Lewis: To kick us off and if you'd be so kind, why are you so excited about Crowfall?

Isarii: I've long been a proponent of developers moving towards projects with a greater focus on emergent, player-driven gameplay - particularly with a PvP centric design, and Crowfall is unabashedly exactly that. I don't think it's an uncommon perspective; when I catch myself saying things like "what I'd really like to play is EVE, but on the ground and with less emphasis on UI-play", there are usually rumblings of agreement from whomever I happen to be speaking with. Crowfall's Kickstarter tagline - that it's Game of Thrones meets EVE Online - ended up being a real attention-grabber for me as a result. I know everyone has heard enough Star Wars Galaxies nostalgia to last a lifetime, particularly on the subject of crafting, but that's another area of game design Crowfall is pursuing that has my interest extremely piqued.

Perhaps more importantly though, one of the most exciting things about Crowfall is not only that they're trying to create that type of play, but that they're not trying to include any other type of experience at the same time. We've had a lot of recent MMOs come out trying to do a lot of different things at once, and while you can still make a good game that way, a lot of those features are going to end up being diluted in the larger game-system ecosystem. Sandbox PvP games with a crafting economy are especially vulnerable in this area - if you start adding dungeons and PvE bosses and items as loot rewards, you easily run the risk of marginalizing or invalidating the game systems that are the backbone of the EVE or Star Wars Galaxies-esque gameplay experience, and this risk can be extremely hard to assess, from a fan perspective, until the game is actually launched. The fact that ArtCraft Entertainment is solely focused on delivering that one style of play instead of adding other types of content gives me a lot of faith that the game we see at launch will still resemble the game we're hearing about today.

Lewis: I think you've hit the nail on the head. I feel we've reached a point in the genre where developers need to begin to pursue a specific area of gameplay, hone it and ensure that it's the best it can possibly be. Something I've seen time and time again, for many years, are is development teams attempting to please everyone and never comfortably doing that. I'm not suggesting recent MMOG's such as Guild Wars 2 haven't done aspects of PvE and PvP well, but they've never quite reached a point where its components are all exceptional. It's interesting that you raise the tag-line strapped onto Crowfall because it caught my eye too. In many ways, the whole concept of a 'dark' but sandbox game is an ideal marriage for me when it comes to the massively multiplayer genre. I don't know whether it's my age or fatigue with the games I've played for the past few years, but I feel ready for an experience that offers something more than a predictable treadmill inside a rigid ruleset. Some of my fondest in this genre come from a small game called Neocron, where there were little rules and players were able to forge their own relationships and playstyles. That similar sense of player empowerment excites me about Crowfall. Do you think ArtCraft can pull it off? Does the genre needs Crowfall?

Isarii: At this point, it would be a little presumptuous to say the genre needs Crowfall specifically, but it does need something similar. Not to be shamelessly self-promotional, but I've written before on what I call the The Massive Identity Crisis, which is essentially how the modern MMO paradigm has shifted away from all of the features that originally set the genre apart, moving from the persistent worlds and massive communities unique to MMOs in favor of segregating players into small-group instances using community-circumventing group finders in a way that makes modern MMOs more reminiscent of games like Diablo than of the games that made the genre great - games like Star Wars: Galaxies, Ultima Online, or even Everquest. The capacity for massive player communities to effect change upon a virtual world is something entirely unique to the MMO genre, so it's a shame that so many developers have chosen to move away from that core genre competency.

Thankfully, the rise of crowdfunding has made it a lot easier for games aiming to return to the genre's strengths to be created. While the executives at major studios have spent the better part of the last decade trying to reskin World of Warcraft in an attempt to siphon off some of its success, games like Crowfall are now able to turn to the players directly to gain the funding that the studios weren't willing to invest in projects less adherent to that same tired and formulaic approach. In that way, crowdfunding allows the development team to create the game as they want to, unbeholden to the central managerial duty of maximizing the investment return of their shareholders. This leaves those in charge fully able to exercise their passion for the game (and if you've read J. Todd Coleman's comments on the game, you know that the passion is there), which is a big leg up on some of the competition. So, do I think ArtCraft can pull it off? Maybe. It's still incredibly early, but they care deeply about the game they're creating, and all things considered, I do think they have a really good chance of actually doing it.

Lewis: I think the most difficult hurdle ArtCraft have to overcome is player expectation. It has crushed many recent MMO's that promises this or that and I think if they keep their design decisions simple, but provide players with the tools they need to have freedom to play as they choose, they'll have won half the battle. The thing is, I don't believe every single MMOG has to be sandbox in order to allow its players to feel free. What it does need however are a set of rules that bring the wall down just enough to keep some of the immediacy that theme park games provide, but also the long term fun that aritificial barriers often prevent. The Bloodstone Campaign ruleset that was recently revealed is a perfect example of something that's relatively defined in terms of its ruleset, but one which offers an abudance of possibilities for players to choose how to approach it. I think it's a sensible mix of content styles and it seems something that ArtCraft Entertainment seem to be pursuing.

As a last question to put to you, if you could implement anything into Crowfall what would it be?

Isarri: Maybe I've been reading too much of Raph Koster's blog recently, but if I could have anything implemented into Crowfall - beyond what's already been confirmed -, it would be game mechanics supporting strong player interdependence and a similar model of weak-tie social interdependence to what was created in Star Wars Galaxies and EVE Online. Weak-tie social interdependence is the idea that everyone in the game world could in fact be indirectly providing you with something you need, even if you don't know them. Essentially, this is the idiom that "no man is an island" realized as a design objective, but in such a way that it extends beyond simple direct relationships (such as between friends or guildmates) and into the broader game community as a whole. As an example, a player providing your crafter of choice with high quality resources may be essential to you getting the high quality gear you depend on to defend your player city, even if you have no idea who he is.

The PvP implications of weak-tie social interdependence are particularly interesting. While a PvP system wherein players have the freedom to kill and steal from whoever they want is a huge part of what's attracted me to Crowfall, it's important for game mechanics to encourage players to determine PvP engagement based on more factors than "it's red, it's dead" in the majority of cases, if community is to play an important role in the game's virtual world and create a PvP environment more compelling than Call of Duty in a persistent world. While negative reinforcement intrinsically exists in all PvP games (if I kill a player from guild X, guild X will kill me when they see me later), meaningful positive reinforcement arising from a legitimate need for collaboration between players - and groups of players - is far more rare, and can be incredibly effective in developing a living society within the game by adding a new layer of social consequence to who players choose to engage in combat against. This importantly adds meaningful context to PvP through the place the players involved inhabit within the game's community.

Unfortunately, this is a big wish, as designing this kind of complex social interdependence inevitably hooks into a lot of different game systems, going so far as to be the type of thing the game has to be designed around instead of something that can just be added on halfway through development. Factors like the ability to play solo effectively, PvE content and encounter design, how vertically integrated crafters will be able to become, the complexity and availability of resources, the degree to which crafters are able to distinguish themselves, how trade is handled, the number of characters on one account allowed into a campaign, how specialized archetypes are, and the importance of player cities will all play crucial roles in determining the impact of weak-tie social interdependence on Crowfall's community. That said, most of what we've heard so far does indicate that they're heading in this direction.

Just in case outlining an entire design philosophy as the one thing I would implement is cheating, I'll add that boat play ala ArcheAge would make some awesome expansion content.

Lewis: For me and perhaps an issue that would be considered small by some, it would have to be a clear direction when it comes to archetypes. I’ve always felt that too many is never a good thing for any game in the genre because it stretches the development team and leaves them with a great deal of work when it comes to balance and bug fixes. Crowfall is already pretty heavy when it comes archetypes and it worries me as to how ArtCraft Entertainment are going to comfortably manage them. In all the years that I’ve played massively multiplayer games there’s never once been a sense of balance when it comes to how certain archetypes or classes are treated. I’m not necessarily talking about power, but of priority when it comes to fixes and polish. I only look at games such as Guild Wars 2 or WildStar and they summarize pretty well as to how poorly some classes have faired at the hands of developers.

Considering the class you play determines almost every aspect of a game and your enjoyment of it, it seems odd that such little emphasis is seemingly placed on ensuring that they’re balanced, refined, and improved upon on a regular basis. If the Crowfall team provide a great deal of resources on ensuring that classes take center stage, there’s every probability that they’ll find themselves in a position where they can solely concentrate on game design as opposed to constantly wrestling with a community that’s displeased with X, Y or Z archetype. I've yet to see any MMOG do this and I'm hoping that Crowfall will be the first. 

Ten Ton Hammer would like to thank Isarii from Errant Penman. You can more of his work by clicking this link.