Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

But perhaps the most intriguing – and potentially controversial – element of Gatheryn’s development was explained by Joseph in a follow-up question. Apparently, the team at MindFuse is creating the game one small portion at a time, rather than taking years and years of development cycles to churn out one massive product. That said, Joseph also added that “we're going to expand the world over shorter time schedules than what you see in other games. The players are actually going to drive what we build into the world. If we see a larger number of players heading towards the casual games, we'll put more casual games in it. We're planning on adding at least one mini-game a month once we reach our "full" stage, which should be sometime in the middle of next year. “

“After that point, we'll be adding a mini-game every month and that will be based on player feedback,” Joseph stated. “If players really enjoy the vehicles, we'll be adding in more race tracks. We're trying to keep things really flexible. We're not allowing players to build the environment [like Second Life], but we are giving them a chance to give us feedback.”

The development team promises a Choose Your Own Adventure approach to updating content.

To this gamer, that whole idea sounds incredibly intriguing and reminds me of the days when I used to buy up shelves of “Choose Your Own Adventure” novels. Gamers will be able to push the development team in the directions that they choose, simply by voicing their opinions or playing through a particular type of content they enjoy.

While driving the design of the game is all well and good, most casual gamers aren’t the type of person that goes into a store and buys a game off a shelf. In fact, many casual gamers run fairly slim computers with little gaming muscle behind them. To alleviate this problem, the MindFuse crew has created a solution that’s been used in the past by MMOG companies (namely Blizzard), but hasn’t seen widespread use among MMO developers.

“We've got a small stream client that the players will download, and we're estimating that it’s going to be about 50 megs,” Joseph explained. “The client will then stream the rest of the game down as you're playing it. You'll be able to go into different areas, and as you're in a particular area, it will stream other areas in the background while you're playing. Since we don't have projectiles in the game, it opens up our bandwidth quite a bit.”

“We're setting up a micro-transaction and a subscription model for the game,” Joseph continued. “If a player chooses, they could actually put micro-transactions on top of their subscription if they want. The free-to-play model will allow gamers to buy some things, but to get access to all of the content, you'll want to have a subscription.”

Even with every sign so far pointing towards a true MMOG rather than a “virtual world” the Ten Ton Hammer team finally got the answer we were looking for from Joseph. Almost every MMOG on the market – from Asheron’s Call to Warhammer Online – has an advancement system, and Gatheryn won’t be an exception to that rule. Earning upgrades to skills and levels will be in Gatheryn from day one.

Player advancement will be included in Gatheryn.

“Levels will be based a lot off of the players' skills that they pick up over time,” Joseph explained. “In the mini-games you'll be acquiring more gold, and that will help your level-building as well. We're going with the traditional skills you see in games: fishing, mining and that sort of thing. It's skill-based in that respect, and there will be crafting in the game. However, there are no races; there are no classes. I think most players will use that [items and clothing] to show their advancement, but we do have leveling in the game.”

But without all the blood, action and violence of a typical video game, won’t MindFuse be scaring away their audience? The Ten Ton Hammer staff was equally curious about the target demographic for Gatheryn, so we asked Joseph about it. Again, his answer surprised us.  

“We're shooting for a 50/50 male to female audience,” Joseph said. “Nobody is really doing that yet. We tried to make the game more feminine without destroying the male audience. We really want to draw in the female players that are playing World of Warcraft while also bringing in the players from the casual games market. We do want to have an older audience, and we're looking at a target demographic between 18-35.”

All in all, we came away from our conversation with Joseph more than a bit surprised and excited to find out that Gatheryn wasn’t just a virtual world and it wasn’t a simple MMOG either. Although my gaming preference has changed over the years, I can honestly say I was one of the misfit toys in my past, and Gatheryn has me excited to be an adventure gaming aficionado all over again.

So what’s next for the MindFuse team and their upcoming game? Apparently the game is slated to go into a closed beta sometime near the end of December, and apparently there are some exciting hires to be announced in the coming weeks, so keep checking back in with Ten Ton Hammer to find out more about this upcoming game!