But perhaps the most intriguing – and potentially
controversial – element of style="font-style: italic;">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.”


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border="1">

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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 “ href="http://www.cyoa.com/main.htm" target="_blank">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 href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/209"
target="_blank">Asheron’s Call to href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/88"
target="_blank">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.


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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 style="font-style: italic;">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 style="font-style: italic;">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 style="font-style: italic;">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!


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Gatheryn Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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