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

After the rousing success of the Fallout franchise and the continuing love of post-apocalyptic visions like Mad Max, it was only a matter of time before the MMO industry received its first dystopian game. Enter Fallen Earth, set to release in Q2 2009 and the focus of one of our recent live Vooncasts. We sat down with Lead Designer Lee Hammock who answered all of our questions and even stayed late to give responses to our audience. Below is the transcription of that Vooncast, so hold tight and read on!

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Ten Ton Hammer: You just got back from a nationwide tour that concluded in Portland, Oregon. Can you talk a little bit about the response you’ve received from the community about the game?

Lee Hammock: It went really well, we rented out an entire bar for the Portland event. Apparently the city is famous for its locally brewed beers, and they have lots of those there. We figured it was a good place to go.

It was funny because we came in on the heels of their Kentucky Derby party, and the mixture of subcultures there was very interesting. But the event went really well. We had around sixty people in attendance, and I got to stand on a table, which is always fun. I tend to get an urge to stir up a riot.

I ran through parts of the game and answered a lot of questions. Everyone that was there got a key to the ongoing closed beta and a special code to get an in-game item named “the Portland runner.” Only those folks are going to be able to ever get that item. We had a lot of beta testers there, so it was fun and different than some of our other events.

Normally when I talk to players about Fallen Earth, they’re prospective fans. They’re people that may want to play the game in the future. Portland was different because we were meeting people that were playing the game. Instead of “this is awesome and this is all the stuff we do,” the discussion was more them bringing up stuff that they like or us asking them their opinions on things already going on in the game. It was a different sort of conversation that allowed me to get feedback on what players really thought of the game.

You can only get so much information from the forums and feedback reports, but actually talking to someone face to face, you get a lot better feedback.

Ten Ton Hammer: That’s very cool, and I really appreciate the approach you’ve taken towards getting out there and getting in front of the fans. It seems common for people to have fan gatherings around events, but it’s awesome that you made a special trip to see fans.

Lee: It was a great trip, other than the fire alarm going off in our airport.  *laughs*

Ten Ton Hammer: Shifting attention to the game itself, as one of the driving forces behind Fallen Earth I thought you might be able to answer this questions.

We haven’t seen a lot of success from MMOs that have chosen the post apocalyptic sci-fi sort of theme. Can you make any generalizations as to why these games haven’t worked? What are you hoping to do different with Fallen Earth?

Lee: The post-apocalyptic MMOs that have really come out thus far have been Auto Assault and….

Ten Ton Hammer: Tabula Rasa?

Lee: There was an apocalypse in Tabula Rasa, but it was still very high-tech. I mean the first weapon you got in the game was a machine gun.

In Fallen Earth, the first few weapons you get are a rusty pipe, a shiv, and a 2x4. It’s a very different game.

As far as Auto Assault goes, I played that game a lot and really enjoyed it. But it was a driving game. It was a very different experience. I don’t think people were as excited about the driving aspect of Auto Assault, because they generally want to see their characters. It was a really fun game, and I played the hell out of it..   

But I think in the games we’ve mentioned thus far, one of the big problems I think they faced – and all sci-fi faces this to some extent – is that there isn’t a shared mythology like there is in fantasy. In science fiction, when you show an alien race you’re just making something up. I mean, you could name it a “Who-ha” and describe it, but no one cares. There isn’t that emotional reaction people get like they do when you say “elf.” Everyone knows what an elf is. Everyone knows what an orc is.

There’s an understood mythology that comes with fantasy. In post-apocalyptic sci-fi stuff, you generally don’t have that. You might be able to say “mutant” and people will know what it is, but it’s not the same sort of thing. I think Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa made it worse for themselves in that they set themselves in post-apocalyptic environments where nothing was familiar.

Tabula Rasa had great alien races and settings, but they were *so* alien there was no touchstone to it. There’s no point-of-view or perspective for the player. They can’t make a connection with anything like this. It was a lot harder to buy into the game, because everything was so weird.

We set our game in a very real world sort of area. It’s the Grand Canyon, and the tutorial is running through Hoover Dam. The buildings look like real buildings. I mean, it’s an environment that could exist in our world. It’s an area where most people will at least have some sort of emotional response to.

We feel like we’ve got an edge because our world is one that’s based off of things that we already know. It’s familiar enough for them to buy in, but not so familiar that it seems boring. I think that’s what a lot of people enjoyed about the Fallout games. There are all these callbacks to the world that existed before. References to the American culture that we have.

We do the same sort of thing, although based in different time periods. Ours is much more faux-90s rather than weird 1950s stuff.

To make this long-winded answer a succinct point, we have a built in emotional touchstone that a lot of games haven’t had.

I mean, I can go on and on about how our gameplay is better and our crafting is better, but people will argue that with me all day long. Though I will say that our system is a hell of a lot better than Tabula Rasa’s because, my god that system was lame.

Ten Ton Hammer: Expanding on that, I mean I remember seeing a Volkswagen bug in one of your screenshots.

Lee: Yeah, we tried to do a lot of stuff like that where you might be walking around and see a ruined cell tower or old car models that you recognize. In one area we actually have a collapsed, very large array, kind of like those big radio antennas. It’s all stuff that you’ve seen in the everyday world, maybe not stuff you’ve seen in real life, but at least you’ve seen it on TV.

But it’s all broken. We might present you with a nice suburban house, but there’s a whole in the wall, the roof is caving in, and there’s blood splatter. We just break it. We just feels that it creates a sort of resonance where it’s the world we know, but it’s damaged and broken.

It’s not what it used to be. It’s not nice. It’s not pretty. That’s a real strength for us.