The Secret World Interview

The latest interview for Funcom’s upcoming conspiracy-laden MMO The Secret World comes to us via Computer and Videogames. In it, lead content designer Joel Bylos replies on questions on subjects such as his role in the team, the game’s writing and the importance of story in the MMO genre, the choice to go classless and more. Here’s a couple of snippest:

You do have astoundingly strong writing and strong writers, which is very unusual for videogame studios and especially for MMOs. Do you think the MMO is the best vector for a great storyline, given MMO players tendency to skip story?

My personal feeling is that it’s a genre that’s still looking for an audience in a lot of places, and I think there’s a place for storytelling in MMOs. The thing about our storytelling, the cutscenes and stuff, you either take a lot of the story in and you like it, or you don’t give a shit and you don’t have to pay any attention to it. I think that’s how MMOs need to do story, actually. It permeates the game.

Every mission you do ties in to the story and, even if you don’t care about the story, it kind of gets under your skin. Most players don’t like to play games without any motivation at all. Hopefully, the aim of the game is to have people theorising about what it all means.

If people start doing that, even their friends who aren’t into story might getting dragged in. I use this analogy a lot; it’s like the first season of lost. There’s lots of questions, a few answers and we want people talking about it.

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The classless players definitely feels the right move for an MMO; it worked for Planetside and I was surprised it hasn’t been done so well since. The ability to change between builds seems important, especially given the varied challenges of the dungeons.

Exactly, that’s part of the longevity mechanics of the game, is making players want to buy the abilities. Let’s say I’m a hammers guy, all I care about is hammers, and I get to that boss who kills melee types in one hit… I can’t just be a hammers guy. I’ll be a hammers/shotgun or hammers/rifle guy.

It’s nice, that flexibility. The class systems are fine, I don’t mind them. They’re great for defining a role and giving you a set of systems to use in that role. Our aim is to make it more interesting to play the MMO with one character for a long time. I feel like a lot of MMOs get their longevity by getting players to start a new character again, and try a different class, and again and again. Not to say that Bioware did anything wrong, they have a story for each class, which makes it more interesting to do that, to keep people in the game longer. But that’s not what we’re going for.