Sony has a knack for giving its devs the breathing room they need to really execute their vision, and that has a way of making itself evident on the showfloor of events like E3 and PAX. Actually, off the show floor is more like it; much like the cozy, inviting back room Sony afforded Thekla Inc. at E3, SOE’s remote escape at the Grand Hyatt hotel practically felt like a PAX Prime oasis. Away from the noise, the cosplay, the body odor, the giant arena battles between anthropomorphic animals (yes that’s real), you get the idea. They had three games to show, but most notable among them was H1Z1, the survival MMO set to release sometime later this year.
Our tour guide of the day was Senior Game Designer Jimmy Whisenhunt, and for a guy tasked with establishing, balancing, and maintaining a persistent, zombie-ravaged world, he certainly didn’t seem all that stressed out. “I’m not like him [Everquest Director of Development David Georgeson] where I just like to troll people all day,” he joked. Of course, he’s referring to Landmark, the player-driven builder constructed from the same tools SOE uses to make Everquest Next itself. But that’s a discussion for another article.
H1Z1 is first and foremost about freedom, and how the player decides to use that freedom is going to both shape and define their experience. I asked if I could simply craft a basic, wooden bow and get along just fine for the rest of the game, and I was told that I could. However, the odds of this actually happening are slim. Curiosity, exposure to new abilities, appearance of new survival scenarios; all of these things will compel to craft or buy new weapons and abilities. Why use a birch-striped bow when actual guns and ammo are available? I argued immersion, but I knew I’d never actually hold myself to that.
The cool thing about H1Z1 is that it actually does offer some of Landmark’s customization and player input. It’s not a building game foremost, but the actions of other players can and will affect the world. Jimmy told me that the mere addition of bears into various environments drastically changed player outlook across much of the game, and that in some cases huge overhauls that the dev team expected to have a similar effect resulted in nothing of the sort. “We try not to be afraid to scrap something, even if it took hours and hours to create,” Whisenhunt jokes. Hey, if SOE is cool with such practices, then so am I.
Perhaps one of H1Z1’s more interesting lines in the sand has to do with exploration vs. finding one’s niche. It is a survival game after all, and if you’re able to carve out a successful little life for yourself (let’s say you hunt animals and sell their pelts in a snowy, wooded area just along a former city’s outskirts), what compels you to explore? According to Whisenhunt, some players will and some simply won’t. And that’s okay. If you’re a traveler you’ll likely find those comfort-zoned players wherever you go, and for a price they’ll assist you. Everyone’s trying to survive, and in theory, everyone wants to help each other out. There’s always going to be that guy who kills without reason or camps your corpse, but in the world of H1Z1, every effort is being made to organically discourage such behavior. So far, it seems to be working.
I was told that early access is an absolutely crucial part of H1Z1’s progression, both in terms of developing and fine-tuning the world and also determining how micropayments are going to work. Like Planetside 2 and Landmark, players can get in on a cut of what they sell, and being a free-to-play game, tactfully embedding micropayments will be H1Z1’s main source of income. It’s bold, but other games are already succeeding with a similar model: just look at Planetside 2’s PC edition.
To me, the most encouraging thing I gathered about H1Z1’s development process is the heavy focus on community feedback. From what I saw, the game does have a ways to go before being regularly and consistently compelling. That said, both its intrigue and potential are enormous, and with its developers focus on early access as a learning tool rather than a hype machine, it’s hard to imagine the game doing anything but improving from here.
Also See: H1Z1’s Senior Game Designer Interview
As for me? I’m a bit afraid the survival tropes of hunting, skinning, and selling will wear thin relatively quickly. Sure there’s base building, vehicles, and more still to come, but my PAX demo excluded much of what the game intends to offer during Early Access and beyond. There are also custom servers and other features planned (at one point land mines were “thrown in” unbeknownst to much of the development team), and evolution is something that H1Z1 seems to be undergoing daily. That’s the beauty of free-to-play I suppose; by the time I try H1Z1 again, it may be an entirely different experience. No monthly renewal required.
