Before you go on to read today’s Mirandus Monday, mark your calendar for February 27th and 28th! There will be events spaced throughout the two days, so that they fit nicely into global time zones for the entire Gala Community! These will culminate in a GalaCon Event in the GamerJibe space where Gala Games Partners will have an opportunity to show what they are working on and there will be a special Mirandus Reveal!

The room in which the reveal is streamed can only sit 50 avatars, so you will want to make sure you are in that room, because everyone who is will get a special Mirandus NFT, and will get to be part of Mirandus History! Are you ready to see the Dawn Over Mirandus?

Now, onto the Mirandus Monday!

For today’s image release, we see another visual target of a glade with some tumbled down ruins. Here, you can see a bit of the water effect, a bit of grass, and some of the forest in the background. Last week, we talked a bit about how we are working on building fully integrated ecosystem models into the world…so you will be able to see the ripple effects of actions in the world of Mirandus.

We also mentioned this in several AMAs, and briefly in the ETH Denver event, and the first question we get is often “THIS IS GROUNDBREAKING?!?! HOW WILL YOU BE ABLE TO BUILD THIS?” Often times, there are references to games which overpromised and failed to deliver.

During a call with the yet-to-be-revealed purchaser of the Citadel of the Stars, this very issue came up in conversation as we were planning the ecosystem surrounding the citadel. Studio Director Michael McCarthy mentioned several factors which demonstrate the ability of the development team to actually bring the world of Mirandus to life. The first is that the development style and trajectory are significantly different from other MMORPGs due to the unique art style. Back in the early days of gaming, it wasn’t about intense photorealistic graphics of million-poly bosses that take a team of 12 six months to create the art for — gaming was about having an immersive world that allowed your mind to make it what you wanted to see. Some of the best RPGs of all time had graphics which would be considered crude compared to today’s AAA titles, but were immersive enough to drag you DEEPLY into the game and to care about the characters and their world.

Therefore, an amazing game isn’t just about the graphics, especially if it has no style. This is why, with Mirandus, we are going with an art style which is reminiscent of complex papercraft and origami. Inspired by the years Michael McCarthy’s spent in Japan as head of Zynga Japan, this style evokes emotion, draws you into the game, looks beautiful, and makes it possible to produce a great deal of content relatively quickly.

The second factor is that Gala Games, led by seasoned gaming industry professionals, has deep connections upon which to draw in order to scale the Mirandus Development Team. Within the next several weeks, we will be announcing several high profile hires with decades of AAA game development experience. We think that the community will be very impressed with the caliber of the individuals that are joining our team from a game development perspective — and we also think that you will be very impressed by how quickly development progress rolls out.

The third factor, as Michael McCarthy put it, is that “game developers get in trouble when they make promises for things that have never been done before. Everything in Mirandus is tried and true game mechanics and ecological modeling, it has just never been combined in this way.” What we are doing is going to redefine gaming, but not because we are promising universes, but rather a world, created by master world builders, and an ecosystem built to allow unprecedented player engagement and immersion.

As one of the citadel buyers said when shown live gameplay of the world, “I just want to live in this world.” Seeing the AI play itself out between predator and prey, it is clear to see that Mirandus is going to make waves in the world of gaming. There is so much yet to come…buckle in, its going to be an amazing ride.

For much of human history, we have looked at forests with a sense of trepidation. Feet which walk confidently on the open road, suddenly walk more carefully on the soft mosses and lichens of the underbrush. The flutter of wings or the snap of a twig, which might pass unnoticed in a sunlit meadow, are brought into crystal clear focus in quiet of the understory. However, none of these noises are nearly as terrifying as — silence.

“I want to be very clear — I don’t want the world of Mirandus, as a whole, to be a scary or dangerous place,” says Studio Director Michael McCarthy. “However, I want there to be some places, like a simple forest for example, that make you realize that while some of the world might be nice and sunny, not everywhere is. Some places should be terrifying and make you check your gear before going inside.”

Earlier gaming had a sense of danger that has largely been lost by more modern games. This is especially true in MMORPGs, where the spawn points for creatures are often quickly identified. Creatures in the games exist for one simple reason — to be killed by player-characters.

What if this wasn’t the case? What if creatures in-game had their own logic and priorities outside of providing crafting fodder for player-characters? What would this kind of game look like?

This is why Gala Games is drawing inspiration from projects like the Mannahatta Project. This project, starting with a 1609 map of Manhattan, seeks to create a fully interconnected ecological web of pre-large-scale colonization of the area currently occupied by New York City. Mannahatta, the Lenape word for “land of many hills,” was the name chosen because the researchers wanted to show what the whole of Manhattan looked like when it was hilly countryside and forests, and before it became one continuous patchwork of concrete and steel.

The Mannahatta Project began by drawing ecological dependency maps, or “Muir webs,” showing how each different animal fits into the ecosystem with those around it. These are similar to the elementary school classes where your teachers might have showed you that an overabundance of rabbits may result in an explosion of the fox population, which would eat the rabbits, etc.

Mirandus is being built as a simulation which you, the player character, are placed in a world which will respond to your presence. Animals and monsters will not have set spawn points where they might reliably be found, but rather vast ranges they might explore, interacting with the other creatures and the environment, and acting according to their logic. This means that if you go into a forest and kill all the rabbits to get pelts for the market, this might mean that the wolves that normally might exist in that range will become hungrier and more dangerous. The lack of adventurers in the forest because of this new danger might make it an attractive home for a den of goblins or a cave full of trolls. Proximity to the forest, as a deed owner, might have some perks, but it also means you are the first to realize that the ecosystem is out of balance. What happens if you cut all the trees down? You might have removed the immediate threat of wolves, but you also might have lowered the water table making it harder and harder to farm. Will we see Rangers forming up to protect and steward the forests — The Dúnedain of Mirandus? Or logging companies? What sort of player-based emergent behavior will be observed?

Mirandus is an extremely ambitious project — we aren’t just building a game, we are building a world, within which you, the player, will serve a central role. This world will grow and evolve as we add to it and as the players exert their own influence. How it will evolve depends so much on player behavior, and we are as excited as you to see what you will do with the world we are building.

Some future players, such as the current Monarchs of the world, are all putting their own indelible stamp on the world. There is much more we want to share, so make sure that you come to GalaCon at the end of February for a special reveal!

The Pieces of Nine

If you own a Gala Games Node license and operate a node, you will have noticed that there was at least one “Piece of Nine” in your Treasure Chest! These are the two first two images from Mirandus, released in NFT art form. While there is a total of 900 shards of each image, only 100 total “sets” can ever be created. We wanted to give something to the whole node holding community and enable you to collect and display some of the great Mirandus art produced by the Gala Games team.

Breweries

Tomorrow, breweries will be minted! Get your mead horn and get ready! They will not be released for sale until somewhat later, once we have made some changes to the store “go live” schedule.