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.
