Project 2 summary

Project Title: WILD
Genre: massively multiplayer online role playing game
Scope: Pre-production, concept art, story & lore, environment design, character design, promotional material
WILD is a new MMO concept that explores the natural order of wildlife. Both educational and recreational, the aim of WILD is to create an online ecosystem where players can experience first-hand how an ecosystem functions. Animal families, evolution of those families, and survival of that species (including habitat) will be examined. In essence, the game would be a mix of SPORE and a basic MMO like World of Warcraft. The aim of the game is NOT to evolve into a tribal stage, but simply for your chosen evolutionary line to strengthen and possibly specialise.

Basic gameplay would require a player to first choose and customise a species for play. Once in the world, the player would need to complete certain tasks in order to survive and grow. One of the biggest challenges for such an MMO as WILD is the lack of customisation available due to animals simply being unadorned with anything but their natural features. I plan to exaggerate the ability to change and shape these features (ie, markings, horns, feathers, etc) so that the player feels their creation is truly their own, but placing restrictions on these features so that the family of species that a player is playing does not stray too far. Another major challenge is the reward system: Survivability doesn’t seem like a great reward when completing tasks compared to some other MMOs, where items and currency make a more satisfying reward. A reward system that could be put in place could be gaining special abilities, the ability to add NPC characters to your pack (ala SPORE style), or special markings that give your character unique passive abilities (much like the recently added glyph system to World of Warcraft).

As your character does more and more tasks, your character will grow. Once your character reaches maturity, you have the option of moving to the next area, requiring your character to evolve. This would give your character the ability to learn more skills, have more customisation options, and to gain more strength and survivability. For example, an evolutionary species step might be from being a small feral cat to being a lion (but of course there would be many more evolutionary steps in between).