DeFi Kingdoms Chaos Cast with Hubert (Game Mechanics) and Ian (Wisdom gaming)(November 30, 2022)
INTRO
Chaos Cast did a stream today with Ian (0xWorkhorse) from Wisdom Labs, which is helping Kingdom Studios to build out PVP and PVE. Given everyone’s interset in PVP and PVE I listened in and took summary notes (not a script) of their discussion.
Link to the video:
Highlights
Background
Wisdom gaming is a sleeping giant in the industry. Ian is one of the co-founders. For the first 3 years, Ian helped build it out. It grew from 5 to 80 employees in 18 months. Once the studio was opened publicly, the wisdom gaming began to be run by another leadership team, and Ian was able to pursue new ventures, which is what led to Wisdom Labs (which started in June this year).
Wisdom Labs brought on devs and artists to start making things, and one of the things they’ve been working on is the connection with DeFi Kingdoms.
When things went south with Harmony, Ian was making content under “Pervy Sage” (Naruto reference to Jiraya). Because of his work and place in Web3, and he has several chains he has connections with he reached out to the DeFi Kingdoms team and it turned into eventually a partnership for Wisdom to help build out PVP and PVE.
PVP and PVE
At first the idea was to just make a quick, simple and light game in 3 months. Once they started and after having meetings with the DeFi Kingdoms team they realized that everyone wanted to do something much bigger and that they were capable of doing it. So what started out with a PVP prototype turned into a more robust PVP and also PVE and much more complex like integrations with crafting, materials, things like evasion, etc.
Making a game at the level that they want is very hard and takes a lot of time. It could take years to make what they WANT to make, so they are figuring out how to release in bits and pieces while trying to meet expectations but also scaling up each time so that people can see the vision.
Graphics and animation are the last thing built in a game, which makes teasers hard.
DFK had the minds to build it out, but Wisdom had the skills, systems and engines in place to help. The reality has not been though that they just say “Wisdom plz build kthxbai”. Its been collaborative.
General Discussion
Big circle j*** discussion about monks.
Huber went from Game Director -> Game Mechanics Director -> Game Director. He enjoys being Game Director a lot more than when he was just Game Mechanics Director.
Everyone jives well and is working together well.
Ian noted Secondbestdad is the full package. Not just an artist, he has the mind for game development as well.
Wisdom Twitter accounts to follow:
Ian — big esports and casting background. Was very connected to the Blizzard universe. Eventually got into FF XIV (lalafel Paladin of course, but eventually turned Dark Knight).
Wisdom built out a lot of tools for tier 3 games that people were playing — HOTS, Team Fight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra, and people started wanting more and more. They were limited with their time and the communities they could do right by. Now with the physical location, they do lots of big things but also a lot of stuff behind the scenes.
Rissen noted that Wisdom has lots of experience with tournaments, playing online, and broadcasting, which DFK team feels will help project DFK further in addition to the work they are doing on building out PVP and PVE.
Ian noted that the reality is that the game will continue to evolve. There would be no reason to end development because the vision is big enough. The living game element is hard to achieve, but is one of the most exciting ways to play a game. Thinking of PVP there will be balance patches all the time, new classes, meta shifts, changes that will make the game feel alive, and that’s just PVP. PVE will be dungeons and raids. The craziness behind travel will be beautiful. They know its hard for people to hear “Trust us, its awesome.”
Big discussion about satisfaction of how well the teams are working and collaborating together.
Discussion of how PVE is the real deal and how PVP is great, but PVE is what they all seemed most excited about.
Question to Hubert about whether he wants to add anything about PVE.
Hubert noted he is super excited and is more of a PVE than PVP guy, but will make sure PVP is very enjoyable for people. When thinking about Travel and land and guilds, there are many big systems that need to be put into place to get to a state where instead of developing a new feature, they are developing content for an existing feature. Once PVE is in place its a focus on lets build new quests for that, rather than developing the framework for PVE. So once it is there there’s so many things they can do. He hopes everyone can be patient as they build it, and with everything happening this year they’ve been delayed and had to slim the team down.
Travel — any inspiration from Heroes of Might and Magic?
Hubert noted he is an electrical engineer by trade, so a lot of his inspiration comes from the many games he’s played. Heroes of Might and Magic probably bleeds into the vision somewhat. As far as the experience goes, map is set into regions and Serendale, each of those will be places you can travel to, it will take time to get there, and within those regions there will be different activities you can do and those activities will grow. The vision he has is that people will log in, see what events are going on, maybe there’s an event in a certain area where you have to get your guys there in a race of time. The hero management aspect of the game will be fun and will be more than just profession quests, summoning, hatching pets. I.e. higher level profession quests will be in a zone that you have to travel to, and you may have to fight through monsters to get there.
Timelines —
They hoped to talk about timelines, but with the shift and growth of what they are envisioning, timelines have been in flux, but we should see more of them. There’s a lot of stuff up front, and they are almost through that up front stuff, and they noted they are probably closer to something than we think.
Share feedback in PVP discussion, Workhorse (Ian) loves it and is processing it all.
Will have formal AMAs with Wisdom in the relatively near future.
Ian noted he and Hubert will drop as many alpha nuggets as they can when they have them.
