Missed the Metarush AMA? Read the transcript here.
Metarush is the first game developed by Myria’s internal game development studio, Myria Studios. For the first time ever, the title was presented to the general public during the Metarush closed gameplay demo. Myria community members and influencers had the opportunity to play through a complete level and leave valuable feedback that’ll help the Metarush team improve the game.
In the days preceding the gameplay demo, Metarush Art Director Quentin Gabriel had the chance to sit down for an AMA and reveal more about the game on March 8. In case you missed the event, you can check the full transcript below.
Metarush AMA March 8 Transcript
Quentin
Thank you so much for inviting me today to speak about Metarush.
Tarji
Oh yeah, definitely. And while we’re waiting for a bunch of people, I think I speak for both of us when I say we’re pumped to talk to everyone about the new game and some of the exciting developments that we’ve reached so far.
At this point, I think we can kick it off.
Quentin
Great, we’re wrapping up a lot of stuff on the emitter side. We have a demo coming very soon as everyone might know. The team is applying some finishing touches and making sure that everything is in place. The demo goes super smoothly and we’re so excited to share some information and answer any questions that the community might have about the game.
Tarji
Lovely. And you’ve been plowing away for sure. I know it’s buzzing over there in the Arts and games department. So thanks so much for setting aside some time to come and hang out with everyone and talk about the game. Alrighty, so for everybody here, who is new, you should know that apart from our end-to-end gaming ecosystem, you know, with the whole Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution that allows for 0 gas, we also have our own AAA game studio in-house called Myria Studios. It’s been keeping busy and we’re super happy to invite everyone for an inside look into the production side of things on our first game in development, Metarush. Of course, we have our art director, Quentin, here with us to shed some light on that. Quentin before we get into it, could you maybe tell us a little bit about your art background and some of the games and studios that you’ve worked with in the past?
Quentin
Yeah, of course. I started pretty young to get interested in this industry. I had a big passion for drawing. So I went to try to find schools that could help me. It was quite difficult at the time, there weren’t many schools teaching the job I was interested in and that was concept art. After learning most of it by myself at home watching tutorials, and online speaking with artists that were in the industry, I started working as a concept artist focusing mainly on the animation movie industry. And after that, I switched to video games, where I had a chance to work on a lot of big AAA titles like Assassin’s Creed, Diablo 4, Spiderman, The Division, Rayman, and more recently as well at Skull & Bones with Ubisoft Singapore. I also had the chance to work in the movie industry. So I touched a bit of every corner and this has helped me a lot to grow as an artist in the gaming industry. And as well on the side, I also wanted to try something else so I had to have some experience as well in publishing. I’ve been doing illustrations for Discovery Channel Magazine.
Tarji
Pretty snazzy list! Cool, thanks for sharing. You know I’ve played my fair share of Assassin’s Creed and Diablo, I’m sure a bunch of people here have to, and I have to say — an element that lends to the whole experience is the game art. It’s one of those things that keeps you immersed and involved as a player. There are times it can be totally understated, but when it’s not there, the entire atmosphere is just lost. It’s surreal to be talking to someone who’s largely to thank for the visuals behind those games. And this game! Metarush. We finally get to talk about it.
Do take it away, if you can give us an overview of Metarush, that’d be great — what genre is it, how does it work, and how do you win?
Quentin
Yeah, of course. So Metarush is pretty much a battle royal game as well as an obstacle runner. In Metarush, mainly the players will compete in races set across different places in the known and unknown Multiverse. Players can expect to see a lot of interesting landscapes, creatures, and weird inhabitants. But the main objective of Metarush is to get to the finish line and qualify for the next round. After each run, half of the players that succeed — pretty much because half of them will get eliminated — will continue and race to the end. Survive to the end and become the champion of the race.
Tarji
Cool cool. And I know the weird inhabitants — that gets me giddy every time I think about it because Metarush has some colorful and whimsical world-building set in outer space. We have stuff from jungle biomes to obstacle courses along a freakin’ asteroid belt. And we’re all curious — What was the creative process behind designing the game’s characters and environment?
Quentin
Yeah, it’s been very difficult because with our team we try to build some things that are original and have not been seen before. Because it’s always important that when a player plays a game, you can still find some things you can recognize or compare with other games as well. We’ve spent a lot of time at the beginning of the game, just doing visual development. Just researching different directions and trying to see what cool things we’d like to do. For me, it’s very important that your team appreciates the kind of games they are doing. This makes the research stage the most important one. I give a lot of freedom to concept artists to make sure that they can have fun. Explore shapes, explore different biomes, etc. And when we have something that we all like, we usually push it a bit more. I think I can speak a bit more about what we did for the characters. We had a pretty clear direction of what we wanted. We wanted some characters that look fun, cool, and clumsy. And I also wanted them to have a vibrant touch so for that we added a lot of emissive lights on their skins and costumes, etc. This is also one other thing we used to showcase to the players that they are not part of our world. They are characters that we will discover, that we will learn about. And yeah, it’s ready to offer something new that hasn’t been seen before. The main process that we usually have to create those characters is to gather references. And when we have those references, we try to find the logic behind them. So why are we picking this? Why are we picking these kinds of shapes or maybe this kind of color, etc? When the player plays the game, they can feel the narrative behind it and of course, it’s not only the art teams that work on this. We also have the narrative teams that do huge work on trying to explore what the world could be, and what the player could feel or see when playing the game.
On the environment side, we did try to do a lot of iterations and the funny thing is that the character side and environment side, in terms of concept art, were quite separated to make sure that we show that it’s a Multiverse. The player will travel between different worlds. There is some connection between them, but there are also a lot of things that are not connected. We decided to start with the nebula world.
I’m sure some of the community have also seen some of the concepts or illustrations that have been shared on Twitter. The nebula was what we wanted to start with because it resembles this founding pillar of the Multiverse. After that, we will explore other biomes as well.
Tarji
Yeah and it’s really fascinating, isn’t it? Part of being a concept artist is having that strong ability to visualize and build on the story behind the game, the lore that weaves everything together… I mean, from what you said, there’s a lot that goes into the process, not just in terms of technical aspects but also creative design and the writing behind it too, so props to you and the team. What is your favorite part about being an art director?
Quentin
That’s a tricky question. I think there are a lot of things I love about art direction, but I think one of the main things is helping my team grow and fueling their passion for the project we are working on.
I make sure that the team is actively involved in the art direction. Because if they like the project, if they like the art direction, they will be motivated to give more work to the project and put their soul and their passion into it. The other thing that I love about art direction is being able to showcase the vision that we had to the community. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing people react to what we’ve been creating.
Tarji
Yeah, and you can see it also in our Metarush Twitter that it’s kind of like a big collage of all the art progress that’s been happening so far and people have their own sentiments about it. They’re really excited about the colorful characters and the lush biomes.
Yeah, I can say that I’m proud of our team, too. They’ve been working passionately and the game is looking better with every build. And it’s kind of funny, right? Because you and I have seen each other at company playtests a lot. We’ve tested the game out together with other folks at Myria. I’m sure more so in the dev and art team, you guys have probably stared at this thing for many, many hours which is kind of also why we’re opening up the demo next week to gain a fresh pair of eyes and collect some feedback, right?
Quentin
Exactly. Yes. And the funny part about building a game like this is that we started from blocks. At the beginning of the game, we didn’t have any visuals. It was just some cubes moving around and seeing the game evolve build by build as you said, there is nothing more rewarding for our team.
Tarji
Yeah, it’s kind of like a blank canvas and you guys have built on it from the earlier stages. Metarush has gone far and I’m sure people who will be trying out the demo will see that come to fruition. What kind of gamers do you think would be most interested in playing Metarush?
Quentin
That’s a very good question. I think it’s very important to know what people would like in the games we are building and I think Metarush will have a wide audience. What we did is we looked at video games, like Crash Bandicoot, for example. If people like Crash Bandicoot then they will love Metarush because there is that fun vibe to it.
In Metarush, there’s something for everyone. A huge part of Metarush is the power-up mechanic. It’s very similar to what we can find in Super Smash Bros or Mario Kart. You pick up a power-up and you get a special ability that you can use while playing. There are many different mechanics that the player can use and that’ll attract different types of players.
Tarji
Metarush definitely hosts a whole party of people and I think that’s awesome. Games like Crash Bandicoot would definitely stir up childhood memories from all of those 90s kids out there and it’s cool to see Metarush potentially appealing to all sorts of players. So, yeah. Well, done over there. Okay, well, let’s talk about the sneak peek that’s brewing behind the scenes, you know, specifically the closed demo that’s taking place soon. It’s already next week. We’ve got some Esports Gamers, some pretty well-known streamers coming in, guilds, and of course, some loyal community members crashing the party to come and play Metarush for the first time. This is still an alpha. What sort of input is the team looking for, from this particular selection of guinea pigs? I mean players?
Quentin
Yeah, I mean, like, we’re looking pretty much for any feedback. I think at any stage that you are in a game, anything is more than welcome in terms of feedback. Because, you know, the team stays and works on the game for so long like day and night, right? So, having a fresh eye from all these people coming in and trying our game for the first time can help us do even better, what we need to do to improve our game, and what could be even more fun for the players. So, any topics like game design, art, narrative, and of course, the bugs. Bugs are one of the most important things we need to tackle to improve Metarush. But yes, I think a game cannot be good without the feedback of the community. In Myria, we have this culture where we take seriously the feedback from our players.
Yeah, and I think for this particular game, right, we’re taking the decision of not entirely building in stealth but then getting the community involved early, in the stage of development that they have this kind of sentimental connection to the game as well. And you know, it gives us that input also and what to improve on, if it’s a game that gamers really enjoy playing.
Tarji
I’ve got an offline question here that maybe you can help out with. So we have someone here asking whether testers for the game need to have any experience with game testing from a technical standpoint. Do they have to have any background on that or can it be just somebody who loves games to hop onto the call and give us their feedback?
Quentin
Not at all, when we are looking for people to test our games where we’re not necessarily looking for people that have experience testing games because we have in-house, right? We have a QA team that tests the games every week on the newest builds that we create. But when we make the game a variable for the community to test, anyone is more than welcome. As you know, in our game we target a lot of casual players so anyone is more than welcome because you don’t need to be a very good player, like a pro gamer, or anything to give relevant feedback for games.
Tarji
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for that. And yeah, I think it’s nice that we have a pretty good mix. It’s a mixed bag, right? We have some regular Joes and some community members joining in who have little to no experience with professional game testing. And then we have people from guilds who kind of had a hand in that in some capacity. We also have some esports players and competitive gamers and streamers. I’m excited because I think the feedback is going to be a really enriched multi-faceted pool of information.
Quentin
Yeah exactly. And I think we can say a big thanks to the marketing team because they’ve done an amazing job finding all the people that are going to help us to test these games. So not only members of our community but as well as streamers, influencers, etc. We have a range of players that can help us get a better idea of the current state of our game.
Tarji
Okay cool. Interestingly, I see some people in our audience today who are invited to the playtest. I want to give them a big shout-out for also listening in and getting a look ahead on what’s to come next week. We can definitely open the floor up for questions if you guys have anything that you’re pondering.
Okay, Quentin. I got another offline submission here. Someone here is asking what the content of the demo is. Is it like is it just one level? Is it multiple levels that are being tested out?
Quentin
Okay. So the demo is going to be one level. One full playable level, where you’re going to be able to test a lot of the mechanics that are going to be in Metarush. Not all of them are currently in the game, but most of them are in it.
It’s one Nebula level from beginning to end.
Tarji
Right, yeah, and this is the nebula level. So this is kind of the level that branches out into all the different kinds of biomes and landscapes.
Quentin
Exactly.
Tarji
Yeah, that’s awesome. This reminds me of the trivia quiz that we held not too long ago when we were asking people what their opinions were about the world around Metarush and there are silly and quirky questions like “Oh, what do you think the great leviathans favorite snack is?” Questions like that get the community involved in building out the world.
Quentin
Yeah. You guys will see during the demo that there is a lot of visual interest in the game and they will not just be visual. Those things will tell you a story later on in the game so you can imagine whatever you want. You can even give us ideas. It’s more than welcome, on any parts you can give feedback and offer ideas for the game.
Tarji
And I’m really excited for people who got to join the demo, they’ll be experiencing the game before everybody else. And it’s pretty amazing because I’ve seen the game and it looks absolutely gorgeous. I’m excited to treat people’s eyes to what you guys have built up so far.
Quentin
Well, thank you so much, Tarji. We’re looking forward to seeing what people are going to think of the visuals. I already got some feedback from some of the community reaching out and saying that they loved to see the concept art on Twitter. So very excited to see what they think of the live game.
Tarji
Okay, so I’m just hanging around a little bit in case somebody wants to ask a question and if you’re a bit shy, that’s cool too. Our Discord is always open, in case you want to post your queries there and ask the team about their creative process around building at the game.
Okay, everybody. If there aren’t any other questions, I’m sure we can button things up here. Again, I want to thank Quentin for hopping in and sharing his knowledge in this process from overseeing the development of the game, especially from a creative standpoint. Quentin, thank you so much.
Quentin
And thank you so much for having me, and thank you guys for taking the time to come and listen about Metarush. I can’t wait to show you what we’ve been creating with the team.
Tarji
Yeah, absolutely. This recording will be available for anybody else who wants to hop in later. If you guys were kind of snoozing or, you know, not your time zone of choice, you’re welcome to come back to this recording and listen back to the cool answers that Quentin gave for this AMA. Thank you guys, have a great day ahead.
Quentin
Have a good day. Bye, bye, guys.
Tarji
Alrighty, thanks, Quentin. Bye, everybody.
Don’t miss out on future Metarush AMAs and events! Stay up to date on everything Metarush by following the official Metarush Twitter account.
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