Team Community

Community is clearly the new buzzword in the MMO space, so we asked Müller for his take on it and why he feels it’s so important. “I’m a casual player when it comes to WoW,” he explains. “I’m actually a loner most of the time – but the community gives me a sense of belonging to a world, and actually being part of something that’s bigger than a game. In the guild-based activity, trying to solve problems together, having, say, guild crisis meetings, naturally gives some sort of a dimension to gameplay that’s not there without it.”

Explaining why MMOs in particular have more potential than pure social networking devices, Müller elaborated: “Through the Internet, Facebook, I think we are in a cultural change. Generally we seem to be more willing to communicate – or, its easier -- through the Internet. It’s kind of a special social life, but I think that when we use virtual worlds, the big power is in the 3D environment. We’re still visual animals, I think, and this environment -- we can relate to it, and it helps us in communicating better through the Internet. So I think that’s a very strong appeal. If this is sufficient to keep in all the players? I don’t think so, but definitely you have to have it to be successful.”

So how will that community work in Empire of Sports? “The most obvious and visible element is the virtual world; it’s four cities representing four European countries. European countries are our focus for the moment; people move between them as they would in WoW or Iron Forge. Obviously, we have a job system, and the usual services like shops, auction houses and information centers. More interesting are the social structures we implement,” Müller explained. “There will be clubs, and within them, teams, so a club is basically like your guild. Like a guildmaster, there’ll be a president who can nominate officers, and he or she will also be nominating a coach for the team. Like with Basketball – you need a coach organizing, and that coach will have a really important role in handling the team curriculum, training, preparation for matches and such.”

The Coach, similar to a guild leader, has some special powers within the game. They indicate the gameplay, can nominate, dismiss or invite members on the team, and are required to play a social role. As of now, anyone can step up to this role, though Müller says a testing system to obtain Coach status is under consideration – since that’s the person who will help his team prep for some of the most important elements in the Empire of Sports world – competitions.

“We will be organizing them at first,” Müller explains, “providing a lot of team sports and single-sport competitions for people to participate in. There will be a load of competitions taking place at any moment, so all types of players will find an interesting competition to take part in. PvP is the core of the whole game.”

Go Anywhere Interface

Müller stresses they’re going for as intuitive an interface as possible. “People won’t read a manual so we try to be as explanatory as possible.” Another feature that increases accessibility is actually fairly unique – “We’ve managed to do an in-game web browser, so you can have a window where you can browse the web without leaving the fullscreen mode of the game. It’s very nice to browse while you play and it really works! We have some flash issues still but we are working to resolve them.”

When users log in, they’ll be able to access all of their in-game information windows via the Web – their character sheet, their active auctions, and so forth, so players will be able to monitor key features of the game without actually logging into the world itself – which means they can track auctions or receive alerts from a mobile phone. “What we’re trying to do is dissolve, a bit, the boundaries,” says Müller. “How you access it, we don’t care. Of course we have this 3D client, but we try to go beyond, we’re trying to be really novel in that.”

So we’ve got both wide accessibility and a customizable degree of player immersion – what about the third element Müller mentioned that creates a casual MMO, the business model? Empire of Sports will be a free download, that much is certain at this stage. At this stage it looks as if full access to the persistent RPG mode will require a subscription, at least in the West – as for that monthly fee, Müller pointed out that he’s aiming strongly to keep it below the monthly fees of comparable worlds. “We’ll also have micropayments, but we know there are player sensitivities around it, and we have to test it out to see if and how it works. And then, we have a contemporary virtual world, so we’ll have some advertisements.”

A sports-oriented world seems an ideal vehicle for ads and product placement, as those elements are already so pervasive in the real-world sporting environments. “Before launch, we’ll be selective,” Müller says carefully, “There will be some sponsors and ads – but again, there’s sensitivity. If we’re not successful with gamers, then we can’t do advertising. We expect it’ll have a minimal role in the game, with ads and sponsors that actually make the game better in some way. There’s a lot of room for scientific stuff, like with energy drinks, that integrates naturally with the avatar model. We’d be able to demonstrate the real-world benefits of sports nutrition products, for example – something that would be non-intrusive in the game, but actually useful to gameplay. But not a lot of brands are ready for that.”

Müller says an open beta is on the horizon for Empire of Sports. “We’re confident with the game, so we’re still trying to launch this year in Europe,” he explains. “Then we’ll try to go to Asia and America – but we’re looking for distribution. We can’t do this on our own, so we’re looking for backing in the States. We hope that we have a successful launch in Europe and that we can come to the States by the middle of next year.”