Getting to know Alganon is like reading an interesting fable and following the main character on a wild journey. The game has been through several delays, numerous financial injections and even a change of leadership. Some people are surprised that after all these antics, our hero is still alive. Others believe in the future, not realizing that even the main character can sometimes give up.

Yet, the thread of the narrative continues and the ending is unknown even to its creators. Will Alganon mirror the tale of the legendary Phoenix and rise to glory from its own ashes, or will it fall forever into the depth of the unknown, where all Games-That-Almost-Made-It lie still? (feeling oddly poetic, sorry)

No one has a clue, really, but to help shine some light on things, I bring you an in-depth interview with Alganon‘s Derek Smart. As you can see for yourself, most answers were very blunt and no attempts to side-step uncomfortable questions were made, which makes for an interesting read. Props!

You reached out to us with an offer of an interview after a four part report on Alganon was published by Lore Hound. Would you like to comment on it?

Actually I never saw the interview until one of my staff brought it to my attention. Despite the fact that it was a well written piece, we felt that some of the information needed clarification because taken within the general context of the piece, those parts seemed out of place and bordering on conjecture.

What is the main focus of the Alganon team at the moment? Are you excited about meeting milestones?

We are focused on streamlining the game, implementing the few missing features which we felt the game needed as well as working hard to continue building the install base. When I took over the Alganon team earlier this year, milestones were pretty much non-existent and the development was, well, all over the place. Which explains the state in which the game was when it was first released in late 2009 in an unfinished form. It also explained all the previously missed dates, a lot of money wasted etc – all of which led to the decisions taken by the investors to halt the development of the game, thus effectively closing down the company due to lack of funding.

After a bit of team shuffling and my position and authority being firmly established, the first thing I did was work with the team to come up with specific and achievable milestones which would see the game to completion and beyond. Thus far, we have have been cranking out those milestones as planned and with very few missed deadlines.

I have a lot of experience in this area, having built up my company from the ground up – and one failed first game back in 1996 – to what it is today. Along the way I picked up a lot of skills and experience which have served me well. So, I run the QOL team and company pretty much the same way that I run mine. There simply is no room for foolishness.

(interview continues after the break)

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Most established developers, these days, have shied away from sandbox MMOs, preferring to create another WoW-clone rather than risk investing large sums of money on a niche title. However, this doesn’t mean that the gap in the market is completely ignored as there will always be gamers who prefer the freedom provided by this type of gameplay…and there will always be indie developers willing to deliver. One such company is Avatar Creations, formed within the intricate depths of the demo scene and presenting their game – Perpetuum Online. Looking like an intriguing mix of giant mech action with the complexity of a sandbox MMO, this Transformers-meets-EVE hybrid is definitely one to watch out for. The game is set to officially launch on the 25th of November, but players with early access subscriptions will be able to log in a week early. We decided to get in touch with the team behind Perpetuum and get some information about the title.

LoreHound: Can you give us a quick introduction to Perpetuum? What would you tell to players not familiar with the game?

Avatar Creations: Perpetuum is a single server, open world sandbox MMORPG. What this means is that everyone plays on the same server and everyone does whatever they want in the confines of the rules of the game world. Everything players do affects the game permanently, and the actions of a player can only be undone by another player or the physics of the game. The game takes place on the planet Nia, where a portion of the native robotic lifeform has been infected by humans and we now have remote control over them. At this time in the story humanity basically just arrived and has to build out a base of operations to harness the energy found on the planet.

LH: What kind of features does this game have that help it stand out among the existing titles on the market?

AC: When designing the game we aimed to create a complex and dynamic world with its own natural laws, and we wanted players themselves to be a crucial part of that world. The game is thereby extremely focused on teamwork, which made a single-server approach our best choice – this alone is pretty rare in today’s MMOs. The game world itself is completely dynamic and constantly changing – in undisturbed areas the plantlife grows rampant, but that scenery can be turned into a barren wasteland by an intense fight in a matter of minutes. The minerals in the ground deplete during mining and slowly grow back with time. In a later expansion even the terrain itself will be modifiable by the players to protect and arrange the settlements and infrastructure they built. Perpetuum is not just a game, it’s a complex game world in itself, and you decide what you want to do in it. Continue Reading

The current atmosphere in the MMO industry is one of fierce competitiveness. Developers have slowly opened up to experiments with pricing models, new settings and gameplay mechanics just to make their game stand out from the slew of new entries on the market, as well as established franchises in the genre. In the midst of all the marketing blitz and new announcements, it is easy to forget titles that never made it to release or were abandoned shortly after. But, for the people who followed them with enthusiasm, the cancellation of these games felt like a real fiasco.

Today, we take a look at some of the MMOs that were canned at various stages of development and were never given the opportunity to prove themselves.

Halo Online

At first, there were only rumors circulating that Ensemble studios was making an MMO based on the Halo universe. Then, several art assets surfaced on the net, and the eager rumor machine shifted gears. The project codenamed ‘Titan’ had a projected $90 million budget and the support of an experienced development team. As one former Ensemble employee noted, the game was geared to be a real competitor to World of Warcraft. So what caused Microsoft to shut down a game that was based on one of the most popular IPs in gaming? Apparently, they looked at the success of Nintendo Wii and the money brought in by the casual market, and decided that appealing to this audience was a key priority for the company’s gaming direction. How was that related to Halo Online? Beats me.

There are so many possibilities and visions of what a Halo MMO could have been, but all is not lost. A while ago, Microsoft stated that they have several teams working on Halo related projects at any given time, so there is still a chance the title will be resurrected in one form or another. One can only hope.

Ultima Online 2

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The last couple of years in the MMO industry have been interesting, to say the least. As gaming in general has become more mainstream, online integration has greatly increased in availability and significance in modern media. With the success of games on various social networks such as Facebook, more and more companies are looking at the MMO market as the next logical step; and where attention goes, money usually follows.

While there are certainly positive aspects to this process, one of the downsides is that a number of announced titles seem to have the MMO label slapped on simply for the sake of it. Some of the newer games under this heading are arguably successful in their attempt to differ from the traditional notion of MMOs and the way we view them today. Others, however, seem to use the concept of persistence as a gimmick and never really deliver on the MMO front while still attempting to charge customers the same price of admission as other, more established games in the genre.

What essentially looks like developers pigeonholing themselves into a sub-genre their game isn’t a typical example of actually makes sense from a business point of view. Under the MMO heading, a title may become a much more profitable undertaking and attract more interest from investors. The company then has opportunities to not only charge its customers for a copy of the product but also find additional ways to monetize it. It is also a smart move from a marketing point of view — adding an MMO label to a game has the potential to attract a new market and benefit from customers who might not have been interested otherwise, as well as give the title a way to differentiate itself from primary competitors (i.e. it’s not just another action game). Continue Reading