Unknown Realm - Interview with GameRaven

GameRaven interview Bruce and Laura about Unknown Realm.

Sean: What's the story behind how Unknown Realm's concept was formed?

Bruce: The original concept for Unknown Realm came out of some frustrations I had with the direction RPGs were taking during the late 1980's while I was still in high school. They started becoming focused on simulation aspects and less enjoyable to me. I wanted to do more exploring and discovering things, and less combat, simulation, and story grind. I always felt there was huge potential for this type of RPG to tell a story and keep the player's imagination engaged at every step of the journey, but it requires the right balance otherwise, the game can quickly become a monotonous waste of the players time and intelligence.

Bruce: A big test for me as a game designer is whether the player actually finishes your game. Many players I know never finished RPGs they started because the games became too long, tedious, or generally less engaging. In my opinion, this is like an author writing a novel that is so boring or hard to read that the reader puts it down after a few chapters and doesn't feel compelled to finish. A good RPG, like a good story, should be so engaging that the player cannot help but finish it because they are enjoying the experience at every step and can't wait to see what happens next. Scope and pacing are very important for an RPG.

Bruce: A concept I formulated long ago is that games should be an abstraction of reality, not a simulation thereof. I think one game designer who understood this concept well was Sid Meier. His game Pirates! is just one example of what I consider great reality abstraction in a game and it influenced me greatly as a game designer. Better graphics and more realistic physics can never fix a bad game design.

Bruce: A lot the design choices that went into Unknown Realm came out of my D&D tabletop days in the 80's. For instance, I dislike the idea that a role-playing game should have multiple players that you control. All the D&D players I knew only role-played with one character. This is why in Unknown Realm you only control yourself. Any companions in the game are computer-controlled. While I know many will disagree with me on this, I do not consider a game where you control multiple characters in a party to be a true RPG.

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