Far Cry and Battlefield Veterans Join Forces to Revolutionize Action Games at Moon Rover
The creators of the Far Cry, Battlefield and Mirror's Edge series, among others, have formed a new studio. Moon Rover's first project will be an „innovative” action game.
Far Cry, Battlefield, Crusader Kings, Mirror's Edge - employees of the newly established Moon Rover studio can boast work on such series. Based in Stockholm, the industry veterans are led by Jamie Keen (co-creator of such titles as Far Cry 3, Battlefield: Bad Company or Need for Speed Rivals).
The Moon Rover team's first project is to be "an innovative, ambitious co-op action game based on a new IP." In doing so, the developers want to rely on so-called "emergent gameplay". This means that dependencies between otherwise simple game mechanics will result in complex situations - sometimes even ones that the developers did not anticipate.
Similar ideas are nothing new in the industry. For example, another series based on this premise is Scribblenauts, and to some extent also EVE Online. Anyway, as stated by Jamie Keenu (via Gamesindustry.biz), the operation of this principle can also be seen in games from the Far Cry or Battlefield series.
Moon Rover's ambition is to use the best narrative formulas and "fun" situations straight from sandboxes, to create a game more strongly based on "evolving" gameplay, without getting stuck in a pattern. Which, as Keenu stressed, makes it a challenge not only to produce as such, but also to try to "sell" the adopted idea to others:
"It [creating the kind of game Moon Rover dreams of - ed. note] doesn't become possible once you hear: "Oh, that moment was amazing! Can we make it happen all the time?" Yes - but then it will lose its magic [...].
That's the part that makes it really hard to convince people - whether in marketing or presentations. You want to be able to describe the limits of the experience, and then say that the magic is that there are millions, maybe even billions of combinations of elements. So what you'll see is really unique because it depends on what you do - it's possible that no one else will experience a combination like you."
Information on the studio's official website also shows that the developers are aiming for games that are more modest ("human-sized"), but still immersive and polished. Keen confirmed that the team does not care about such scale as adopted in, for example, Breath of the Wild.
It will still be a long time before we see the results of Moon Rover's work. The studio is still looking for employees, and the project itself is unlikely to go beyond conceptual plans yet.
