Once Human is undoubtedly one of the hottest games of 2024. This free-to-play, open-world survival MMO has shattered the traditional summer lull, attracting hundreds of thousands of players from all over the world to be online at the same time.
But at its core lies a conundrum: In a multiplayer survival game, how do you prevent loyal regulars from achieving world domination over a steady stream of new players, while still respecting their time investment with a game that’s always fun?
Humans’ once controversial but interesting solution was to have short-term seasons based on different gameplay scenarios, with different story elements, survival mechanics and combat parameters, after which a new round would begin again.
Once Human is currently available on PC, with iOS and Android versions coming soon, but developer Starry Studio hopes to make it available on consoles in the future.
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Derek Qui, director of operations at Starry Studio, told VG247 at Gamescom 2024: “Our long-term goal is to ensure that our games can operate for decades.”
“We have to provide enough content for players in a way, so our game has to be innovative and attractive to players. It has to be very creative, both in terms of the narrative and the gameplay itself, and that’s what’s important to us The hard part, and the subject we are currently dealing with.
“On the other hand, we want to bring the game to more users. The development plan we are currently working on is to provide more platforms for players. We will move to mobile devices, we will move to consoles, but we will in the future through Official announcement announced – but we will do so and all data will be transferred across platforms.
But designing for a large audience isn’t always easy, especially when the audience is larger than you expected. Throughout its lifespan to date, Once Human has struggled to keep up with server demand, especially difficult servers in recent times.
“It’s too difficult for an open world [games]Kui explained. “The bar is really high because content is consumed very quickly and players will complain, ‘Well, we just consumed all the content’ or ‘There’s no new content, we don’t want to play anymore.’ So we’re trying to open up New content and new gameplay features implemented in the world to solve this problem by not making their world completely empty, but instead filling it with content and joy.
To satisfy some of this need, Starry Studio aims to create a hardcore mode for the most dedicated players, but is also careful to keep Once Human open and open to a variety of tastes.
“For us, when we designed the game, it was pretty hardcore, but we tweaked it to accommodate more players,” Qui said. “So we sacrificed some persistence because it was hard for us to debate whether we wanted to stick with making a very hardcore game for a small group of players, or whether we wanted to expand it to a mass audience in a relatively easier way.
“Ultimately we want to be a bigger company [game] Because that’s the only way our voices can be heard by players, and if we get smaller, we’ll never get bigger. Our goal is to get bigger, and we have changed our development direction to embrace more users. Current players think this game is easier because we made adjustments while playing the game and underestimated player abilities.
He continued: “We will definitely have a more complex hardcore mode for hardcore players in the future, but we will still have a relatively easier game mode for those players who don’t have a lot of time to play, because when we hear a lot of Players say we need a hardcore mode, but we can’t ignore the fact that there are a lot of players who don’t have enough time, who are not good at shooting, and who are not good at MMO game types, and we have to take care of them as well.
“For us, we want to take care of all players as much as possible, so we will definitely add a hard mode for hardcore players, but at the same time we will still keep the basics of casual mode for less competitive players. It’s very dynamic and Very tricky.
However, underpinning Once Human’s ambition to offer a steady stream of new features is a free-to-play model that emphasizes accessibility. In that sense, Once Human is in an interesting position in the market.
It’s a new game from a new studio, but it’s not an indie game. Starry Studio is a subsidiary of NetEase, so while Once Human is free-to-play, it has earned a reputation among fans as a relatively less aggressively monetized game. With the backing of this massive budget, Starry Studio can effectively position the game as a market innovator to attract more players to its platform, while also aiming to stick to its current model without business pressure.
“First of all, I want to emphasize that this is going to be a long-running game, there will be no pay-to-win elements, and it will always be free to play,” Qui explained.
“Secondly, we will continue to provide as rich content as possible to attract and retain players. This may take some time, so we hope that our players will be patient as we provide content, become very systematic and become a productive team Teams need time.
“Once Human is a game that we aim to be a market innovator, so business has not been the top priority for our game from the beginning. That’s why we insisted on free-to-play rather than pay-to-win when designing our monetization model.
“We expected our game to be small in the beginning because we foresaw that the monetization model would not help us make a lot of profits because we would have to grow our reputation and user base to become bigger, and then this monetization model would It works. More than we imagined, people are actually very enthusiastic about our game and very supportive of our monetization model – last week we were in the top two in terms of revenue, so it was beyond my personal imagination.
“We will never change our intentions, and in the long run this will always be what we are currently doing: no-win games, free forever.”
Once Human is available on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store. It is expected to be launched on iOS and Android in 2025.
Starry Studio also distributes the Once Human code, providing free Starchrom and Energy Links to all players.
