14 DAY TRIAL // Rebel Entertainment, a development team made up of a number of veterans from Disney, has revealed that it is working on an MMO type video game that is similar with the Diablo franchise from Blizzard and will use Facebook in order to draw players in.
The general manager of Rebel Entertainment is Mike Goslin, who previously worked as the vice president of virtual world design at Disney, and his new studio has received funding from the company that has also backed Vimeo and CollegeHumor.
The company leader spoke to GamesIndustry and stated, “If you’re playing it against other real people, meeting other real people, building relationships, the experience keeps changing, because the dynamics of interacting with other real people are what’s interesting.
“To build a single-player game that lasts as long as these multiplayer games do you’d have to create a tremendous amount of content. I think it’s prohibitively expensive to do that.”
Despite the enthusiasm of the development team, details are limited at the moment.
Goslin added, “It’s an action game, so being skilled does give you an advantage. Right now we’re focusing on cooperative multiplayer, so you’re not going head-to-head against other players directly, the way it’s designed currently.”
It seems that the core experience of Rebel’s MMO will be free-to-play, allowing any interested gamer to create a character and engage with the game world.
But the team also plans to sell premium weapons for those who are looking for a boost or feel that their skills are not good enough to progress.
Facebook has been used for game experiences that have been increasing in terms of complexity over the last few years, but a Diablo style MMO sounds very ambitious and it might be too much for the potential player base in terms of commitment of both time and resources.