The Storybricks Kickstarter which which I blogged recently has a new video better demonstrating how cool this build-a-story kit project for MMO/RPG players and developers really is -- watch:
I've been e-mailing with Storybricks development lead and longtime veteran designer Brian "Psychochild" Green, and he explained why content creators and game developers (such as those who create in Second Life and other open platforms) will like Storybricks:
Will creators be able to monetize their stories made in Storybricks?
BG: We've been discussing the possibilities of letting people sell access to their stories. We're not sure if this is going to be a feature of our first project, the "Kingdom of Default", but it is more likely to be a feature in future games we create. We have been listening to feedback from our users, and we will certainly take feedback about whether people want this feature sooner or later.
How about own the rights to them?
We would prefer that people retain as many rights as possible to their own stories. We'll need to work out the legal terms, but here's our attitude: we need some rights to be able to host and share the stories people create, but we want people to be able to take their original creations, such as unique characters, and use them outside of the game as well.
There's a lot of mini-MMOs in Second Life. Would the developers be able to use Storybricks as a backend via XML?
Storybricks has many different facets: the visual brick editor, the AI system that defines characters, and a world with a setting that supports this type of gameplay. In the short term, we think it's best to focus our efforts in providing all these facets in a game we create or that we co-create with a partner. Therefore, in the short term we don't see a high probability of us including third-party Second Life support in the short term as we have a lot of other work to do. Not to say that we wouldn't be interested in partnering with Linden Lab if if the opportunity arises.
What kind of avatar and environment customization options will owners of Storybricks have? Can you for example create a Steampunk world with this?
We want to give players as much customization possibilities as we can while maintaining our goal of making the tools as easy to use as possible. For example, we would love to allow players to change a map layout by swapping buildings or "tiles" (such as a forest for a field) in the world, but we don't think it's appropriate or very much fun to force the player to place individual trees in the world.
Initially, the choice of environments will probably be limited as we try to tailor Storybricks to different settings. While it would be great to let players create their own stories in a Steampunk setting, we still need to define the emotions of characters that would inhabit the world. It wouldn't really be a Victorian Steampunk world if the characters went around demonstrating medieval fantasy notions of emotions like "loyalty", "respect", and "courage".
Would a low-budget developer be able to create an MMO with Storybricks? If so, how? How about for an RPG or MMO on the web/Flash?
Our background in tabletop gaming means that many of the Storybricks team would love to see a way to use Storybricks in a small MMO or an environment similar to tabletop role-playing. When we went to Gen Con last year to show off an early prototype, we heard a lot of support for that type of product.
However, in the near term we think an established game written by us would be a better use of resources. Think about graphical engine developers, all the major developers wrote their own games in the engine before licensing it to others to use. We think that by developing our own game and demonstrating the power of Storybricks, that will make it easier for people to use in a small scale later.
We are currently using Unity3D for our client, which is supposed to be able to export to Flash in the future. So, the possibility of writing an MMO for the web/Flash is definitely a future possibility.
The Kickstarter still needs about $225,000 to make its goal -- go here to consider pledging.
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