Improbable's first RPG is being built by former BioWare, Capcom and Ubisoft devs

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An online RPG, but not an MMO.

Worlds Adrift, built using Improbable's SpatialOS

The first game developed by Improbable, the creator of the multiplayer cloud-based platform SpatialOS, will be an online RPG but "not an MMO", and is being made by a team that includes former BioWare, Capcom and Ubisoft employees.

“We’ve got a lot of great folks with diverse backgrounds, not just some BioWare folks, although we have those. Folks from Ubisoft, folks from Capcom, that have come over and are helping us build what’s going to be an RPG using SpatialOS and Unreal," he said. The game is being directed and executive produced by former BioWare art director Neil Thompson.

It will be an online RPG, but Improbable CEO Herman Narula told the publication it isn't an MMORPG. There will be a focus on player agency, rather than just having a "prescribed" world, he added, citing Neverwinter Nights' player-created content as an inspiration.

"SpatialOS [is]...not an MMO solution. We’re a solution that increases the vocabulary of multiplayer. What I do feel comfortable saying is that I’ve told Aaryn from the beginning, ‘Think about how we can make players have a greater say in what we create together,'" he said.

“I grew up in love with some of the games that Aaryn and the team worked on. One of the things we were most passionate about was that Neverwinter Nights was so player-created and player-generated. RPGs and storytelling have been such a massive part of the industry, but if we’re going to find a way for RPGs and multiplayer to work, we have to deal with the paradox of how do we make players feel like they have agency in a world which is in some ways prescribed.”

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.