Michael McMain loves magic. You might not catch him pulling rabbits out of hats or asking you to ‘pick a card’, but for the last year he’s been deep in the process of conjuring up a new IP that he hopes will rip up the rulebook on how players experience the finer points of sorcery in gaming.
Lichdom, the first game from the Xaviant studio that McMain heads up, is a first-person RPG set in an alternative world. At the heart of that world is a rich lore built squarely around what the game’s architect summarizes as an “epic mage experience”.
Taking time out at San Francisco’s GDC last month, Michael went into more detail for Inside Crytek. “You play the role of a mage – someone that has been given power in the form of these bracelets that you wear and that imbue you with the ability to cast magic in a way that’s very different to the way the rest of the world casts its magic. I can tell you this; our game does not have cooldowns, it does not have mana; those are not negating factors that restrict you from using magic.”
“We have a very interesting storyline that starts with a revenge hook to get the player into it, and then you unveil something a little bigger that’s more intriguing. It’s all about you laying waste to a significant number of enemies with your magic ability."
Underpinning Lichdom is a belief that players not only crave the kind of fantastical powers it will place at their fingertips, but that they’re also ready for a new way to experience such powers.
“Every game that I’ve played that has magic in it, for the most part, has an alternative to magic as well,” poses Michael. “You can usually play a fighter, or you can play a rogue, or you can play a ranger and a mage. And because of that, what you can see happens is that magic is always brought down to the level of the others, because you don’t want it to be too overpowering. Well, we’re getting to tell the story of somebody that’s over-powered – and that doesn’t mean the game isn’t going to be challenging, it’s very challenging. But we don’t have to balance you to other things like somebody swinging a sword. A mage is capable of doing massive destruction and devastation. And that’s our goal, to tell what that story would be without having to tell the other stories along with it.”
Running in parallel to Lichdom’s story is the story of Xaviant itself. Founded in 2008 by Michael and colleagues from a previous company that specialized in operating online casino games, the Atlanta-based developer was originally set up with some gaps in its knowledge that had to be filled quickly.
“The focus of our talent and experience was really heavily on the software engineering side of things for business systems and things like that. When we started this project – which has been kind of a dream of mine for a long time – we knew that an area of challenge for us was going to be understanding what it meant to design and create a game, because we didn’t have any of that expertise. We probably spent a good two years trying to figure out how to get the talent and how to get people that we understood could deliver. We went through a bit of a trial trying to figure that out, and now we’re on a really, really good path. For the last year we’ve been in a solid production mode of building our game and we should be done in another year.”
Despite having to make up ground in certain areas, technical know-how and a fundamental understanding of what keeps players interested ensured Xaviant were well ahead of the game in other respects.
“Even if the game that you’re developing is some sort of gambling game where people are hoping to win money, the focus still has to be on gameplay, or you’re not going to attract people otherwise. And that’s our same focus here. In fact, when we set our priorities for building a game, during that initial two year period where we were sort of figuring things out and experimenting with technology, we realized that gameplay had to remain our number one priority – because that moment to moment is where the player lives most of their time.”
Returning to Lichdom, that “moment to moment” experience Michael refers to is one he hopes players will ultimately come to lose themselves in. To achieve that aim, the team at Xaviant is working hard on little details that will help achieve the bigger vision – particularly when it comes to controlling the game.
“The gameplay has to be solid enough that you’re not thinking about the controls. You can’t be thinking, ‘What do I have to hit, what do I have to do to make this happen?’ It’s got to be very smooth, because as soon as you get the pieces of the console or PC out of the way, then you can just let go and imagine you’re that person that you’re seeing inside the screen. We’ve spent a lot of time iterating on our gameplay to make sure it’s smooth, it’s clean, it’s dynamic and it doesn’t take a lot of mundane thought.”
While players won’t be able to get their hands on Lichdom for around another year, Michael says the first impressions of everyone who sees it in action have been positive, and he’s quick to praise CryENGINE for its role in making the magic happen.
“The renderer of CryENGINE is so beautiful, I mean, it’s amazing the images you can create – they’re just phenomenal. On top of that, I think the speed of iteration is amazing. The fact that we can get changes in real-time has been a very big help, especially in doing our gameplay, because I told you the gameplay is so tight, there’s a lot of iterations, and because of the way CryENGINE works our developer that I would work with closely as a designer would be able to iterate within an hour – I’d be able to see something new and we could make our decisions about whether we were going in the right direction, and that has been great.”
“We’ve also found Crytek to be a great partner, in that, there’s a lot we had to figure out to do this game because we were trying to do some things with the engine that had never been done before. And so that takes a lot of cooperation, and that has been phenomenal for us.”
Work will continue on Lichdom as Xaviant build towards a 2014 release, with the developer in the comfortable position of being able to keep their options open as they consider publishing platforms and the like. For now, the main objective is to make sure that when players do get to grips with the game, they experience something as magical as its creator intended.
Which only leaves one question; what exactly is it about assuming the role of a magician that appeals so much to Xaviant’s amiable founder?
“I love the whole fantasy of it. Everyone can imagine what it’s like to be a fighter, because all the tools exist in our world. You can imagine what it’s like to be a stealthy rogue. You can’t really imagine what it’s like to be a mage, right?”
With the CryENGINE 3-powered Lichdom taking shape nicely, we might be able to imagine it sooner rather than later.
