Any news regarding Project Copernicus or related to 38 Studios, instantly gets my attention, particularly the untidy circumstances in which baseball athlete Curt Schilling misused millions of Rhode Island taxpayer funds in an attempt to develop a MMORPG in the Kingdoms of Amalur universe.
My gaming compatriot Tozzeb was aware of this and brought to my attention a recent article on VentureBeat that mentions Project Copernicus.
A large chunk of VentureBeat’s content dives into a story about Irene Pereira, who established a firm named Unleashed. Unleashed is developing a tool, “Realm” with a promise to “optimize gen AI alongside profound human expertise in growing gamer communities, resulting in quicker progress, more cost-efficient and highly monetizable, scalable for both niche games targeting a small but passionate audience, to mass market MMOs targeting millions of players”.
Frankly speaking, it sounds ominous, like a scheme to churn out identikit games rapidly for maximum profit before they turn into abandoned ventures. I haven’t seen these tools in action, so I’m willing to revise my stance. However, their concept game, “Haven”, does little to boost my confidence. The intention behind Haven is to attract parents, who are nostalgic about playing World of Warcraft or EverQuest, to introduce that type of MMO to their children.
The monetization plan for Haven includes a sliding scale from a “$10/month subscription for individual players, less for duos and groups, up to a “Village Plan” costing $150/month for 150 players.” These monetization tools are immediately available for games created on the Realm platform, just to lay bare who they’re targeting.
I’ve added a video about Haven below. Having seen it, I can say that neither my children nor I would be interested in playing it. In fairness, it currently is in early development, and my final verdict will be deferred until further into the development process. Pereira sparked controversy earlier this year with her social media posts boasting about the absence of white male characters in Haven’s alpha version. Although some of these remarks have since been erased, many responses to critics remain accessible.
Despite my skepticism, Unleashed has its fair share of industry veterans and investment, especially with their Realm project. We’ll have to wait and see how this pans out. However, their current design seems more appealing to companies wanting to produce an MMO cheaply and quickly, rather than the general gamer community, something I don’t find encouraging.
For me, the most exciting part of the story is the connection to Project Copernicus. Pereira was working at 38 Studios during its downfall and she witnessed the whole fiasco first-hand. She expressed interest in possibly penning a book about it, a read I would pick up instantly.
According to Pereira, she has possession of a hard drive containing the game’s content, but unfortunately, she lacks the password. She thought she had a potential source for it, but the person has since passed away.
THQ Nordic acquired the rights to Project Copernicus in 2018 and Pereira hinted at her involvement with them over it, though the details remain undisclosed. She did say however that she also has other leads on how to access the password according to VentureBeat.
Getting a peek into that hard drive would indeed be quite remarkable.
