Behind Earth Eternal
An interview with Matt Mihaly, CEO and Creative Director

Posted on January 17th, 2007

by Gamer-girl

Learn more about Earth Eternal

Matt is a veteran of virtual worlds and MUDs/MMOs, having played them since the early 90s. In 1996, he founded Iron Realms Entertainment and pioneered the virtual goods sales model with its first text MUD - Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands. As CEO, Matt led Iron Realms to become the most successful company of its kind in the last decade in the niche (text MUDs/MMOs) it is in. Under his leadership, Iron Realms released three more successful MMOs: Aetolia, the Midnight Age, Imperian: The Sundered Heavens, Lusternia, Age of Ascension. Matt is currently serving as lead designer and producer on Earth Eternal, Iron Realms' first 3d MMO. He speaks about virtual world business models and independent game development at industry events like the Game Developer's Conference and DragonCon, and edited Dr. Richard Bartle's canonical book, Designing Virtual Worlds.

For a basic description of Earth Eternal, check out the FAQ.

G-G: Thanks for granting us another interview! So how much has Earth Eternal changed since its original concept?

Matt: Earth Eternal actually started with human characters and a very 'mature' tone: lots of violence, not shying away from sex, etc. So clearly, it's changed quite a lot!

EE is very much a PG game. There's no way to stop players from having chatsex with each other, of course, and what players do in the privacy of their Groves is pretty much up to them but we won't be including any overtly sexual content, and any blood will be kept to a cartoony minimum.

Get to work, peasant shroomies!

I want to create a game that will give people a free-to-play experience that feels unique and that's welcoming to a wide demographic. I'd like to see teenagers playing safely alongside 50 year old moms, for instance.

It changed because I realized that I'd worked on these really hardcore games my whole career, and I wanted to do something a little lighter.

G-G: Can you give us a brief description of the Earth Eternal setting and lore?

Matt: Well, the setting is a highly modified version of Earth, starting off largely with Europe. The history melds together elements of original IP with all sorts of mashed together real-world stuff, from Norse, Greek, Egyptian, and Celtic gods to Dracula to Arthurian legend.

One of the things I enjoy most about MMO design is the lore aspect, and as a side benefit it's one place where small companies can compete with giants like Blizzard. I've written a lot of world history for EE. We're up to 39 chapters so far, in fact.

The lore tends to relate more to real-world mythology than real-world history, since most of the lore that has survived is from before mankind existed and after mankind destroyed itself. However, there are certain historical elements included as well, often architecturally. So, for instance, if you journey to where Paris was, you'll see the ivy-covered still-standing Eiffel tower. If you're in Andalusia (southern Spain) you'll see Moorish-inspired buildings, while hanging around Midgaard (Sweden/Norway) will show you Viking longhouse-inspired structures.

There's really no central theme for the lore and setting (much like any real history), which makes it difficult to explain succinctly. The player characters, however, are all anthropomorphic, ranging from boar-people to frog-people to bird-people. Sixteen races in all.

G-G: If you had to guess, which of your sixteen races might be the most popular with players?

Matt: I honestly have no idea. I haven't seen any consensus among our forum-goers as to which race they favor, and picking one out of sixteen is not the sort of odds I like to bet on. ;)

G-G: How large is your development team at Sparkplay?

Matt: Sparkplay's development team is currently six people plus outsourced artists. We're small but damn it, we're spunky.

G-G: What have been the biggest challenges in developing Earth Eternal?

Matt: The biggest challenges for me personally have without question been dealing with the fact that 3d is incredibly restrictive compared to the text environments I've spent most of my career working with. It's somewhere between 10x and 100x more work to create most game systems in 3d vs text.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a 3d model worth?

G-G: Your other games often utilize volunteer staff to help manage the players, with one or two paid employees. How is this model altered for Earth Eternal, undoubtedly a project with an even larger target audience?

Matt: We've had a couple volunteers for Earth Eternal (one of which now works for us full-time) but the trick is that volunteers need a system to work within. We just haven't had the time to create those yet, and in any case there's a ton more work to do in 3d to make it possible for volunteers to be helpful than there is in text.

G-G: There are so many virtual worlds these days. What sets yours apart?

Matt: I think we bring a certain 'flavor' that no other virtual world has, and a certain approach to development that goes a bit outside the traditional box.

Groves are something we're pretty excited about. They're privately-controlled 3d spaces, like valleys or islands. They'll be owned by either players or collections of players (guilds, clans, whatever). Just like what you've done is often reflected in the equipment you wear in most MMOs, what you can put in your Grove will be a reflection of what you've accomplished in EE.

G-G: What are your plans for Sparkplay beyond Earth Eternal? It looks like you've got some pretty high-profile people on board.

We definitely have plans that go beyond Earth Eternal, but I'm not going to get specific about them right now. They include things like Facebook apps that tie in with EE though.

G-G: How will you handle beta testing? Tell us your secrets!

Matt: Can't talk about this yet, sorry! (disappears)

G-G: Alas.

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