The Continuum
A new game is on the way by Seven Lights Studio. It’s called the Continuum and it’s a deeply woven strategy narrative that involves a story that players will directly affect with their characters. The online collectable wargame, featuring a vast amount of characters to trade and enhance, large explorable environments, and turn-based battles, is currently in development. We recently had a Q&A session with CEO and founder of Seven Lights, Timothy Harris, about the Continuum, and you can check out what he said below.
VG Core: For those who don’t know, how did Seven Lights come to the idea of creating a game like The Continuum?
T. Harris: We're big fan-boy hobbyists-- from pen-and-paper RPGs to tabletop miniatures to comic books. We've always wanted to put all of those ingredients together in the online environment to allow a player to feel as if his collection of in-game elements is dynamic, yet uniquely his. Many times we asked ourselves, why isn't there something out there that has the depth of all of these tabletop strategy and RPG games without all of the rules memorization? The Continuum was born out of those conversations.
VG Core: With Seven Lights catering to several interactive mediums, how do you branch the products to consumers who are favorable to one property over another? For instance, getting card players to join the online community, or expanding the comic books and videos to on-line gamers?
T. Harris: We're designing each of the aspects to stand alone, but act together as a fully immersive entertainment experience. If you are a comic book fan, for example, but not a gamer, the comics (both online and in print) will take you on a great ride narratively without you having to play the game. For the strategy gamer, the game will provide all of that collecting, army-building and gameplay that they are looking for. Together, they’re certainly more powerful, but highly entertaining alone as well. In talking with fans of tabletop miniatures and TCGs, the fact that we’re creating an accessible, browser-based experience that maintains the turn-based gameplay they love was often cited as the reason they’re looking forward to the game and the lack of that was why they haven’t moved online with their hobbies before.
VG Core: The MMO crowd can prove to be a very profitable and expansive market based on the likes of World of Warcraft and Starwars Galaxies. Are casual and hardcore gamers from the MMO market the primary target for The Continuum? Or will the game have more of a tie toward casual/hardcore gamers that simply have an interest in fantasy/sci-fi material?
T. Harris: The Continuum will definitely appeal to the MMO crowd, in that it’s an ongoing storyline with loot, RPG elements and persistent characters, but the strategy fan is the main target. Your collection of characters and the armies you build stay with you throughout the experience, but the gameplay itself is more akin to squad-based tabletop gaming than an MMORPG. Thus, we’re targeting MMO fans as an additional side experience in their well-balanced breakfast and strategy fans as a collectible version of the gameplay they already know and love.
VG Core: Are there in-house developers currently working on The Continuum, or is Seven Lights outsourcing to various developers?
T. Harris: Right now, the core team of developers is in-house, and we’ll use mostly in-house resources for the first couple of games.
VG Core: With Seven Light’s ties to Nintendo, are there any general plans in the future to possibly port The Continuum to any of Nintendo’s gaming platforms?
T. Harris: While we've enjoyed a good working relationship through past ventures with Nintendo, Seven Lights does not currently have any formalized relationship with the company at this point. We'll be looking to expand into the digital distribution services of the consoles at some point in the future, but there's nothing to announce just yet.
VG Core: The gaming community and the market for the community seems to have become extremely competitive. Given that the details on the game are still being kept under-wraps, could you possibly give any examples of what The Continuum may feature to curb gamers’ interest from the current competition?
T. Harris: Definitely. The Continuum will feature squad-level strategy gaming, with an ever-expanding set of characters slinging a huge assortment of abilities at each other to win battles. One of the features we’re most excited about is that your collection will learn and grow in power as you use your characters. It’s much like a RPG in that sense, but the big difference is that ALL your characters develop when you use them—you don’t just focus on one. The gameplay is head-to-head, turn-based wargaming, but there is the added element of loot-finding, because any equipment you find on the battlefield is yours. Players have to balance exploration and gaining advantages through loot and power-ups with the fact that there’s an enemy army marching on them. This will make for very interesting matches.
VG Core: With gamers able to sing-up for the beta, does this mean there is a set date in which we can expect to see the beta of The Continuum released?
T. Harris: The date isn’t set, but we’ll be going to beta in the next couple of months, so players should sign-up for updates on our site right away.
VG Core: Thanks Tim, for answering our questions. Any final comments for fans and eagerly awaiting gamers?
T. Harris: This game is going to adapt and change based on the gamers that play The Continuum. The way they play, the characters they use, and the feedback they give us will affect the storyline, new content, and the features we roll out. This game is meant to be player-directed, so it’s very important to us to make it iterative and introduce new content quickly. We’ve developed it in such a way that we can implement the needs/wants of the player community as they communicate with us. We’ve already gotten a ton of feedback on the details we’ve reveled thus far, so we’re really looking forward to hearing more as the game rolls out.
If you’d like more information about the Continuum, you can visit their website at: www.thecontinuum.com. Be sure to stay tuned in for more news and media regarding the Continuum here at VG Core.
Article By: Cyguration
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