Life experiences are often at core of a developer's inspirations for making a particular video game. When Shigeru Miyamoto started gardening, he was inspired to make Pikmin. For the development team at 8 Points, their everyday lives surviving in the cold wilderness Yakutia has been one of the primary sources of inspiration for their first title, The Wild Eight. We spoke with lead developer Ed Gototsev about these experiences and how they got started in the world of video game development.
Co-Optimus: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. I must admit that even after studying Russian in high school, I had to look up where Yakutia was. How did your development team come together? Do you all have any previous background in games development?
Ed Gototsev: Yakutia is the largest region of Russia. It is larger than Argentina and just smaller than India. Yakutia is our adorable motherland and we know for sure how to survive here. As for our team – first of all we are friends. Also we are not noobs. 8 Points got together in 2015, but prior to that all of us came from different game development companies. Many of us had been developing casual games, but later we realized that it is not for us. Now we do what we really like!
Co-Optimus: Your first title is The Wild Eight, a survival game where players work together to endure the Alaskan wilderness and make it out alive. What are some of the big features?
Ed: The Wild Eight is a co-op survival game for 8 people. Our hope is that players will enjoy not only surviving in the co-op but the intricate plot and extensive sci-fi content as well.
Co-Optimus: From a gameplay perspective, are there features similar to a “roguelike,” i.e., if players fail, do they start over from scratch? Is the world different each time?
Ed: Yes, it it's like that tagline "Live, Die, Repeat" from the "Edge of Tomorrow" movie. If you die, you have to start everything from the beginning. To make the game even harder locations in the game are procedurally generated.
Co-Optimus: If someone were to sit down with your game for the first time and play for, say, 20 minutes, what would that look like?
Ed: In The Wild Eight experience comes with death. If you don't eat and spend time gathering resources, making weapons, etc., most likely your character will die. The game is very dynamic and is designed to keep things interesting for the player.
Co-Optimus: What makes The Wild Eight different from other games like Don’t Starve or Rust? Did those titles influence yours at all?
Ed: We have studied a lot of them and tried to get best from them. But at the same time we are also inspired by RPG and strategy. Diablo for example.
Co-Optimus: How does the co-op work in your game? Do players always have to work together?
Ed: We are intentionally making the game challenging for a single player. There's an underlying idea in the game of "strong helps the weak" - it is the spirit. For example, you don’t die immediately in The Wild Eight; before that, you'll be lying on the ground unconscious and you can be saved by another player. Another example of that idea is that you can split into hunters and gatherers, appoint the possession of different types of resources and items to different people, or be divided into small groups of two, and so on.
But, we also included a mode that can be turned on prior to starting the game - friendly fire.:)
Co-Optimus: Why did you decide to build co-op into The Wild Eight instead of just making it a single player experience?
Ed: Our goal is to make a great co-op game combined with a strong single player mode.
Co-Optimus: What’s been the biggest challenge so far in developing the game?
Ed: The biggest challenge for us have been life situations. Life in one of the coldest places of Earth is very severe. Here, as in our game, without food and shelter you would not last an hour. For a long time we worked without wages. One of us actually lived in the office, as there was no housing. The North has broken many people, but not us.
Co-Optimus: What are some of your favorite co-op games?
Ed: We really love co-op games. Most of all: Left 4 Dead, Zombie Panic! Source, Magicka, Don’t Starve, WarCraft 3 and of course Minecraft.
We'd like to thank Ed and the rest of the team at 8 Points for taking the time to talk with us and share some of their development experiences. The Wild Eight is scheduled for a release this fall on PC and XBox One.