ION 2008 - Interview with Sam Lewis – Cartoon Network's FusionFall

Tag : little fuse
June 9, 2008 ION 2008 - Interview with Sam Lewis  Cartoon Network's FusionFall
by Jason Van Horn

While attending the 2008 ION Game Conference last week, I managedto get some one-on-one time with Sam Lewis, the Lead Designerbehind the Cartoon Network's first MMO called FusionFall. Based onthe information gathered, it looks like FusionFall will be an MMOthat mirrors the content of the network itself  fun for people ofall ages.

Jason Van Horn: So tell me what Cartoon Network's FusionFall is all about?

Sam Lewis: It is our first MMO. We started about two years ago. What we'vedone is taken all of our characters and put them into one shareduniverse, so Billy and Mandy live down the street from Dexter. MojoJojo's Volcano is in downtown. They're all connected in this sharedworld. You get to go out and play with all these characters. We'reshooting for the tween market  the Cartoon Network's coredemographic  the 9 thru 14-year-olds. We're combining things toform a RPG and MMO that has a kind of collectible card game flavorwith it, and combining that with platform play. Two types ofgameplay our core demographic really understands.

Jason: What's the overarching story that brings all of these characterstogether?

Sam: Well it's a shared universe and everyone sort of livestogether. We've aged a couple of the characters&

Jason: Yeah, I saw Dexter looked a little older and taller.

Sam: Well Dexter is six. The Powerpuff Girls are six. The rest of thecharacters are in that 12-14-year-old group, and we decided wewanted to age those characters up a little so they all feel likethey are all together. The background fiction is that the universeis getting invaded by Planet Fuse, which is this big amalgam ofother planets. It gets close to the planet, and when I tell thestory to 14-year-olds, they say, "It looks like snot!"There are these globs of goo that fall on the planet and startconverting everyday objects into monsters, and starts sucking inand converting the entire world so it can be absorbed by PlanetFuse. In the process it takes things like cars and sailboats andmakes a monster of those. They also grab bits and pieces ofpersonal equipment from the Cartoon Network characters and makesevil clones. So you have evil clones of Dexter, Ben 10, and allthose other characters together. So as the player you're trying tofight and hold this stuff back. One of the ways they do it is bymaking you learn about these things called nanos, which are thesesuper deformed versions of the Cartoon Network characters. Each onehas powers and abilities that will help you fight against Fuse. Youdon't have to do just combat, as the Fuse is trying to convert thewhole planet, and some areas have gotten very, very complex, andthose are our platform areas. There are floating platforms,springs, everything you'd see in a really great platform game. Sorather than fighting you can go off and do these platform areas,collecting the Fuse mana to help you build and make gear, nanos,and other things.

Jason: Now usually a lot of MMOs stick to the ground, but when I lookedat the video there was a lot of jumping and platforming. You're notsticking to the level.

Sam: This world is kinetic. Outside of the platform play areas, whenyou go downtown there is a three-dimensional place there.

Jason: So when you're doing quests you're not just on the bottom ground?

Sam: Nah, you'll hit jump pads, go to the top of a 30-story building,jump rooftop to rooftop. Some of the nanos have enhanced jumpingabilities. A group of them have retro-rockets, so you have a littleflight ability. A lot of this is we looked at what our targetmarket is playing, and they're playing platformers. So while we'reusing terms like RPG, we've thrown a lot of those conventions out.This game is much more oriented towards player skill and thatcollectible card game concept, so it isn't target a mob, walkthrough a cascade of spells and then go back through the first.Combat is much more about going in there, make sure you have theright nano out, it's using the right power, and keep a sense ofwhat's going on. It's not sandwich combat. You can't start a macro,walk away, and then come back. You can't do this in the game. Ourmonsters are smart enough where they'll start taking out your manawhen you aren't watching. You have to think about which nano topull out given the situation.

Jason: So the nanos are the collectible card aspect of the game?

Sam: The nanos are the collectible card game part, but I'm using thatas a design metaphor and not a physical one. Depending on which oneyou've got out, each one has a certain power you can activate. Soif you want to do healing you can pull out your healing nano. Ifyou want to stun the monster you can bring up your stun nano. Ifyou want to run fast&there are a whole variety of powers andabilities geared towards the platform portions that you cancollect. So we're trying to combine the best elements of a RPG andplatformer game and put them together into a new experiment.

Jason: What characters are going to be the nanos?

Sam: We've got thirty-six. We've got characters from the Kids Next Door Numbers 1 thru 5. Ben 10. We're not actually giving you a Bennano, but rather one of Ben 10's alien forms. We are using thenewest version of Ben 10.

Jason: The series that has aged him?

Sam: Right, so we selected that. So we have some of the new alienforms and some of the old ones. We've got Grim, Billy, and Mandy.We've got Courage. Dexter, Deedee, and Mandark. Oh, Foster's Home we've got Blue and Coco. The cool thing is we have Blue in therebeing as snarky as ever, but we've also got the Blue nano. The coolthing is saying, "Okay, how does Blue and Mandy get along? Howlong until Mandy kicks Number Three?" So we had a lot of funwith those reactions.

Jason: Are you sticking more to the current airing series or will therebe some of the older series like a Johnny Bravo or Cow and Chicken?

Sam: We're doing a lot of answers, so there's like Bravo Beach. You canwear Johnny's hair. So I love Cow and Chicken  I'm still trying tofind a way to get them in there  but we've got Courage, forexample. A lot of the shows where we don't have characters from,we're representing them as locations. So for My Gym Partner Is AMonkey we've got Charles Darwin, the school there. And as new showsshow up we'll start adding items and NPCs from those shows.

Jason: I know with titles like The Simpsons games, one of the fun thingsis always going, "Oh, there's that place from the show!"Is there going to be that element in the game where you go,"Oh, that's so-and-so's place from the show."

Sam: Absolutely. So the KND tree house is there. Powerpuff home isthere. Dexter's lab is there. Mojo Jojo's volcano is there. Soeverywhere we can we are using locations from the game. Oh, we'vegot Ed, Edd, and Eddy. We've got the cul-de-sac. The problem withthe cul-de-sac is the Eds have decided to defend it by making acardboard castle around the cul-de-sac and it's working&we don'tknow why it's working. Foster's Home is there.

Jason: Besides being nanos, are you going to ever be questing with thecharacters?

Sam: Yes, they'll be in the party with you. So during the quests you'llbe taking missions from the characters, but sometimes they'll joinyou and fight with you. You'll be joined by people like Blue,Billy, and they'll help you complete these missions. So you'll beinteracting with them as NPCs, nanos, and as characters that tagalong with you.

Jason: Is the battle system going to be standard "click andattack" or is it going to be more action oriented like runningand attacking?

Sam: It's definitely a little FPS-ish  not like click on this pixel tohit that pixel, but more hand-eye coordination. A lot of it is alsomanaging the nanos as each nano is better at fighting certain typesof monsters; a simple rock, paper, and scissor type of system. Soif you have the right nano up you'll do more damage. The monstershave targeted attacks that really take you out of that sandwichcombat formula. As you progress a little higher, you will have topay attention, and we're finding out the kids are really enjoyingshowing off their player skill.

Jason: Since the game is gearing towards the tween market, how do youapproach the battle system so it's kid friendly enough but not tooviolent?

Sam: On one level is the fiction  these are gobs of goo that haveformed to make the monsters. You hit it hard enough and it busts upand the goo flies off. You're not killing anyone. When you'redefeated you're not dead&you're just knocked out. Grim has setthese resurrections up that allow you to go back. It's also not asharsh  I'm not a big believer in punishing people for playing. Youjust have to go back to the location you were at  maybe 100 metersaway  and run back and lose a little time. We want people to beable to take risks instead of worrying about a death penalty ordefeat penalty that really slams you or degrades your equipment ortakes something away. You're seeing that more and more in MMOstoday. I remember the EQ days where I'd walk my character torecover my corpse and all my gear went away&it was too much work!

Jason: What are we looking at in terms of weapons and armor players willbe using?

Sam: So they'll have gear. Gear is split into two classes: social andclothing. Social gear is like my rainbow monkey hat, where itdoesn't do anything, but I want my rainbow monkey hat on. Thenyou've got your clothing like pants, shirts, and shoes that allhave stats associated with them. Then we've got about fivedifferent classes of weapons, such as melee weapons, rangedweapons, long weapons&

Jason: I saw something that looked like a bubblegum shooter&

Sam: Bubble shooters, yep. We're pulling a lot of that out of theuniverse. It's going to be non-realistic gear that you'll be ableto equip yourself with. We've got normal street clothes, Koreanstyle dress, and it's all just a whole lot of fun.

Jason: What is FusionFall going to offer in terms of classes?

Sam: We don't have the traditional class system, as everyone hatestrying to get a group together in a game, going in there and going,"Hello! Hello! I need a healer!" So what we've done withthe nano system is everyone can be everything. So if you want togive us all our mobility abilities, great, you take these nanos.I'm going to be in charge of healing everyone so I'll take thesenanos. You're going to be a tank so you take these nanos. A lot ofit is we're oriented towards solo gameplay too, so if you don'twant to group we aren't forcing that, so you can get in and playwithout worry.

Jason: What's the level cap?

Sam: That's another one of those terminology things. You can collect upto 36 nanos, and by collecting them you get privileges to wearother gear. If you're expecting "when I level I get thisability" then you won't see that as we're more focused oncollecting those nanos.

Jason: Do the nanos level or get new abilities as they grow?

Sam: No. We had a long discussion about that and if we wanted toimprove the ability of nanos, but the problem really focused on thefact that we didn't want to force players to use nanos just to getthem up. If you're into the Powerpuff Girls (and you get them earlyon in the progression) you'll still be able to use them when you'relevel 36 as their abilities don't degrade over duration.

Jason: Do you see players using one nano over the others right now?

Sam: Right now, because we're balancing the transportation system,Number 2 gives you a run and everyone wants that one so they canget around quicker. Once the transportation system is in, I'm ofthe opinion that the player's time is their currency and we betterbe entertaining them during their time. So long runs  30 minutesto get from point A to point B before you can fight or do what youwant to do  we've worked really hard at reducing that cost.

Jason: Are you looking at anything like mounts?

Sam: Not at release, but yeah, not at release. The game is going toexpand. We're working on the core gameplay and then we'll expand onthose elements and work on things like a more robust club or guildsystem. We're discussing a whole set of features that we'll releaseas it goes along.

Jason: Is there going to be any PvP?

Sam: PvP is still&we're also working with Korean developers obviously,and PvP is a huge issue and selling point to them, so we'rediscussing when we'll be releasing PvP. I'm not sure if I'm evenallowed to talk about that  I have a whole list of things I can'ttalk about. Let's make that answer go under the discussion of"we'll have an announcement about it later."

Jason: Is it going to be free play?

Sam: Oh that one I already know  the business model has not beenannounced yet. How is that? There will be a free component though.

Jason: Are there going to be microtransactions?

Sam: The business model has not been announced yet. (hahaha) That's oneof the great things about working for Turner  they are very handsoff and give you a tremendous amount of freedom with the property,but the bad thing is there are certain things  like the marketingand PR  that is very important to them and we can't discuss. It'sa system that is news worthy enough that they want to make a bigdeal of it.