Dune: Awakening's developers have a big 10-year plan for the survival MMO that includes new maps and planets, so it's encouraging to hear that player retention blew the team's "expectations away."
Speaking to GamesRadar+, Dune: Awakening's production director Ole Andreas Hayley said "the team is spirited" after the game's pretty massive launch. Momentum didn't get lost in the sand soon after, though. "It's been received well, our retention numbers for the game have been extremely good. It blew our expectations away."
With the game's 10-year plan in place, those numbers mean the team "can start digging into all the ideas that we had that we didn't manage to get in for launch, and then expand on the entire universe." Good thing there's "so much to pull from" in all the Dune books too. "The polar region is one that we've talked about. We'll go to new planets eventually. And, yeah, the team is really excited about exploring what Dune has to offer."
While Hayley thinks it's "great for both the game and movie" to be coming and building upon the hype of the series at the same time, Dune: Awakening's post-launch content won't totally be influenced by Warner Brothers' film plans.
"So let's say, like, introducing a new faction that is going to be introduced in the movies," Hayley explained to us. "We want to make sure that we are kind of in sync, so the audience is getting a connected experience and exploration of Arrakis, but that's the only extent that kind of influences us."
For Hayley personally, getting to explore the Fremen on Arrakis is going to be "a huge part for us at some point." But what's maybe more exciting is going to different planets, hopefully "the Atreides home planet, Caladan, and seeing those different biomes." Lots to look forward to, it seems.
Dune: Awakening is a bit more “like a Dune survival RPG” than a full MMO, with multiplayer driving "that feeling of the universe being alive”
