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Funcom is largely known as an MMO company, but its modern games have always struggled against strict genre labels. Dune Awakening<\/a>, for example, is massively multiplayer, online, and an RPG, but it\u2019s also a survival game. So, is it really an MMO? Game director Joel Bylos thinks not.<\/p>\n Alongside discussing the game\u2019s long-term 10-year plan<\/a> and the game\u2019s player count<\/a>, Dune Awakening game director Joel Bylos explained that expressing the genre of Funcom\u2019s latest survival game has been a challenge.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, I think that\u2019s one of the biggest challenges we had during development. How to describe it. Because we had this online server setup,\u201d Bylos told us. \u201cIt\u2019s quite complicated compared to most survival games and we wanted to have multiple maps\u2026 so we weren\u2019t really sure, and then, at some point, we were describing it as an MMO because we figured it was easy\u201d.<\/p>\n While early reveals and discussions clearly labelled Dune Awakening as an MMO, the developers removed the MMO label prior to release. \u201cWe launched in June, I think, we dropped it November before,\u201d Bylos said. The reason for dropping the MMO label was due to the overall confusion around the game\u2019s genre. They added, \u201cI don\u2019t think that helped either\u201d as removing the label introduced additional confusion.<\/p>\n Bylos, and many working on Dune Awakening, have a background in MMO development. Bylos was one of the lead designers on Funcom\u2019s prior MMO Age of Conan and a lead content designer on The Secret World. There are inherent MMO quirks that exist within both Conan Exiles and Dune Awakening, and they\u2019re part of why the games are unique and have satisfying loops. However, Bylos doesn\u2019t think either game is an MMO, at least not anymore. <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s an MMO,\u201d he continued. \u201cI\u2019ve worked on multiple MMOs for sure, but I think there was a weird space where we were trying to do slightly more. We have this big, connected world, we have this big deep desert with lots of players being able to go in there. So it was a hard game to describe, and I always find that people kind of have a very set notion of what a genre is. So it\u2019s hard to describe something that does something slightly new.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not an MMO is my strong feeling right now,\u201d Bylos continued, \u201cit\u2019s definitely not.\u201d The game director explains that the clearest example of where the genre splits is how it focuses on progression. While both World of Warcraft and Dune Awakening have level-based progression, WoW focuses on Quests whereas D:A focuses on crafting to pull you through the game.<\/p>\n \n