Where did the idea for
Starborne come from?
SG: The original idea for Starborne
was born out of frustration. I’ve been
playing strategy games my entire life, and
about ten years ago, I felt strongly that the
development of the then old, yet brilliant
strategy browser games had grown stagnant
- I was not impressed by the direction of the
new mobile strategy games. The in-game
maps of those games were, unfortunately,
becoming less and less critical for the overall
experience of the players. However, I was
seeing all these fantastic PC single-player
grand strategy games like Civilization, Hearts
of Iron, and Europa Universalis where the
players play on truly immersive maps, and
then you had these massively multiplayer
strategy games where the world map had
little real relevance.
Out of this frustration, Solid Clouds was
founded in late 2013 to create something
that had not been done before; a massively
multiplayer strategy game named Starborne
where players would play on a seamless
single map layer in the classic 4X style,
rather than spending most of their time in
narrow city views.
What is it about Starborne that you
think makes it stand out? Why should
people care?
HSL: While at its core Starborne is a player-
driven empire builder, there are many
things that truly set it apart. Among those
features is its gargantuan scale and the fact
it is deeply political. You cannot win a game
of Starborne by yourself. You need to join
an alliance, and you need to work together.
Don’t expect it to be easy; the galaxy has
over 5000 players who are also vying for
ultimate control. All of this is happening
on an incredibly detailed and beautiful
seamless single-layer map. It
is huge. The current version
has over 800,000 hexes and
navigating is smooth; there
are no loading bars, city views,
or lag of any sort, meaning that you can
go look up any empire within the game
and go there instantly and back if you so
desire. This fidelity is unheard of and makes
strategising and watching your plans come
to fruition a pure joy.How are you tackling the bane of any
MMO: long-established games that are
hard to break into?
Each server only runs up to eight weeks,
meaning that all players start colonising the
galaxy at nearly the same time – this means
that players who have been playing for
years do not have an inherent advantage by
being incumbents as in other MMO titles. How many lasers are we talking? Lots of
lasers? A reasonable amount of lasers?
SG: An unfathomable amount of lasers!Is Starborne suited to those of us who
don’t play MMOs?
HSL: ‘Traditional’ MMOs like World of
Warcraft, Runescape, or The Elder Scrolls
Online do not have much in common
with Starborne. We have often heard the
comparison that Starborne is a lot like a real-
time Civilization in space with thousands of
players. It is deeply political, and each server
will end and have clear winners.wfmag.cc \ 07InterviewAttract Mode