What Funcom Sees In Its Future: The Secret World and Free-to-play MMOs

By Siam Choudhury | May 18, 2009 | | Filed under: News | Tags: Age of Conan, Funcom, The Secret World

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The Funcom quarterly presentation had a lot to say about Age of Conan, but the document also mentioned what the company sees in its future; The Secret World but also their free-to-play MMO ventures. Two of them at least.

Funcom’s future plans are split into three horizons:

Horizon 1

Extend Core Business
- Age of Conan
- Anarchy Online

Horizon 2

Build Emerging Business
- Secret World
- Free-2-play MMOs

Horizon 3

Create Viable Options for future opportunities

- New free-to-play MMOs
- New large scale MMOs
- Virtual world social networking

Regarding The Secret World, the presentation listed the progress that had been made by reaching its latest milestone on May 7:

• 1st iteration combat
• Character creation
• First cut-scenes
• 1st iteration of mission system
• First underground playfield
• Content development tools

It also mentions that the game has about 100 people working on the project, that there is a higher interest in the game than Age of Conan did at the same stage of development and that it’s being developed for the PC and Xbox 360 platforms.

Funcom has two free-to-play games in the making a browser based and one java based. The current status of the two projects:

Status Java based MMO:

• In focus testing and game play tweakingdevelopment phase
• Vertical slice mile-stone this summer
• 17 people on team

Status browser based MMO:

• Core team in place
• Developing MMO technology
• Combat mile stone this summer
• 14 people on team