RuneScape: Dragonwilds creative director says survival crafting has more in common with MMOs than you might think: ‘It’s almost like the genre was born from MMOs’

When Jagex unveiled it was making RuneScape: Dragonwilds—a survival crafting game that cribs more than a few elements from its long-running MMO—I was curious, if not a little hesitant. I couldn’t help but wonder how certain elements would translate cross-genre. Turns out, pretty well.

I recently sat down with Dragonwilds creative director Rick Turek to talk about the development and launch of the new game, and the one question I had to ask was: Why survival crafting? It’s a pretty over-saturated genre at this point, and wouldn’t have been my first guess for “RuneScape spin-off game.”

But as Turek tells me, “there’s always been talks of a survival crafting game, because I think that there’s a good overlap with MMOs. You get a lot of different survival crafting games that have overlapping gameplay loops and even moves and impetus with MMOs. Like Conan Exiles is a great blend of MMO and survival crafting. It’s almost like the genre was born from MMOs. You know, not one-to-one, but you can see the influences in a lot of gameplay loops now.”

In typical Jagex fashion, Turek says that one other group had a big part in deciding what genre to settle on: Its community of RuneScape players. “When we were originally thinking of the concept, it was informed by surveys that we had done with the audience. Jagex loves to run surveys with players to get insight. And we were asking ‘What genres do you think would work well?’

“And at that time, survival crafting wasn’t as saturated a market as it is. There were some good competitors and some heavy hitters, but it’s become a rich place for development, but not so much that we didn’t think we could add our own special sauce.”

I mean, Dragonwilds really does feel like a great blend of classic RuneScape mechanics and survival crafting elements. I’m a huge fan of the way it implemented the MMO’s magic and rune system, and Kara Phillips had a great time with Dragonwilds’ skilling.

And hell, like Turek said, there are games that exist that are blending the two genres into one playable thing: Conan Exiles exists. Dune: Awakening is marrying the two to varying degrees of success, depending on who you ask on the PC Gamer team—Josh Wolens is here for the mashup, while Chris Livingstone isn’t totally sold on the MMO aspect yet.