Survival MMO Dune: Awakening will make players fight each other over spice

If you are a fan of the extremely popular Dune movies, you should keep Dune: Awakening on your radar, as the survival MMO looks very promising.

At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Dune: Awakening developer Funcom has provided some more details on its upcoming title. Chief Creative Officer at Funcom, Joel Bylos, touched on how PvP will work in Dune: Awakening, with the developer saying that Funcom believes PvP "works best" when players are competing over resources rather than fighting over bases, which is a common mechanic in other survival multiplayer games such as Rust, Ark, and DayZ.

For those that don't know, within the Dune universe, spice is the most valuable resource in the entire galaxy, and having Funcom adopt an approach that pits players against each other to acquire spice fits perfectly into the canon of the story. More specifically, players will be able to see "spice blows" as world events on the map. These spice events will be visible to all players, creating a sense of urgency to travel to the location, gather as much spice as possible and then transport their haul back to their home bases while fighting off other players.

"One of the approaches with PvP we wanted to take in Dune was to pull people away from competing and fighting over bases and destroying each other's things," said Bylos, "and instead have them competing over resources in the world at locations."

"We think PvP works best when people are vying over resources, or trying to return resources to base, and fighting over something that's not as personal as your base," said Scott Junior, executive producer of Dune: Awakening. "So, that's what we're trying to do here."