Turbulenz

How a group of EA veterans turned Minecraft into an MMO.

- Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Boundless is a sandbox MMORPG of uncommon resilience. Consider, for one thing, the hardiness of its geography. Four years since entering Early Access, it still resembles Minecraft with a splash of Avatar, but where Minecraft’s voxel vistas can be stripped to the bedrock, the planets of Boundless slyly repair themselves in your absence. Quarries are sucked back into the soil, trees regrown, structures erased save for those safeguarded by Beacons, each player’s means of establishing ownership. The resources each region contains, however, vary their distribution each time, so even if you know the terrain you’ll still need to poke around a bit. All this reflects a careful balance between allowing seasoned players to leave a mark while ensuring that there’s plenty of ‘unspoilt’ wilderness for newcomers. “You don’t want to go into a cave and discover that it’s like an escalator going down, all lit up,” Turbulenz co-founder and CEO James Austin says.

The regeneration system as it stands was not part of the original Boundless blueprint. It’s the result of years of back-and-forth between the tiny, Guildford-based Turbulenz team and its community, with some players chalking up thousands of hours in a game that has seen over 200 updates. “We might have discovered that was required during development, but when we first planned out the game it wasn’t on the to-do list,” Austin goes on. “It emerged as players were manipulating the environment.”