Interview: Casey “Lumin” Flynn

by Lorne Whiting, May 29th, 2009 (parenthesis)

Casey Flynn, going by the screen name Lumin, is the one-man team behind Faery Tale Online, a roleplay centric browser based RPG, kinda like the love child of a MUD and Urban Dead.The game features permadeath, and a rather innovative sign-up model: You have to be born to two people already in game in order to play.

He was kind enough to answer some questions, his true intellect veiled thinly behind the formal tone of the questions!

Thanks for doing the interview. Care to introduce yourself?

Lumin: Alright. So my real name is Casey Flynn. I am currently living in St. George, Utah working as a Web Developer for a local Internet Service Provider. I finished school at Southern Utah University with a BS in Computer Science in 06 and met my wife there as well. We now have a couple boys and are enjoying life. Faery Tale Online is a little project I’ve been working on for the past year or so…it’s been a lot of fun.

How would you describe FTO? Mass Multiplayer Murder-simulator?

Lumin: I think it falls into the category of a Persistent Browser-Based RPG, but I don’t believe it fits into the traditional, “Grind” RPG that seems so popular right now. I like to think of it as a “Pure RPG” or an RPG that tries extra hard to put you in the shoes of another role. For example, the entire game world started with nothing but natural objects and places, so you won’t find any developer-designed cities, caves or npcs. The game has no pre-written story either, but what the player-characters create through their actions.

It sounds like there’s a wide variety of societies developing, with individual approaches to how to play the game. You must be keeping track of what your players are doing, are the in-game communities turning out how you’d like, as a whole?

Lumin: There are already several races in the game now, with more on the way, and yes, the cultures are already becoming pretty diverse. We’ve got a colony that is very religious, sacrificing disobedient members of their community and a group that is very in-tune with nature and peaceful. Races are born with unique advantages and disadvantages such as weather resistance, improved construction skills, inherited magic, and greater strength and endurance. Combine that with different climates, and regions and you get a very interesting demographic. I try to stay out of things as much as I can. The beauty of the game, is how the players themselves get to decide what happens. Events sometimes occur in the game that I did not expect, like a character trying to murder everyone in his tribe. With permanent death, it is very possible for an entire group to be wiped out, but I believe it only enriches the world even more. That type of dynamic game-play isn’t found in many other games.

What caused you to implement the whole “players need to be born to parents to play” thing?

Lumin: Well, when I was younger I had always envisioned a MMO where all the players were born into real families. The image that stayed in my mind was the prologue in Dragon Warrior 2 for the NES. If you’ve played it, you remember the monster army invading the castle and killing all the guards. Just before the King is slain, he tries to protect his daughter. Something about that scene made me think of how amazing if all of it was taking place in a game with real players trying to protect their children from an invasion. So, it always surprised me that nobody had really done something like this in a multiplayer game. I don’t think FTO could be nearly as interesting without a real family system. Players find themselves far more attached to their characters when they are part of a family legacy and have a name to bear. With players able to keep their own books and journals in the game, I’m seeing a lot of characters keeping geneologies and family histories of their experiences. These books can then be handed down through the generations for players to keep as family heirlooms.

what are some sources of inspiration as far as games go? Do you like games that involve mowing down hundreds of ugly people because they killed your father prior to the events of the game?

Lumin:It takes a lot of inspiration from Dwarf Fortress for the fantasy world simulator aspect, and Cantr, because it is a really great role-playing environment. Western Role-Playing Games are my favorite genre, and I also really like Pen & Paper RPGs. I like a lot of other stuff as well. I’ve always been a big fan of horror games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil. I get a little more picky with RTS and FPS games – I spent endless hours in college playing LAN Starcraft with roomates. Lately, I tend to only to play indie games like roguelikes and other unique projects that don’t eat up a lot of my time.

I’ve always really liked survival games, and I don’t think there is nearly enough of them out there.

You seem to listen to the community surrounding your game a lot, asking them questions about upcoming features, implementing many suggestions, etc. Has this helped development of the game so far? Have you ever caved-in on a feature you didn’t want but the players did?

Lumin: Haha, yeah actually I have put a few features in that I didn’t originally want to do. In fact, I’m nearly finished coding a new city system that is being done in a way that I didn’t initially want to do. Honestly, though, the game is better for the player input. There are some things that people have come up with that I would have never thought of and have made things work out much better. I saw that Toady from Dwarf Fortress was having a lot of success with the 1 developer + community feedback system and decided from the very beginning that I was going to do it the same way.

Cool, cool. Any advice you’d like to give to people looking to develop their own PBBG MMO sacrificial-murder simulator? To game-developers in general?

Lumin: Well, the most important thing is to create something you are really interested in and make sure you’re having fun doing it. Most indie developers start making games on their spare time and if they’re not very excited about, it will quickly become a burden. I would also suggest people try to do something original in their project. If people see you’re just out to try to make a quick buck, they’ll quickly lose interest.

Any long-term plans for FTO you’d like to share? can you see yourself ever looking at the game and saying “It is finished!”?

Lumin: There are a few major things I need to have done in the short term: seafaring, farms, revamped combat, armies, better code optimization to name a few. I think there will come a point when I can be happy with what is there though. However, I also have very long-term plans for creating a totally new setting based on what I have. A space colonization MMO is another genre that has not been done before and FTO’s engine would be a great starting point.

Any words of wisdom you’d like to end the interview on?

Lumin: Well, just that I invite anyone interested in a totally unique, serious, role-playing experience to come sign-up. There is a wait for the birth system which may require a bit of patience, but as we are getting more players, things are moving faster.

Thanks for taking the time for this interview, Casey.

Lumin: Yeah, no problem. Let me know when it’s up!