Two former developers of EVE Online have been working with their studio Klang Games for over a decade to make an MMO where it isn't just the world that's persistent, your characters are too. At this week's Game Developers Conference, the Berlin studio unveiled Seed, a project that asks a deceptively simple question: what happens to your virtual life when you're not watching?
Seed's characters continue operating in the world even when you're offline. Unlike traditional MMOs where the world pauses when you disconnect, your character might sign out and later go drinking in a pub, get into a fight, get into trouble with the law, and wind up in jail. By the time you sign back in, your character is a few hours into an overnight stay, depressed and shunned by their peers.
This persistent character simulation sits at the heart of Seed's design philosophy. Klang's cofounders, Oddur Snær Magnússon and Ívar Emilsson, are ex-CCP employees who both worked on EVE Online. That heritage shows in the game's approach to society-level systems. Societies are the backbone of Seed. Players within a society will be working together to build it up, whether as its lawmakers, business owners, or individual citizens collecting resources.
The mechanical complexity is staggering. CEO Mundi Vondi adds titles like RimWorld to the cocktail of obsessively deep simulation touchstones. It's an MMO where your Seedling characters continue operating in the world even when you're offline. Players can control up to ten characters. A lot of game design that's usually very tricky, like sleeping, disease, mental issues, and ageing, are pretty difficult if you're one character. But when you have ten you can actually do something with it. A lot of grind gets solved with this, so they basically work autonomously. They set their routines, and work on what their priorities would be.
Klang hasn't shrunk from the infrastructure challenges. The game is powered by Improbable's SpatialOS tech, and its persistent simulation is inspired by Facebook and its construction and management systems pull from the likes of Dwarf Fortress. Klang have been working with a Harvard law professor, Lawrence Lessig, on a way of setting virtual laws that these virtual characters will have to follow.
The project has attracted serious investment. The company announced that it's raised another $8.95M in Series A investor funding, bringing its total investment to $13.95M. More recent reporting indicates the studio has continued fundraising to push development forward.
For players sceptical of yet another ambitious MMO project, the persistent offline mechanics do raise real questions about loss of control. You log in to discover your reputation damaged or your settlement damaged by decisions made while you were asleep. Klang also shared that Seed will have a mobile app version so players can check in on Seedlings while away from the main game. I might be able to pull up the app to check characters' needs, reassign them to new activities, or see selfies they've taken.
What's genuinely interesting here is the inversion of traditional MMO design. Most multiplayer games demand constant login time; Seed is built to reward absence as much as presence. Your settlers have agency. The world doesn't wait for you. That's either a liberating design philosophy or a terrifying loss of control, depending on your perspective. For Klang Games, it's the whole point.