It’s been awhile since I chatted with our friends at Digital Leisure. The people who gave us the Casino on PS Home and Western Frontiers. Not to mention a very LARGE fish tank. Now that Home is gone, the gang over at DL isn’t letting grass grow under their feet. They already have a new casino up and running on Steam called The Four Kings Casino and Slots. I realize not everyone is into virtual gambling. To be honest, I wasn't either. However, because of YPSH, I have been checking out the various options of new virtual worlds that might one day become a Home replacement. Or at least similar. Not much out there right now. So when it came to checking out The Four Kings project, I was skeptical. I was in for a pleasant surprise. I thought it would be too early in the game to expect much. I expected a very basic, limited demo. What I saw was an entire casino. Complete with a VIP Room, a Club and even stores! So I signed on eager to see it all. Then an even bigger surprise awaited me. It had a personal space! Your very own hotel room. Yeah, I know what you are thinking. You are remembering that teeny tiny dumpy hotel room on Home right? You'll be surprised when you see this one. Truly a room with a view! At any rate, I have been on it quite a bit. Again, pleasantly surprised to see the DL crew on it a lot, checking things out and improving things. So I had to have a chat with Paul Gold (Executive Producer), Adam and Miguel (Game Designers). Here’s our conversation………. Karen : Gentlemen, thanks for taking a few minutes of your time to chat with us about 4 Kings. It’s a sad time, because we lost Home, but it’s also an exciting time to see what the future holds. Paul Gold: Thanks for having us Karen, it’s always great to chat with YourPSHome.net. Yes, Home might have signed off, but we’re super excited about what the future holds. We knew that Home wouldn’t be around forever, so we've been hard at work taking the magic that made it such a popular item on PS3 to all new audiences on PC and PS4 later this year. Miguel: We’ve had a big uptick in activity since the end of Home, so while we're sad to see Home end, we're glad that many of our users are starting to take an interest in our new game. Karen : I was so surprised to see just how far along the casino has come. I really didn’t expect to see a working casino! Congratulations on getting it this far so fast! When did you start on the PC version? Adam: Thanks! We’re all very happy with how far we've come since we started working on The Four Kings. It’s been about a year and a half since we started development and we are excited to see our launch window get closer and closer. Karen : Can Mac users run it too? Miguel: Yes, Unity allows us to compile the game for different platforms much more easily than before. Granted, there are still issues to address when going from one platform to another, so the Mac version is a little less optimized. Once things are more finalized and working on the PC version, we’ll go back and give the Mac version an optimization and polish pass. For now though, we’re glad that it compiles and runs on a Mac. Karen : You chose to use the Unity 4 engine rather than the Unreal engine. Give us some insight as to how you came to that decision. Paul Gold: The cross-platform nature of the engine makes it an easy decision. We've been a Unity studio for many years now using it to develop titles in our catalog. I think we were actually first introduced to the Unity group back when we were developing WiiWare titles on the Wii. So it’s been a while! When transitioning from developing for PS Home, the logical move was to develop with Unity. The emphasis on portability and the platforms they target – it was easy decision. I think Unity Technologies has been an incredibly powerful force in bringing many independently produced titles to the forefront. The upgrades in Unity 5 will bring an even more dynamic visual experience. Karen : What will upgrading to Unity 5 bring to the table? Adam: Upgrading to Unity 5 will give us a lot more power to most of our systems. Right now we are reworking all of the lighting in our environments. This will make the casino pop and feel more realistic when you are walking, or jogging, around the space. You’ll also see an improvement to material shaders. This will make our avatar, clothing, and environment materials look more detailed than what you currently see with Unity 4. First ever look at some comparisons of 4 Kings done with Unity 4 vs. Unity 5 Unity 5 will also make it easier for us to bring everything over to PS4. The team over at unity has done a really good at making cross platform development easier to accomplish. Karen : Four Kings is on Steam. In the beginning, we had to provide our chip count from PS Home to apply. Now that Home is gone, can people still sign up for the beta version for free? Adam: We updated the website to continue to allow PS Home users to apply for PC and PS4 beta access even without the chips holdings verification. You can sign up here -->> http://casino.digitalleisure.com/#apply Karen : You also have a few paid subscriptions available. Tell us what those are and what we get for each that we don’t get with the free version. Paul Gold: Well, I wouldn't exactly call them subscriptions as they are a one-time bonus purchase – and something completely optional. An Early Access upgrade to one of our passes will grant you a variety of bonuses that will not be available when the game goes live as a Free-To-Play title. You get exclusive Founder status items like clothing, nameplate badging and instant Reward Points to get even more clothing right from the start. Our All-In Pass even includes instant VIP Access and VIP Guest Passes to give to friends. But the most compelling item is of course chips! Each pack will give you a bonus set of chips to use when the game goes Free-To-Play. All of the chips during Early Access are free, but you’ll be ready to play as soon as we officially launch! Any purchased bonuses are carried forward to release, so everyone will know you were there prior to launch. Karen : I assume the VIP Room requires a separate pass? Adam: Well, we won't really have a “pass” that you buy but I can see where this question stems from. Let me explain what’s going on with VIP right now. Most people are familiar with how they achieved VIP status from Paradise Springs. You earned 100,000 chips and you were VIP for life. Then you could go on and earn High Rollers status for life and go play in that separate space. Or you could skip all that and buy your way in. This design didn't work as well as we wanted it to so we changed it up a little bit this time around. Currently, we have one VIP area that you’ll have to earn your way into every month. Our goal is to make the VIP area a prestigious place to be. Having VIP status will also give access to an exclusive store, VIP only games, and special perks like bonus RP, chips earned, and guest passes for your friends who are not VIP. Now there is a slight exception to this statement. As Paul mentioned, during Early Access you can purchase a Double Down Pass or an All-In pass. This will give you instant VIP access during Early Access, and then again when the game officially releases. This was done so that the VIP area wasn't so empty and could be tested immediately, and we wanted to give you access as a thank you for helping us during our development phase. Miguel: One thing we didn’t like in Paradise Springs was that once you had VIP you had it forever, so as they game went on, more and more people had VIP status. In the Four Kings, we want to reward loyal players who play a lot and maintain their VIP status. Once you earn VIP you will unlock it for next month, and the remainder of the current month. So if you earn it on January 15, you will be a VIP until the end of February. Once February starts though, you will need to earn enough RP to cross the threshold and maintain it for March. Note that all the thresholds are arbitrary right now and we’ll be tuning them, just like we’re tuning RP earning in early access. Karen : Four Kings is only on Steam (PC) at the moment. I know you can’t give us an exact date, but approximately when do you foresee a PS4 version being available? Paul Gold: The current timeline is have a live multiplayer Beta test for all of the Home users who signed up through our website this summer. Should that live test go flawlessly – which it of course will – we'd be looking at an early Fall release. We'll of course keep everyone up-to-date with news as we go. Karen : I’m going to guess that once both versions are live, you won't be able to transfer items from one account to the other because they are on different platforms? Miguel: Yes, unfortunately the platform gap will make it impossible to share accounts at this time. We might be able to carry over a starting bonus and some bonus items for your loyalty, but each version will be its own separate entity. We're going to do our best to make sure both versions get the same features and games going forward, but the accounts will not carry over. Karen : Four Kings already has the usual casino games. Blackjack, slots, War, Keno, Poker, etc.. Any new ones planned to be added down the line? Adam: Yes, we do have more games planned such as Pai Gow, Sic Bo, new poker variants, and more slot variations. We also plan on bringing free mini games and fun little social games as well to our world. We don't have an exact timeline for when these updates will come out, but we are always looking to grow and expand what we have to offer. First look at new "Spinning Cogs" slot machine coming to 4 Kings. Miguel: We've also added Baccarat for VIP players this time around. Keno has been simplified to a single-player instant keno, which we think is much more fun. Our slot machines are also redesigned from Home, and we're working on new ones. Karen : Since its still underdevelopment, there is bound to be bugs. Where do people report any they find? Paul Gold: In game we have a nifty tool called “Submit a Bug Report”. If you find something or an issue crops up while you're playing, you simply need to fill out the form and give as much detail as possible so we can recreate it. If we can find it, we'll fix it! We're constantly updating things and fixing bugs. Miguel: We're also active on our steam community forums, so if you post about your problems there we'll be able to see them as well. Our users are also very helpful, so they know a work-around they might be able to help you. Karen : You have a basic Club already in place at the casino. Any plans to add music, dance moves, etc to the Club in the future? Adam: Yes of course! We want to make the club a fun social area for people to gather. We've already discussed what kind of dance moves we want to incorporate next! The Club at Four Kings Casino Miguel: The club is also a good place to add social mini games. We've discussed a few different ideas like serving drinks, dance offs, DJ booth activities. These would be a fun way to interact with each other and earn chips, but we won't be able to start working on them until after our initial release. Karen : I notice that some stores (on the second level) sell items that you can pay for with Reward Points (RP) you accumulate. Some you can buy with money. Tell us about that and what we might see available there in the future. Miguel: Just like in home, we're going to have some items which can only be purchased with real money and some which can only be purchased with RP. We don't plan on having any items which can be purchased with both – if an item can be purchased for real money and RP then it could be argued that RP has real monetary value, which give us some legal problems regarding online gambling. So expect a lot of variety for both purchase types. We plan on adding more clothing items, as well as hair styles, particle effects, make up styles, facial hair features – the sky's the limit. We want to keep adding rewards so there’s always something new to earn and show off. Don't forget about personal spaces as well! We've already got some new ones in development, and being able to customize those spaces with furniture is still on the roadmap for the future. Karen : Speaking of RP, I'm a bit confused. Straighten me out here ? I see leaderboards called “Global” as well as other leaderboards. They list a number alongside your position. I assume that number is the total RP you have accumulated? Miguel: Yes. Just like in Home, we're basing the leaderboards on how much you've earned in our games. Unlike home however, we’re calculating it using RP. This allows us to balance games a little better for speed. In home the best game to get the top spot on the global leaderboard was roulette, because you could bet high and play quickly. With RP, we can tune it a little better, so roulette earns RP at a similar rate to blackjack, or slots. We want players to have a variety of options when chasing the leaderboard, so they don’t feel that they HAVE to play a certain game. I’m sure a particular game will rise to the top, but we'll be able to adjust RP earnings in the future to keep things competitive. Karen : So the number I see on the menu (next to the crown) is the amount I actually have to spend? Adam: Correct, that number is your RP holdings. This will fluctuate as you win RP from playing the games and spend on items in our RP stores. Karen : You also have “VIP Tiers”. What’s that all about? Miguel: Again, keeping with the theme of rewarding our most dedicated players, we wanted a way to keep rewarding players for playing more. Currently the perks aren't implemented, but we had planned on giving each VIP tier bonuses to RP earning, chip purchases and chips earned from tasks. Higher level VIP’s will get additional guest passes to invite friends to VIP and Badges (as long as they stay VIP). We want to give meaningful perks in addition to the prestige associated with being a top level VIP. One concern about the perks is mis balancing our leaderboards, but we're definitely going to do our best to make being a top player a rewarding experience. Karen : Can you talk a bit about avatar development? Like will the Four King avatars be able to be highly customized? Will they look as good as the Home avatars or better? Miguel: In terms of the base avatar model we're pretty happy with how they look. There is a good number of facial features which allow you to change the look of their face – we felt home avatar faces all sort of looked the same. We've heard requests from our users about improving the feminine form, and we'll consider that going forward when we create items in the future. For our first pass we wanted to provide a good mix of basic clothing. Going forward, we'll have more freedom to make more focused items – clubwear, swimwear, themed pieces etc. Karen : Home users feel like they have been “sold out” by Sony’s decision to close Home. Now they fear a new virtual world might close up on them at some point. Like, say if a PS5 should come out. What can DL do about that, if anything? Paul Gold: I completely understand the emotional response people had to Sony’s announcement. People had invested a lot of time and money into the service – and they didn’t see why it would need to close. However, as consumers we can't expect our multiplayer experiences to live in perpetuity. The only thing that keeps these experiences alive is a strong active user base. We believe our fresh new experience will be one where people will play for years. Karen : Home users also lost everything they purchased. That, of course included any Digital Leisure items they may have purchased. Any plans to help out those of us who bought DL products who want to get them again via the casino? (like my big fish tank I loved?) If not a replacement, maybe a discount? Paul Gold: At this point we're moving forward with all new items and gear for the Four Kings experience. It is certainly possible that in the future we'll have aquariums and other furniture for sale to outfit personal spaces with. We know many people purchased items in Home and we have some fun ideas in mind for those users who come and register with us. In fact, since we launched in Early Access on PC – all PS Home users have had completely free access to Four Kings on PC/Mac. This way they could check out the space with no obligation. However, if they like what they see and want to purchase one of the bonus upgrade packs, they are certainly welcome to do so. Karen : Speaking of virtual items, you just included a personal space in the casino. A hotel room. A nice sized one too with a view. It’s already furnished. Ex-Home users are so anxious to see a new virtual world (VW) with new personal spaces available for purchase as well as new public ones. Non-casino spaces. I know it’s early yet to talk about that, but let me pick your brain for a moment about possible future additions. Do you foresee Four Kings evolving in that direction? Adam: Oooh, this is a tough one. Let me start off with saying that there is a non-casino personal space being worked on right now. There is no official title for it at the moment but let’s call it The Beach Front. We really only have a shell of it right now but it’s shaping up really well. Now, in terms of public areas, I can’t say for certain where our Four Kings journey is going to take us. Right now we are focusing very hard to get the game launched, and we have casino related plans to carry us further past our release date. We have thrown around ideas with “What if we included...” but we have not settled on anything of a non-casino public space. Do I think it would be cool to be able to walk out the front doors of the casino and take a stroll down the strip? Absolutely. Would it be awesome to be able to travel back in time and go to the Wild West? Without a doubt. All of us here are dreaming about how big the Four Kings world could become, but we have to stick with betting one chip at a time going forward if we want to succeed. The possibilities are endless it just all depends on where this community takes us. Karen: Will Four Kings eventually have goods made by third party developers? Miguel: Currently there are no plans to involve other developers in the Four Kings. Nothing is set in stone, but right now we do not have the infrastructure to allow other developers to work on the Four Kings. We’ve been in contact with some home developers just to talk about how we’re doing things, but everyone from home is working on their own thing. Karen : I hear rumors DL may be considering adding a User Generated Content (UGC) system to Four Kings. Would that allow us to make our own virtual items? How would that work? Would we be able to sell items we created? Can you elaborate on all this? Miguel: Other games on Steam like DOTA 2 and Team Fortress 2 allow users to create items which can be used in-game. We hope to implement a similar system, which would allow artistically inclined users to create items and sell them in the casino. Our back end isn’t quite ready for it yet, but when it is, you’ll be able to register on our site and download some plug-ins which will allow you to connect to our servers to create and test your items. Users will have to use their own software (typically Maya, Photoshop, Z-brush etc) to create the items. Then they will be able to test them in a special test environment and take screenshots. Once they have created their item and taken some pictures, they’ll be able to upload it, and other players will be able to look at the items and vote on what they want to see in the game. Digital Leisure staff will then look at which items have proven to be most popular and decide if we want to include it in the game. We’ll then run it through our own QA and talk with the artist to decide on a price. If it gets into the game, the artist will receive a portion of the sales. This model only works if an item is sold for real-money. If we want an item to be a reward or sold for RP, we will negotiate with the artist to buy the rights of the item and pay them a flat-rate. Adam: I’m really excited to see what our artistically inclined users come up with! Digital Lesiure hard at work on The Four Kings Casino Karen : That would be awesome! Changing the subject, let’s talk financing. Other devs have tried Kickstarter campaigns. It takes a lot of money and resources to take on the challenge of making a new virtual world. So far, DL hasn’t gone that route. I fully expected DL to do one too. You chose not to. So far anyway. Will you do one in the future? Paul Gold: I think Kickstarter, Indiegogo and other crowdfunding sites are really exciting ways to raise money and show that there is interest for a product. I myself have ‘Kickstarted’ a few projects and have been happy with the products delivered. When it comes to Kickstarting software, I’m a little more skeptical. Knowing what it is involved in development and how easily costs can get out of control – I can see why users are slowly moving away from Kickstarting software. There have been many headlines made from some large studios who couldn’t deliver on million dollar Kickstarter projects. So to ask users for money on something that a small studio ‘plans’ (aka hopes) to deliver over a year from now is a tough sell. We were very fortunate to have success in PlayStation Home, and we decided that self-financing the new project and releasing a stable Early Access product was the way to go. You even said yourself that you were surprised at how far along things have come. Many Home users who have come over have said the same things – and that’s the best compliment we can hear. We wanted the loyal Home users to have first access free-of-charge right out of the gate, so they could see that there will be new social experiences available post-Home. Yes, we started with our Casino property – but of course there will be personal spaces! We know how important the social aspects are, and though we’ve only been out for two months – there is a whole new world to be created, and that takes time. Karen : Lastly, if Four Kings becomes very successful (and it looks like it's on its way) would DL like to develop any other PS4 projects? Paul Gold: Anything is possible. But we’re completely 100% focused on making Four Kings a success on both PC and PS4 later this year. One step at a time. Miguel: There’s so much more we want to add to the Four Kings – even after release. It’s hard to even think about starting another project on top of that at this point. Karen : Gentlemen, thanks so much for giving us the lowdown. Everyone is anxious to see “what’s next”. DL is certainly in that spotlight. I know that’s been keeping all of you very busy, so I really appreciate your time today. Thanks! We’ll be watching. Adam: Thanks for all of the support and feedback. You guys have already done a lot to help us bring forward information to the community. I hope that there are more of these discussions in the near future! Miguel: We’re glad everyone is enjoying their time in the Four Kings, and we’d like to thank everyone who has helped us grow to this point. Just a quick plug – if you’re already in the Four Kings, please don’t forget to leave us a review and subscribe to our community hub. If you’re not yet in the Four Kings, you can still subscribe to our community hub on steam to view screenshots from real users and see what people are talking about. CLICK HERE -->> (Steam Community :: The Four Kings Casino and Slots) Please note this interview may NOT be copied or posted elsewhere without the express consent of the author. To see a photo tour of the 4 Kings Casino, CLICK HERE To see a video tour of the 4 Kings Casino, CLICK HERE To read up on all that's new and user comments about 4 Kings, CLICK HERE For a user guide on 4 Kings, CLICK HERE
Unity 5 sure does make the Casino look a whole load better and more real, looking forward to seeing that update first hand, So far my time in the Casino as been good and its been nice to see more mates from PS Home joining up and enjoying it also.
Great interview and it was good to see you cover a lot of ground with Digital Leisure. I'm a bit concerned that Home users are going to get a bit bored spending all their time in a casino environment. Home users could go to a casino, then to a beach, then to a park, then to a pirate game etc.. I'm wondering how long the casino will be able to hold user's attention.
Decent interview. All though I find it more talking around the product then the real intention being a casino game. As indicated from the interview the prowess of the historical PShome experience lost the focus to what casino means, what seem to the reason it is unbalanced into those footsteps. The reason the casino feels boring quick is because there is no real casino feeling. Yes there are all the games, but a game and feeling like a casino are separate things that hungers for more dedication to be polished. As is said in this interview many times, one thing at a time. You can guess the real question. Why something for everything, then first set a fun core experience. Everything is so thin build as a feeling, like presenting a playground and put the focus on the community to be the game. What is the game It feels like a world of everything a bit without a goal in game play. Then some other concern listening this interview why I now believe there is no dedication to these lads to give a real casino experience. What that would do in the effect is it creates the VIP system useless as gameplay value and edge. Everything is shaped blend, no luck based, no growth value. You are basicly saying two thing. 1: We want to reward you being one of our high VIPs. 2: But we want to also nerf you because then other people feel not fair. I cant imagine that to work if RP value is used in both leader board math and shop currency. Being skilled is one thing, creating a world that lives up his title, there needs all the dedication, so much wrong there. The biggest problem is creating gambling into a linear structural system, if you look at all the response and feedback that is why it feels boring. There is no excitement. The population has problems for now because of the things received and seen from the developer. *The above written text is meant as a fan based expression in the current state. Experienced to a different feeling is solely personal.
