New Sandbox MMORPG BitCraft Offers Social Interaction And Empire-building

New studio Clockwork Labs has kicked off development of BitCraft, which it bills as a "procedural, sandbox MMORPG." The San Francisco-based studio recently announced that it had secured $4.3 million in funding and has brought in former workers from Ubisoft and Kakao Games to work on the game, which co-founder Tyler Cloutier said "will feature a truly unique level of social interaction and cooperation between players."

That's not an uncommon boast about any MMORPG, so what kind of solid details can we gleam about BitCraft from its website? According to the description there, BitCraft will draw from a number of gaming sub-genres -- survival games, sandbox games, role-playing games, city builders, and strategy games -- and emphasize social interaction over combat. It will let players make permanent changes to a "single, massive, editable sandbox world," including the ability to band together "to tame the wilderness and create impressive towns and cities anywhere in the world" and "build empires across continents and oceans."

The part about the "single world" is notable, in that Clockwork Labs says it doesn't have plans to offer player-hosted servers for BitCraft. That's not bad in theory -- a game with such an emphasis on social behavior needs a large population -- but games that allow for that functionality do so because they realize that different players have different goals. That's especially true for people who want to have a chill and largely non-competitive experience, perhaps with close friends, and don't want to be continually harassed by someone with a bigger sword than them.

BitCraft is taking applications for its pre-alpha for PC players, which will start in the fall. If you think it sounds like something you could get into, you can sign up on the website.