EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK - The Legend of California: A Sprawling Western Adventure

Heat. Heat.

Hello friends and welcome to NoClip 2's latest big preview. This one on The Legend of California. In the past, we've produced big previews for indie games like Mugenics and Demon School. So why

today are we covering a big new game from an industry veteran? Well, perhaps

it's because this big idea is coming from a personal place and is being made by a remarkably small team. When Jeff

Kaplan left Blizzard after a storied 19-year career working on World of Warcraft Titan and eventually leading the team on Overwatch, he could have done pretty much anything. He could have

joined another studio in the Los Angeles area. He could have asked Venture

area. He could have asked Venture Capital for $200 million for a game as service idea. He could have retired and

service idea. He could have retired and tended to his garden. Instead, Jeff

built a team comprised of some of his old friends and some new faces to help him with a passion project. Something

inspired by both his favorite online game and the place for most of his life he's called home. For the past few years, Jeff and a team of around 33 people have been working on The Legend

of California. And for the past month or

of California. And for the past month or so, I've been playing different indevelopment builds of it. Exploring

its large world. Hunting its animals.

Murdering its outlaws. Riding my donkey.

Feeding my donkey. Killing my donkey.

Mining. Fishing. Chopping down trees.

Being mauled by wolves. Being mauled by bobcats. Starting a homestead. Doing

bobcats. Starting a homestead. Doing

jobs for money. Taking wagon rides.

Cooking, placing candles, reviving a beloved video game rental store, being harassed by large sheep and torn apart by bears.

Today, I'm going to tell you why I've played over 40 hours of this game and still can't put it down. How the game is structured, how each version of its world is procedurally created, the way

combat and PvP works, and much more. I

also made the real life journey from Northern California to Southern California to talk to several members of the team at Kugiyama and also to practice pronouncing the studio's name.

We chatted about its gameplay, open world, and their hopes for this game once players get in and start running a muk. and I talked to Jeff about his

muk. and I talked to Jeff about his experience at Blizzard, what it was like leaving, and how this new project came about. This is the big preview for The

about. This is the big preview for The Legend of California. As ever, if there's a specific section you're really interested in hearing about, we do provide chapters in every one of our videos. And if you're new to NoClip 2,

videos. And if you're new to NoClip 2, then we invite you to subscribe. The

NoClip documentary channel focuses on work about how games are made. But our

mission here on NoClip 2 is to showcase great upcoming or newly released games from interesting teams. not how these games are made, but how they play and why you should play them. And not just

industry veterans, but developers on the fringes, too. We think we're building

fringes, too. We think we're building something unique here, and would love to have you along for the ride. Last note,

I played multiple development builds of the game to get an idea of how far along it's come over the past 6 months. So,

some of the gameplay will look not as clean as some of the stuff I recorded on the latest version of the game. And of

course, this is all in development gameplay, so much of this has yet to be optimized. All right, enough

optimized. All right, enough housekeeping. Let's dive in.

housekeeping. Let's dive in.

>> My name is Jeffrey Kaplan. I work at Kugiamyama, a studio I founded with my good friend Tim Ford.

>> My name is Tim Ford. I'm one of the studio heads at Kugyama, uh, where I oversee most of the engineering department.

>> The company was formed to make a passion project of ours called The Legend of California. It's a game that people are

California. It's a game that people are going to call it a survival game, which is fine. It has a lot of survival

is fine. It has a lot of survival elements to it. I think of it as the California action game. Uh we're rolling into alpha really soon. We're going to go into early access later on after an

alpha and a beta. We're just kind of building our way there and looking for people to help start supporting us. For

me, the inspiration and the passion for this particular project came from a number of places. one, I grew up in California and I think it's an amazing

place with the most diverse bio regions, flora, fauna, etc. So, I always thought it would make a great game world. Two, I

wanted to build sort of a survival sandbox game. I have always been a huge

sandbox game. I have always been a huge fan of the survival genre. In

particular, I have one favorite game, which is Rust. I've played Rust for over 5,000 hours. The game that we're making

5,000 hours. The game that we're making is not like Rust in many ways. Rust is

really like probably the pinnacle of PvP games. Anybody who's played a lot of

games. Anybody who's played a lot of Rust knows what I'm talking about. It's

the ultimate month-long battle royale.

And the last one comes from my background on World of Warcraft of just wanting to get back to working on a big openw world multiplayer game and just

what happens when people from all walks of life are playing in a space like this together.

All those things coming together are really what inspired this game.

>> Hello everyone. This is Jeff from the Overwatch team. We're here.

Overwatch team. We're here.

>> For most of my video game career was spent at Blizzard Entertainment. I

joined in 2002 and I ultimately ended up leaving in April of 2021. So 19 years. I

never imagined I would leave Blizzard.

Um, I always imagined that I would retire from there. Uh, Blizzard's hold such a big part in my heart. Uh, I love the studio. I love the games. Some of my

the studio. I love the games. Some of my favorite game developers are still working there and making awesome stuff.

I think I hit a point in my career where me and Blizzard had just grown apart in our view of, you know, how we thought games should be made, what types of

games should be made. um how should the studio be structured? I didn't leave Blizzard because I wanted to start a studio. In fact, I just left Blizzard

studio. In fact, I just left Blizzard because I felt like I didn't really belong there anymore.

And I planned to just take a break. Um

my wife tried to convince me that I needed to take at least a year off cuz I barely took off any time while I was in those 19 years. I like really gave my

all to to Blizzard and to the games. And

um I would just sit in the backyard uh pulling weeds. You know, she doesn't let

pulling weeds. You know, she doesn't let me plant anything in the garden, but I am allowed to pull the weeds. And I was just sitting there like, you know, wondering, am I just done making games?

There's no real place for me. I I

couldn't imagine going to another company after having worked at Blizzard.

Blizzard felt like the pinnacle, the top of the mountain, and I didn't have this desire to go work somewhere else. And I

would take breaks and I would just start writing, you know, I just writing design docs. And then, you know, that led its

docs. And then, you know, that led its way into like learning different software so I could maybe start making and prototyping stuff. Eventually, I

just had this really strong idea of this game that I wanted to make, which turned out to be Legend of California. And

around that time, my good friend Tim reached out to me and he had sort of reached a similar place in his career with Blizzard. That's when it really

with Blizzard. That's when it really started to gain momentum is when Tim left Blizzard, he was going to take a month off. He was going to take a break.

month off. He was going to take a break.

And literally on his last day from Blizzard, like after he had had his exit interview, he calls me up and he's like, "I'm coming over Monday afternoon. You

better show me what we're working on because if I take any time off, I'm just going to be writing code anyway and it might as well be for us." I have worked

on multiple teams where you do kind of new team, new IP, new tech. And that's

every single project I've worked on that had those three failed. We got

cancelled. We fell apart. We pivoted.

That you know, Titan falls falls into that camp. That was a pivot to

that camp. That was a pivot to Overwatch. This I didn't know at the

Overwatch. This I didn't know at the time was not really going to be new team for a lot of people on staff. We did

wind up rejoining. And even though our team is incredibly small, we did join with a bunch of folks who I've had the pleasure to work with for decades. So

mark that one off the list. The risk had to kind of drop precipitously when we knew a lot of the folks we were working with. New tech, I chose Unreal fairly

with. New tech, I chose Unreal fairly early on. Um, obviously if you're making

early on. Um, obviously if you're making a first-person shooter and you don't want to be in engine development for 8 years, you should probably just get Unreal. So that was our that was our

Unreal. So that was our that was our tech thing. The last hurdle obviously is

tech thing. The last hurdle obviously is new IP. Well, we'll see. You know, it's

new IP. Well, we'll see. You know, it's it's obviously for us the intellectual property was something we're excited about, but uh I'm I'm really confident that this thing is going to be a real banger.

>> I know there's a lot of startups who like start a game company. We really

want to be a company. Let's figure out what game we want to make.

That path wasn't interesting to me. I

had a very strong opinion of the type of game that I thought would be super fun that I really wanted to work on. Tim was

super on board with making that game and I thought it was a better pact with the people who were going to join us to know what they're going to make. And I would openly say this to people in interviews.

I would say if this idea is not interesting to you, do us a favor and don't join. Like you need to be excited

don't join. Like you need to be excited about this idea so we're all moving in a similar direction.

Kitsugyama is a fully remote studio born and forged in co as Jeff puts it. The

team is now a split between old Blizzard friends and new hires from around the US and Canada. The work that went into

and Canada. The work that went into building this version of California is worthy of its own video. So, we're

working on a more development focused video for the NoClip documentary channel that talks to more of the team about the research, technology, and design that went into creating the island of

California. But I wanted to touch on

California. But I wanted to touch on some of the fundamentals of the game world in this preview. Why California?

Why an island? Is this a game set in a specific moment in time? And where is the line between survival craft video game and representing real history?

The island of California was sort of this idea of like what if California was just off on its own and you were the first one. No one was here before you.

first one. No one was here before you.

you know, throw history out of out of the picture and you're showing up for the first time and what would it be like? You know, the natural beauty and

like? You know, the natural beauty and splendor and also what if it was an island? The interesting part about that

island? The interesting part about that is I think from about the early 1500s all the way through the 1700s, many actually believed that California

was an island. Weirdly, our like crazy game concept does have some historical basis. Um, but that's not where it came

basis. Um, but that's not where it came from for us. For us, it was we wanted to do this really contained space. We

wanted it to feel larger than life, like almost um like a modern-day myth or legend of, you know, there's an island out there with hills of gold in the

storm. And no one's ever gone there and

storm. And no one's ever gone there and come back to report it, but everybody wants to find it because the land itself is so valuable and rich and there's all

these stories to be told. So that was sort of the basis for what this island is. So we iterated on the scale a lot.

is. So we iterated on the scale a lot.

Um initially what we thought was going to be the right size turned out to be the wrong size. We have an amazing world builder, a guy named Will Harris. He

would talk to us about, you know, how many players do we think we're going to have? What's the vibe of the game? And

have? What's the vibe of the game? And

the vibe is supposed to be that it's like vast, expansive, lonely. So the smaller you make it, the

lonely. So the smaller you make it, the more it feels like everybody's kind of up on top of each other. So Will would spend a lot of time. We we would fake things. We would we would create what we

things. We would we would create what we thought was, for example, the size of a player ranch. And then we'd place 100,

player ranch. And then we'd place 100, we place 200, we place 300, plus a bunch of enemy strongholds and outposts, and we would just run the world and say,

"Does this feel right?" and keep expanding from there. The other

interesting part about making the the island of California is not everything is equally interesting. So in real

California, Central Valley, which is where all of the farming takes place, is one of the most dominant features of California landscape, but it's just a

huge flat valley with nothing but farms in it. And for a game world, that's less

in it. And for a game world, that's less interesting. So for example, the scale

interesting. So for example, the scale of our Yoseite is much much larger than the relative scale of something like Central Valley. So we're trying to play

Central Valley. So we're trying to play the greatest hits. Um, and it's been a really interesting push and pull experience.

>> How, you know, you've mentioned a lot about like the the history of California and obviously this is its own sort of take on it. How how did you sort of like research and resolve the issue of sort

of First Nations, right? because like

that's obviously a big part of Californian history that a lot of people would say has sort of like disappeared in many ways even though we use names and place names and stuff for things

that are obviously from from tribes. Was

there much researcher thought about that put into that?

>> Well, the most challenging part about properly representing the First Nation experience in California is it's not limited to one tribe,

>> right? So you want to be really careful

>> right? So you want to be really careful about making assumptions of like is this okay or not? That's a very complex question. I think in present day there

question. I think in present day there are something like over 100 registered tribes and historically there's some

number that's over 500 tribes have called this home. Our take

on the island is we're not trying to specifically represent, you know, not only the the First Nation or indigenous people that were here um historically

accurately as what happened in the same way we're not trying to represent the Spanish Mexican European Chinese Japanese experiences cuz we know there's

no way we can accurately capture that historically. So sort of the fiction of

historically. So sort of the fiction of our land is that nobody was here. You

can play as any of these characters.

Like you are free to define your character and their backstory, but we make no claims that like we're doing a good job of historical accuracy. Um in

fact, we want to let people know, we know that there is a great rich history.

They should study it, but this is not the game to learn about history, >> right? Maybe geography perhaps.

>> right? Maybe geography perhaps.

>> Even geography. We do a pretty bad job with the there there is no north coast.

There is no east coast.

>> We take a lot of liberties with our California.

Okay, let's dive into gameplay. The

Legend of California is an online game and each server is a new version of the island. not in terms of the geography of

island. not in terms of the geography of the island, but rather the placement of encampments, enemies, and the different tiers of difficulty zones. Imagine, if

you will, the world of Azeroth, but instead of Goldshshire always being a low-level area and Strangle Thorn Veil always being an area you'd need to level up a bit before you wander in, these

difficulty tiers could swap around with every server seed. This is how The Legend of California works. The idea

being that each server and each server reset provides a new version of the island with new challenges. The level

one areas always appear on the coast with level two, three, and four areas fanning outward from that point like the colors of a rainbow. Early areas have

enemies with weaker weapons and fewer aggressive fauna. But the more you

aggressive fauna. But the more you travel outward from that point, the more dangerous the world becomes with enemies with better guns, more intimidating fauna and larger, more intimidating

enemy sightes, which are known as encampments. These encampments range

encampments. These encampments range from small mines to roadside camps to medium-sized settlements all the way up to large towns full of buildings that

are best taken on as a group. Stores

known as outposts are procedurally dotted around the island, too, with roads procedurally connecting them and many of the large points of interest.

We'll cover the technology and design behind these systems in our upcoming video on the NoClip documentary channel.

Your character does have a level, but rather than based on some sort of XP system that you get from doing things around the world, you are guided by the game's challenge menu to complete specific tasks. Completing all of these

specific tasks. Completing all of these tasks in one level unlocks the next one and thus bonus features. For instance,

to place your ranch, you'll have to be level two. In my opinion, this works

level two. In my opinion, this works really well because it essentially operates as a tutorial for the various game systems with an aim to getting you the knowledge and gear that you'll need

to further explore. better clothes, new weapons, ammunition, fishing rods, and ultimately blueprints to stake your own claim to homestead a ranch that you can place almost anywhere on the map as long

as somebody else hasn't already taken it. In terms of objectives, this is

it. In terms of objectives, this is similar to most survival games in that you spend most of your time collecting resources to craft that better gear, but a large emphasis is put on traveling to

meet this objective. The world is large and certain items can only be found in certain areas. Certain stores only sell

certain areas. Certain stores only sell the specific blueprints you might need.

So, you'll need to, say, roam around the world to uncover a mining store before you can build a mine on your claim. I've

mentioned World of Warcraft already, and obviously, this is a team of ex Blizzard people. But, I really need to emphasize

people. But, I really need to emphasize just how often this game reminded me of playing vanilla WoW. That feeling of roaming into an area that was slightly too high level for you. The way fast

travel is handed. You can basically soul stone back to your tent or ranch on a 30inut cool down. But most of the time you get around the map by taking wagon rides in real time. These rides are

available between any store that you've already uncovered and also your ranch, allowing you to sit back and watch the world pass you by. Basically like taking

the deeprun tram or a griffin from Iron Forge to Stormwind. Sorry Horde players.

All of my WoW references are Alliance.

And in case I haven't mentioned, this world is large, around the same size as the most recent Zelda games, so to take a wagon from the northeasternmost point to the southwesterly most point is going

to take you around 30 minutes. A lot of encampments in this game feel like running into mobs in Azeroth. Job boards

give you daily objectives, which usually boil down to the Californian version of collecting ruined pelts. You can get a mount, you collect gold. The game is mostly PvE, but there are specific PvP

zones. I mean, the comparisons go on.

zones. I mean, the comparisons go on.

Later, we'll talk about how death and PvP works, but first, I want to focus in on the biggest distinction between this game and a lot of other shooters. The

lethality of the combat, the relative simplicity of engagements, and what it's like exploring a world like this in first person.

From the outset, we wanted to make a firsterson shooter. Tim and myself just

firsterson shooter. Tim and myself just love first-person perspective in video games, but we have a designer named Jeff Goodman who is also like a first-person

enthusiast and he's so talented. He was

the lead hero designer on Overwatch.

It's beloved to us. I feel like it's the most immersive and expressive version of gameplay that you can have as first person. So, there was never any doubt in

person. So, there was never any doubt in our mind that the game was going to be first person. Now, from a shooting

first person. Now, from a shooting perspective, like a real nuts and bolts shooter, we were excited to explore a different type of shooter gameplay. If

you really study Overwatch and think about it's like action arcadey, people call it an arena shooter. And to me, what that means is like it was inspired

by Quake and Team Fortress. It's got

that larger than life, you know, sort of vibe to it. Knowing that this game was going to be set in California in the 1800s, we wanted to embrace the weaponry

of the time period cuz there was just so many cool guns and firing mechanics. Not

only that, but it was a different type of game where you have these really long engagement distances. It's a big openw

engagement distances. It's a big openw world game where you might see something from 200 m away. And we wanted to have those sort of long distance engagement

distances, fast time to kill where a game like Overwatch, for example, it's got a very slow time to kill because you need to be able to heal and use your

abilities. Um, in this game, if you get

abilities. Um, in this game, if you get hit by a bullet, you better like take some cover and use a bandage or something cuz you're going to get taken

out. We also don't currently have any um

out. We also don't currently have any um raycast weapons, meaning all the weapons actually have, you know, physical projectiles that are going out in the world and they have bullet drop and

velocity. And that's a really fun thing

velocity. And that's a really fun thing to learn for the different types of weaponry. Yeah. Well, we have some very

weaponry. Yeah. Well, we have some very slow loading guns. So, we have uh one gun that's called the Harrison muzzle loader. that is uh you know an old

loader. that is uh you know an old school black powder pour it down do the ram rod um and it I think the load time

is something like 10 seconds but it hits like a truck um and a lot of that is so that there's variety of the gameplay and later on you get in these guns that do

you know by the time you get a lever action rifle you might have you know 15 rounds in it and you can fire them off you know uh like in rapid succession So

that sort of gameplay is interesting to us.

>> Yeah. So the last game I worked on was Overwatch at Blizzard. I worked on World of Warcraft for quite a while um as an encounter designer. I worked on I built

encounter designer. I worked on I built Encounters way back in the day from Enixia and uh Blackwing Layer Nefarian.

I worked up until um Cataclysm.

>> You're responsible for Enixia?

>> Yes, I am.

>> You [ __ ] That's right.

>> You know, a lot of us worked on Overwatch and there's maybe this expectation of like, you know, we're going to be in that space, but I kind of wanted to push really hard the other way because I knew we might have a tendency to slide towards like the arcadey kind

of style. We really did want this to be

of style. We really did want this to be more grounded, more lethal, you know, slower gameplay in that sense. The

weapons feel really visceral and strong and powerful and they don't fire very quickly. They have really slow rate of

quickly. They have really slow rate of fire, really slow reloads. It's very

deliberate game. I think laying that down really early really helped set the tone of combat and how everything was going to work. And then I mean everyone's on board pretty much right away and kind of fell in love. This is

before we even had AI. So we were just shooting each other in the early prototypes. Um so then we got to you

prototypes. Um so then we got to you know build up the AI side. But at that point we already had an idea of the the pacing and the tone of combat. So the AI I think felt a little easier to get in at that point.

>> I mentioned earlier about being slower and deliberate and lethal. A lot of that's on the incoming damage side. And

what we really wanted you to do is respect the cover and the level design and not just be able to run out in the middle of the open and just kill everybody while they're shooting at you.

I mean, if you take enough damage, you have to bandage. So, you can't just like, you know, that takes a little bit of time to heal yourself up. So, you

can't just immediately go back out. So,

there's just a lot more, especially in a group, you know, somebody goes out and gets shot, they run back, start banding, and you cover for them and everything.

It's it's really a really fun dynamic and it makes the the levels especially really pop cuz you're really thinking all the time about how do we want to approach this POI? Do we want to go in from the side? There's actually cool like routes underneath some of the

points of interest we have that are really cool. Um so there's all these

really cool. Um so there's all these different ways to approach and there's also different sizes of the of the encampments you can fight and taking on a large is is really hard because they can really hit you from all these angles

and it's it's there's just a lot of guys to kill by yourself. So, it definitely helps to have a group in those cases or just be really well geared.

>> Yeah, we want there to be a variety to gameplay styles. Like, so there are no

gameplay styles. Like, so there are no classes in this game. We want you to be defined by the gear you take out in that moment. Um, we want to add those

moment. Um, we want to add those different, you know, this is a very game designer thing to say, but like those gameplay verbs so the player can start

defining their play style. You know,

maybe you're a stealthy bow player using tomahawks where I just want the pump shotgun and I'm going to choose the routes through the enemy encampments with the closest engagement distances

and just, you know, go loud with the boomstick.

So mining is central to the game. In

fact, we want mining to be as fun as going out and shooting stuff. Plus, we

built this like huge voxal beautiful world. So, it's a really fun technology

world. So, it's a really fun technology and design to be playing with. At its

core, there are sort of three types of mining that currently exist in the game.

There are random enemy mines that just kind of show up. There might be a group of bandits out front. Once you clear them out, you get like a room with some

resources to keep you going. Tiny little

areas where you get to have like a little bit of that gold mine experience.

The other type of mining there is are there are really expansive mines in some of the points of interest. Not all of them. Not all of them have mines in

them. Not all of them have mines in them. Some of them are just like towns,

them. Some of them are just like towns, like port towns. We have a shipyard for example, like obviously doesn't have a mine in it. We've got this one large

mining complex. We've got another mining

mining complex. We've got another mining town and then we've got an abandoned mine and we don't have it yet, but we're working on putting AI in those mines.

So, you're going to have to like fight and mine at the same time. The the last type of mining, which is like probably the most exciting, is we let you stake

your own mine claim. And right now, you do this on your ranch. And it is enormous. It's like we give you, this is

enormous. It's like we give you, this is going to be hyperbole cuz with programmers there's always a limit to everything, but we basically give you all the voxels beneath your mine uh or

beneath your ranch to just sort of mine out in this really cool way. And our

mining system is put together with a lot of like very dynamic procedural almost like dungeon building systems that create these really intricate levels. We

we give you elevators to get back up to the top. Um and it's really in its

the top. Um and it's really in its nassent form. Like when people see it in

nassent form. Like when people see it in the alpha, it's not going to be our true vision of what what it is. Especially

the player uh ranch mine, it will get uh much better art treatment. Like our

artists really haven't dug their teeth into it yet. It's very designer programmer right now where we're trying to figure out the right mineral distribution and the right layouts to the mine. It's currently laid out almost

the mine. It's currently laid out almost like a wedding cake. If you were to see the layers where the top layer is much smaller and by the time you get to the

bottom layer, it's huge and deep and the rooms keep getting bigger and bigger and more grand. So, uh, we want to have

more grand. So, uh, we want to have hazards in the mine. We had this in at one point and we stripped it out, but we're going to be bringing it back where you have to build the mining supports.

You'll hear a rumble. you'll see the crumble of dirt and you know, you'll know it's going to cave in soon unless I do something. And then you have to

do something. And then you have to timber the gold mine just like they did in the 1800s.

The island of California is often an intimidating place to explore. Wolves

prowl the plains at night. Large animals

intimidate you or attack on site. Though

I found you can often use this to your advantage.

The AIS in this game are relatively simplistic, taking basic cover and moving slowly, and animals have patterns that can be learned. They do get smarter at higher levels, but in general, they are not that taxing as long as there

aren't too many of them. This seems like a reflection of the combat style of this game, slower, more deliberate, where the focus is purely on lining up your shot and choosing the right moment to pull

the trigger. Death happens often, and

the trigger. Death happens often, and like World of Warcraft, it's relatively forgiving. Initially, you respawn with a

forgiving. Initially, you respawn with a debuff a few hundred yards from your corpse, but you don't drop all your gear, only a few bucks. The game's

currency used for buying certain items at stores. Bucks are earned by

at stores. Bucks are earned by completing jobs and are character specific. But the game's other currency,

specific. But the game's other currency, gold, is shared among you and anybody in your company, sort of the de facto guilds of this world. The punishment for death is flipped on its head in the

various designated PvP areas that each server assigns. Getting downed inside

server assigns. Getting downed inside one of the PvP zones means dropping any of the loot that you picked up while in that area. Only visiting an outpost or

that area. Only visiting an outpost or leaving the PvP zone will clear the notoriety of this gear. But this freedom to fail is essential in a game with such

fast time to die where exploring the frontier is not only encouraged but essential. With all of the hazards in

essential. With all of the hazards in this version of California, the most dangerous places you'll encounter are the enemy encampments. These are also all procedurally placed around the landscape on each game server. And I'm

not just talking about the small roadside ones. This also includes the

roadside ones. This also includes the largest towns in the game world. You may

run into a massive factory town in the middle of the desert on one server and then stuck up a mountain on another.

These come in a range of different sizes, and not all of them are best taken on solo. These enemy encampments come in three, actually four sizes now that I think about it. There's ones we

call micro, which are the hideouts, um, small, medium, and large. And a lot of this was inspired from WoW content, meaning in World of Warcraft, like you

could do a lot of stuff solo, like if you were playing solo, you could go off and do like a quest, and I can clear out the Fargo Deep mine if the quest tells me to and kill the cobalt in there. But

I can't do dead mines by myself and I really can't go raid molten core by myself. And so we wanted different size

myself. And so we wanted different size enemy encampments. Some of which if you

enemy encampments. Some of which if you got brave or you got really great gear you could go and do by yourself, but otherwise you want to go in there with a

group and you kind of want to like do those things with other people.

Initially, we were dropping all your stuff, >> right?

>> And in our earliest play test, it just didn't fly with people. And it's very hard for me because I come from Rust.

>> So, I'm like, >> it's an entire lawless game.

>> Yeah. Like in Rust, it's like you'd get my ranch, too. Like, if I, God forbid, I left the door unlocked, like I'd have nothing. So,

nothing. So, >> or someone's living under your floorboards and you don't even realize.

>> Yeah. That was such a great That was such a great episode, Zchum. But I'm

used to very hardcore, very punishing PvP. But I'm also excited like this is

PvP. But I'm also excited like this is the promise of userenerated content, server controls. I would love to be able

server controls. I would love to be able to put in a server rule set that is like, yeah, you just drop everything, all the it's PvP everywhere. Everybody

can shoot everybody and you can loot all their stuff. And if people are attracted

their stuff. And if people are attracted to that kind of server, like have fun, guys. You know, actually, I'll see you

guys. You know, actually, I'll see you on that server. I'll I'll be there with you getting my stuff looted by you probably. Let's say a player really

probably. Let's say a player really doesn't like nighttime and they want to turn nighttime off. I don't care. like

run your own server and turn nighttime off or if turn wolves off or make everything three times as hard or PvP all the time and if you die once you're off the server. I'm all for it. Us

trying to figure out the rule set that fits everybody I don't think is correct.

And also, some people just like to run run their own servers because they like inviting who they want to invite or having the admin controls or, you know, this is just our like one subreddit

server and you've got to, you know, have x amount of karma before you're allowed whatever. I we don't care. Just have fun

whatever. I we don't care. Just have fun playing the game. It's your game. One of

the funnest parts about working on a dynamic open world game, like a truly dynamic open world game, especially the fact that it resets every month, is we

can do crazy things like let players claim big portions of land. It's not

easy, and we don't want it to be easy to move your ranch around. Like, we don't want it to be like um like an RV base where, you know, I've got this huge gold mine. The honestly the hardest technical

mine. The honestly the hardest technical part is the mine because you're mining all those voxels beneath you and we can't guarantee the same thing being in the same place. But we also give you

your own personal campsite where you can set up and it's got, you know, just a few amenities and um we give you very limited with fast travel in this game.

We really are trying to like preserve that sense of place, but we do allow you to travel to the tent and the ranch and we want you to be able to put that tent

in different places. And it feels cool.

Like it's fun when you're running around and you see like, you know, I might see like, oh, there's Will's tent or Penny's tent. Like they they're in the area. I

tent. Like they they're in the area. I

wonder what they're up to. Part of the reason that we're running this upcoming alpha test is to really get a sense of how many players is right on a server.

Um, we have some ideas. We've tried some things. Our team is only 34 people. So,

things. Our team is only 34 people. So,

when we run a play test, like the max we ever get to is 34 on the island and we have a sense that feels good but slightly empty. We'd like to have more.

slightly empty. We'd like to have more.

What is the upper number? That's

something we're actually going to use our alpha test to help determine. And

then we'll have a beta a few months after this alpha test where we'll adjust from our learnings. So, we're really trying to hone in on that right now.

This week, Kugyama launched a closed alpha and I got a few hours of play time in there before I wrapped up this video.

It's been fun seeing players helping each other in the text chat and dropping gratzes when people level up. Folks have

been planting their tents close together, and I even had somebody give me an item blueprint a few minutes after I spawned in. How very arc raiders of them. The studio will be following up on

them. The studio will be following up on this alpha with a beta and early access launch sometime in the future. From my

time playing versions of the dev builds as far back as 6 months ago, I can already see how fast this game is progressing. But I wanted to ask Jeff

progressing. But I wanted to ask Jeff what type of game players should expect in early access. What are the areas of design that the team are mostly going to be focused on? And how do they all feel

about people finally hitting the shores of the island of California?

There's a lot we want to do for early access. We need more endgame. I think

access. We need more endgame. I think

right now the game is fun for roughly let's say 25 hours. That's like 25 hours if you're really experienced player and you know how to power through. A less

experienced player probably is going to get more like 40 hours of what's currently there. I would like to have a

currently there. I would like to have a lot more endgame content. We have some really cool rare items and rare creatures. I don't know if you saw any

creatures. I don't know if you saw any in your play test, but for example, we have the white stag that you can kill and when you get its trophy hide, you can craft this amazing spear. It's

called the heart spear. Um there's a rare bison. Uh there's the albino bear.

rare bison. Uh there's the albino bear.

Definitely not a polar bear. It's an

albino bear. Um, and when you get a tide, you can make a a cloak out of it.

So, these like kind of rare endgame hunt type items. We want to do a lot more of that type of game play. We also want to do more endgame world events. We want to

drive more to PvP. Um, alpha is going to have our first PvP events that draw players into the zones, but we need to evolve PvP more. We haven't really been

able to do as much as we would like with PvP with a small 34 person team. Um,

same with our customization systems. Like every piece of gear you can customize. You can also customize almost

customize. You can also customize almost every piece of furniture.

Those it's cool. Like the tech is there, the promise is there, but the content is not set up correctly. Um, and I think the mind needs like the mind, we've come

such a far away. It's cool right now, but it's very straightforward and kind of systemic. And we we want that like

of systemic. And we we want that like infinite possibility like I just want to I'm going to log in for 2 hours tonight.

I'm just going to be in the mine and we're not there yet. So, that's kind of where I see things going.

>> I mean, it's always scary releasing a game to the public. I've done it a few times now and it's uh that never gets any easier I suppose. But but yeah, I mean I I it's more exciting to me I think at this point more than scary. Um

just cuz you know it's hard to be heads down for so long and you're making a lot of assumptions and you know we're inevitably going to miss something or didn't think about something or many things and as players find them. So I

get really excited about that cuz usually that just makes the game way better. These kind of shows are really

better. These kind of shows are really cool because they can like really surge the game forward um than we would have necessarily been able to figure out just in our, you know, in our meetings.

The Legend of California is already a game I find myself going back to day after day. But that said, I've always

after day. But that said, I've always been predisposed to PVE games that focus on roaming around large maps, discovering things. On top of that, I

discovering things. On top of that, I myself live in California and have spent countless days camping, driving, and solo exploring most of the dozens of unique zones that are featured in this

game world. Uncovering the various spots

game world. Uncovering the various spots we've filmed noclipip documentaries at over the years has been particularly fun. But I also respect what the team

fun. But I also respect what the team are trying to do here. a studio around the same size as say Super Giant Games who are focused on an experience that feels oddly throwback, stripped of

narrative and bombast, no cutscenes or voice acting, just an everchanging systemic sandbox for you to explore, where emergent interactions between players, the game world, and other

online explorers is where the fun is had. Well, it's doing something right.

had. Well, it's doing something right.

43 hours later, and I'm still here chopping down trees.

We're not interested in representing ourselves as the ex Blizzard devs. I'm very proud of having been a part of Blizzard, but I think it's diminishing

to the people still at Blizzard. Like

Blizzard still is the king, sitting on top of the mountain, making the greatest games. And I don't think this game idea,

games. And I don't think this game idea, the the IP, I don't think what we're doing at all Blizzard would ever make. It's not in

their DNA. It's doesn't look and feel

their DNA. It's doesn't look and feel like a Blizzard game, and that's not what we're we're trying to do.

Definitely not trying to draft off of Blizzard success. They earned that. They

Blizzard success. They earned that. They

spent 35 years defining who they are and it would be silly of us to claim that, you know, we have any right to that. I

hope with this game we create something that sparks the imagination and sort of attracts people to the fantasy of what would it be like to live in a world,

explore a world and interact with all of these, you know, random gamers in fun and quirky ways. and also like the

dynamic nature of it. Um I know in many ways we're building a new fan base here and it's very scary for us like we came from a background of you know having

that built-in sort of fan base that would follow you loyally and scream at you when you did it wrong. I'm really

hoping we capture the support of the community that they realize this is 34 people on a very limited budget and we

could use all the help we we could get.

We know the alpha is going to be small.

We can't accommodate a lot. We're we're

hoping to run like two servers mostly because the game's not ready yet. Like

we're not ready to have this big statement out in the world. the beta

will be a little bit bigger and we'll try to get more people in it. And then

in early access, we really need support.

You know, we need enough people to believe in the game that it makes it viable for us to keep making the game.

The silver silver lining that's more for me and Tim is to try to prove to the industry that there's a different way of

doing things and there are different ways of being successful than the ways that have sort of been established and and followed for recent years.