It’s widely understood that when you play the Game of Thrones, sometime later this year. Nexon did not immediately respond to comment.
A Game Of Thrones MMO isn’t a strange prospect. However, having that MMO take place between two stellar seasons of the five-year-old television show is odd when the current critically acclaimed spinoff series House Of The Dragon is set 200 years before. The timeline of George R.R. Martin’s seminal fantasy series spans an extensive 15,000 years, which could have given developers plenty of room to get creative with the world.
But as odd as its setting may seem, Nexon’s involvement is somewhat intriguing. The publisher has had its fair share of controversies regarding aggressive in-game monetization practices (the Korea Fair Trade Commission would fine the publisher about $9 million for deceptive microtransactions in January), it also knows how to cultivate a lasting online community. For all of its community’s gripes, Maple Story, a game that predates World Of Warcraft, is still going strong more than two decades after its release.
Additionally, the recent trend of games smashing together established literary fantasy worlds with unlikely game genres, like the cozy hobbit-social sim Tales Of The Shrine and the upcoming Dune: Awakening is one we’re all here for. As bleak and violent as Game Of Thrones can be, a multiplayer game that incentivizes social play and coordination could be an inspired choice if it can replicate the often-complex, interpersonal drama of the shows and books.
This unannounced project will not be Game Of Thrones’ first foray into gaming. In 2012, Atlus published a single-player RPG based on the television series. Two years later, Telltale released a single season of an episodic Game Of Thrones video game in their point-and-click narrative adventure style. Plans for a second season were canceled amid Telltale’s financial troubles in the 2010s.