German developer Nukklear have announced a partnership with Funcom on the upcoming multiplayer surival game, Dune.

There aren't any substantial new details here but we might infer that the popularity of this year's Dune film has encouraged Funcom, or new owners Tencent, to upscale their vision for this project.

Arguably Funcom's biggest success has been their simplest in terms of design - desert survival sandbox game Conan Exiles, based on the Conan the Barbarian property.

With Conan Exiles having a multiplayer option and also their having developed three fully online multiplayer roleplaying games, Anarchy Online, Age of Conan and The Secret World, Funcom always made sense to develop an online Dune game.

Possibly prior to this partnership announcement they had been planning something relatively modest in scope.

For example a copy / paste hybrid of Age of Conan and Conan Exiles, but with environments and other graphics altered for Dune. Plus obviously new Dune story.

But with Dune having performed quite welll at the box office, they now see the game as having potentially much broader appeal.

Time will tell.

Launched in 2001, Anarchy Online is considered the first sci-fi MMO (massively multiplayer online game).

It was a very solid game and performed quite well financially in a relatively small market. By today's standards, though, many of its systems would be regarded as overly complex for the average player.

Age of Conan and The Secret World were both much more expensive and bigger in scope and not without charm, but neither attracted a big audience. Their combat mechanics are a bit odd.

Parent company Tencent own a slew of highly successful games. Between all 3 gaming companies there's probably a good chance of this being a decent game.

[ Main Image: Dune (2021). Credit: Warner Bros. via IMDb.com. ]

References

Murphy, William (February 17, 2010). The Sci-Fi MMO: The Past. MMORPG.com.

Nukklear. (December 1, 2021). Nukklear partners with Funcom on Upcoming Dune Survival Game.

Wikipedia. Tencent. (viewed December 5, 2021)