NEW WORLD

Amazon’s game-making toolkit delivers an MMO unlike any you’ve played before

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Developer/publisher Amazon Game Studios

Format PC

Origin US

Release May 26

Amazon wants to arrive in the game industry proper with a bang. Founded as a developer seven years ago, so far Jeff Bezos’ experimental games arm has largely produced small titles – a forgettable (and bizarre) racing game based on The Grand Tour licence, and a series of Amazon Appstore exclusives. When it’s not been cancelling them, of course.

But our trip to the San Diego studio reveals a project that’s clearly been a while in the making, an expansive massively multiplayer online game set on an uncharted island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This island, sustained by a supernatural mineral called Azoth that enriches the veins of the land, promises many things to would-be explorers: adventure, immortality, power. Those corrupted by the mineral, wandering souls cursed by the island, are keen to keep interlopers away – as is nature itself.

An intriguing setup for an MMO, then. But New World is fundamentally different from the giants of the genre – the World Of Warcrafts, the Final Fantasy XIVs, the Guild Wars. Amazon is here to make a statement, to prove to the industry that it can play with the big boys. And it wants to make some big changes to how the world sees massively multiplayer games in the process.

“We made New World thinking, ‘What could we do in the MMO genre, and what could Amazon do?’” game director