Massively writes: "Nexon American's Min Kim dropped a hint late-May that an upcoming MMO title was in development by their Vancouver Studio. The big secret is Sugar Rush Arena, a casual based MMO romp and stomp with coin collection mixed-into the foray. It is the first MMOG from that studio that is intended for North American audiences. Sugar Rush Arena is free-to-play, but will sustain development costs via a micro-transaction model "item-mall" similar to many other free-to-play MMOs. The game is currently in closed beta and Nexon America is not accepting applications at this time, but we believe it will launch in the very near future."
There are any number of free-to-play games on the Internet right now, ranging from the very basic to the incredibly complex. Most of these are in the RPG genre, but how many are in the fighting/combat genre? Not too many worth noting. However, that might change with the release of Sugar Rush, developed by Klei Entertainment and published by Nexon.
Just a few years ago, Jamie Cheng was an AI programmer at Relic Entertainment working on the well-received hardcore strategy game Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War.
Now he is the CEO of independent studio Klei Entertainment, which has released its own original downloadable games, including Eets, on PC and Xbox Live Arcade, and helped Metanet develop N+ for XBLA.
Klei recently teamed up with Korean free-to-play publisher Nexon (MapleStory) for its next game, Sugar Rush, described as an "online arena combat game."
In a Penny Arcade Expo panel, Cheng reflected on how he got into free-to-play games and what he has learned about making them.
