Frontier Dreamcast, when a Turbine MMO almost arrived on Dreamcast (Making-of)

Frontier Dreamcast, when Turbine's MMO almost arrived on Dreamcast

The Dreamcast was SEGA's brilliant vision of the future of console gaming. A future in which technology became second nature and creative substance became essential to their productions. A forward-looking perspective in which developers had the resources and tools they needed to meet the many programming challenges that lay ahead. A futurism in which next-generation consoles were definitively entering the realm of networked games, enabling thousands of players to compete online. This dream, shattered into a thousand pieces in 2001, seemed too good to be true. And yet, almost 20 years on, today's console manufacturers have all followed SEGA's path, which began with the Dreamcast at the start of the second millennium.

When there were only 6 billion of us

In many aspects, SEGA's intuition was right. The games were innovative, with some still being held in high regard even today. Developers enjoyed working on Dreamcast and, just like gamers, have fond memories of it. The console's short lifespan meant that the possibilities offered by online gaming, then in its infancy, could not be fully exploited.

SEGA made a timid attempt to promote network gaming. Phantasy Star Online and Quake 3 Arena (article with interview to be discovered here) marked the 128-bit console generation thanks to their easy online access. Dreamcast players faced each other in bloody deathmatches on John Carmack's license, or ventured cooperatively into the wild but melancholy lands of Ragol. Both titles were perfectly calibrated and optimized, and ran flawlessly online with no particular latency problems or server crashes that can occur with some PC MMOs (especially at their launch). Software offering Internet functionality on Dreamcast were few and far between. The reason is well known...

« I think that consoles of the Dreamcast and PS2 era probably just weren’t powerful enough for a traditional MMO, but probably a bigger limitation is that console users of the time weren’t yet expecting their console to be always online. »

A rare photo of Frontier DC

The question on the minds of many developers who had worked on massively multiplayer games planned for the Dreamcast is whether the console was capable of displaying such complex games without having to make huge concessions. Was the Dreamcast capable of running Open Worlds of this kind, or should the zones have been instanced? MMOs were in development on Dreamcast, but were cancelled at an early stage, as you'll discover in this article retracing the history of one of them, Frontier, a partnership between SEGA and Turbine!

« It’s a legitimate question. In our favor was the fact that Turbine engine was aimed at low-spec PC’s to start. I suspect the Dreamcast game would have had additional limits, and might have even went to a more segmented world instead of a fully open one, and we would have had to get further in development to learn what they were. »

This question remains unanswered, as no real MMOs have ever made it onto the spiral console!

Frontier and its origins

Chris Foster (quoted in italics in this article) had studied film at university and planned to pursue a career in the seventh art as a scriptwriter or editor. With his professional life just beginning, he took a completely different path one day when he scanned the classified ads in a local newspaper. Impressions Software, a video game company, was looking for an employee for its customer service department. That's how he joined the video game industry.

« First off, hi! This was a fun and (relatively) early time in my career, and it’s nice to get a chance to look back and reflect. »

After 5 years of loyal service to Impressions Software, first on various odd-jobs and then as designer and producer on a number of titles, it was time for him to move on to a new company. Turbine seemed the ideal video game development company for him to hone his skills. He settled in the Boston area for 9 years, working mainly as creative manager and designer on massively multiplayer games such as Asheron's Call and Lord of the Rings Online, not forgetting other Unreleased projects such as Monster Island and Frontier Dreamcast.

The old Turbine logo is much prettier than the new one.

« Turbine was always challenged to deliver these massive games as a relatively small, independent studio. It's also interesting to compare the ambitions here with what DID actually ship for Dreamcast: Phantasy Star Online. It made many smart choices to focus on small teams instead of a shared open world. »

After Turbine, he spent 11 years working for Harmonix on games such as Rock Band, then a few years in the development studio Fire Hose Games, before finally taking up his current position at Hidden Door, where he and his team are creating a game that will allow players to play new adventures in their favorite fictional worlds, reminiscent of the Oasis in the film Ready Player One and the planet Doom, for example.

« I was a game designer at Turbine, and was the Lead Designer for Frontier. I was also the UI Systems Designer for Asheron’s Call, the studio’s first massively multiplayer online game, and after Frontier ended I became the Live Lead Designer for that game for a while. »

An MMORPG classic

While development of Asheron's Call was progressing well, Turbine was looking for opportunities to undertake a new video game project in parallel, still using the studio's current engine, basically called the "Turbine Engine". At the same time, SEGA of America was looking for ways to exploit the Dreamcast modem and promote their next-generation console. The company founded by Jon Monsarrat, Jeremy Gaffney, Kevin Langevin and Timothy Miller was beginning to make a name for itself in the world of online video games. Asheron's Call impressed wherever it was presented. Turbine's reputation continued to grow. It wasn't long before SEGA set its sights on the Boston-based studio to demonstrate that a massively multiplayer game could work on the Dreamcast with the know-how of Turbine's developers. This collaboration between SEGA and Turbine gave birth to Frontier, an MMO that was unfortunately cancelled, and can be considered the first known attempt to design a game like this for a home console.

« I don’t recall if we reached out to SEGA first, or if they contacted us. The opportunity to work on a new console was what drove the project, and we pitched and designer Frontier as a game we felt would be an intriguing fit for console play, and a break from the fantasy MMO’s that were largely the norm at that time. »

Frontier Dreamcast's intention was to bring a group of more than 4 players into a console MMO experience. The engine, one of its strong points, made this possible. Asheron's Call could accommodate hundreds of players in a single world, and around 30 in a single zone. These numbers would undoubtedly have been lower on Dreamcast with Frontier. The developers would have had to adopt a different approach to offer this type of game outside the PC, not forgetting the technical challenge, at the time, of porting an MMO to a console according to its specificities.

Homemad cover of the game by Benedikt Scheffer

« Development didn’t get far enough to answer questions about connection and lobbies. »

Relations between publisher SEGA of America and developer Turbine were excellent. The heads of SEGA's American branch were enthusiastic about Frontier's first drafts. Members of Turbine were even given a sneak preview of SEGA's strategy for the Dreamcast well before its launch in the USA.

« I recall entering the private portion of their massive E3 booth, possibly in 1998, where we got to take turns holding a confidential, early mockup of their controller, carved out of wood. As a gamer, having access to those early, how-the-sausage-is-made moments in the history of a new console was thrilling. »

Frontier, its storyline and game mechanics

Frontier's scenario involved exploring a planet populated by threatening alien life forms. To avoid risking their own lives, players had to create genetically modified creatures to take their place in a world of hostile environments, mysterious ruins and monsters each more dangerous than the last. Player progress was determined by the genetic material harvested from fallen enemies.

« We planned for a colorful alien landscape with many different environments – something that would stand out, and would play to the strengths and limits of our engine. »

Frontier Dreamcast was designed to be played with an ordinary controller. To make this (theoretically) possible, game mechanics were to be aggressively streamlined. For social interaction, the developers were thinking of equipping drop-down menus with prefabricated options rather than a keyboard (at least by default), perhaps as Phantasy Star Online would later do...

Configuaration of the Frontier controller keys, or how to imagine yourself playing it!

« The thing that made Frontier special and I suspect secured us the deal – was that it was going to fundamentally about creature breeding. »

Few Dreamcast games have really benefited from the VMU's (VMS) functionalities. In Turbine's MMO, the screen was used as a "translator", transforming the thoughts and behaviors of the creatures into a language that the player could understand. In this way, the gamer could interpret what they were thinking and interact with them appropriately.

Penguins in the desert...

In this title, players donned the costumes of scientists on a distant alien planet. The method of exploring the world was to breed creatures from the alien DNA found there, and use them as a kind of remote-controlled living drone. The aim was to assemble and remotely control one's own menagerie of aliens, lovingly bred and shaped to one's play style, to venture out into the world while the player's human form remained safely in orbit.

« Looking back, it’s interesting that we thought little, if at all, of the ethical implications of such a scenario. »

Victor Frankenstein is not far away

Frontier's concept was essentially based on animal breeding, which set it apart from other games on the market or in development. Player-bred critters could attack an enemy and devour its body, collecting genetic samples to give life to genetically modified hybrids. By mixing the biological material of an existing alien with a newly harvested DNA sample, a novel creature was born combining the aspects and characteristics of both. The semi-random combination of DNAs meant that each new hybridization was influenced by luck (certainly based on the equivalent of a drop rate system), to a certain extent. To defeat increasingly larger and more powerful enemies in order to unlock their genetic code, the player - rather, his monsters - had to toughen up and get stronger.

« I built an Excel prototype that showed how we could convert a set of randomized, cross-bred creature DNA traits into typical RPG stats. »

The progression of creatures, the evolution of their stats or their rise in level, was based on training and capped according to the limits defined by their DNAs. As creatures aged, their physical appearance grew and their defenses became more fragile with age.

« There was an effort to lean into the idea that these were creatures that you raised, grew, and eventually had to move past through their offspring. »

In addition to planet exploration, Turbine's game featured a combat mode allowing player-controlled characters to fight each other (Player vs. Player) with a PK (Player-Killer) indicator, world zones with different degrees of permissibility for PvP and resulting rankings.

« I think this was based on what we were exploring with Asheron's Call at the time. Among the world zones were arena zones to allow anyone to participate on PvP action. »

To get in or not?

A strange cross between species

A large number of quests were planned, but that was before WOW redefined expectations in terms of quest content density. It's true that Blizzard's MMO had hit the nail on the head in this regard!

« There was an idea of "shared creature, egg, DNA pools" that would have provided another way for players to collaborate. »

The community aspect was not left out, as the exchange of creatures and resources between players was planned. Prior to its cancellation, the developers conceived a variant of the allegiance system in Asheron's Call. In AC, social actions are implemented in a monarchical organization reminiscent of the guild structure found in other MMOs. No Raids (Raids generally refer to large-scale events in which many players participate in order to achieve a specific objective) were envisaged. This epic game format became established and popular with the release of World of Warcraft in 2004.

« There were notions of using guild-hall like structures - Temples - to motivate conflict between allegiances. Looking back, this all looks like "let's put all the ideas in the spec" and I'm sure we would have pared a LOT of this back for the initial release. »

The development and cancellation of Frontier

The cancellation of Frontier was a mutual decision by SEGA and Turbine to break their contract. At the same time, Asheron's Call was finally supported by 3D graphics cards, which contributed greatly to their MMO fetish and which was necessary for a console engine, a semi-victory despite the hasty end of the Dreamcast project. The development team was disappointed not to have been able to follow through on their desires, having come up with an innovative idea for their future production.

« At the time I’d picked up a used electric guitar super cheap, that had a cool shape but was otherwise nonfunctional. When the game wrapped the artists drew some of their favorite alien designs on the guitar, and then we smashed it outside in the parking lot rock-star style. It was a cathartic way to say goodbye to Frontier. »

Frontier's development lasted around a year, mainly devoted to deepening its design and technical prototyping. Before it was abandoned, the Team had complete concept documents reflecting their ambitions, a prototype revealing PC game mechanics and another running on the Dreamcast's true hardware.

Paper animation model of Frontier creatures

An abundance of concept documentation had been written (this stage is covered and explained in detail in the Vectorman Playstation 2 release). They explained the various game systems, such as combat mechanics, how the user interface was envisioned, level progression, the articulation of social interactions and much more. In those days, a publisher would ask for a complete GDD (Game Design Document) to prove the premise of a game, to get an idea about it, and then once the game was approved, to keep track of the progress of the project, since it was updated regularly.

« The reality is that these documents were at best a starting point for the actual iterative development that would reshape the design as you went. At worst, a GDD becomes a misery-producing tool for negotiations between publishers and developers, stifling the process by which good ideas become better ones. »

Creature breeding in Frontier is not to be taken lightly

When the ability to advance technology is limited, writing game design documents and illustrations is a relatively inexpensive way to move a game forward.

« In the case of Frontier, I think the lengthy design document was also an important way to keep the project moving forward while Turbine’s heavily overextended engineering team tried to port our engine to console, while also trying to complete Asheron’s Call (whose ship date had slipped later and later as that game went on). »

MMOs are complex games to program, requiring considerable development time. It would probably have taken an extra year to complete Frontier and satisfy Dreamcast fans of networked games!

« We had a unique idea, had struggled to make it real, and had to stop before some of the most interesting work (building and iterating on the game experience) had begun. »

The core Frontier development team consisted of 10 people. It's impossible to give an exact figure, as many Turbine employees contributed part-time while finishing Asheron's Call.

The build launching on Dreamcast, to be located if it hasn't been destroyed, was a "Test Client" intended to demonstrate how the console side of the game worked and the ability of Turbine's members to display a world and a player without needing to be connected to a server. The PC prototype (preserved but non-functional), meanwhile, was an example of how the developers envisioned being able to blend creature art - characters with their different bones, meshes and animations - to create unique hybrids. It was a quick technical demo with a relatively small sample set that allowed everyone to exclaim their delight at Frontier Dreamcast's potential.

« There was a Windows prototype that I haven’t been able to get working in Windows 10. We had concept art for a number of biomes, and had built test assets for at least of them before development stopped. »

A monthly subscription would undoubtedly be required to play the game, due to the additional costs involved in setting up and maintaining servers. Unfortunately, Frontier Dc's development was not sufficiently advanced for Turbine's team to really think about a suitable business model for their game.

The post-Frontier era

Today, no one seems to know who owns Frontier's IP. The IP is unlikely to be a priority for SEGA if they are the owners. With the changes at Turbine, acquired by Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment in 2010 and renamed WB Games Boston in 2018, they may not be aware of this license if it's in their portfolio. There were never any plans to continue Frontier's development on another console or PC.

A poster worthy of a Z-movie (Monster Island)

Nature always finds its way (Monster Island)

« Either SEGA owned enough of the IP that continuing would have been complicated, or the idea was too out there to attract another publisher. An ambitious science-fiction MMO from a still relatively unproven developer was going to be a hard sell at best, given the high budgets required to deliver a massively multiplayer game. »

Following the cancellation of the Dreamcast title, Turbine began production of a new game, revisiting some of Frontier's mechanics and concepts. This new MMO, called Monster Island and featuring a typically Japanese theme, the *kaijū, failed to find a publisher willing to finance it.

*A kaijū, the Japanese name for strange creatures and especially giant monsters, is seen more as a force of nature before which man is powerless, not a force of evil.

« Monster Island was no more than a pitch, aimed at adapting the Frontier concept and mechanics away from the Frontier IP. We had a blast creating a pitch package that we hoped would capture publisher attention. »

Aimed at a target audience between 13 and 17 (ESRB "T"), Monster Island was set on a seemingly paradisiacal island with a seaside resort at its heart. Breaking away from Frontier's serious atmosphere, the game's adventure was based on humor, as suggested by the few artworks depicting its ambience. Development was calculated to last 20 months, without taking into account the eternal delays.

« We planned for human players to be represented with a name, dossier and portrait. I think we wanted to avoid creating a totally separate set of avatar art and animations. »

Who knows, maybe one day we'll have the chance to try out Frontier's short prototyped demo, even if it's less interesting to play, but just as important in documenting and preserving Dreamcast Unreleaseds.

I'd like to thank Chris Foster: for his availability, his kindness, for taking the time to answer my questions, for sharing screenshots and artworks of Frontier and even more. His testimony gives us a better understanding of what Frontier Dreamcast was to become.

I'd like to thank the entire Turbine team involved in the Frontier project (Mobygames from Ashron's Call).

Special thanks to:

Neil Riddaway proofreading the english version
Hick proofreading the french version
Benedikt Scheffer for creating the Frontier Dreamcast Cover

In my research at Unreleased, I had the opportunity to interview some developers. I took the opportunity to write articles about these canceled games with new information:

You can read my other articles by clicking here.