Meet the Team - WorldShards Interviews

Development on WorldShards continues to go from strength to strength, and we’re excited to see new features make their way into the game, and for the existing features to undergo constant improvement.

Looking back at our past articles and news posts, we’ve focused on drip-feeding you snippets of the game’s lore and what you can expect from the game, but there’s one very important thing that we’ve not yet started, introducing the team, so we’re sure that you can guess what we’re doing today!

So without further ado, let’s start off the first WorldShards team introductions.

Nikita Nikitin - Producer

Thank you very much for joining us today, we’re really excited to be able to start introducing the WorldShards team to our fledgling community! Let’s start with an introduction, can you tell us your name, and what your position is within WorldShards? And please do go into detail if you can, the more you can say, the better!

Great, let’s get things started, my name is Nikita Nikitin, and I am a producer with LowKick, working on WorldShards. As for what that entails, I am in charge of the overall creative vision of the game, so I find myself immersed in pretty much all parts of the development processes and also the game’s design department. On a day-to-day basis, I deal with planning, making sure the documentation is created properly, (so it’s my duty to make sure that roadmaps, feature lists, and content plans are written) and actively provide feedback to the art teams. I guess you can think of it as having a finger in pretty much every pie. For what I really like and dislike, I would say that I really enjoy looking at newly implemented mechanics and exploring if-and-how they can be improved on in the next iteration. What I dislike should be quite predictable for someone in my position, it’s when things don’t go to plan.

That’s a great introduction, it seems to me that you’re like the gel that keeps the teams working together smoothly! I’ve noticed that the producer role is quite often misunderstood, so it’s great to learn about the role straight from you! This does bring me nicely to my next question, it’s clear to me that you’re quite experienced, so if you can tell us, what were you working on before you joined WorldShards? And as a bonus question, of all your past jobs, what was your most memorable?

You’re right that I have worked on previous projects, and I can even say that the previous project included many members of the LowKick team. Unfortunately, because of an existing NDA, I can’t name it. What I can say is that it was a very ambitious project, but unfortunately, it had to close down, when that happened I moved to LowKick and started my work on WorldShards. As for the previous job that left the biggest impression, I would say it was with Game Insight as that was the start of my journey into the world of Game Development. It was there that I met many good people, some of whom I work with now at LowKick. While there, we made Guns of Boom, a successful mobile FPS. This was a game that is very close to me as it was a project that I was with from the very beginning and got to be involved in all stages of the game’s development. Game Insight provided me with a lot of useful experience in how to do things, and also how not to do things!

So I was right, you certainly are experienced. I completely understand why you went for Guns of Boom, the first game that one works on from start to finish is special! With such a background, how did you first hear about WorldShards, and how did you end up joining them?

I’m actually one of the original creators of WorldShards! The concept itself was born about five years ago, and all this time the concept grew with different ideas on what we wanted to see in WorldShards, and what the players would (hopefully) enjoy. So I was part of the project from the very-very beginning and we ended up using all of the ideas that we came up with during that time!

That’s great, so you’re a true founder (among others) for WorldShards! So with such a personal connection to the game, what is it that really calls out to you?

Personally speaking, it would be the opportunity to spend your free time on this project with friends, building, mining resources, trading, and generally performing group activities. Of the planned features, I find stealth to be very appealing and because of this, we’ve designed large, open locations like the Warg settlements in which the player will need to use stealth to properly explore, especially if you want to find all the secrets and secret loot!

Well that sounds fantastic, it’s really surprising but in my experience, it’s quite hard to find a game that really balances all of those features that you mentioned, so just hearing that from you makes me rather excited. Continuing on with my questions on the game and your connection to it, WorldShards has already introduced a lot of unique characters and species, so what would you say is your favourite? And, we’ve got a fun question for you. If you find yourself in a situation where you are being summoned to the universe of WorldShards, and you can be reborn as a race from WorldShards, who/what would you be?

Ok, I like the Wargs the best! They are a race that emerged into the world of WorldShards, have an uneasy fate, and have to somehow navigate a plethora of internal conflicts. Also, *spoiler alert* though they may be the bad guys who have come to take over the world, not all of the Wargs are aggressive and want to wage war against the Meowkles, some genuinely want to just find a new home to replace their destroyed homeworld. As for the reborn question, if I could be reborn in Murrlandia, I’d actually want to be a big ginger Meowkle who mentors and guides the heroes who arrive in this world, that way, in my spare time I can simply eat and sleep - living the dream!

At first, I was surprised you chose Meowkle, given that you like the Wargs the best, but after hearing your reason for it, I can totally see why. In a way, it sounds like a more relaxed producer role, helping guide and gel the others, but actually having some time to rest in the meantime! So, now we’re coming to the end of this interview, I’d like to end this with a bit about you as a person. What would you say your hobbies are outside of working on games?

Gaming, in one form or another, plays a big part in my life. I do play other games, read about games, and watch people play games on streams. Outside of the digital world, I occasionally play the guitar and paint Warhammer miniatures.

As you’re a big gamer, let’s make the final question about that. What would you say is your favourite genre and your favourite game?

I really enjoy Survival games, but honestly, I don’t exclude a genre, I’m happy to play games from every genre! As for my favourite, one of my favourites would be Don’t Starve Together, and thanks to its many interesting mechanics, I consider it to be one of the best games of its genre.

And that's all for our first interview, we hope that you've all enjoyed reading along and getting to know Nikita!

Now, as we prepare for the next interview, it's over to you - our community - do you have any questions for Nikita? If so, do let us know and we'll do our best to get the answers for you!