Funcom’s Game Director Joel Bylos spoke in an interview about a major mistake the team made prior to the release of Dune: Awakening and continues to fight against.
What is this mistake? Joel Bylos, who is the Game Director at Funcom responsible for the development of Dune: Awakening, discussed in an interview with frvr.com the challenge of appropriately describing a survival game of this nature with a rigid genre label. He explains:
I think that was one of the biggest challenges we faced during development: How to describe it. Because we had this online server structure. It’s quite complicated compared to most survival games, and we wanted to have multiple maps… so we weren’t really sure. At some point, we described it as an MMO because we thought that would be the easiest.
Ultimately, Funcom has a long history with MMOs through games like Age of Conan or The Secret World. And unmistakable MMO elements can also be found in their survival games Conan Exiles and Dune: Awakening, which strongly influence the respective player experience.
Nonetheless, this step was, in Bylos’ view, a mistake in hindsight because it led to confusion and ambiguity among players. Even before the launch of Dune: Awakening, the team moved to drop the MMO label. The lead developer explains regarding Dune: Awakening:
I don’t think it’s an MMO. I’ve definitely worked on several MMOs, but I think we were in a weird in-between space trying to do something a bit more. We have this large, connected world, and we have this vast, deep desert where many players can enter at the same time. So it was a hard game to describe, and I always find that people have a very fixed idea of what a genre is. That’s why it’s hard to describe something that does something slightly new.
My strong feeling tells me right now that it is not an MMO. It definitely is not.
Bylos notes a clear distinction from MMORPGs like WoW, especially in character progression. This does not rely on quests in Dune: Awakening, but on crafting.
Despite this strong feeling, the developer admits that they still struggle to adequately describe the game. Currently, they use the term “Open-World Survival RPG” on their product pages.
MMOs – a genre that polarizes
How does MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz assess the conflict? Basically, Joel Bylos is right: Genre labels are very simple and rigid. However, game development continues to advance, combining a variety of genres and elements to find a mix that resonates with players.
This is particularly evident in online games with service structures, as the most diverse genres often meet progression systems and social features that were previously known only from MMORPGs.
In addition, the term MMO comes with its own complications, as it describes an imprecise quantity. What exactly does “Massively” mean in “Massively Multiplayer Online”? Do hundreds or even thousands of players have to meet in an online world? What about several dozen players? And does this need to be possible everywhere, or is it sufficient if masses gather in specific areas?
The community has been debating the exact definition since the MMO term came into existence.
For some time, there is another factor: Developers increasingly tend to actively avoid the term MMO for their game. This is especially common when the project is also intended for consoles.
We observed this, for example, with New World Aeternum: suddenly Amazon Games turned the MMORPG into an Online Action RPG. Similarly, Kakao Games and XL Games describe their ArcheAge Chronicles, which is set to release for PC and consoles this year.
We asked the Korean developers last year why they were taking this step. You can find their extensive response in this article:
In short: Chronicles is not meant to be a traditional MMORPG, but it is a constantly online playable game with meaningful multiplayer systems. The focus is on story as well as content for solo players and small groups. The persistent world, multiplayer systems, and player interactions are basically a bonus.
In early 2026, I also had the opportunity to ask developer veteran Jack Emmert whether there is an increasing aversion to the term MMO – perhaps due to the many failures in recent years. His response:
I can imagine that some mistakenly believe that the MMORPG term is negatively charged. Because of things like grind or the notion that you have to commit to an MMO for a long time. However, the extremely successful launch of New World has proven that even today many players love the MMO genre. So why should one distance themselves from it?
Looking at Dune: Awakening, however, I do not believe that the MMO term was a problem. The survival adventure was able to celebrate enormous player numbers at launch. Critically, it was more about how PvE and PvP content were balanced or how the first version of the deep desert functioned or didn’t function. Essentially, the developers are still working on resolving the conflict between PvE and PvP fans so that both player groups are satisfied. You can learn more about this here: 10 months after the release, Dune: Awakening makes the right decision, separating its brawlers from each other
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