Trion's new Trove has a sharp focus on community engagement

Rift developer Trion Worlds is taking a different approach to online games with its new project, Trove -- a voxel-based game that features procedural generation and user-gen content. Trion said the game, dubbed a "massive multiverse adventure," was developed by a small team within the studio. Worlds are composed of handmade content and auto-generated zones, which include procedurally-generated dungeons. Trove is a significant move for Trion, as the company adopts a new breed of online games that are sharply focused on community interaction. Creative lead Andrew Krausnick explained in a developer video (above) that players will log in, play with friends, "build, destroy, do whatever you want." Once a world is completed, the developer will then offer a whole new world for players to experience the next time around. The plan is to allow players to create their own "trans-dimensional home" that will serve as a base that persists across worlds and servers. Most of the content creation will be driven by Trion, but Krausnick said his team will work very closely with the community via social media to gather then curate ideas that will be implemented in new universes and adventures. Krausnick said players can also build content outside of the game, which can then be imported into the game. "When you have a very small team you don't thave the option to make a lot of content by hand," said Courtland Idstrom, engineering lead. "So you have to come up with systems that are able to make the content you want, and put it together in ways that are interesting and meaningful to the user."