Today, the UK government's Department For Transport unveils a new browser-based MMOG, created by New York-based developer Area/Code. Designed for early teenagers to learn principles of traffic safety, it's probably the largest 'serious games' project ever to be created for the UK.

Called Code Of Everand, the game is set in a land crisscrossed by spirit channels, hazardous lines of creatures which players, known as pathfinders, must battle using magic to dissipate. Exploration takes place using a top-down view, but the turn-based battles are experienced in firstperson view, requiring players to look around the scene for threats. The metaphors are obvious, all part of a delicate balancing act to appeal to the game's intended audience without patronising it by veiling too heavily its messages, nor making them so obvious that no one would want to play it.

Code Of Everand is the result of over two years of work with the Department For Transport by Area/Code principals and designers Frank Lantz and Kevin Slavin, not only because of its size and ambition, but also because of the complexities of developing it for a government body. The project, after all, has gone through several incarnations and has been on the brink of cancellation twice.

We spoke to Lantz, Slavin and Simon Williams, who led the project at Carat, the Department For Transport's media agency, about what Code Of Everand is, how they pulled it off, and why they think it could prove that games can be a powerful platform for learning.

What basic principles is Code Of Everand built upon?
Frank Lantz It's drawing from the tradition of casual social action adventure games that are successful in reaching the audience and providing a rich long term gaming experience. It's set in Everand, a land that is dangerous because it's crisscrossed by these hazardous features called spirit channels. So most of the people in Everand find it hard to get around, but there's a group of elite people called pathfinders who have the innate skills and magical abilities necessary to safely cross the spirit channels. Players take on the role of these pathfinders.



Does the combat element of an RPG comes with taking on these spirit channels?
FL Yeah, where a combat would go in a normal RPG, we have the process of traversing the world. Whenever you reach a spirit channel you have to use the same kinds of strategic and tactical decision-making that you use in traditional RPG combat to successfully cross the spirit channel.

So is it realtime or turn-based?
FL The encounters to cross these spirit channels are based on turn-based combat you might see in classic RPG, but with a unique twist, based on the premise. While the creatures are oblivious to you, they are extremely dangerous to be near. Pathfinders have the ability to slow down time in order to interact with these monsters, and use the right traps and spells to make them dissipate or phase out from the spirit channels temporarily. When you're walking around the landscape it's a top-down view, but when you enter into an encounter where you're crossing a spirit channel, it switches to a first-person perspective for you to be better able to look left and right and take tactical positions. That's the core loop of the game. There's loot involved too, and you can build up an inventory of items and improve your character with skills and magic abilities, and you're going on quests, so it's built on the classic play patterns of the MMORPG tradition.

How does the social element work?
FL There's in-game chat, and there are different types of social interactions. You can travel with other players, which is rewarded, and there are also social competitions. For example, every pathfinder travels with a critter - an animal familiar which lends specific advantages. And there's the Critter Court, where these critter kings are competing to be dominant. You can donate coins you've collected to make your critter type dominant. We plan to roll out more of these social features - we'd like to have things like guilds and explicitly multiplayer quests that require players to work together to complete.


_{^{Area/Code's Frank Lavin (left) and Kevin Slavin (right)}}

It sounds like a large endeavour. Would you say this is the largest project Area/Code has created in terms of sheer amount of content?
FL Sure. We've done a lot of projects on a lot of different platforms and using different technologies and we've done some large-scale things that integrate real-world elements. But this one, in terms of building an enormous world with tons of content, is quite large indeed.

Why did you decide to create an MMOG?
FL We wanted to offer an accessible and familiar gaming experience to this age range. And we wanted a long-term experience, and thought the format lends itself to creating such a game, plus we love that kind of game ourselves.