Salem Dev Diary Talks About Criminality, Permadeath
Salem fascinates me. Few MMOs dare go the route of full-on player-driven systems and player co-operation, but this village-builder is doing it. And it's doing it in the lovely setting of the colonial era Americas, complete with spooky woodland folklore monsters. Salem is going to be one of those games where the basic process of doing things - collecting resources, building and so on - is relatively unexciting, but the wider prospects for co-operation and sanctioned griefing are where the true game lies. It's a sandbox MMO with permadeath, so you risk losing everything if someone happens to be quicker than you with a knife. Becoming a criminal, as this video explains, is not something anyone can take on lightly, however, because it allows people to track you. And if the mob catches up with you...
