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Podcast Moderator: Hello, and welcome to the first official Thrive development podcast. The Thrive developers have decided to begin releasing audio question and answer sessions for their fans, so that those outside of the development team can have a look into what the project is about. These podcasts will cover basic concepts of the game as well as the progress of its development. The Thrive team wants to reach out to its fans as much as possible, so If you have any questions about the project, please post them on our website forum or ModDB page.

Today, we're going to hear from some of the top developers of Thrive, {insert participating members & who they are here}

And so, the first question of the podcast is: What is Thrive?

Hello, I'm Isaac, known as sciocont or scio within the development forums. I co-lead the project and developed the organism editor concept, as well as some of our art style and other aspects of the game. I'm the go-to guy around the forums for basically anything, and I run our ModDB account.

So what is Thrive?

I didn't invent Thrive, or come up with the idea of a game for everything. I simply stumbled across the project a few years ago and decided it was something I could get into. Thrive truly is a great game concept. It's based around the idea that people do things better than companies, and that a community can come together from all corners of the world and create a game for free, then distribute it to anyone for free. I'll stress that again- we are non-profit. Nobody on the development team makes money off of this game, and our goal is to keep it that way.

:next reply:

Hello! I'm Justin, or Thrivial Pursuit on the forums. As a concept artist, I essentially work for scio, crating conceptual flora and fauna. I'm basically an artist in development, so my art will improve.

Well. What exactly is Thrive, anyways?

I learned about the project when I was on the Spore Forums, when it was still "Evolutions!" run by Sven Littkowski. I joined as "Evolutions2000," and never went on the forums much. People didn't really like my ideas. A few years later, I joined Thrive. The environment was much more user-friendly, and I got to know the other developers better. I joined the Art team in order to help create the game. The art will be rendered, put into procedurals(hopefully) and animated. The art may even be implemented into the game, once completed. Personally, I like the idea of a non-profit game being put into production. Plus, it's all free. Yet we all get credit. I hope the game will become famous enough to make it into the papers.

Hiya, i'm Luke. But 'round these parts they call me Alaska.

What is Thrive? Thrive is a dream. A goal for a few dreamer teenagers and a crazy Jamaican that has since grown into an ambitious goal for a few driven and dedicated developers. The game itself is an everything simulator, ultimately. Evolving from a cell to an intergalactic federation, if that's the goal you want to pursue of course. No one goal is the goal for Thrive, and the player will do whatever they please, with as few restrictions as possible.

One thing that never ceases to amaze be about the project is its resilience. We've been through corruption, shut downs, complete restriction of communication, members disappearing randomly. For an outsider, it'd be easy to confuse the history of Thrive with the history of a dynamic nation like France or Russia. But throughout all this, Thrive has thrived. We now have a large number of rather concrete concepts recorded in our wiki, and we actually have programmers that are working towards creating the game. Thrive is a dream. But every day it creeps closer to becoming a reality. And i, for one, can't wait.

Salut tout la monde. I am Zach, however here I am known as Poisson.

What is Thrive?

Thrive is a similation game. Our goal with Thrive is to create a game where one can do anything naturally possible with a species they create through evolution, both genetically, technologically and socially. During the creation process we have tried to adhear as closely to the current scientific model of evolution and physics, though certain things were sacrificed for gameplay, such as speed of light travel. But we are still very satasfied with the current concept. I don't think many of us truely expected to have made it this far.

As to the project itself, Thrive is, like Alaska has previously said, a dream that we all had several years back. I won't go into the details, as that may be a question for another time, but basically we were just regular forumers who stumbled upon an idea a man had for a game to compete with Will Wright's Spore, but as time passed and people came and went, the game evolved into it's own thing. I for one, have a fairly positive outlook on what this project may become.

Salvete, Hola, Bonjour and all that. I am Kenna, also known as Mysterious_Calligrapher or just plain Calli, and I'm here to do everything but the kitchen sink. I am primarily the team ecologist, though I'm also often called upon to be team botanist, biologist, chemist and linguist.

Thrive is a project that I am surprisingly new to. I didn't become an active participant on the forums until 2010, when my younger brother Isaac (sciocont) finally got me to have a look at the forum, and I was amazed at how much had been accomplished in so little time.

Along the way, I've come to realize that Thrive is life. Not life-consuming, (though it has the potential to be) nor life-changing, (though we can only hope) but a computer-simulated representation of life from it's most basic, single cells, to creatures and environments that could only exist on other planets, to whole civilizations from those first struggling to piece together pictographs to those that have achieved spaceflight. The possibilities present in Thrive are endless. Be a plant, if you wish. Be the perfect predator. Be an entire civilization or a single humble citizen. Be an amoeba.

Zdravím vás, přátelé. I'm Tomáš, better known as Commander Keen on the forum. I'm mostly the all around military guy here, with a strong word in industrial age and research sections.

What is Thrive, you ask?

Thrive is an attempt to make THE game. The game offering both peace and war, the game allowing you to roam the wild or explore the deep space, the game forcing nothing on you, yet allowing you to do everything.

This might seem to be an impossible goal for a bunch of random people on the internet. But we have thing many others lack: history. Thrive is already three years old, and in this time, we have already got through things one could mistake for historical events of a real country. Betrayal, revolution, sabotages, that's just naming a few. All those difficulties only served us, they made us stronger. They made us prepared to create Thrive.


:Could someone be so kind and grammar check this, please? I really don't want to be talking nonsense in the podcast.:

^All clear ~sciocont

Yep, my beloved Czech.

My second guess would have been polish... only because of the z's and c's. I have no idea if they're related at all.

Okay, no longer curious.

The was only one Z and no C's at all Anyways, yes, Polish is the third most related to Czech, after Slovak and Upper Sorbian.

If that's all the replies, I'd like everyone to start recording.

Expect a delay from me, my microphone is at a friend's house. I'll try to get it back ASAP.

Oh, and do you have anywhere in particular you want us to upload to?