Jeff Kaplan’s survival game is inspired by Rust, but not by Rust’s main hobby: shooting everyone

Jeff Kaplan is a very big Rust fan. The former Overwatch lead says he has spent more than 5,000 hours in the game, and he holds it up as the high point of player-versus-player design. That admiration, naturally, is part of why survival games are on his mind at all. But if you were expecting his next project to copy Rust’s usual formula of suspicion, gunfire, and general misery, you may need to adjust your expectations.

In an interview with noclip_2, Kaplan said:

"I have always been a huge fan of the survival genre. In particular, I have one favorite game, which is Rust. I've played Rust for over 5,000 hours. The game that we're making is not like Rust in many ways. Rust is really like probably the pinnacle of PvP games. Anybody who's played a lot of Rust knows what I'm talking about. It's the ultimate month-long battle royale."

So, to be clear, Rust is still getting its flowers. Kaplan thinks it is the standard bearer for PvP games, which is a bold thing to say about a game where trust tends to expire faster than groceries. But he also says The Legend of California, his upcoming survival game, is heading in a different direction.

More Valheim and Subnautica, less Rust-style warfare

Kaplan has previously explained that The Legend of California is leaning away from Rust’s harsh PvP systems and toward the more relaxed base-building of games like Valheim and Subnautica. That does not mean conflict is entirely off the table. He has said “Rust-like mechanics” could be added as an option for servers that want them, which suggests the game may eventually offer a more hardcore version for players who believe peace is for other people.

Even so, the main influence appears to be something else entirely.

World of Warcraft may be the more useful comparison

Kaplan also said part of the project is coming from his history with World of Warcraft, particularly the appeal of returning to a large-scale multiplayer world.

"Just wanting to get back to working on a big, open-world multiplayer game. Just, what happens when people from all walks of life are playing in a space like this together?"

That seems to be the real design question behind The Legend of California, not whether it can recreate Rust’s endless cycle of betrayal. Kaplan clearly has enough respect for Rust to log years of his life into it, but the game he is making now sounds more interested in shared spaces, survival systems, and player interaction than in turning every server into a small-scale war zone.

Kaplan has also recently described The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as "the greatest game ever made," which gives him the sort of ranking system that would make any game designer either very confident or mildly alarming.

The Legend of California is expected to arrive in early access later this year.