inZOI held an AMA chat in Discord answering community questions before early access in March
inZOI is an upcoming life simulation game from KRAFTON, a South Korean video game publisher and the makers of PUBG. With early access just a few weeks away on March 28, developers hosted an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session in their Discord server on February 27.
During the session, they addressed various topics, including body types, updated hairstyles for Black characters, world creation, and more.
The chat was moderated in English by Assistant Director Joel Lee. Technical Director Jongduk “Leonard” Chai, Art Director Seonghwan “Eddie” Jang, and Creative Director Yunksuk “Alex” Kang were also present to provide additional insights when needed
Note: Questions were submitted before the session. Chai, Jang, and Kang wrote responses and Lee translated them during the session.
Character Creation Updates
The first question the team addressed was whether players could adjust the height of their Zoi characters. The short answer is no, but Lee provided a translation of the reasoning behind this decision from Jang.
“You cannot adjust…the Zoi’s individual heights. As you might have seen, the male Zois…we programmed them to be a little bit taller than the female Zois…for that orientation to look a little bit natural to what we see in the real world.”
The reason for this is that the animations are pre-programmed motions. For the animations to appear aesthetically pleasing, they need to happen at precise angles. To achieve this, the characters must be the same height.
The next question focused on body types, a major topic in 2024 after footage revealed that the ability to customize the Zoi’s bodies was limited.
“People are saying that there’s only a very small gap to how big or how small you can make your Zoi’s body. And that’s been the complaint we’ve seen last year during Gamescon. We have made significant improvements to make sure that the Zoi’s can be expressed at a much wider expressability,” Lee said.
This means that they’ve heard the critiques from the community and players should be able to adjust the body shape more.
“You can make the Zoi’s a lot bigger than [you’re] used to and a lot skinner than you’re used to,” said Lee.
Many pointed out the lack of hairstyles for Black people and people of color, noting this issue in the creator videos and during the character creation demo that was released last year.
The team said they have increased the number of hair styles so that it balances out with the straight styles already in the game.
“We’re happy to announce [that we’ve] added many [hairstyles] to balance out that ratio of the typical hair you’re familiar with [and] also [added] curly and more Black hairstyles. Which, when I looked at it, looked really good,” said Lee.
Others asked about tattoos and piercings in the game. The team said they are limited but will be flushed out more towards the end of the year.
“Right now in early access we have facial tattoos and neck area tattoos. Tattoos that come above your shirt. We all know that everybody wants arm tattoos, body, and all around the leg,” said Lee.
GAMEPLAY
inZOI’s open-world gameplay and realistic graphics caught the attention of players. However, many noticed some limitations in the early development videos.
Someone asked how many Zoi’s could be in one household. The team answered that eight is the maximum you can have and that they refer to them as “family” instead of households.
Many players are excited for early access and asked whether a memory system would be available. The team explained that there wasn’t enough time to implement it for launch, but they confirmed that a full memory system will be developed in the future.
inZOI’s job system remains a hot topic. One person asked how it differs from the job systems in other life simulation games.
“The obvious difference is that they have an active job system and not a rabbit hole,” said Lee.
Lee further explained the reason they took it a step further is because having a job is a major part of your life and wanted to give Zois that experience.
When it comes to family activities, creative director Kang wrote a response stating that, “right now there aren’t a lot of interactions you can do with family members. But something they will build upon even after early access launch.”
The team explained that players may feel somewhat underwhelmed by the limited family interactions, but assured that the creative and related teams will continue to expand on this feature.
However, one interaction currently available is that children can ask their parents for food. Children won’t be able to cook on their own and will need the assistance of an adult Zoi.
One of the more controversial questions addressed sex in the game for making a baby. After the second round of creator videos, a romantic scene was shown at night, followed by a fade to black.
Lee said, “the answer is very very straightforward.” He referenced the different countries Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), and that they weren’t targeting only the adult audience for the game.
“We wanted to try and provide a game [that] is suitable for as wide as an age group as possible.”
Following the topic, they answered questions related to the stage of pregnancy and raising children in the game for early access.
“Compared to our previous versions of the game that a lot of people would be aware of…there’s a lot more interactions now to what you can do while a Zoi is pregnant, according to Kang’s written response.”
A few examples of this were that you can tell friends you are pregnant, and you can have pregnancy cravings.
With a world as expansive as inZOI, players wondered if they could follow their Zois around the cities and participate in active school days, similar to how they can follow Zois to their jobs in the game
“Unfortunately, an active school system is not available in the game due to how complex it is. You don’t just go to school, study in the classroom, and then you come back. There's so many elements in this life of going to school. You go to the cafeteria to have lunch, and while [there], you’re socializing and having disagreements with school bullies. So all these very complex mechanics…have to be involved to provide a thorough school experience, it makes it a huge project for Alex [Kang] and the team to take on,” Lee said.
The team acknowledged the importance of this feature and stated that it will be added, though they couldn't provide a specific timeline.
Since Psycat is the official mascot for inZOI, players wondered if they would be able to have their own pets in the game.
Lee asked the team if players could have pets in Korean. The team discussed briefly and Lee said that they know how important having pets in the game is. However, implementing pets will be “complex.”
“All four of us know how important it is to interact with your own animal. And have them be a part of your life…but it is so complex. There are so many things we have to take care of,” said Lee.
For the chaos-driven players, the topic of murder in the game was raised. The team referenced the ESRB rating system and how it influences the content they include.
“Don’t know if this was the answer you guys were looking for…is there murder in inZOI? I think this is still related to the age rating system. You can murder someone indirectly using certain features of the game,” said Lee.
One example Lee gave was how houses can catch on fire, and those who do not get out in time, will die.
The World
inZOI boasts a vibrant world and how one can customize it with different features. Some asked if you could build your own world from the ground up.
“From a technical standpoint, right now as you know, you can edit the city in various ways. It almost feels like you’re creating your own customized city,” according to a statement from Chai read by Lee.“
However, it was explained that the ability to adjust the pre-made worlds could feel like a whole new world.
They further explained that creating a city from scratch would be difficult for optimization and “don’t want to step into those areas quite, yet.”
When it comes to pools and hospitals in the game, pools were a feature they wanted to implement for early access. According to Chai, “he thought that the quality of what he was able to develop with the team is insufficient..and the quality was not up to par to his standards.”
However, Lee pointed to Chai and said that,“he plans to work on it and improve on it so when he does release it in the future, it would be a satisfactory experience.
For active hospitals, it was expressed again that the systems and features at the moment would be difficult and would be worked on at a later time.
Techincal Support
If players were wondering about controller support, Lee asked Chai about this and it was said that the ability is not available at the moment.
“Right now they don’t have native controller support on inZOI and that became de-prioritized once again because of all the things they thought [were] more important to work at the moment. It’s going to be worked on very soon after early access release.”
Since the game is launching on Steam, Valve’s Steam Deck came up as a question since some games can run on the device.
The team referenced that Valve has two categories for games when it comes to games being able to play on it. One is “officially supported” and the other is “runs on steam deck.”
Lee said that inZOI is on the “runs on steam deck” because they did not work with Valve to make it functional. However, Lee said that Chai did test inZOI on a steam deck and it “runs fine.”
The team mentioned that there would be more sessions like this in the future to answer questions about the game. You can join the official Discord server for updates on inZOI’s development and communication from the game’s Director Hyungjun “Kjun” Kim.
Correction: An earlier version had the names mixed up for two of the devs in the picture credit at the top.
Update: To the graph about sex, it was added about making a baby for clarification.
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