Dune: Awakening director “absolutely” feels pressure following the movies
Joel Bylos, creative director of Dune Awakening, teases Easter eggs and discusses how the success of the films has impacted the game.
Releasing 20th May 2025, Dune: Awakening is a survival MMORPG based on the novels by Frank Herbet. In the game, developed by Funcom, players will explore the hostile desert landscape of an alternate Arrakis.
When Funcom first acquired the license to adapt Dune into a video game, they had no idea Denis Villeneuve was attached to write and direct the film adaptation. Starring Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya, the films' critical acclaim and box office success meant the game was faced with more attention – and more pressure.
Joel Bylos, creative director of Dune: Awakening and chief creative ffficer at Funcom, “absolutely” felt the pressure. “Our budget increased about three or four times,” he told us at the London Games Festival’s Screen Play event this week.
“We were working to make it a very good game, but we were a much smaller company.”
After Funcom had already acquired the Dune licence and were working on the game, they were bought by Tencent Games, which owns stakes in Epic Games (Fortnite), Roblox Corporation (Roblox) and Riot Games (League of Legends).
“They were injecting more money into the company to help us make this project as big as it could be," he added. "That changed the scope."
“As creative director, I had to change my ambitions for the game a little bit and start thinking about questions that I was going to ask a couple of years after launch and ask them a lot earlier in development so we could build something bigger.”
Currently, the game is still going through an internal beta, but they are discussing the possibility of holding an open beta. Bylos promises that if they decide to hold an Open Beta, they will announce it by "early May".
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As someone who grew up on Dune, Bylos is keen to weave the franchise’s rich cultural legacy into the upcoming adaptation. “Dune has this really interesting history," he said.
"You have the books; you have the Jodorowsky film that didn't get made; you have the 1984 film. And then you have the video games in the 90s. I grew up playing the Dune video games.
“We've tried to just touch on all the legacy. We have an in-game radio station in Dune: Awakening where you can listen to music from the 90s video games.”
Recently, a radio play for the in-game station was released on YouTube.
He also hinted at a “flaming giraffe” which appears when players get too high on spice, a reference to the Jodorowsky film that was never completed.
In terms of video games, Bylos points towards Conan Exiles and Ghost of Tsushima as key reference points during the game’s development.
“I really loved the way that [Ghost of Tsushima] handled their immersion into the world, and I wanted to do some of those things in Dune: Awakening," he said.
But despite pulling from a range of references, Dune: Awakening promises to be faithful to the spirit of Frank Herbert’s novels.
"The central guiding point has always been the books," he added.
But the video game adaptation diverges from the book series in one crucial way: Paul Atredes was never born.
In the canon, Jessica betrays the Bene Gesserit by giving birth to a son, Paul Atredes. But in Dune: Awakening, Jessica obeys the Bene Gesserit and gives birth to a daughter instead. “The story branches off at that point,” Bylos said.
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When it was first announced, Funcom received some backlash, but Bylos is confident that their video game is a respectful successor to the novels.
“People can be mad for many various reasons, but we'll show them that we really care in the game," he said. “I think people are really going to enjoy our version.”
Dune: Awakening releases on 20th May 2025.
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