Saturday night was easily the biggest night at the Australian edition of the Penny Arcade Expo, PAXAus, because of the amazing musical performances held later on in the evening. You might remember that we posted an Omeganauts contest semi-final posting on Saturday night, the live musical performances followed on straight after that. There were three performances in all that night, but The Protomen were easily the most memorable.
On the Saturday night, we had a great opening act by 7-Bit Hero, which was quite interesting in that the artists would play live music along with their upcoming video game designed for gamers to play along with the band and undertake challenges. The next act was a band called Minibosses, which did some pretty metal covers of NES era video game soundtracks. But really, these were only lead-ups to what would be the best act of, not only the night, but of my entire life (so far).
From the get-go, The Protomen hit the audience hard and fast, getting everyone pumped up with some of their more fast-paced songs from their first album ‘The Protomen’ while ending what I would dub: The first act; with a nice Queen cover that was also featured on their ‘A Night of Queen’ album.
The (what I’ve dubbed) second act of their performance was even more epic and by this point I was absolutely hooked on The Protomen’s performance. I was chanting along with the crowd, singing along to their tunes, fist pumps to the heavens and more.
That’s what’s really great about The Protomen’s live shows, they really know how to get the audience pumped up, they get the crowd involved and because of that, you’re connected to not only the performance, but also to the overarching story behind the show. I can remember when they played Queens Bohemian Rhapsody, not only were existing fans of The Protomen singing along, but also everyone in the crowd that had yet to experience The Protomen before coming down to the show. This is only one example of getting the crowd involved, but another great example of this was when they had the crowds chanting “We are control”, or clapping along with the beats leading into some songs.
One of the things that really impressed me during the performance was the way that each of the performers were costumed on stage. While it was a little difficult to tell who was supposed to be which reploid from the Mega Man mythos, the costumes really captured the feel of the story that The Protomen tell in their music. My favourite character by far is their take on Dr. Wily; who is easily identifiable by the stylish W across his face. However, that Protoman helmet with the minigun as an aside was fabulous and you could easily tell that this was a universe where some pretty wicked stuff had been going on.
Personally speaking, the standout performances of the night were: “The Hounds”, “Vengeance”, “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the song that I believe lit up up the night, “Light up the Night”. Unironically, these are also my personal favourite songs of theirs. So I do admit there may be some bias here.
Overall, I’d say that everyone at that performance had an amazing time listening and rocking out to the best live band that I’ve ever seen. While many of us were already Warriors, after that night, everyone was a Warrior. Warriors of PAX.
Be sure to check out the official websiteof The Protomen, as well as their tours page to see when they’re playing near you.
Thor: The Dark World is set to hit cinemas everywhere this November, and fans were wondering if there would be a tie-in game to accompany it. Turns out, there will be! Gameloft today have announced that they will be publishing the Thor: The Dark World Official Game.
Taking inspiration from the upcoming film, the game puts you as Thor and you must lead your Asgardian forces in over 100 missions against Dark Elves and Marauders in order to restore order and balance to the Nine Worlds. Gameloft are sparing no expense with this release, and their HD game engine really captures the beauty of the Marvel Universe. The realms of Jotunheim and Asgard are really sights to behold. If Gameloft’s track record for awesome movie tie-ins, coupled with Thor himself isn’t enough to get you excited, then you should also know that the story will be co-written by farmed Marvel writer Christopher Yost, who is also one of the screenwriters for the movie.
Thor: The Dark World will be the latest of Gameloft’s movie-tie0ins, and also the latest collaboration with Marvel Films. It joins the ranks of Iron Man 3 (check out our review here), and Gameloft are thrilled to continue their collaboration with Marvel. Karine Kaiser, Gameloft’s VP of Marketing & Licensing said
We are delighted to continue our excellent collaboration with Marvel … Developing official games from Marvel’s cinematic blockbusters and bringing the fans an immersive experience in a Super Hero world inspires us every time.
Thor: The Dark World will be releasing on iPhone, iPad and Android, alongside the film’s release in November. Oh and will be free to play! Gameloft have also been so kind as to provide a little trailer, which you should check out below. As always, be sure to stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all the Thor: The Dark World and Gameloft news as it becomes available.
After getting my hands on the iPad version of the game, I was surprised by how huge a departure the game was from the usual style of Halfbrick’s games. Colossatron: Massive World Threat seems to be very Japanese in inspiration, with anime style cutscenes and character designs. The titular character Colossatron is not unlike the Japanese ‘Kaiju’ monsters. If you enjoy the Japanese style, Colossatron: Massive World Threat will likely be of interest to you.
In terms of gameplay, Colossatron: Massive World Threat is best described as similar the old school mobile game ‘Snake’ but you do not control the snake creature. Instead you must drag new piece to add onto your destructive snake monster giving him different weapons and control the firing of said weaponry. The game scores you on much destruction you are able to cause, so obviously the more weapons the more destruction you can cause.
It is an interesting game, that is somewhat difficult to pin down as while it does have a lot going for it, it does not essentially feel like a game. It was hard to get past the fact that you do not control much of the game, the majority of it is automatic with you taking on a side roll as Colossatron destroys of his own volition. I feel that the game would have been better served if players were able to control Colossatron. Unfortunately that is not the case, which is a little disappointing.
All in all, Colossatron: Massive World Threat is indeed an unique gaming experience. It is every bit as fascinating as any other Halfbrick game if not more, but how much longevity will the game have? It is hard to say, until the game is released. For now, we look forward to Colossatron: Massive World Threat with eager eyes for what may very well be another colossal hit for Halfbrick.
Overview It has been a couple of years since a new numbered Dynasty Warriors was released stateside. Since the release of Dynasty Warriors 7, we’ve had Xtreme Legends, Empires and even a PS Vita version of Dynasty Warriors called Dynasty Warriors Next. Now two years after the release of DW7, Tecmo Koei and Omega Force have brought us Dynasty Warriors 8. The question is, has DW8 been refined even closer to perfection or is this numbered title one to forget?
Story The story of Dynasty Warriors 8 continues to adhere to The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and most of what is on display here is everything Dynasty Warriors fans have seen before. The story mode follows the campaigns of the kingdoms of Wei, Wu, Shu and most recently Jin, and a handful of single stages for some of the “Other” characters such as Lu Bu.
As the player advances through the story of each kingdom, they witness many of the events we’ve seen and heard of in past titles, but they have been reworked and introduced in a refreshing way that treads lightly on past events and gives players a new look at these events. Interestingly enough, players are also given opportunities to choose between three or four pre-set characters per stage, with the fight beginning right out of the cutscene at times, giving players some variation.
Besides the basic storylines for these four kingdoms, a few stages have secret objectives that can be completed and if all of them are completed, a special “What If” scenario unlocks in the campaign selection menu, allowing players to choose a different option from what history remembers. These “What If” scenarios can unlock anything from extra characters to a handful of new levels that expand the storyline even further and give players even more to unlock in this already massive game.
Gameplay
Dynasty Warriors 8 is still very much the same game that Dynasty Warriors 7 was, as it bases all of gameplay structure around the same features found in DW7, however it seems that rather worry about redesigning everything from the ground up, simply refining what they had and adding more too it was the route that was chosen, and it is certainly a step in the right direction.
As anyone familiar with the Warriors series knows, players will enter the battlefield as a selected character and take on hundreds, even thousands, of nameless soldiers and numerous enemy officers and generals as they make their way through each stage. Players level up their character by simply defeating countless enemies, picking up EXP drops and more, with leveled characters simply being stronger than unleveled fighters.
Customization is a bit limited in Dynasty Warriors 8, but players can choose two weapons to take into battle and switch between them in mid-combo to deal extra damage. While it is certainly possible to enter battle with two unfamiliar weapons, characters do have preferred weaponry which adds attack bonuses and an ‘EX’ Weapon which the fighter’s default weapon type which usually features extra combo attacks and other bonuses.
However one thing that has been added to DW8 is the weapon Affinity system. Each weapon comes with either a Heaven, Man or Earth affinity and it is something of a rock paper scissors style system where certain elements are strong or weak against others. The game even warns players if they choose two weapons of the same affinity, as doing so can put the player at a disadvantage in combat for one major reason.
Facing off against an enemy wielding a Heaven weapon while using a Man weapon will place you at a distinct disadvantage, as shown by a warning sign of the enemy’s head. Why this is dangerous is because not only will your weapon not be able to stagger or break an opponent’s attacks, you deal less damage and receive more when hit. On the opposite side of the spectrum, facing off against an enemy wielding an Earth weapon while using a Man weapon for example, will display a blue icon over the enemy officer. When striking officers with blue icons, the blue icon will shrink in size as the player dishes out bonus damage and if that icon disappears, players enter a ‘Storm Rush’ mode which allows the player to unleash an unblockable flurry of attacks that can draw other enemies into their path, unleashing pure devastation to an area.
Also added into the combat system is a ‘Switch Combo’ that allows players to time their weapon switches with an opponent’s attack, allowing them to not only dodge the attack and issue a counter attack, but switch weapons as well, often accompanied with a temporary damage boost. Another nice touch added to the game is a “Rage” meter which fills as the player gives and receives damage. When this Rage meter is full, the player can temporarily become faster, stronger and practically impossible to damage as well as unleash a special “Musou” attack.
As mentioned, Musou attacks return and as the player’s chosen fighters level up, three Musou attacks can be unlocked, allowing a basic ground Musou, a mid-air Musou and a special Musou move that requires the pressing of two buttons at once. Another nice touch to the game is the fact that horses or other mounts can be automatically mounted if the player holds down the trigger when calling for them, allowing the player to mount while on the run and not break stride the entire time.
While a minor detail, these numerous gameplay additions have made the already impressive gameplay that accompanied DW7 all the better. These additions not only offer something new and more streamlined for fans of the series, but a better experience for newcomers as well. Of course the fact that nearly every aspect of DW8 is playable in local co-op or online with others.
Outside of the combat itself, a number of new characters have been included in the game for each of the factions and alongside these fighters come a slew of new weapon types, some of which are getting really strange but when you have as many weapon types as DW8 has, things can be a bit odd and be perfectly fine.
Also it is worth noting that Free Mode returns, allowing players to roam through stages at their leisure, alongside a new Ambition mode which sees players fighting small battles, consecutively if they choose, to lure the Emperor to their growing nation. These fights see the player gathering resources, allies and fame in an effort to build a village and is a nice distraction from the main gameplay options, especially when some of the fights presented can be very challenging considering players are not able to heal between consecutive fights.
Visuals
As always, one of the drawbacks to the Dynasty Warriors series is the game’s visual aesthetic. While improved from past iterations, Dynasty Warriors 8 continues the series’ tradition of having basic environments and basic enemy designs that are repeated non-stop as you slash through hundreds of same-faced soldiers and numerous same-faced officers with only the occasional famous named officer standing in your way.
The actual playable character designs have been improved over past titles and the fighting animations are as impressive as ever, with numerous special effects added to Musou attacks and the Storm Rush abilities. The game does suffer from a lot of slowdown at times, including whenever the player is fighting against numerous opponents in a heavily populated area and even when the player is simply walking through their village in Ambition mode, making the game slow down to a crawl at places.
Audio Being a numbered release, Tecmo Koei has given Dynasty Warriors 8 an English dub which means that all of the characters have been given English voices, though it does sound like a number of the voices for characters are simply clips taken directly from DW7. The new characters have obviously been given new voice work and they are nicely handled and the story dialogue is also handled well enough, but nothing exceptional.
As far as the background music goes, DW8 returns with the same type of soundtrack we’ve come to expect from the series, with a number of fast paced rock songs to keep the blood pumping as players drop over a thousand enemies on the battlefield.
Overall Omega Force has spent the past two years since Dynasty Warriors 7 making numerous spin-off titles but it appears that those spin-offs may have simply been refining their craft since Dynasty Warriors 8 improves on what was already an impressive combat system by adding numerous additions, some of which are small but long-awaited, and giving players an enhanced story mode and even more characters to slay over a thousand enemies with. Outside of slowdown issues and the number of re-used assets from past games, Dynasty Warriors 8 may be the best Warriors title to date.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
SEGA and developer Creative Assembly have outed Rally Point Episode 15, titled Suebi Campaign Spoilers & Rome Event which is viewable below.
Rally Point is a behind the scenes look at Total War: Rome II’s development process, with the latest episode revealing a pretty in-depth look at the frosty starting area of the Suebi faction. For those who aren’t history buffs, the Suebi were a Germanic people during the Roman times who later formed the Kingdom of the Suebi following Rome’s collapse.
Judging by the preliminary footage, the UI looks a lot neater than in Shogun 2. Less clutter and a cleaner look makes it seem that much nicer to work with. Aside from the game we also see some outdoor adventures, involving a guy with a pony tail and his vase. We’ll leave that with you to figure out.
Creative Assembly has recently started a new Let’s Play video series in the lead-up to the strategy game’s release on September 3 this year for the PC.
In celebration of PAX Aus, Clicker, a two man indie development team from Melbourne, has soft launched their newest title Game of Watchcraft: Spawn of Squishy for Australian players. The game is a ‘demake’ of everyone’s favourite MMO (take a guess which one) reimagined as a 1980’s LCD portable game console and made playable on a 2013 portable game console: the iPad.
Complete quests! Fight the boss! Level up! Complete more quests! Fight the boss again! Did we mention that you level up? Game of Watchcraft is the new gaming sensation sweeping the nation. Gamers are losing hours, weeks, spouses and careers, enthralled by its deep world, immersive graphics and repetitive action. Can you survive its addictive appeal?
Unsurpassed graphics!
Take on the role of Squishy, a priest with a never-ending mission to collect stuff, kill innocent goblins and fight creatures substantially bigger than him. It’s just that simple.
As fans and aficionados of retro LCD consoles, such as the Game and Watch, Clicker are keeping the fire burning for this lost format and bringing it up to date with crisp HD visuals, Game Center leaderboards and achievements. The game will also feature authentic retro audio, using almost a whole octave to bring you that sweet old school feel. The game is the first in the studio’s LCDemakes series, taking the essence of modern day gaming hits and translating that through the design constraints of LCD consoles.
Konami are ready for this year’s Gamescom, and are bringing their best for 2013 and beyond in tow – with a good number of big reveals to be made. One of the big-named released for this year will be PES 2014 – which will be shown with the FOX engine in full effect.
Also on the list of offerings is Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, along with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Ultimate Edition – which will be seeing a PC release.
Here is a statement from Konami themselves:
“KONAMI enters gamescom at a very exciting time in its long history,” said Martin Schneider, General Manager, for Konami Digital Entertainment. “Following the successful relocation, we enter gamescom with a trio of extremely strong titles – and a chance for visitors to Cologne to go hands-on with the all-new PES 2014, the absolutely breath-taking Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, and the PC debut of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Ultimate Edition. gamescom is an essential part of the European gaming calendar, and we look forward to showing our hand and unveiling key product details as we move towards launch.”
We can also expect to see more news for Pro Evolution Soccer and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow brands, so stay tuned – as we will keep you updated as Gamescom rolls out.
Bushiroad brought the fight to PAX Australia 2013 with their hit card game series Cardfight Vanguard. Whether you are young or old, it is never a bad time to card fight. That was undoubtedly true with the impressive turn out of Cardfight Vanguard players at the Bushiroad booth in the Big Top.
Players engaged in intense Vanguard battles, taught each other new tricks, traded and compared cards and even were able to purchase some new booster packs and decks from the booth itself.
While Cardfight Vanguard may not exactly be all too familiar to Australian card game fans as of yet, the series has proven to be a colossal success in it’s native country of Japan and across the world, having spawned several anime series, manga and live-action drama adaptations.
It was truly a Cardfight Vanguard fans wonderland at Bushiroad’s booth, there was even a number of rare cards on show for cardfighters to look at as you can see below.
Other than Cardfight Vanguard, Bushiroad also had their other card game series Weiß Schwarz (‘Weiß’ is pronounced like ‘Wise’) on show, with several brands of Weiß Schwarz showcased including Sword Art Online and Fate/Zero. It was undoubtedly a jam-packed booth for Bushiroad card game fanatics and showcased how truly passionate these fans are for these amazing card games.
Fans of the hit television show Phineas and Ferb will be happy to know that Majesco have announced the release date for the latest video game adaptation, Phineas and Ferb: Quest for Cool Stuff – which will be launching on August 13th for the Wii U, Wii, DS, 3DS, and Xbox 360.
This little romp developed by Behaviour Interactive comes with a brand new adventure for the step-brothers, and details on that are as follows:
Travel to out-of-this-world places in Phineas’ and Ferb’s newest invention, the A.T.T. (All-Terrain Transformatron). This upgradeable, customizable, ultra-cool amphibious ride helps the boys hunt for lost loot to display in their backyard Museum of Cool. Phineas and Ferb: Quest for Cool Stuff also features many other fan-favorite characters from the hit show, including Candace, Isabella, Buford, and Baljeet.
As for a release date, all versions will be launching August 13th – and as you can tell, there is a lot of choice when it comes to platform.
“In Mother Russia, you don’t drive tank! Tank drive you!” Okay, so Mr. Kislyi didn’t say that (would have been awesome), but the CEO of the immensely successful Wargaming.net did give us a great interview at PAX Australia 2013. PC gamers, heck, all gamers know of the site, the service, the community and of course, the game – World of Tanks. Read on below for our mammoth interview, where we discuss literally all things Wargaming, from its beginnings to its increasingly bright future.
The booth was always busy with competition
World of Tanks has become such a mammoth success. I just can’t imagine the effect that has had on the company and your life personally…
Well, let me just give you some pure numbers about the company. This year we are celebrating our 15th year anniversary. When we started making WoT, we were 60 people in 2008, and now we are 1,800 people. We have 15 offices around the world, so a bunch of developer and publisher offices in Eastern Europe, Paris for Western Europe, San Francisco for North America and some development in Chicago and Seattle – in Seattle there’s Chris Taylor and the recently acquired Gas Powered Games.
We also have publishing offices in Tokyo, South Korea and Singapore – covering Southeast Asia – and we have a good partner in China and an office in Sydney. Well, there’s like London and Cyprus doing some administrative, finance and taxation kinda stuff. So the sun does not set on Wargaming. As for Sydney, have you heard of a middleware company called BigWorld?
Yes, I have.
We were using them for all the tanks, warplanes [for World of Warplanes] and then the warships for World of Warships, so we eventually went to buy them. So that was a $45 million deal and now they are a part of our team, integrated with our engineers…they are our engineers now, and that helps us to make games faster; new games and updates to existing games. Looking at WoT specifically, it is a tremendous success and it’s our only currently commercial running game and has around 65 millions users around the world. And it is growing.
You have to have publishing centres in the territories where you would like to publish. So like Russia, Western Europe, America and Southeast Asia and Korea are covered. Tokyo will open their game operations soon. And we’ve made our first step of adding Australia and New Zealand to the family of the Wargaming universe. We had noticed that there are over 300,000 registered Australian players, most of them registered on the American servers, on the east coast, which is very painful for them to do. So with this PAX presence we have demonstrated that from now on, we are serious. Yes, we could have done it probably a little bit earlier, but it takes time and now it’s the time to do it here.
Are you one of the 65 million?(!!!)
It’s great to hear and see this support for the Australian player base, and I’m sure with that will come more dedicated servers and largely improved experiences for those players?
Yes. It’s not easy; usually we come into a region and there’s quite a sophisticated amount of things to do, but there is no way back. And you can see on the ground floor [hopefully you fine readers may catch them in a couple of the photos] we have those guys in official t-shirts – they’re one of the Australian clans, so we have clans here now.
That’s good that things are moving quickly then considering all that was just explained about the process. I don’t think people realise – and I was certainly in that same boat – exactly how much work goes into the product and service.
And of course now we have these other projects. Out of the 1,800, possibly 1,200 are WoT related. And we had a dilemma about a year-year and a half ago with the new projects – and now the reality also confirms – that it would be suicide and not a very wise move to engage the same team in these new projects, so that is why we did some shopping and purchased a couple of companies in Eastern Europe and gave them World of Warplanes and World of Warships, and of course our supervision, technology and experience exchanges, but they go to separate teams: one of them is in Kiev, Ukraine and the other in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Also we have a small team of around 40 people doing [World of Tanks] Blitz. It’s pretty much just like WoT but a little bit smaller and for the mobile. The Xbox 360 Edition is made in Chicago and Chris Taylor in Seattle is working on something big and legendary, but it’s just too early to talk about. And also, we have to in the entertainment business, and high-tech business, always have something in the pipeline, to experiment and to define your future. So that’s why we have a couple of other products, prototypes, ideas…not necessarily all of them will survive, but we will right now allocate certain resources to find what we will do in the future.
However – and this is pretty much a good situation to be in – WoT is really, really far away from its saturation. We can see that it will still be growing for the next couple of years for sure, and then when the growth stabilises, it will be running for another ten years. Because people stick to it a lot and there’s still a lot of people to whom we have not extended our hand in terms of marketing, PR and physical presence.
The bossman gets a good view of booth
And of course, the expansion onto the mobile and Xbox 360 platforms will only help to accelerate that growth of the game.
Well, technically speaking those are slightly different markets. The 360 Edition – this is primarily for North American, UK and in a manner of respect the Australian market where people just have different playing habits. Absolutely, because those people that have Xbox at home don’t play too much on PC. Maybe they don’t even have a gaming PC. Here [referring to Blitz on the iPad beside me] is the same; this is a new wave of entertainment and nobody yet has figured out the sustainable, long-term way to do that forever. But this is a nice first try, with good assets and technology. You’ll have a very similar experience to the PC, but just that you can do that on the go.
What was the motivation to expand into the mobile market? It sounds like a silly question, but I’m just wondering whether you saw something in particular that was so promising that it had to be made, or was it something that had to be done considering it is the trend right now and direction the industry is going towards?
Nobody can deny the pros of this platform; it’s almost like ‘we have to do something’. But again, before it happens, you can not guarantee success theoretically beforehand. So that’s why, instead of trying to find the theoretical solution – whether it’s viable or not – we’d rather just make it and put it on the market. Okay, so first it goes through alpha tests, and closed betas, open betas…so only real people can give you definite answers and only after they’ve played the product. Not just some prototype, but after the open beta, which is pretty much final quality.
So what were some of the specific challenges involved with getting a version of this on mobile?
Well it’s a small device, and you have to render all the 3D stuff with the models of the tanks, the lighting, the shaders, and also this one is PvP. So, right now you’re playing against the bot for demonstration, but this game will be approximately 7-on-7 with other players, sometimes from different countries or even different continents. It’s the same BigWorld engine used behind it too. And with the iPad it’s a little easier, because there’s one standard and one mini. With Google – and of course we’re doing this for Google as well – it’s more difficult because there’s a lot of vendors, screen resolutions and technical specifications, but we’ll get there…we are a big company with lots of resources, so we’ll get there.
More coverage on Blitz to be coming shortly
Awesome. Jumping to World of Warplanes, that is in open beta right now in Russia, Europe and America. So have you been getting some good feedback from it already and how is its progress? Has the new team been learning a lot from the process?
Yeah, there’s always some balancing, some tweaking and polishing. This phase usually goes for a couple of months; from 2-4, so presumably somewhere around September, maybe October, we will launch, and then it takes some time to launch it in this part of the world.
You mentioned earlier that you’ve got separate teams on the upcoming titles and you share resources and such between them all. Have the Warplanes and Warships teams been learning from the World of Tanks guys directly, being helped along in creating a similar experience? Or is the fact that they are coming into this fresh breeding new game ideas entirely?
Yes and yes. It’s like show-business and Hollywood; you just have to put a lot of effort into every aspect. Some things which you can copy, you copy. Some things which you want to copy, but don’t fit, you have to make them from scratch. Some things you have to modify, but that’s why we have hundreds of people there everyday. We have a technological group which is comparing technologies and versions and it’s a lot of work. People wake up in the morning, go to work – technical specialists – earn their salary, go back home in the evening, sometimes late at night, go to bed and wake up and go back to work and do this all over again. Some of them are working even at night at home. It’s a lot of work, but we have a good management team to just make this process happen non-stop everyday.
With the Xbox 360 Edition, is there anything you can tell us about this release that might be unique, for players of the PC original or those unfamiliar with the franchise?
What’s important to know is that it’s not a port, it’s a special edition. We had this company in Chicago – Day One [Studios]- who we purchased approximately a year and a half ago so they were working in top secret, but as you might have heard, I made a big announcement from the stage at the Microsoft conference in Los Angeles. The game is faster. Of course you have tremendous changes to the interface and the way you do text and icons so they are more visible and recognizable from the couch. Some things – especially the levelling up – are a little simplified in order to help avoid table browsing, but to a reasonable extent.
And somehow, the game happens to be more dynamic, and maybe that’s just because Day One is good at making console games. I have to confess that I myself am not a console gamer. But everyone knows the most crazy people playing Call of Duty or any fast-paced action game are on the console and they just kill. So that’s why we need the analogous controls, and we simplified just a couple of small things to make it more accessible and so those games go faster.
Thank God that’s not drivable…would be mayhem at PAX
Was there any pressure or inclination to integrate Kinect into the experience?
No. First for launch is the pad. With these games, at the time of release, there is no physical way you can have everything. You just have to have a viable, playable, bug-free, enjoyable version. And after you release, then the work starts and the millions of players come and play and they have problems, or don’t have problems, but they tell you on the forums or email you what to do. Then for the next many years, you keep improving and enhancing this non-stop. So what’s going to be happening two years from now, nobody knows.
I know this may be a question for a much later date with so many other, more immediate things on your mind, but do you see this brand continuing to expand in terms of game releases and variations of the titular theme, or do you see something radically different as a potential experiment down the line?
First of all, we do Wargaming.net as a service. So one login with security that gives you access to all of your games that we make. I don’t believe we will publish other people’s games basically. We have a lot of games on our hands to entertain you for the rest of your life. You will be able to freely transfer gold, but also we will be allowing you to transfer experience points; that’s a very interesting tweak that I don’t feel like anyone is doing. So imagine that you have been playing WoT for 3 years and you have like 100 machines – like myself – you can earn those xp points in WoT and then transfer them in the form of free xp in ‘Warplanes’ and use them for levelling up planes if you don’t want to spend too much time levelling from zero.
Also, our main monetisation point is the premium account – which doesn’t give you any battlefield experience, but it just gives you 50% more experience and credits after you finish each battle. So it just allows a working professional like myself to level up on a strategic scale faster. And it will be zero premium account cost for ‘Warplanes’ and any future games if you have a premium account for WoT.
Of course the majority of users never pay in these free-to-play games anyway, but we still value them, we still need their time, involvement, friends, participation in clans and tournament, Twitter and Facebook posts, YouTube videos…they’re a very important part of our ecosystem. However, if you already gave us $10, we have this saying: “Wargaming does not milk the unmilkable”. We are strong believers in support that if you are a paying user, we love you, and there’s no way we are going to do this.
By land, air or sea, Wargaming has you covered
This actually makes me wonder – were you profitable right from the get-go?
Yes, we were really, really lucky to have Mother Russia besides us because the tank topic in Russia is like sacred because there were dozens of thousands of them running around our towns, cities and lands, so that’s why there’s literally a tank monument in every town in Russia on the western side of the country, and in Belarus and the Ukraine. So Russia took off and exploded immediately the first day. It just literally exploded like Facebook.
There’s always the technicalities of the process, so after a month or two, we were highly profitable. But, instead of buying ferraris and islands, we started very wisely reinvesting the money back into the growth of the company and the service; new territories and additions like maps, tanks, better graphics, etc. So yeah, those profits are going in the right direction, even as we speak – increasing the quality.
I know I’m going back further now [the reverse order interviewer!], but was that culture and historical presence and importance what influenced or wholly inspired the conceptualisation of World of Tanks?
Believe it or not…we had been making games for almost 15 years before that: turn-based strategy, real-time strategy – most of them retail-based, single-player products. We realised that this industry is going nowhere; the industry of physical retail, subscription, first pay-then play…it’s not going to work. YouTube is free, Google is free, etc., so that is why we had to have a lot of courage and guts to pretty much burn all the bridges with our past experiences, this past style of products. So we starting making this free-to-play online, which was unheard of in the west pretty much.
For five years we were knocking on doors, of course promoting our own game, but also promoting the concept of free-to-play for the west because the perception was awful. You would knock on the door of some big media outlet in San Francisco and they were like “free-to-play? Nah, we’re not even touching that.” So the way to convince them was just demonstrate that free does not mean cheap. It does not mean low quality.
Free means…whatever it meant before and what it means in Asia, we brought a new meaning to that. It has to be AAA, top notch quality on all aspects from graphics to textures to connectivity and the talent behind it. And also the way we handle community, customer support and PR: come to a new territory and talk to the media, bring the players in to do tournaments and e-Sports, surveys and all that.
Jump online and Rollout!
Being a mainly console guy, that subscription-based model was something that really put me off experiencing many PC titles that were booming in our generation, especially with the likes of World of Warcraft. But then when you looked at F2P, that negative perception did the same for everyone else…was the topic of the game ever hard to sell?
You know in China, there’s 400 predominantly fantasy games coming out every year. And some of them make their way to the western markets through publishers, who just do languages localisations, a few twists and whatever they can pull off with the Chinese developers and that’s it. I’m not blaming the Chinese because you know, China is a special country with their own culture and most of those games are devoted to the history of China and Korea and that kinda stuff. But the west is a different market and requires different stuff. First of all we started with a realistic topic looking at its heritage. Those tanks are not some fantasy creature; you can go to museums and pretty much touch the Tiger, the T-28, the StuG III and our grandads were fighting the war…
Yeah, exactly. I have to say by the way, a belated thank you for being here as well because I know you’ve been running around like crazy and getting in at 4am and…
That’s our work! You know I’ve been on WoT myself, but for the last month and a half I’ve switched to World of Warplanes because this is a very critical phase. I’ve pretty much gotten sucked in. But before that I would be playing at least one hour every day. I have 11,000 battles in WoT. Some people have 100,000 battles, but for a CEO 11,000 is a lot!…
Well that brings up another belief amongst people, and it’s been justified in the past, that many CEOs might just be financing or running a company, but are actually approaching it purely as a business venture and don’t get involved in their own product or process…
Oh yeah, you know I can rant for hours and hours, but the short version is this: can you just imagine…people might be a little bit jealous of my role now, because I used to be just a gamer in my highschool and university years. I’m a physicist, so laser physics…but in the 90s, all we did was of course play, with the first computers, everything from Abrams [Battle Tank] to Civilization, Warcraft, Starcraft, Total Annihilation andMaster of Orion a lot. And then I wisely chose a career of not being a physicist.
We would always get together as friends and say “they could improve this!” and you would write emails – well there were no emails – but letters to the companies and then you realise that they are not getting these letters and will not do what you want, so the only way out is to make your own game. And see right now it’s a good business with good revenue and profits. I still enjoy playing games, and of course I play others’ games, but I don’t have too much. Mostly I spend time playing my own games, and it’s a good business and it’s worldwide with almost 2,000 people, so I’m pretty much one of the happiest people on Earth. I’m making games, and enjoying these games and that’s how I pay the bills. It’s a great place to be. And I get to talk about my games all around the world!
Get ready for a new world, a World of Warplanes
That’s a nice perk, but I’m sure you don’t have too much time to actually sight-see and experience the local culture of each place?
I can’t wait until I go to Brazil! This is actually my first time in Australia, otherwise I would never probably come to Australia [not because he dislikes it, just in terms of opportunity]. PAX is important as I can talk pretty much for the first time to Australian press, and Monday I go to Sydney to see our office here. And then by the end of this year I will get to go to Brazil, for work! [Laughter] What, there’s a crazy big game show!?
But no, I don’t get much time to explore. After this there’s some event in Eastern Europe, then the Tokyo Game Show and D.I.C.E. Europe, GDC Austin – well, not in Austin, it’s going to be in Los Angeles now – and then G-Star in Korea. In January there’s going to be D.I.C.E. in Las Vegas – I have to go to Las Vegas for work – then GDC in San Francisco, the Taipei Game Show…oh I forgot there’s two big Russian Game Shows, and then E3 and after that there’s Gamescom. It’s pretty much…
A never-ending cycle – the whole schedule just starts again. Talk about jet lag, I just don’t know how you do it! Well I mean it’s a passion for your business really…
I’m a big revenue chunk of the coffee market, worldwide! [Laughter]. You know, let me just finish on this. In probably 5 years from now there will be no PC or Mobile or whatever. Probably all of our gaming or calculating work devices will be nano-tech or whatever, and we’ll be transmitting our project onto anywhere, like 3D fill-in-the-room holographics. But the one key that remains will be the experience. So technology will allow us to miniaturise and have it in your pocket always. Right now, it’s not yet the case. Maybe we’ll achieve this through cloud gaming or streaming, so having calculations happen on the server side so you don’t care about the size of the data centre and internet can be so quick that you can stream HD pictures in a snap of the fingers.
From that moment, it’s all about gameplay experience. So we’ve been doing battle experiences for about 15 years; we enjoy that, we know how to do that and we’re growing based on that and will continue to do that. We have big muscle now behind us. Before we had just a few of us and all that devotion, and that remains. But out of a small bunch of Eastern European friends, now out of 1,800 people we have lots of nationalities…it’s very exciting to be this multinational and multicultural organisation.
It’s definitely an exciting time. I really want to thank you for your time out of that extremely busy schedule. This was really informative in terms of coming to discover just how much work goes into this always-on machine that is Wargaming.
No, thank you very much! It was my pleasure.
If you are a PC gamer and you haven’t given World of Tanks a look, we may have to revoke your gamer card. Also, check out the mobile instalment World of Tanks: Blitz, which does not have a finalised release date as of yet. And you can participate in the World of Warplanes open beta right now! The alpha for World of Warships will be coming soon.
