Boggit interviews Tim van der Moer of the Lordz Game Studios at the Home of Wargamers 2014 Conference

click image to enlarge; go on – you know you want to!

Aside from being a popular Grogheads forum member, Tim van der Moer (aka Lord Zimoa on the forum) first gained his reputation as modder before moving into games design. Here he gets the opportunity to say how he got involved in games design and about his plans for the future.

Tim van der Moer (right) and Alex Shargin (Flashback Games) demonstrate Warhammer 40K Armageddon at HOW 2014

Tim, tell us a little bit about yourself. I know you come from a modding background. Tell us how you moved from modding into game design.

I think back in 2000, or 2001 when I got a phone call from an old chap called Iain McNeil who was on the phone from the UK and asked if I was Lordz’ Tim Moer. For years we were running a modding community, and we got some attention in the international press with our mods, especially our Napoleonic mods, our Lotus fantasy mods, and basically he wanted to ask who I was and what I was doing. I gave some of my personal background, but basically I was totally not into the industry.

The Orcs charge into battle! This is the tactical level display for Sovereignty.

My background is in the medical dentistry business. He said basically the quality of what I’ve seen so far from you guys, is if you can do this, you can do a commercial game. I said ok but, I was a little bit surprised. It was flattering of course but I had no interest really. A few days later he mailed me back, phoned back and I started thinking about it, talking about it with my wife, and thought well why not? It has always been a dream. I have been playing with games and modding since I was 12/14 years old with the Commodore 64, so I’m an old geek who likes to play games and is interested in history.

Tim chills out after some heavy demoing! Left to right: Ionut Georgescu (88mm Games), Tim van der Moer (Lordz Game Studios), Fraser Brown (PC Games-N), and Joe Robinson (Strategy Informer)

So yeah, these were the first steps. We then started working with Slitherine, I was a developer for them. We worked on Great Battles Medieval, music videos, we did some scenario building, worked on Battle Academy, and also did some scenarios for that. And well it all started to grow and we did more projects, working with more developers, co-developers… And then we got to a real successful stage for us with Panzer Corps of course, and the Commander series. And now we’re doing like six or seven projects at the same time with them and for them, and also for some other people. But yeah, that is how it started.

The Imperial troops assault Timz Warboyz (Space Orks) in a Warhammer 40K Armageddon desert encounter

So Tim, that’s the background. Tell us about what you’re doing now, and what you hope to be doing in the foreseeable future.

Well the most important projects at the moment that we are also showing here are of course Sovereignty, which I have presented here, Warhammer 40K Armageddon. I think this is one of the biggest brands we have ever worked for, and there’s still a lot to do, but it’s fun to work in this lore. It’s incredible and I think it will be a successful game. We also have the last game in the Panzer Corps series – Soviet Corps – that is coming. We have plans to do more with the Commander engine. Commander: Great War has been ported to iPad, and we have several games in production, which unfortunately I cannot talk about at this point but the Lordz are here to stay, and we’ll have a lot more interesting news in the foreseeable future.

Some of the really nice hi-res artwork for Warhammer 40K Armageddon

Well Tim, thank you very much for taking the time to speak to me and to give that information to our readers.

All good things come to an end… some of the group (Tim second left) prepare to leave the Castle of Pavone for home. (Marco Minoli, Slitherine’s Marketing Director (far right) did a tremendous job of organising an excellent event, and with his team ensured everything ran smoothly.)

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