Category: Interviews

07/9/14

GrogHeads Interviews Uwe Eickert of Academy Games

Grogheads’ Corinne Mahaffey sat down to talk with Academy Games’ Uwe Eickert at Origins.  In person, Uwe radiates a cheerful enthusiastic intensity; game design is clearly one of his passions!

Grogheads:  What new games do you have coming up?

Academy Games:  The Conflict of Heroes Solo Expansion, and Conflict of Heroes – Guadalcanal are shipping soon.  We will have a Kickstarter for Conflict of Heroes: D-Day Airborne Battles this fall!

Academy Games
Academy Games

In addition, in 2015 we expect to publish the first game in our Civil War/Napoleonics series: Gettysburg – Day 1 Bloody Crossroads. This will be the first game in a 2 or 3 volume set based on this battle. The map boards and counters are big and incredibly beautiful! (Check our website for pictures [http://academygames.com/games/fight-for-the-colours/bloody-crossroads-gettysburg-day-1])  This is a new system that implements some of our newest and most advanced design mechanisms; there will be no dice, no numbers on the counters, and no charts to look up.  You will be able to see the detailed state of each Regiment by quickly looking at its Brigade Command board. This will tell you its fatigue, morale, and current capabilities.  The game can be played with 1 to 8 players and the decision cycle for each player is constant, with little to no down time.

We have been doing a great deal of research on the US Civil War, concentrating on the soldier’s fatigue and mental aspects of combat. We have factored these aspects into the game mechanism, so that brigades act more like they did in battle, often flowing forward and back towards the enemy.  We’ve been working on this for 4 years and hope to publish it in 2015.

 

Grogheads:  Could you compare how you build computer games versus board games?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of each medium?

Academy Games:  We always start with the board game because we find we have more subtlety when we design the board game.  If we have no computing power, then we build a better, more intuitive, more streamlined game to begin with, which we can then move to the computer.

When we create board game mechanics, the results are transparent; we know why we came to the in-game result that we did, and we learn the strategy of the game.

Computer war game AIs are often designed with a biased advantage.  They are often given limited, hard coded orders.  However, human thought patterns are not limited in this way.  The Artificial Intelligence (AI) that we have developed for Conflict of Heroes utilizes a unique Emergent Behavior and Agent Based Logic that evaluates Battlefield Situational Conditions. The AI then implements the best Tactical Response based on its available unit assets and resources. If the forces and logistics are available, the order is executed by the best available AI unit.  If not, the secondary procedure order is implemented.

We think people will be surprised by the intuitiveness of our board game AI.  Our AI does not “smooth” results or have arbitrary advantages.  No matter which side you take, the AI will kick most players’ butts 60% of the time. This system has gone through several development cycles and we have had help from some of the most cutting edge computer programmers, active duty Army officers, and game designers.

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05/25/14

Home of the Wargamers Report: Interview with JD McNeil, CEO of Matrix / Slitherine

Boggit interviews J D McNeil at the Home of Wargamers 2014 Conference

 

J D McNeil, CEO of Matrix/Slitherine delivers his “State of the Company” address at HOW 2014
J D McNeil, CEO of Matrix/Slitherine delivers his “State of the Company” address at HOW 2014

J D thank you for agreeing to do an interview with me.

It’s a very big step for new developers entering the gaming industry and quite fraught with difficulty. Why should new developers see Matrix/Slitherine as anything more than just another publisher?

There are a number of reasons why a developer would find a deal with us attractive.

The first and primary reason is that we can showcase their game and put it in front of a very dedicated audience. When gamers come to our websites they know exactly where they’re going and what they are coming here for. We track and check statistical analysis of all of this and the industry norms for sell-throughs and visits. It’s an analysis that many companies have and they don’t generally share it. But what I can tell you is that we outstrip any known factors for any other site that we have got information on. The sell-through from visits is enormous, people come, they know why they come, and they buy. So that’s the first reason.

The second reason is that we work with the developers/partners from the very start of their development. No matter how good a developer is, when coming to a new business sector or any business sector, they can make mistakes, they can make errors. That’s not saying that they do make mistakes or errors. But we will advise, cajole, help, push and prompt. We try and get them to a placewhere we know from our business experience that their product will sell. Now that’s invaluable time being saved, it can knock months off to be honest. It’s also the case that when a developer comes to us too late in the cycle, we are often faced with the situation that the errors, or the points, or the things that we think would improve his sales are beyond redemption, and to strip out and rebuild it could take an enormous amount of time. Continue reading →

05/11/14

Airship Dragoon – The Interview

Lloyd has a chat with Steve Acaster, the developer of Airship Dragoon – which can be found on Steam’s Greenlight program.

Airship Dragoon is clearly and proudly anchored in a steampunk universe. What are some steampunk influences that have inspired you and can be seen in the game?

Airships! But I guess that one is rather obvious. There is something majestic about dirigibles in a manner which winged aircraft do not possess. They seem to glide effortlessly and silently, moving with grace whilst aeroplanes are noise and can’t just turn around on a fixed point. They’re oceanliners of the sky.
I always imagine their interiors decked out in mahogany and sumptuous shag pile carpets. You don’t much more steampunk than airships … except maybe goggles. All the characters in the game wear different goggles, with the exception of the British who have their goggles hanging around their necks. I tried to design the goggles for each faction to be indicative of the nationality, so the British have very traditional goggles, the Dastardly Pirates have an eye patch, the Austro-Hungarians a monocle and the Americans have wrap around shades to symbolize their modernity.

The “evil genius” weapons are also a popular steampunk theme. As the game progresses and the player upgrades his troops equipment the hardware becomes a little wackier. There are railguns which can blast through objects, a laser type “lightning gun” and of course no steampunk arsenal would be complete without a good old fashion “death ray”. There’s a little joke about radiation poisoning on the information screen for the “Atomic Death Ray”.
Defence-wise I came up with the idea of having a harness which projects a moving image which dazzles the enemy and reduces their accuracy. The concept for that was based on the naval “dazzle camouflage” of The Great War. I really liked the striking designs and wanted to include them visually. The great thing about steampunk is that there are no hard and fast rules, nobody is going complain that it isn’t scientifically or historically accurate – it’s not supposed to be! Steampunk is a lot more fun and a lot less po-faced than many other genres.
Science fiction can be quite sterile and take itself far too seriously. Nobody thinks that a characterture of Dick Dastardly with a zeppelin and a death ray is sterile!

Sample screen from the new realism mod available for Airship Dragoon.
Sample screen from the new realism mod available for Airship Dragoon.

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04/4/14

Developer Interview with Muzzy Lane Software

Craig Handler has a chat with the Muzzy Lane crew about their upcoming release in the Making History series, The Great War.

 

muzzyLANEWe recently had the opportunity to sit down with Chris Parsons, the Product Manager at Muzzy Lane Software, to talk about their upcoming grand strategy game, Making History: The Great War.  As Muzzy Lane’s first departure from the battlefields of the Second Word War, this new title in the Making History series spans from 1910 through 1922, and will focus on the horrific trench warfare of World War I.  Making History: The Great War promises to permit players to experiment with revolutionary new armaments, technologies and strategies in an effort to rewrite history by leading one of the great powers during one of the most turbulent and pivotal times in modern world history.

With Making History: The Great War, Muzzy Lane hopes to appeal to serious historians and hardcore gamers, alike, by combining historical authenticity with a design system geared towards fostering education through strategic gaming.

 

GH: Thanks for agreeing to sit down with us to talk about Making History: The Great War. As you can see from our forums, there is a lot of excitement in the air over this upcoming early access release. Our readers, who consist of old fans of the Making History series, as well as new comers, are interested in learning about Muzzy Lane, the Making History series and importantly, Making History: The Great War.

Muzzy Lane games seem to be more focused toward education and the classroom, rather than the traditional commercial gaming market. What are the backgrounds of the individuals behind Muzzy Lane and is there professional experience as educators, teachers, professors, etc.?  If so, does any of this professional experience focus on either of the World Wars?

ML: At its core, Muzzy Lane is a technology company that focuses on game-based learning.  In addition to education, we also make games for business training and for healthcare, and of course, for strategy gamers!  Our underlying technology allows us to customize the learning for specific subjects and curriculums, and share the actions taken in the game with everyone involved.  This same engine drives our Making History games as well.  The founders include educators and engineers, and from the start we’ve always worked with subject matter experts.  For example, we worked closely with economic historian Niall Ferguson on Making History II, and the name of that game: “The War of the World” is taken from his book of the same name.  

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03/9/14

Lock’n’Load Heroes of Stalingrad – The Grogheads Interview

Mark H Walker takes a few minutes to talk with us about the new Heroes of Stalingrad game – the first digital entry in the Lock’n’Load line.

9 March 2014

Grogheads: OK, first things first: It’s been, what? – 6 years!  What’s taken so long to get this game out?

Mark H Walker. First off, making a computer game is difficult. Damn difficult. I’ve written novels, designed board games, and raised three daughters. Creating Heroes of Stalingrad ranks right up there. If both Tom (the programmer) and I had been full time on the game, it might have been easier. However, I work full weeks designing board games as well as keeping the company that publishes them moving forward. By the same token, Tom also has several other irons in the fire. Hence the game took longer than we would have liked.

Secondly, nothing beats experience. I consider myself video and computer game fluent. I wrote full time in the industry for ten years before I founded Lock ‘n Load Publishing, but nothing prepares you for creating a computer game better than creating a computer game. We were lucky to have Matrix’s Erik Rutens join the team as producer, and bring the game home. His experience was invaluable.

GH: As computer games go, this one is clearly “playing a board game on the computer”.  How hard was it to maintain the feel of the board game as you worked on the computer game?  What were some of the particular challenges of keeping the soul of the game as you digitized it?

W. Not hard at all. Basically the design document centered on making this a PC board game.

GH: For someone who has never seen the board games, what’s the pitch for picking up this game over a comparable-scale WWII computer game?

W. It’s much better. LOL. Taking into consideration that this is a hex and counter game and no threat to the Titanfall crowd… it’s pretty, it’s immersive, it’s easy to get into, it doesn’t take itself seriously, and it has a cute Russian nurse. 

GH: For the boardgamers out there, why should this be the game that causes them to boot up the computer instead of cracking a beer and taking over the dining room table with a map and counters?

W. They shouldn’t. If you have a chance to down a Parkway Get Bent IPA  with friends as you play a great board game you should always do it. If you don’t have that chance HoS is a great substitute. The AI is pretty sharp, and the clean up is easy. Continue reading →