Re-sharing my Tempest Rising Interview

Earlier this year, I gave an interview with Russian-speaking magazine Gamemag.ru in my role as the lead game designer on Tempest Rising . While I do not want my role on the game to overshadow the content of this blog it was very important to me to preserve this interview on my own site for posterity. You can find the English version of this interview on the Tempest Rising Community Hub on Steam – it was put up there in April of this year, I believe.

While I wasn’t thrilled with the direction of some of the questions, as I deemed them to be overly negative about the genre, I tried my hardest to answer them well. I hope you find this interesting!

1. Answer 1 – what happened to the RTS genre?
2. Answer 2 – remasters and nostalgia
3. Answer 3 – publishers
4. Answer 4 – spiritual successor?
5. Answer 5 – the Command & Conquer formula
6. Answer 6 – battle scales
7. Answer 7 – RTS and 4X
8. Answer 8 – multiplayer experience
9. Bonus: Tempest Rising PVP preview video

Question:
Since about 2006, RTS began to die. Many attributed this to the fact that the genre stagnates, but strategy releases still have not gone anywhere – just from them almost completely abandoned by the major publishers. The only exceptions are Microsoft and Sega. What happened to the genre in your opinion?

Answer 1 – what happened to the RTS genre?

I think that we need to be precise with what we’re talking about. If the idea is that increasingly, RTS games have not been financially successful, I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Games like Company of Heroes 2, Iron Harvest, and Spellforce 3 have done well for their developers to my knowledge, as well as games like 8 Bit Armies, Northgard, Dune Spice Wars. RTS and other strategy titles have managed to find themselves a niche in modern gaming audiences. The truth is, these games just didn’t have the same budget behind them as many other massive FPS, MMO, or other more mainstream AAA titles.

The other part of this question is “why are RTS not, largely speaking, massive critical successes that sweep the gaming world, like we remember from the late 90s and early 2000s?” And this is a harder question. Certainly, part of it is just money. It takes a lot of money to create an RTS, and given a couple of high-profile failures, such games are not seen as a safe bet to a publisher as something such as FPS games. Greg Black, a longtime designer on the Command and Conquer franchise, has quipped that a new Command and Conquer Generals game would take more than $50 million USD to do properly.

I do think this view of the industry is fairly narrow though, to be honest. While there are some high-profile successes in the FPS and MMO space, it’s scarcely risk-free to attempt to unseat the larger players in these genres, either. Just like RTS, there have been some high profile flops in arena FPS, MOBAs, and any other large genre you can think of or name.

When it comes down to it, any large and content-dense game is going to be expensive to make, and players have high expectations for feature sets. A good editor, replay system, observer mode, post-launch balance and content updates, additional factions, all of these things take a lot of time and money, and it doesn’t just take the skill of a single talented individual to produce a best-selling game. There’s a lot of time and money and yes, luck, that has to all kind of fall into place to turn a game into a bestselling game.

RTS are heavy, complex games and their fans are jaded. It’s hard to introduce new players to these titles as well, and RTS communities are resistant to many modern monetization practices. as well as being tough to do well for console and mobile. It’s a bit of a risk, though there are passionate developers, creators, and publishers who are always willing to give it a try.

Question:
In recent years, the industry is ruled by nostalgia, which is being successfully exploited by Microsoft, which is actively producing remasters of Age of Empires and Rise of Nations. Looking at this, EA joined the banquet with remasters of two games from the C&C series but limited themselves to them. Why aren’t even remasters as popular as projects in other genres?

Answer 2 – remasters and nostalgia

Nostalgia does sell, but it has to be done right. Nostalgia alone can’t carry a game, particularly if multiplayer is an important component of what drew people to the game or keeps them involved in the game. The Command and Conquer Remastered Collection was a successful remaster, but once players got their nostalgia hit, a lot of them left for what might be considered greener pastures. Unsurprisingly there are still people playing it and creating content for it, but a lot of people were content to replay the core campaign(s) and move on again with the warm glow of revisiting a fond memory.

To be attractive to a wide audience, and to keep them coming back, the game would have had to be changed quite a lot, which is not what the people who were most interested in the product wanted. It’s possible they could have snuck in more tweaks here and there to pathfinding, or queues, but there’s a fuzzy line past which the game would not have reasonably resembled Command and Conquer Tiberian Dawn or Red Alert any more.

I think, though, that Microsoft and EA have done pretty well for themselves with their remasters: Age of Empires 2 is one of the most-played and most-watched RTS right now, and the Age of Empires 3 remaster has a solid and stable fan and player base. To add to this, even Age of Mythology is getting “Retold” sometime soon, so clearly Microsoft is seeing success with releasing remasters.

We have seen games not handle remasters well, and WarCraft 3 Reforged is prominent among them. But I think overall players are happy to return to classic games that defined their childhood, but in some cases the game’s formula is so old that it is a tricky thing to try to figure out how to modernize it while keeping what people loved about it in tact.

Question:
When you started developing a game, did you encounter any distrust from the publisher? How do game companies feel about attempts to revive a “dead” genre?

Answer 3 – publishers

Thankfully, THQ Nordic were about the perfect publisher for this project. They have been very knowledgeable and supportive of Tempest Rising from the beginning. The statistics framework which they used for Spellforce 3 and which they made available to us has been a valuable source of consuming data from playtesting, and they have marketing, QA, and other disciplines who have been valuable assets throughout the entire course of development. I’m very glad to have them as our partner for the development and release of this game.

Question:
Why did you decide to make a spiritual successor of C&C?

Answer 4 – spiritual successor?

Our Game Director Fred Schreiber, has had a lifelong dream of bringing back the style of game C&C was known for, especially later titles in the series such as Tiberian Sun. His vision of creating a new high-fidelity, high production value RTS led to the creation of Tempest Rising.

Tempest Rising arose from our collective love of classic RTS experiences of the 90s, and our feeling that the time was right to revisit them in a slightly different way than we’d seen other recent games attempt it. We started with some of our favorite gameplay moments, some of our most cherished memories of playing RTS on LAN with our families and friends, and asked each other how we were going to recapture the bombastic fun of those moments. To us, the feeling comes first, the love and the passion for these games guiding us towards a game that truly embodies why people love RTS so much, a whole that is more than the sum of its parts.

I take the design of Command and Conquer titles very seriously, and have a love for each of the core games for different reasons. And frankly there aren’t many modern RTS titles that have the same visceral immediacy to them that we loved in those classic Westwood RTS. That being said, we very much want Tempest Rising to stand on its own and to be enjoyed on its own merits, rather than because we borrow from games that came before.

Question:
In your opinion, what elements of C&C and other strategies don’t work now?

Answer 5 – the Command & Conquer formula

As with many of the time-tested RTS formulas, a surprising amount of what the Command and Conquer games do holds up well to this day. Many of the older games were arguably held back by technology constraints – in particular, User Experience and User Interaction design has come a long way since the days of Tiberian Sun and Red Alert, but the actual core gameplay of these titles remains enjoyable to this day. The challenge for a team like ours is how to iterate and modernize the frenetic classic 90s RTS feel while still preserving what we, and so many others, loved about these games.

One thing that many Command and Conquer games experimented with is the concept of sub-factions. In many of these titles, the player could choose between things like a Libya faction to gain access to a Demolition Truck unit, or to select a Nuke General or Laser General, or to pick a sub-faction like Reaper-17 that introduces some changes from the basic Scrin. I think ultimately none of these methods was as successful as it could have been, and with Tempest Rising we are trying something a little different with 2 systems we’re calling Specialists (I discuss these a bit in the next section) and Doctrines, which we’re not discussing publicly at this time.

We are also paying a lot of attention to the very early game and the very late game, both of which I think struggle somewhat across a lot of classic RTS. One of my primary goals with Tempest Rising is to have it be less volatile in the very early game, less prone to game-ending rushing before the players are able to scout out their opponent’s strategies as well as harsh economic crashes in the late game.

For the latter in particular, our designers have spent a good amount of time exploring optimal regrowth rates for our primary resource, Tempest. Tempest vines regrow, and actually mature over time, becoming more resource-rich the longer they are allowed to grow until they reach their maximum size and density. The behavior of this ‘electric plant’ is very important to the overall pace of the game, and we’re determined to get it right.

Question:
Which approach to strategy in your opinion works better? Large-scale battles or more tactical ones?

Answer 6 – battle scales

Personally, I’m all about the personal, visceral feel of tactical battles. I think there’s something awesome about being right there in the action, knowing that each unit or ability you use is an individual choice is incredibly satisfying to me. That being said, it is indisputable that many RTS players also love commanding larger armies. With Tempest Rising we are aiming towards the larger end, with some units and strategies maintaining that visceral and personal feel.

One great example of this are our Specialists, which are limited-quantity specialty and support units that can be used in either campaign or multiplayer to great effect. Not quite WarCraft 3 style game-deciding heroes, and not quite Command and Conquer style high-impact commandos, Specialists can range from the GDF’s Riot Medic, who is almost impervious to small arms fire and can both heal allied infantry and suppress enemy infantry, to the Dynasty’s Physicist, who fires large spheres of energy at enemy vehicles and can deploy a massive and powerful electric Tempest Field around herself, which builds up a debilitating and damaging electrical charge up on enemy vehicles, to the Drone Assassin, a one-man army killer equipped with 2 flying buzzsaw drones that can slice through any enemy ground unit with ease.

Each faction has 5 different Specialists they can call into battle, though in single player they have to earn the trust of up to 3 of them during the campaign, and in multiplayer they have a limited choice as to how many they can field as well.
Anyway, we’re trying to provide some of the benefits of larger army games as well as more tactical games with Tempest Rising.

Question:
Do you think it makes sense to try to mix RTS with 4X strategy elements? That’s what Sega, in particular, is trying to do by offering a global map campaign in Company of Heroes 3.

Answer 7 – RTS and 4X

I very much enjoy “world map” modes in RTS games. This is not a new thing in the genre (The best RTS campaigns on PC ) and world map campaigns can provide players with thousands of hours of replayability and engagement in a game. That being said, I feel like an RTS can lose something if too much focus is taken away from the moment-by-moment gameplay. The very best world map modes add to and accentuate the main RTS gameplay experience, not detract from it.. I feel strongly that the world map mode should not encourage the player to skip the actual RTS gameplay.

One of my favorite map modes is actually that in Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault. Each battle can impact future battles in a very interesting and compelling way and ties them together in a very tangible way. I’d love to see more work put into models like that, that really keep in touch with the core of what makes RTS gameplay so engaging.

Question:
What will the multiplayer be like? Does it make sense to change something drastically – or did Relic’s experience with Dawn of War 3 show that it’s not worth shaking up the basics?

Answer 8 – multiplayer experience

With Tempest Rising, we are going back to the roots of the genre. Bases, buildings, large armies and intense story-driven campaigns. Our innovations are directed towards respecting the player’s experience: meta-level progression in customization systems in the campaign but not in multiplayer, where players don’t want to have their match experience interfered with.

We want to lay down a solid foundation on which to grow. In multiplayer, players will compete against each other either solo or in teams, to drive their opponents off the map. We’re currently experimenting with the idea of starting armies, so the player begins the match with a couple of units they can use to defend themselves or to scout the map with during the otherwise less interesting beginning minute or so of gameplay. For win conditions we are exploring both the traditional “destroy the enemy” mode as well as another one where a few key structures can be taken out to defeat an enemy player. It remains to be seen if in future we try to deviate further from the core RTS experience and player expectations.

You can also find it on the Steam Community Hub for Tempest Rising.

Bonus: Tempest Rising PVP preview video

In case you missed this, it’s a preview match between Game Director Fred Schreiber, and myself, which I think also released in April.