Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight Preview

VideoGamer.com: StarCraft II is on the horizon. Are you guys fazed at all?

JV: StarCraft II is going to be great. I mean, it's going to be awesome. All of us on team are super excited to play SC2. Our former lead designer from the Battle For Middle Earth series, Dustin Browder, is leading up that team. He's a great, legendary designer and an awesome guy. We're all looking forward to it. Sure it's intimidating. It's one of the most powerful franchises in gaming and it's going to take the market by storm. What I hope is that gamers will try both. I hope that an RTS player will try StarCraft 2 for that classic RTS formula - base-on-base, the epitome of classic RTS PvP gameplay. And then maybe after they get Zerg-rushed a few times they come and try C&C 4 and get more of a casual, accessible experience. I think there’s room for both of us. C&C and StarCraft and Warcraft have been legendary franchises, and I think we’re both going to be great. I can’t say anything bad about those guys.

VideoGamer.com: The new unlocking system seems interesting. What motivated you to change this from the traditional approach, where you introduce new units as you progress through a campaign?

JV: What I’ve found is that when I install a new RTS game, and say I don’t want to play the campaign but rather a skirmish or multiplayer, my first experience is going to be that I’m dropped into this world where I have 50 units, a bunch of structures, powers and upgrades, and it’s just “GO!” I have no idea what anything does, no idea what counters anything, and if I’m playing against someone who’s had a little more experience with the game, I’m going to get destroyed. That’s not going to be a fun first experience. So the unlocking mechanic… like you said, it’s normally handled in the campaign, but we wanted to branch that out so that no matter what mode you’re playing, you’ll be introduced to the game at an understandable pace. At the start you’ll have a few of your main battle units that can cover the combat chain and do their job, you’ll learn about them and then after a few matches you’ll be able to unlock something else. You’ll be like, “I want to try out that unit. He has a cool special ability - how does that work, and what does it counter?”. So you’ll play with that for a few matches and then you’ll get to try something else. We think it’ll help new players to understand how the genre works, what these units do. No matter what mode you jump into, you have a chance to learn how the game works. Every other genre does this. RPGs don’t start you at level 16, they start you out very small with one weapon and one ability, and they slowly teach you the mechanics until you reach the high end. Then you look back and you’re like, “Wow, look at all the stuff I’ve learned!” That’s the kind of experience we want people to have.

VideoGamer.com: Presumably you’ll have a few mechanisms in place to keep things balanced? It’ll be no fun if one side has access to a massive tank that can just kill all your troops.

JV: There are a few things we’re doing here. First off, we’re going to try to match people within their level range. The next thing is to track people by skill level, so we have tracking mechanisms that determine how good you are and to keep the teams balanced. But most importantly we’re working on the balance so that even if you have some of the high-end units and toys, low-tier units will still be able to counter those. Even though the dude who’s been playing for months will have access to some really intimidating weapons, you’ll still be able to win if you build the right counters at a low level. He’s the big slow ship, and you’re the speedboats. The high-end player might have a bit of an advantage as they’ll have more options and will be a little more versatile, but in terms of units you’ll be fine as long as you build the right counters. And of course in terms of the meta-game, if you’ve got better strategy and capture the right points on the map, it won’t matter if he has a giant tank - you’ll still win the match.

VideoGamer.com: Many thanks for your time, Jim.

Command & Conquer 4 will be released on PC in 2010.