Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight (PC)

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EA’s Jim Vessella is a veteran developer of RTS games, having worked on the Command and Conquer series for the past five years. He’s currently working as a producer on C&C 4. Last week we met up to chat about the game and why fans of the franchise may be in for a few surprises.

VideoGamer.com: Why did you choose to change so many familiar elements for C&C 4?

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Jim Vessella: There were a few things behind this. On-team, as developers, we've been doing the same formula in RTS for almost a decade now. This is the team that made Red Alert 2, Generals, the Lord of the Rings series and some of the C&Cs. We’d seen within ourselves that it had been the same for a long time, and I think the team really had an urge to try something different, to keep the spirit of C&C but to throw something out there in left field. So it came from passion on the team. There are some great other RTS games that have been released recently, Dawn of War II and World in Conflict. We have a lot of respect for these guys trying new things in the genre, we saw that and it also inspired us. It was like, “Wow, there are ways to play RTS without just building up a base and attacking the enemy base.” So I’ve got to throw a call out to those guys for trying some new things. And the other thing is that what we’d seen and what we’d come to, looking at just the numbers, is that that classic RTS formula is kind of intimidating for new players to get into.

Of course we have this hardcore fan base in the RTS community that’s been there for a long time, and we love those guys, but when you make a game that’s entirely focused on that - like Red Alert 3 - it’s really hard for a new player who just wants to try out RTS. So we wanted to find a solution that can allow veteran guys to have a great time, but that can also support new players who just want to try it out, a new generation who didn’t grow up on the games in the 90s, so they can get in there and not feel intimidated by being Zerg-rushed in the first four minutes. That’s what happens even to me, as a veteran RTS player, if I go online and try to play competitively. I can’t even beat my own games! I try to play Red Alert 3 and I just get destroyed!

VideoGamer.com: The same thing happened to me the first time I played RA 3. I was bear-rushed in under five minutes…

JV: Yeah! We loved Red Alert 3, and we’re really happy with the work that we did there, but we certainly focused on that group. And I think we really satisfied that group. There are guys doing ladder tournaments and all kinds of great stuff, but I think it was a little limiting in terms of reaching out to the more casual audience, so we wanted to make a game for that crowd this time.

VideoGamer.com: Do you think the new approach a big risk?

JV: Absolutely, it's a big risk. C&C has been a very strong franchise for a long time now with that formula, and it's worked well with us. So we stuck with that plan, and kind of made C&C 4 a standard C&C game in the same way that 3 was. And that probably would have worked out fine, but it wasn't going to grow our audience, it wasn't going to bring in new players and allow a new generation to come in. I think we are taking a little bit of a risk, but it's a really good risk. It's what the genre needs, and I think that other companies like Relic and Massive have seen that as well. I hope it pays off, I really do. I hope that new players try the game, have fun with it and then try out some of the other RTS games out there. There are still so many high quality games in the RTS genre. I just think it's always been typecast as this hardcore genre where you need to have 250 APM [actions per minute] to get into. We want to try and prove that stereotype wrong.

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