BattleForge Interview

With Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 out, and StarCraft II and Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2 looming ominously over the horizon, RTS fans have got it good. But there’s one game you might not be aware of that you really should, and that’s BattleForge, EA Phenomic’s new MMO-style fantasy RTS that incorporates Magic the Gathering-esque card collecting. Intrigued? Head filled with questions? Good, cos we got answers, from producer Sébastien Nell no less. Read on for the low-down on what could be one of 2009’s surprise hits.

VideoGamer.com: BattleForge is unique in that it’s an RTS that incorporates elements from traditional card-based games. Was the idea for the game an easy sell in terms of the initial pitch?

Sébastien Nell: For us, the keeper of the creative vision, it was fairly easy to imagine what it was going to be like, but unfortunately everybody else had a different vision. There was a lot of communication that was needed to be done in order to get everybody on the same page on what our vision is within the studio. There’s still a lot of misconceptions because we’re going a different route, we’re trying something else that hasn’t been done before, especially not in the RTS genre. We’re doing an RTS completely online, having micro-transaction items, using different game mechanics than RTS usually has. There were lots of misconceptions but I think we did a very good of getting rid of those.

VideoGamer.com: What was the reaction when you pitched the idea to the powers that be at EA?

SN: There’s a cool story behind that. After we finished SpellForce, we were looking for a new publisher. With the idea of BattleForge in mind we created a board game that has more or less the same rules that the game has right now but it was turn based. So what we did was we created a board game and went to different publishers, also went to EA, and had a great meeting with the execs of EA, also with the EA partners. They came back to us and said, ‘guys, I’m sorry, we aren’t going to publish you, we want to buy you’. For us it was just amazing. One of the EA execs played the board game for more than two hours and was asking all these questions, ‘how does that work and how does that work, how would that translate into the real game?’. It was really great. You could tell that they were gamers and really liked the new idea behind doing something different than anybody else does. Especially for EA, if you look at the line-up that we have this year in total there are some very exceptional titles out there.

VideoGamer.com: Any high-profile publishers that turned the game down that are perhaps regretting that decision now?

SN: (Laughs) Yeah! Definitely! But unfortunately I’m not able to talk about who this is!

VideoGamer.com: The game has been in beta for a couple of weeks now. Have you learnt anything?

SN: Yeah, oh definitely, we’ve learnt a lot. It was a great launch. Initially we sent out 2000 keys, we did that on a Friday, and on Sunday there were 1000 users online at the same time, which means that 50 per cent of the people we sent a key to actually played at the same time, which was great. The servers did a good job, load testing worked out very well. BattleForge is a very cooperative gameplay oriented game. We have 12 player maps and on the first day we already had a couple of groups that tried to complete those missions but horribly failed, which is great to see. When you unleash your baby to players who are not EA, and not press, but are just regular players, what they do with it was really great to see. The forum was full of suggestions and questions. It’s starting to live now. Community, for BattleForge especially, or for every online game, it’s the key, it makes the game successful. We’re trying to do the best job and provide them with all the information they need and try to be present within the game to answer questions that might occur in the game and in the forums. We’re looking forward to the future stages of the beta.

VideoGamer.com: Has the beta flagged anything up in terms of the way the game plays, perhaps balance or content changes as opposed to stress testing servers?

SN: Right now it’s mainly actually stress testing and getting users in and trying a couple of things. But in terms of content we will definitely have phases in the beta where we focus testing on, let’s say four player PvE maps, see how they balance, see how the people do and of course, balancing the maps is one big point, it’s very important for us to keep track of.

VideoGamer.com: What kind of release date are we looking at?

SN: We’re planning for very very beginning of next year but now it’s looking later towards March time. We’re announcing the release date in the next two weeks.

VideoGamer.com: You’ll have to pay for the game itself but there’s no subscription model, is that correct?

SN: That’s correct. There’s no subscription model. You can go into a store and buy the box. There has been a misconception about what are the micro-transaction items, why do I have to buy the game and then pay more for extra cards? That’s actually not quite true, because what you get in the box is actually four pre-defined decks, which are 16 cards from each power, we have four powers in the game, and also ten booster packs. One booster pack is made up of eight cards, we guarantee that there’s one rare, there’s five commons and two uncommons, which adds up to roughly 100-120 cards. And that’s more than half of the cards that we actually created for launch, for the first edition, because one edition has around 200 cards.

VideoGamer.com: How much will the cards cost?

SN: This is going to be a very low price point. We haven’t decided on the exact pricing yet but it’s going to be a lot cheaper than the physical cards that you would buy in booster packs from Magic the Gathering.

VideoGamer.com: Some fans are concerned that the more you spend the better your deck will be, that the more money you’ve got then the better you’ll be at the game.

SN: That’s something that from the start we paid real attention to. That actually doesn’t happen. A deck only consists of 20 cards, so despite the fact that your collection might include all 200 cards the only advantage that you have is you can choose from those cards, where a player that didn’t buy any additional booster packs has only 120 cards to choose from. It’s still a lot of cards to choose from and there’s no advantage in having more cards when you don’t know the strategy and how to use those cards in one of the scenarios or in PvP.

VideoGamer.com: But if you pay for them you save time having to obtain them by playing the game…

SN: How you get cards, except for buying them, is by trading with other players. Also we incorporated everything that we know from the real world, we replaced eBay for the Magic players with our own auction house that is in game. We have player trade where players can get together and trade their cards, trade messages, where they can post, ‘I’m trading this card for this card’, or ‘looking for someone to trade with’, and also attach those to in game mails. So we’re giving the players every opportunity to trade cards as easily as possible and get their preferred cards.

VideoGamer.com: So if you’ve got a card are you able to sell that card or can you only trade it?

SN: You can put it in the auction house if you want to.

VideoGamer.com: And then another player will be able to buy that with real world money?

SN: It’s what we call BattleForge points, that’s the monetary currency that we have in BattleForge. We do also have BattleForge gold which is the experience currency that you get by playing the game, but auctions are usually paid with BattleForge points.

VideoGamer.com: So if you buy a card with real world money and put that card on the auction house you won’t be able to make your money back from another player?

SN: No.

VideoGamer.com: What’s your plan for post release? I assume you’re going to be introducing new cards on a regular basis.

SN: Yeah definitely. BattleForge is an online service rather than a boxed product. We’ll release new maps in a monthly cycle, these will be for free, everybody can download and play them. Then we have new card editions on a regular basis, like Magic does, they have release cycles for new card editions. We don’t know yet when we’ll launch the second edition.

VideoGamer.com: Am I correct in understanding that if you defeat a unit in the game you then get that unit’s card?

SN: No. That’s a misconception. We never take cards away from players. When completing scenarios you can’t win cards, you will win card upgrades, which is our way of rewarding players. It’s kind of a reward that actually matters to gameplay. At the moment we have three kinds of rewards, depending on the difficulty level of the maps. We have the epic card upgrade for completing the 12-player maps for instance. You’ve got low upgrades from additional hit points to high value card upgrades which will add another special feature to the unit. Also, the card upgrade allows you to bundle another card. If you have a card twice you can also apply this when you’re upgrading your card and it doubles the charges of one card. Charge means the time you can play out the card in one scenario.

VideoGamer.com: Battleforge is an RTS but it’s unlike any other that’s currently out or in the works. Do you see it competing with the likes of Red Alert 3, StarCraft II or Dawn of War 2 or is it out there on its own?

SN: Well we’re certainly looking at those games, but these will be great standard RTS games. I won’t blame anyone that plays StarCraft II! I’m looking forward to that game! But BattleForge is a little bit different. The transition that RPGs have made throughout the years, that they’ve gone online now, that transition was never made by RTS. The only online modes that RTS had was PvP. Since we’re online total we want to be the pioneer in the new era of RTS.

VideoGamer.com: Those games I mentioned are remaining fairly similar to what’s gone before in the RTS genre, and you’re taking things in a different direction, more based in the social aspect. Is their focus on remaining quite hardcore a mistake?

SN: RTS is a hardcore genre. With our thinking, with our approach we’re trying to make it a little bit more accessible. Giving the players the opportunity to play with each other instead of against each other, it makes it a lot easier for newbies to get into the game when they’re guided by guild mates or by the community when they play with players.

VideoGamer.com: So you don’t think it’s a mistake for these developers to continue to focus on the hardcore aspects of the genre?

SN: Well I think sooner or later they will also do the movement online. That’s what the passage now in PC gaming is for sure, the intention is to bring all those games online and I think these companies will do so as well.

VideoGamer.com: I wanted to ask you about one of the hot topics in PC gaming at the moment, which is piracy. I speak to many developers who say that the PC games market is dying. BattleForge is a PC only title. What’s your feeling on the matter?

SN: For us as an online game I think the problem of piracy is not present at all. We encourage the player to pass around the BattleForge disc because when they go online you can only use the code once and then it’s redeemed, it’s kind of like World of Warcraft, where you need an account online to play the game but you can pass the disc around to all your friends, but they need an account to play. So BattleForge does the same thing. It can’t be pirated in the way that other PC games can. It doesn’t have that issue.

VideoGamer.com: So if you were to buy a copy of Battleforge, would that would save all your friends having to buy a copy? That sounds pretty good value!

SN: (Laughs) No it doesn’t. There are different ways of distributing BattleForge. One is direct download. If someone has a low internet connection maybe they want to go over to their friends, borrow the disc, install it from the disc and go to the EA server buy it online.

VideoGamer.com: So PC gaming isn’t dead then?

SN: I don’t think so. We’ve seen developers moving to the console and I think that’s a good decision, I can see why they’re doing that, but PC gaming is not dead at all. The PC market has been for the last couple of years very World of Warcraft driven, as well as Sims driven, but I think in the future there will be a lot more titles that will get more players back to the PC again.

VideoGamer.com: Including your title I guess!

SN: Yeah, definitely our title!

VideoGamer.com: What’s the situation regarding the possibility of doing a console version of BattleForge? It strikes me as being an RTS that might get around that control system problem on account of it being a little simpler than others in the genre.

SN: Yeah that’s true. You know creating a console friendly RTS is mainly about the controls. I don’t know one game that has found a proper solution. We’re definitely looking at options, not for the near future, but we definitely want to evolve as a studio as well so of course we’re looking at options to do a console friendly RTS.

VideoGamer.com: What was your take on Ubisoft’s voice command solution to the problem with Endwar? Is that something you might consider?

SN: That’s actually one game I’m looking forward to playing. I haven’t tried it, I can’t say much about it, but I will definitely try it. It sounds very interesting and a lot of players seem to like it. I think it fits perfectly to the setting, giving commands to military people is what users, if you would do it in a fantasy game, you would say, ‘Unit X attack unit Epsilon’, that wouldn’t deliver the feeling that a fantasy RTS would need when playing such a game, but I think it’s a good approach.

VideoGamer.com: Have you got some genius solution up your sleeve that you’re keeping under wraps so nobody else can steal it?

SN: No! As soon as we’ve found the perfect solution we will ship a game with that perfect solution and then we’ll tell you!

VideoGamer.com: Would you not just like the ability to be able to plug a mouse and keyboard into a console? Surely that’s the best way to do it?

SN: Yeah… no. They need to go and play on the PC!

BattleForge is due out for PC early 2009.