Halo Wars: Strategic Options Details
Robot Entertainment opens up with details on the upcoming download and the future of the new studio.
May 8, 2009 - Halo Wars surprised a lot of skeptics when it was met with generally positive reviews and then flew off of store shelves en route to selling over 1 million copies. Since its launch, Halo Wars has garnered a stable and sizable online community that meets up on Xbox Live daily to test the latest tactics on this real-time strategy game. Though the group that made Halo Wars, Ensemble Studios, was shut down by Microsoft, members of that team have since formed Robot Entertainment.
This new studio will support Halo Wars with balancing patches and game add-ons. The first, titled Strategic Options, will add several new multiplayer modes and will release on Xbox Live soon. Robot Entertainment's Dave Pottinger, a producer on Halo Wars, recently opened up to IGN with details on that add-on, possible upcoming expansions, and the future of Robot.
IGN: We saw a little bit of the detail on how these modes will work in the initial press release, but can you explain it again with a bit more detail? What sorts of styles of gameplay do you feel these afford players compared to what's currently available?
Dave Pottinger: Sure. The goal with each of the modes was to change "one thing" and have that cause you to rethink your entire strategy. We didn't want to add 1,000 tweaky rule changes that broke your understanding of the basic gameplay or unit relationships. Perhaps Game Add-on No. 42 will do that, but Game Add-on No. 1 wanted to be a little higher level, a little more epic if you will. I'd describe the modes this way...
Reinforcement: What's the core of any strategy game? Building your army and then crushing your enemies with it. Okay, let's take away that first part! You can't build any units in Reinforcement mode. When the game starts, you instantly see the "Wave Timer". When that pops, we take all your supplies and give you a selection of units to play with based on how many supplies you had. That selection is gated by your tech level, etc. Your success depends on how well you can use those units and how much you've upgraded those units. If you just got a raft of Warthogs, you should probably go buy a Warthog upgrade. The reinforcement waves come fast and furious every minute or two. This sounds crazy, but it's a blast. It obviously forces you to rethink everything, but it also really rewards and showcases the players who understand how the game works.
Tug of War: Tug of War is based around the idea of bringing a fighting-game mechanic into a strategy game. Every unit and resource you have contributes to your strength. The "Tug of War Bar" at the top of the screen shows the difference between your strength and the other team's strength. If your strength goes up, the bar moves a little bit closer to your side. Your task? Simple, get the bar all the way to your side. This mechanic creates a neat dynamic where the tactical choices in battles are very different. Doing the most damage to your enemy is no longer the goal. You need to do that while saving your own troops as much as possible. Retreating and focused raids are much more common in this mode.
Keep Away: If you've played a game of Capture the Flag, you've got a decent idea how this works. Keep Away is Capture the Flag for a strategy game. Every so often, a cute little Forerunner Sentinel pops out on the map in various locations. Everyone can see it. The first unit to get to the Sentinel claims it. Once claimed, you need to keep the Sentinel alive for a couple of minutes. Do that and your team gets a point. First team to three points wins. This has been a lot of fun. The big "Aha! This is going to work!" moment came when we figured out that we needed to change the standard Capture the Flag mechanic. Bringing the Sentinel back to your base was alternately trivial and impossible. It wasn't working in a strategy game very well. Changing the goal to keeping the unit alive added that element of strategy and unpredictability that strategy games require.
IGN: How long has this downloadable content (DLC) been in the works? How do you decide which bits of content should fit into a DLC release?
Dave Pottinger: It's been in development for a while. As many folks know, console games require a long lead team because they have to go through certification after the team finishes the game. That time afforded us a chance to get a jumpstart before the game was released, but then we tabled the Game Add-on work given the release of the actual game, a bit of time off and starting up our new company, Robot Entertainment. After we got Robot on its feet, we jumped back on the Game Add-on. I'd say overall development time is probably two or three months of work.
Deciding which content fits into a DLC release is fairly unscientific, to be honest. All along, we knew we wanted to do a lot of modes for Halo Wars. It's a strategy game and ripe for cool modes that reinvent the game for people who've played it for a while. It just made sense that the first Game Add-on pack added a bunch of modes. Other packs will do different things...
IGN: With regards to ongoing tweaking and balancing with the game, what sorts of changes or updates are you focusing on right now?
Dave Pottinger: Our biggest focus is evaluating the feedback and data coming in. Our Web site for the game (halowars.com) is the main source of both those components. Players can go there to read forums or our blog-style posts about the game. We get a lot of feedback about the game there. We read it all and discuss the common bits that bubble up. Also, we're constantly data mining our backend servers. Every Halo Wars game you play gets uploaded to our site. We have real-time stats on the win percentages of the civs, the leaders, etc. If someone complains that "Grizzlies are a screw," we can go look at the games they've played to see what really happened. The ability to do that has been invaluable in determining what feedback is based on actual imbalances vs. perceived imbalances. While both are important to fix, the solution options often differ between the two.
http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/981/981066p1.html
IGN: Some in the community that Warthog rushes on the UNSC side or Leader rushes by Covenant players are too prevalent in online matches. How do you respond to that? Is there an issue there, and if so, what steps might be taken to address it?
Dave Pottinger: I'm sure there are issues with the balance. It's a strategy game; it's really, really hard to get those balanced before the game ships. Since Halo Wars has been out, we've been watching the trends online. We know that we don't want to knee-jerk react to issues, but we can't take forever, either.
On something like the Covenant leader rush, we obviously think it's stoppable otherwise we wouldn't have shipped it. But, it's entirely possible that the way that we play the game simply may not match up with how the community plays it. It takes a while for any strategy game to get "learned" by the fans enough, doubly so for Halo Wars since we're trying to bring strategy gaming to the console. Long story short, we've been waiting to see if the community can figure out how to stop the leader rush. I think they've figured that out for the most part now, though we did realize there was a balance issue with one of the leaders.
Happily, we've got a patch in certification right now that will include some balance fixes (including that one for the Prophet of Regret), a few bug fixes and even a couple new features.
IGN: We see a lot of posts hoping for additional single-player content in the game, is that something that might happen or is Robot's focus at this point on the online community?
Dave Pottinger: Right now, our focus is on the community. Bungie has done such a great job building excellent community relations in as part of the Halo "experience." We're trying to live up to that and make sure that our labor of love gets the TLC it deserves. As far as single player content goes, we simply get more requests right now for multiplayer/skirmish things. While the new modes are fully playable in solo skirmish mode, most folks who want additional solo content are talking about a Covenant campaign. That's a huge undertaking. It's not on our radar right now, but who knows? If the game continues to sell the way it has been, I'm sure it will get discussed again.
IGN: Can we expect to see more DLC made available beyond this Strategic Options pack? Is there any possibility for additional units or even an additional faction to be included in the game in the future?
Dave Pottinger: Well, for now, we're focused on this Game Add-on pack. Like you'd probably expect, we're always discussing new stuff to add to the game. We've got a long list of cool things we can do. That list grows longer each day with nifty suggestions from the fans. Once this pack is out the door, we'll step back and figure out what aspects of Halo Wars to buff-out next. Keep an eye on halowars.com.
IGN: Can you go over the situation regarding Robot and support of Halo Wars? For instance, how long might the support last?
Dave Pottinger: Robot has the contract with Microsoft to support Halo Wars and Age of Empires. We don't usually discuss the terms of such things. As Robot goes, our goal is to do a fan-damn-tastic job supporting the games. That support is the first official act of our new company; we want to do it up right. If we do a great job and the game continues to sell well, the contracts and such usually take care of themselves.
IGN: So we know this hasn't yet been announced, but what are the exact release dates and pricing?
Dave Pottinger: That's really a question for the Microsoft guys. Our first focus is getting that title update out first. Once that's done, the DLC will follow pretty quickly, I'd bet.
IGN: What are your thoughts on how the game has sold so far? How does that match up with how you initially expected it to be received by the community?
Dave Pottinger: I think it's done great. It was awesome to see how quickly we reached 1M units. Since then, the game's continued to see very well. Our games have always had long legs. For me, the interesting question will be to see how Halo Wars sells through the rest of the year. Ask me again in October.
IGN: What are your thoughts on the future of the real-time strategy genre on consoles?
Dave Pottinger: I think Halo Wars has shown that strategy games can be a blast on the console. I'm really happy that we were able to create a different type of strategy game, too. We talked a lot before the release of Halo Wars, about "bringing the strategy experience" to consoles. I think some people were expecting a more literal translation of a PC strategy game, but I think we delivered on creating a strategy experience that felt at home on the console. In that sense, I hope Halo Wars has shown that there are alternate styles of strategy game out there. It is possible to have a fun strategy experience that lasts 15 minutes, for example. I do think you'll see more strategy games on the console in the future. I hope those games take the best stuff from Halo Wars (e.g. the circle menu) and make it even better.
IGN: What about the future of Robot Entertainment?
Dave Pottinger: I can't say too much yet...
It has been a fun ride getting things up and running. All of our employees (approximately 45) came with us from Ensemble, so we've all worked together for a *long* time. I look around and see the folks I interviewed with when I joined Ensemble 13 years ago. We know each other pretty well. Yet, Robot is not Ensemble.
Going through the closure of Ensemble, we got the chance to step back and re-evaluate how we wanted to work, the types of games we wanted to make, why we wanted to be in the games business in the first place. With Robot, we've taken a more aggressive approach to developing new, more innovative games. In a weird way, Halo Wars was a great baby step in that direction. We had to re-learn everything about making strategy games during the development of Halo Wars. With Robot, we're approaching everything differently.
Games-wise, we've got a lot in our hoppers. Obviously, we're supporting Halo Wars and the Age of Empires franchise. Beyond that, we're working on one main project. Can't disclose that yet. We are starting to incubate some other ideas, too. Definitely can't disclose those ideas yet. Keep an eye on our Web site (robotentertainment.com). We'll be putting something out there soon.
Heh, I guess that was quite a bit after all.
http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/981/981066p2.html
