Last week, Petroglyph quietly put up a game announcement for a project called Victory on a new Facebook page. Following its official announcement today we managed to catch up with the Petroglyph team to find out more about their new WWII online strategy title, and the Kickstarter campaign to get it funded.
Hello there! What is Victory, and why have you opted to crowdfund the project?
Victory is an online team based WW2 action strategy game. From the start our philosophy for Victory has been to include the community in the process of making the game, so crowdfunding was a natural fit. We want players involved in every step of the process to make Victory the best game it can be.
You’ve been quite up front about saying this is not an RTS title (due to the lack of base building and resource gathering.) Did you feel an RTS game would stand less chance of success on Kickstarter?
We think Planetary Annihilation’s success showed that an RTS can make it on Kickstarter. There is clearly a robust community passionate about the genre. Petroglyph’s love for the RTS genre is definitely unabated. With Victory we just wanted to do something different.
Is Joe Bostic involved at all in the development of this title? If so, what’s his role?
As the Studio Design Director, Joe Bostic oversees all projects currently in development. Did you know that his original RTS prototype that lead to Dune II was playing with army men in the sand – just like Victory?
Your Kickstarter makes plenty of references to ‘in game currency’ purchases. Will there be real world currency transactions too, and if so how will you maintain game balance?
Players will be able to spend real world currency on items in Victory. However, Victory is not a game about buying power – everything can be obtained by purchases with the in-game currency. It will be quite possible to be competitive without spending real money or grinding an extreme amount.
Will the game be based around an experience system like we see in games such as World of Tanks which you have mentioned?
Players in Victory will have an opportunity to gain experience and level up, but the approach isn’t quite the same as World of Tanks. Leveling will focus on the player’s companies (groups of units brought into battle) and not on their overall account.
What will be the upper limit on players in team vs team, 4v4, 8v8, more? Is there any 1v1 play?
Right now the plan is 4v4, with 8v8 play as a stretch goal. Victory is designed as a team game, and as a result we won’t have 1v1 play initially as it doesn’t really work with the core game mechanics. Nonetheless, one of our philosophies with Victory is to listen to player feedback, so we are open to doing 1v1 in the future if the demand arises.
How many units will each member of a ‘team’ typically be controlling and keeping track of?
The number of units a player controls will ultimately be up to their play style and preference. A player seeking to bring large numbers of infantry may have as many as 20, while a player who likes smaller squads could bring just 5 heavy tanks. The average balanced player will likely have 10 to 12 of various different types.
Since teamwork and co-ordination seem so important to the game, what chat/voice options will there be in Victory?
Initially Victory will feature basic team chat functionality as well as a robust ping system. The pings will allow players to provide more information than usual, calling out information like unit types and requesting actions, such as advance or retreat. Once the game is live we have plans to expand the system to allow for even more detail.
Will there be other game modes alongside ‘capture and hold’?
At launch there will be one game mode. We wanted to first and foremost focus on making the best, most balanced gameplay we could.
The Kickstarter page mentions certain ‘special orders’ that can be acquired and used on units. Can you give us any examples of those?
Special orders are essentially unique abilities a player can bring into a battle to augment their fighting force. Orders might include a command that temporarily boosts the speed of your infantry or the damage of your tanks. Orders don’t dictate the outcome of a battle, but they provide a player with a variety of tactical options.
Everybody is obviously keen to get a slice of the ‘multiplayer battle arena’ revenue, but is there a danger that this is simply the new gaming “gold rush” (as MMOs were a few years back); where a few companies get rich and the rest fall by the wayside?
During the MMO gold rush, most games were very similar in mechanics and playstyle, with stylistic exceptions such as a particular focus on PvP or story. As a result, there was little incentive for players to branch out into different games, with a few exceptions for very different games like EVE Online, which is still going strong today. Arena games aren’t quite the same – rather than a defined genre, it’s simply a multiplayer style that encompasses many different types of games. It could be argued that Battlefield, League of Legends and World of Tanks are all Arena games, and all of those games enjoy big markets with a lot of overlap. Victory is very different from any other Arena game on the market – it offers totally different gameplay, gameplay that will appeal to players who love real time tactical squad based combat and customization.
Beyond the Africa campaign, have you planned out further content in other theatres of war and will the game move beyond WWII at any point? C&C managed to migrate between timelines quite successfully.
After launch we do plan to expand the game to other theatres of war such as West/East Europe or Asia. There is a huge amount of material available in WWII to explore. As of now we don’t intend to include other conflicts, but that may change in the future.
Members of the Petroglyph team have been involved with some of the greatest strategy games ever created, Red Alert, C&C, Company of Heroes and more. Not to forget Frank’s amazing Red Alert Soundtrack. Based on this vast experience, what makes this game different from what’s members of the team have worked on before?
Petroglyph has had a lot of experience making traditional RTS games, but Victory is something new. While it includes elements of different games, including traditional RTS games, it isn’t quite like anything out there. It takes the tactical “micro” gameplay of an RTS game and transforms that into something even deeper and much more accessible than before. On top of that, it brings a unique twist to overall strategy with squad customization done in a style similar to deck building in card games such as Magic the Gathering. At launch, there will be nearly 100 different units to collect and build your companies with.
I know this is not Victory related, but what happened with your involvement with End of Nations? To an outside observer, it appeared as if Trion suddenly pulled the game ‘in house’ to finish development. Was that always the intended development process for the game, or did that move come as a surprise to Petroglyph?
It’s not unusual for developers to hand a game over to the publisher for ongoing live operations, and this was something that was foreseen with End of Nations. We enjoyed our productive collaboration with Trion, and we are looking forward to the release of EoN. Meanwhile we have set our focus on Victory – the support for the game has been great and we are very excited to make this dream a reality with the help of our fans.
We’ve been asking quite a few fashion-related questions in our interviews of late, so here’s one for you guys too: what’s the ideal outfit for playing Victory in?
We think wearing Forever Lazy adult footed pajamas (watch now) is the best outfit for playing Victory. We fully expect that you will love Victory, and that once you start playing, it would be unlikely for you to go anywhere any time soon, so might as well get cozy, right? A convenient rear flap allows you to streamline those inconvenient “bio break” disruptions and, therefore, maximize your time online. Best of all, it’s available in almost-military-like heather gray!
You can find out more about Victory on the new official website.
Published: Mar 5, 2013 08:02 am