Wildman Interviews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on January 15th, 2013

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PC Gamer: Aside from the possibility of missing your Kickstarter goal, did you have any hesitation before doing this? Any fears about crowdfunding?

Chris Taylor: Oh yeah, I use this silly analogy: we're on an island, and the water is rising in the old model. The old model, right or wrong, got us to where we are today, but the water is rising. You know, it's very, very difficult, if not downright impossible and some of the Kickstarter videos that really exemplified it, like Brian Fargo's Wasteland 2, he talked about.it kind of pokes fun at the model.

You know, in the old days you'd walk into a publisher with a crazy idea and they'd say, (You know what? Let's at least see where this can go.) But today, that's not really possible, so. like I said, the water's kind of rising on the island, those who are standing on the driest spots are still doing well, the highest driest land, and the rest of us are up to our ankles. And we're saying, (Well, I guess we better start making iOS games, or we better start making Facebook games) or something, because the publisher is a gatekeeper between us and our customer.

And, you know, that's not a bad thing, that's just the reality of it.this is the ecosystem we've developed over the last 20 odd years in PC gaming. In this case there's another island. This other island is rising up out of the water and there's shark-infested waters between us, and that's the risk we must take: swim to that island.

You have to sort of cast off your worldly possessions, if you will, and you have to jump into that water and swim for it, and of course there's trepidation. So, you know, in the meantime we continued to talk to a whole host of publishers about the traditional model, but what we found was that the budgets for those games was going so- it was just going straight down. They were, you know, the budgets are all turning into that- forget 10 million, forget five, it's all 500 thousand, a million, two million, in this ballpark. What's the benefit of doing those titles? You've got a publisher involved still and they're gonna recoup all their dollars and they're gonna make the profits generally.

.So, long story short, Kickstarter is not just a funding source. Kickstarter is a game changer for the way we work with our customer. It's saying, (Hey, you want this game,) or (Here's a game, do you want it? If you do, back it, and let's work together on this. Let's collaborate on this game and you get what you want, and we're making games so we're happy.) .It wasn't like we choose A or B. The old model just wasn't working. It damn near was dead, to put it in so many words.

Very broadly, Taylor says Wildman brings the RTS into the RPG, and the game also incorporates MOBA aspects. It has players taking control of a caveman-esque "wildman" or "wildwoman" who is subjected to the surrounding evolving technology and culture, and who is pushing to dominate the surrounding environment. As that push for geographic expansion continues, players will encounter enemies, and conflict will ensue.

Taylor says he wants Wildman to hearken back to the so-called glory days of PC games, conjuring up the spirit of his successful games such as Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander and Dungeon Siege.

In other words, it's not the kind of game that major publishers would really be interested in these days. With the traditional publishing model, Taylor knows what it's like to draw a bad hand. Over the years, Gas Powered has seen its share of cancelled games -- projects that quietly died as publishers pulled the plug.

Taylor revels in how once a game is adequately crowdfunded, "it is not cancel-able." He says, "We've had projects that we've been working on over the past 15 years that, three-quarters of the way through, some almost finished, some halfway, and they get cancelled.

It sounds to me like a real-time Civilization, would you agree?

Yeah, yeah, there's some real truth to that. The idea that when you start off, it is like Civ, you're moving one unit, you've got very small territory, you don't have any technology.

For example, you play the overland adventure part for 10-20 minutes with your hero, you might have clubbed some opponents, take down some loot and you get to a place where you can erect a fort and this is your home base of operations and you're like '˜okay, I can work from here'.

And you step out into this region, which is controlled by someone else. And when they see you, you draw blood basically you declare war and their armies start pouring towards you out of their various structures.

And by the way they're building also like you, so there's a bit of a video game component, they're not ready to unleash an outstanding army they have to pull together their side.

Now on your side you also start building those structures, you might build a barrack, you might build a rage fighter's structure and so on. And then your units start pouring out of your structures and start meeting on the battlefield.

Now you have to make a decision: do you get out there on the frontline and do I push the lines forward or do I go back to base and manage there and so there's the RTS element. But what's important about those decisions is what you build is very RTS-like.

And once you win cause you will invariably win you get to decide what technology you're going to take, like Civilization to come back to the first point. It could be something really cool, like a longbow because you don't have that yet or it could be something like soap.

You think (soap?) and to teach you something about early man which was when soap was discovered, health went up, longevity went up, people lived longer, they were cleaner.

So all your units now get a health bonus in the next war, so it's kind of fun to take a page from prehistory and teaching people a little bit about the fact that for about 200,000 years homosapiens ran around in the woods and somebody over yonder invented say cheese, and 35,000 years later someone else invented something.

It was a long time. Intel wouldn't have done well, they would have had to wait too long for improvements in CPU.

This is a really interesting time period, so what we're doing is telling that story but in a fun way and we're going to dress it up a little bit, with some new fiction that we're coming up with. So you can battle other sentient creatures, where real human history did not but in our game we did. And we want to have some fun with that.

RPS: So what makes this an RTS/RPG and not a MOBA/RPG? Is there some Demigod influence here?

Chris Taylor: You get into this whole RTS gameplay for what I call the war zone. You might be thinking of a MOBA-style game, and there's a lot of stuff that we love about MOBA. But what we want to do is have more of an RTS experience there, bring more of the RTS in with the ability for your hero character your Wildman, who is evolving tech-wise. He takes these characters, and depending on his leadership skill, he can rally and lead a few of them and do things like end runs or go to different places on the battlefield. He can find weaknesses in the other side's defenses.

Once you defeat them, you're taking their technology. There might be some choices. They might have something crazy, like soap. If you get the soap technology, your health for all your units will increase 30 percent. It's kind of a fun thing. We're bringing a historical element to it, so it's not just pure fantasy, the trappings of a typical fantasy game. I like having this basis in reality. However, we've got a really interesting fantasy element to it.

We say, (What if men, when they evolved into the homo sapiens form. What if other creatures also evolved, and other creatures had sentient minds?) You could fight, say, a giant fly creature, or a lizard creature, or wild animals. What if there were thinking cats and things like that? Insects that are just creepy, that grew and were vying to take over the planet. Men had a clear shot, because we were so clearly superior over all the other animals, or at least that's what we're led to believe [laughs]. Who knows what really happened 200,000 years ago, when we were smashing skulls?

It's definitely a combat-oriented game, but discovery is important. When you're going through the overland adventure part of the game, you might find a cave, or an old crypt or some entrance to something, and you don't know what's down there. The question, ultimately, is, (Should I go down there and find some stuff and bring it back? When I fight the next war, I'll have better technology because I've gone exploring. I've done some due diligence. I've done my homework.) Then you find a chest and pop it open and there's something cool in there. Now you're thinking, (Yeah, when I go back, I'm gonna arm all of my soldiers with this new technology that I've discovered. That can make the next battle that much better for me.) I use this model of the expanding Roman empire. When they would take over or defeat a civilization, arguably a lesser civilization, they'd pick through the spoils and go, (This is really cool! I really like this. They have something going on here. We'll take that.)

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