26 Ridiculous Battletech Memes you can see after the article.
Battletech is a board game from 1984. The first name was Battle Druids made by Jordan Weisman. It’s about robots (Battletech) and pilots (MechWarriors). Its played for serious people and its not an easy game. Only the best minds play it.
Here is a few questions we asked the creator of the game Mike McCain:
This game is likely to be appealing on two potentially opposed fronts:
-
Diehard, grognard table-top fans, who love the idea of fresh experience in a very rules-driven system.
-
Raving lore/story fans who love the idea of fresh experience in this war-torn, gritty universe.
(I’m sure some people are both, self included 🙂
My question: At the principle/high-level goal level, how are you thinking about delivering on expectations from both sides? How do you think about ‘sacred cow’ elements vs. what’s “on the table” for change or adaptation?
I realize you might not be the arbiter of the dilemma of whether and how to tweak the stats/rules/balance, etc. but I’m sure your voice is relevant to that kind of decision making.
Mike:
Good question!
I like having AND eating cake. : )
But I do believe it’s possible to accomplish both goals. What’s important to us is capturing the spirit of the game and the world and staying true to the ideas that make BattleTech BattleTech. As we’ve said in the Kickstarter, we won’t be simply porting the tabletop rules. We’ll be doing everything we can to make a great turn-based PC game and to ensure that the game “feels” like BattleTech, both in terms of gameplay and in terms of the world. This is the philosophy we approached Shadowrun with, and overall I’m pretty happy with how we were able to balance rules and story in those games.
Saying the majority of people who enjoy video games are incapable of dealing with more complex gameplay is both horseshit and disrespectful. There are very significant followings for games that are hardcore sims, like DCS and ARMA, if that’s your taste. But those are definitely not the only types of “complex” games out there.
If anything, games have become way larger, way more involved projects over the years with more complex gameplay and depth. People put on their Nostalgia Goggles(TM) but forget that games used to be a lot more simple the vast majority of the time. A lot of modern games are really good at hiding the complexity so it’s not overwhelming or introduces it slowly, but it still exists.
Look at the massive, incredibly hand-crafted and complex RPGs that have come out in the last decade, titles like Pillars of Eternity, the Divinity series, Fallout New Vegas, Disco Elysium, The Outer Worlds, etc. Look at how absolutely massive their sales are. Those games are complex and have sold incredibly well. Look at X4 titles like Stellaris or other more niche titles. Those have tons of complexity and have sold like hotcakes.
It’s also reductionist to games. Just because games don’t always appear to be complex (IE, it’s not a sim) doesn’t mean they aren’t. Lots of games have a lot more depth than you may realize. Just because you haven’t seen it or played those games does not mean they don’t exist.
Also, Titanfall is a damn amazing pair of games that deserve respect for what they are. Just because they have mechs and aren’t Mechwarrior doesn’t mean you can lump them in with everything else.
Now, some game series has definitely changed direction. Take The Elder Scrolls. TES 2 was a hardcore RPG. TES 3 made many sacrifices, but did so for many good reasons and became a more focused experience. With TES4 and TES5, Bethesda wanted to shift to making a very strong core gameplay loop of combat, exploration, and looting. You can disagree with the game’s direction, but they absolutely fucking nailed what kind of game they wanted to make.
2: The lawsuits, however bullshit, still eat up valuable time and resources, and can scare away publishers who just don’t want to deal with that. PGI and Harebrained Schemes dealt with it for years and it cost them a pretty penny to do so. Even if it did turn in their favor.
3: I can agree, at the least, that the, in general, the gaming industry has a lot of bad practices that have gotten worse over the years. Listen to this post-mortem of Anthem and you can see some of what was going on esp. with Bioware. Churn + burn of employees is a disgusting practice that needs to stop. And releasing unfinished, buggy, un-optimized titles. (Looking at you, Bethesda)
