Developing the Sequel
No game keeps players for ever – not even one that’s been continually updated like Tribal Wars. It’s one of the reasons why Senior product Manager Nino Protic has been tasked with developing a sequel that lives up to the heritage of the original, while becoming much more accessible for newcomers to the MMORTS genre.
“We had a goal from the beginning where we wanted to make the game more accessible. It’s over ten years old, it’s a game where you kind of feel you’re in Excel that has graphics.” Heading to closed beta soon, Tribal Wars 2 aims to keep the same feeling of the original, while looking better and being easier to get into. Part of that simplification is on removing some of the research and construction dependencies, so that player progression is easier to understand.
But would the hardcore nature of the series be preserved? “I think it all goes down to the core loop of the game.” Tribal Wars is all about forming tribes with other players, then grouping up to attack others and capture their villages. “‘As it’s still the same game where you wipe players out – you want to destroy them because you feel good – we decided it’s still Tribal Wars.”
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Why not simply remake the original? “One of the thoughts was that we had this group of 50 million players that we would like to get back to play. We sat down and we thought ‘can we achieve this by upgrading Tribal Wars 1, or can we achive this by creating a new game?’” For Protic, the decision solidified when his team looked at overhauling the user experience. “Would they appreciate it, or would they kick our ass?”
New features will also arrive in Tribal Wars 2, such as the new espionage and counter-spying system we first saw at GDC this year. With both games having a different feature set, the original will continue to exist alongside its shinier sequel. “We still have a full-fledged team on Tribal Wars 1, they still keep working on the game every day, and they still keep producing new features and polishing the game.”
As someone who came to InnoGames through playing the original Tribal Wars, Protic feels the pressure in making a new game that lasts just as long. “Definitely, but I put that on myself as well.” Even so, as a game that needs a strong community to survive, the upcoming closed beta will be the hardest test of all. “Tribal wars is not a content game, so we don’t keep putting content into it, but what we are dependent on is the community of the game.”
‘If you join a really good tribe and you enter their forums what you’re going to see is who are they going to attack next, how they’re going to attack.” It’s this element that introduces the hard-to-master part of the MMORTS – knowing how to plan and co-ordinate attacks for maximum effectiveness. The new spying features will hopefully add to that blend of strategic planning and counter-strategy. Portic also added that “for Tribal Wars 2, feedback is going to be humongous important for us. What are our next steps, where did we screw up, what don’t they like?”
A Mobile Understanding
The face of gaming is changing. What would once be played on a desktop computer has now migrated to a tablet. Genres that used to dominate the large screen have now been shrunk to fit on a small handheld. The result is that more of us play games, in more locations than ever before. We’re constantly on the search for the best forms of entertainment to fill our lives with, wherever we happen to be.
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It’s why games like Tribal Wars 2 will be launched on iOS and Android alongside the traditional browser-based experience, with new technology underpinning those foundations. For MMO veterans that are waging war with internet spaceships or slaying dragons in fantasy realms, these strategy games might not be meaty enough to earn our time. But, as pocket-sized online experiences, they’re intriguing enough to satisfy our appetite for online gaming while out and about.
That said, competition in the mobile gaming space is fierce. It’s not just about delivering interesting mechanics, but wrapping them in a highly polished experience that’s easy to navigate and understand – skills that InnoGames has recently been pushing hard to catch up on. But, as Hamburg’s own mayor said in a speech during the grand opening of InnoGames’ new office, you can’t really know your competitors until you’ve sat down and had a beer with them. Considering how good the local German beers are, I’m certain it will be an enjoyable experience.
Gareth Harmer / Gareth “Gazimoff” Harmer has been blasting and fireballing his way through MMOs for over ten years. When he's not exploring an online world, he can usually be found enthusiastically dissecting and debating them. Follow him on Twitter at @Gazimoff.
