MoW2 Instinct?

[Popalu]

Hi Instinct,

I subscribe to UK PC Gamer Mag and your quotes in the September edition are alluding to there being a MoW2 in the offing and that a full sequel is required for continued success to the game.

The article is a 3/4 page lead on page 11, and it talks about Assault Squad and it's DLC, Vietnam and the new Condemned Heroes taking over 1C with all it's variations, but there is a quote from Instinct which appears to suggest a MoW2 is is on it's way

"...Even with the radically different stories, Condemned Heroes and Vietnam aren't going to change the tried and tested Men of War formula.

But Chris Kramer, founder of the game's developers Digitial Mindsoft, was clear that the approaching Men of War 2 would do just that. 'Men of War is at the point where it requires a full sequel to be successful in the future. Since Soldiers:HoWW2, the game hasn't drastically changed away from the core concepts. I still beleive the game can be much, much better than it is now. To make it hugely better, we need to start from scratch'...."

So are you creating a MoW2?
Are your starting from scratch?
Will Gem 3 be used?
Will all missions from all the previous games be ported to the new engine or available as DLC?
When can we expect an official announcement on here or are they misquoting your intended meaning?

[Zebah (szebus)]

Will MoW 2 be an mmo game ?

What will the core changes be to the original game ?

and so on ...

[Instinct]

Well, MoW 2 hasn't been announced nor verified at this point yet, so I can't answer most of your questions.

I don't know all quotations as I don't have the magazine yet. But the intended meaning of my statement was that we from Digitalmindsoft will only continue the series if it's possible to widely improve the game. Expansion packs other then Men of War: Assault Squad are out of question for us.
The game has reached a point were it has to drastically change to be competitive and successful in the future and for this to happen you can't continue adding and improving the game slightly while your main focus is to create new content. The game itself has to transform, it has to be become vastly better.
So if a MoW2 is going to happen and if we are involved in it, it will be dramatically different to previous games. This of course doesn't mean that core features of the game like physics, direct control and partial realism will vanish, but that the game itself has a fresh new start with features and content it really needs and focuses exclusively on elements that create pleasure for players.

[Savino]

The only thing I ask is better physics! (not that the current one is bad, not at all, but a improvement would be very nice)
The destructive environment could be better like the houses reacting more realistic to the shots, trees could break apart, rocks could be deformable, more particles, volumetric light and smoke... and my favorite, ragdoll!

Having those things you can leave the game intact! (but some new wars would be great... kinda tired of WWII!)


PS: 3D would be a nice gimmick to play with!

[Bullet_Force]

Well, MoW 2 hasn't been announced nor verified at this point yet, so I can't answer most of your questions.

I don't know all quotations as I don't have the magazine yet. But the intended meaning of my statement was that we from Digitalmindsoft will only continue the series if it's possible to widely improve the game. Expansion packs other then Men of War: Assault Squad are out of question for us.
The game has reached a point were it has to drastically change to be competitive and successful in the future and for this to happen you can't continue adding and improving the game slightly while your main focus is to create new content. The game itself has to transform, it has to be become vastly better.
So if a MoW2 is going to happen and if we are involved in it, it will be dramatically different to previous games. This of course doesn't mean that core features of the game like physics, direct control and partial realism will vanish, but that the game itself has a fresh new start with features and content it really needs and focuses exclusively on elements that create pleasure for players.

I'm thrilled that you haven't shied away from the reality. MOW is a solid game don't get me wrong but its well past a massive/overhaul update if its going to be competitive in the future. Also you'd want to work on marketing, most people have never heard of this say compared to Company of Heroes, a few more advertisements around the Internet wouldn't hurt. I do my best to help out where I can posting threads about the game on forums when you have a Steam sale but even then its hard just to even find some good screenshots and especially videos. I know you do a lot of trailers for the game but people are more interested in gameplay videos.

Lastly while I think single player is nice I'd say the majority of players that play this game are more interested in the multi-player aspects, single player tends to be something you play once maybe twice then thats it. The Gamespy system needs to go, replaced with a fully customized thing similar to what other titles have. A system that would allow the easy transfer of maps between host and players for instance would make a big improvement to multiplayer.

[Instinct]

We have two distributors who have really invested a lot into marketing and pushing the title. Their territories have vastly been doing better than all others. So yes, I do agree, marketing is a key element, however something that isn't as easy as just doing it. Blizzard can invest more money in a trailer, than we can invest into our whole game. So you need to see things in perspective.
We as independent developers have always believed that marketing can't just come from the publisher alone but is a joint venture, but even then, it's not our key focus and for every minute spent on marketing, we can't work on the game. So we need to make things wisely and chose smart ways above pumping out millions (which we don't have) into marketing. Whether a publisher will do a lot of marketing depends on many things, for instance how risky your title is and that depends on a lot of factors as well, platforms, costs of development, experience of dev team, strength of the franchise, previous sales of previous titles. Also the games' topic, marketing a sheep farm casual game is a lot easier than marketing a WW2 game. So I agree, there needs more to happen, but don't underestimate the difficulties.
Besides that 95% of the media attention (free marketing) is given to 5% of the games out there.


Ironically our numbers have shown quite the opposite. Only 1/3 of the owners of Assault Squad have played online multiplayer at least a single time, while over 2/3 never even activated their cd-key. And here we talk about mainly a multiplayer expansion.
While I agree that with GameSpy providing little improvements over time, changing to another system is helpful, it still remains a fact that there are many big titles out there using GameSpy or GameSpy similar technology. So it's not the cause of all evil.

[DJ Szopen6]

If there would be a MoW2, I must say it would be great if it is about late Cold War or our times warfare.

[ZoNedd]

I would love a Cold War-era game, but there was no "official" conflicts, just some skirmishes here and there, so that wouldn't work. The Afghanistan thing wouldn't work for a full game. But Modern Combat would be neat, I think.

[Zeke Wolff]

So you would call the eight year long war between Iraq and Iran a "skirmish"? Then you also have a lot of wars in Africa, and in Asia (India vs Pakistan) and of course, the wars in Middle East between Israel vs several of its neighbors. Who said that a cold war era war HAD to involve Russia and/or USA?

~Zeke.

[ZoNedd]

Well, if you're trying to sell a game about the cold war, then it kind of has to involve the US and/or Russia. So there's that.