Rob Zacny

Episode 203: Classic Career Analysis with Chris Taylor

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Go back and watch the Kickstarter video again. The first thing he says is "Wildman takes one of our favorite genres, action RPGs, and combines it with the elements we love from real-time strategy." Shortly there after he says, "At it's heart, Wildman is an action RPG." They were playing up the ARPG and RTS elements from the start and at no point were they ever really pitching it as a Lords Management-style game. The press heard Lords Management and ran with it.

I still maintain they didn't do enough to distance it from the Lords Management genre. To most strategy gamers, who are quite hostile to multiplayer and "hybrid" games, it sounds like Chris was putting lipstick on a pig and trying to sell a Lords Management game as an ARPG. Thirty seconds of him talking about coop play and tech trees on this podcast convinced me otherwise, but there's very little sign of that in the pitch video.

It kills me, because in the comment thread on RPS about the kickstarter failing, people were saying stuff like "I'm a huge fan of GPG, but fuck Chris Taylor and his DOTA clone cash-in" and "I'm so tired of having good single-player games ruined by mulitplayer." There was a communications breakdown somewhere, because barely anyone was talking about Wildman in the form that Chris pitched it.

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I stumbled on Wildman cold, and thought it was a DOTA clone. I don't remember what it was, but something about the pitch screamed M.O.B.A., (which I've punctuated there to see if I can get around the forum rewrite rules; it seems to work). Once I watched the video it became obvious that they weren't going totally M.O.B.A., but it still had a lot of that flavor.

The original intro text from the pitch, IIRC, which was shoved down in a later update:

"Imagine a game where you control a single hero—the “Wildman”—dropped into the middle of a War Zone. The battle starts. Your own army begins to engage the approaching enemy.

You support your troops with your own combat abilities and skills. You shape-shift into new forms that grant you new abilities. You upgrade your armies with new technology. You construct defenses. Your opponent switches tactics; you reconfigure your army to counter.

You push the enemy back to their citadel, their home base. You face your opponent’s champion. You each rally your troops for support. You execute your special abilities with precision. Your opponent is devastated.

You survey the battlefield: the bodies strewn on the ground, the trees burned down and smoldering, the buildings turned to rubble. You collect your rewards. You evolve.

Victory is yours. For now."

I read that, I think M.O.B.A.

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Gas Powered Games was acquired by wargaming.net

Best of luck to GPG while under the boot of their new hawkish overlord!

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That actually makes me sorta cautiously optimistic. They must have reasonable financial muscle behind them, and they already have a community who's tastes overlap to a extent. Plus the Wildman concept & SupCom both are unusual among RTS's by having a embodiment of the player in the game, which could give them a great way of anchoring someone in a MMO.

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