Age of Wonders 3 - Interview @ GameWatcher

Nick Horth of GameWatcher published an interiview with Triumph’s Game Director Lennart Sas to get some details on the new expansion called Eternal Lords.

GameWatcher: Eternal Lords is bringing a whole bunch of new content to the table for Age of Wonders 3 players. A lot of other studios opt for smaller packs of DLC, so why does Triumph go for these big expansions instead?

Lennart Sas: We’re all very old-school gamers, and we just really like those big expansion packs. I’m not sure it’s the best business sense, but we prefer giving players a whole bunch of new features packed together for a whole new experience. Some people cut them up into smaller pieces, we also see some people selling what are essentially expansions as full sequels, but as old-school gamers we prefer to do things the traditional way. We want to give good value for money, and rekindle interest in the game that may have faded over time.

GameWatcher: How do you plan what’s in each new expansion? Do you listen to what the fans are requesting, or is it more an opportunity to add what you wanted to add in the base game?

Lennart Sas: It’s a mix of both actually. When making a very complex game like Age of Wonders you need to give things time to mature. When you’re in the thick of development you often run out of fuel in terms of new ideas, but when you’re looking back a few months down the line you can see what all the fans are saying, analyse and play the game yourself, and then these new ideas start to emerge. For example, the new race relations system we’ve added, the ‘Unifier’ victory, this all came forth from iterative development. Once you have the game out there selling and generating revenue, then you can start tweaking it and making it better. Continued development like that is a great benefit of this digital age, of development as service, where the community is right there for you to gather ideas from, get feedback from. It’s been a huge change for us from the usual model of working directly with publishers.