World in Conflict Wrap Report

Key Strengths

Some of World in Conflict's key strengths are undeniably the Reinforcement Points, the tactical aid system and the destructibility. Reinforcement points allow us to keep and maintain the drop-in multiplayer, which really is what makes World in Conflict stand out. Unlike many other strategy games, it doesn't become a race to have the most resources, but focuses on managing and using the fixed resources everyone is given.

I'm really fond of the whole idea that we can actually have drop-in multiplayer, and that it's so easy to just start it up and get a quick fix without any hassles. This accessibility really speaks to me a lot

The tactical aid element gives the players another level of tactics, where they actually gain points after performing well in the game, and the variety of the different possibilities really makes for some dynamic and interesting play.

Last but not least, the destructibility is also something that makes World in Conflict unique, as the maps will actually evolve according to how the players play. Individuals can change the conditions for both their own team and the opponents by burning down forests and blowing up buildings and bridges. Since we also have a line of sight system for all of the units, there are definitely some tactical values in using the environments.

Areas for Improvement

Most developers would probably agree that an important aspect of making a game is making it easy for the user to understand quickly. You don't want the player to be confused over the rules and conditions or how the controls work. We probably came very far in terms of making World in Conflict accessible, but could always do better.

Another thing we could have benefited from would have been to put more focus on the development of our own in-game tools. A lot of developers are used to working with very temporary and difficult tools, but we felt we could definitely gain from putting a little bit more time in developing them, especially since, in our case, a lot have been made available to the community after release.

Lessons Learned

We realized that we really benefited from having a lot of content finished before the single-player team started to work its magic. It's a lot easier to get a flow in the single-player development if most features are finished. And we also confirmed that it's great to make the game playable from day one. This way, you can really get a good picture of the game and get it tested early on, so that's definitely something we'll keep on doing.

Audience Response

The hype before release was pretty good, and of course, it's very encouraging for the team to get as much as possible. The first previews were very positive, and you could really sense some anticipation for our concept, even though it took some time to reach out and get the name out. But after attending something around 30 different LAN parties and conventions, we started to become known amongst the gamers and the press. We were pretty confident from the start, however, as all of our testers were positive and we knew we could only make it even better from there.

Once the game was released, it got some very good reviews in a lot of important magazines and on a number of well-known websites. The whole international press seemed to be in agreement that World in Conflict was a fresh new take in a very conservative field. Both the media and the community seemed to embrace the action-oriented gameplay, the drop-in multiplayer and the story-based single player. The story especially seemed to be strongly appreciated in America and Russia, which is probably understandable. A very pleasant surprise was to see how gamers of different kinds could take a liking to it, regardless if they otherwise mostly played RTS games or shooters.

Some more distressing things that started to get much more noticeable when the online community really hit it off on Massgate was the lack of teamplay and the common occurrence of team-stacking on public servers. We still try to encourage players to play fair, and we're even implementing some anti-stacking measures.

Personal Thoughts

Martin Walfisz: The development of World in Conflict was by far been the smoothest and most fun time I've had as a game developer. We ran into very few obstacles, and reached almost unimaginably good results. As for the game, I'm really fond of the whole idea that we can actually have drop-in multiplayer, and that it's so easy to just start it up and get a quick fix without any hassles. This accessibility really speaks to me a lot since I don't have much time to spend with it due to work, family and whatnot. It really fits me perfectly.

Petter Sydow: I'll have to say that I really love the Fuel Air Bomb. It's such an enormously evil invention I had no idea existed before I worked with this game, so it definitely takes number one on my top list of favorite game weapons.

Martin Walfisz

Founder and President, Massive Entertainment

World in Conflict

Petter Sydow

Production Manager, Massive Entertainment

World in Conflict

Wrap Reports are intended to complement reviews by providing a post-release viewpoint we seldom see, that of the developer and/or publisher. Since introducing this format in November of 2003, we have had the pleasure to publish quite a few, primarily within the RPG and online world categories, with selected action and strategy games also represented. A complete list of the previous ones may be found on the next page. - Ed.