SPOnG: Being a multiplayer-only game, and that you want to change the status quo of game pricing to a degree, what value do you see in single-player campaign modes? Do you think they're necessary in these kinds of games anymore?
Peter Tamte: It's an interesting question. I don't know the answer to that, first of all, because we're kind of in new territory. So the rough entry point for digitally distributed military FPS games was Battlefield 1943, which was multiplayer-only, and it sold two million units between the PS3 and Xbox 360 I believe. That's pretty successful by any stretch of the imagination.
My experience is that a lot of people play through the campaign but spend most of their time in the multiplayer components. Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Halo... all great games, and their single-player campaigns are great, but it seems people migrate to the multiplayer side pretty quickly and stay there.
SPOnG: Would you say that there's a mentality of perceived value for money though? That because a product doesn't come with a single-player campaign, it's not as 'complete' as say the Medal of Honors and Call of Duties of the world?
Peter Tamte: Yeah, and it would be inaccurate for us to say that for 1200 Microsoft Points we can give you the same robustness of an experience that you can get from any of the full-price games. That's not our goal. Our goal is to say 'we're going to give you a different kind of experience that you can already get from Call of Duty or Medal of Honor and for a lower price by offering less content.'
I think other people have tried in the downloadable space with one of two approaches. They either make a small game that's very niche-focused, or they make a game whose only appeal is value. Like, offering a whole bunch of maps on the cheap. We're offering a robust, mainstream experience with a fresh take.
SPOnG: What's your opinion on the marketability of a downloadable title? With a retail product, you've obviously got the box on the shelf where people can see it and impulse buy it. It's easier to advertise I guess – I just saw a huge billboard for Call of Duty: Black Ops on the way to this event in fact...
Peter Tamte: And for Fallout too, I've been seeing those adverts everywhere!
SPOnG: Clearly, it's going to be much harder to market a game that people aren't going to see in a shop though, right?
Peter Tamte: Well, the PC version will be available as both a retail and a downloadable product. And this is part of my point too, that traditionally with most downloadable games, there couldn't be a retail game. They don't have a broad enough appeal to make it happen. We're kind of proving that Breach actually has retail appeal because it will be on store shelves.
SPOnG: What about the consoles, though?
Peter Tamte: Microsoft won't let us. If it's an Xbox Live Arcade title, they won't allow a retail version.
SPOnG: Surely that makes it even more of a challenge to market?
Peter Tamte: It's a challenge, no doubt. EA and Activision are spending over £20 million marketing their games right now. We can't possibly compete with that. What I'm hoping is that people will play Breach, like it and tell their friends. That works to offset this huge disadvantage that we have (laughs).
SPOnG: Breach is using the same engine, Hydrogen, that was used for Six Days in Fallujah. Has it been updated at all since work on Breach began, or was the engine good enough to be used straight off?
Peter Tamte: The Hydrogen engine, which was originally built for Six Days in Fallujah, was made for destruction. It's the sort of thing you have to architect in from the ground up – you can't just sort of slap it in.
That being said, there's a lot of differences compared to Six Days in Fallujah – in the development budget and the game's approach – so Breach doesn't really give any insight into what Six Days in Fallujah would have played or looked like. They're just very different games. It does give you an insight into the same sort of destruction capabilities, but not in terms of how the game was meant to be played.
SPOnG: I'm curious to learn more about the story behind Six Days in Fallujah. There's a debate between respecting the soldiers and creating a game that serves to provide something of an interactive documentary. Where do you stand on that?
Peter Tamte: Six Days in Fallujah was meant to recreate the true stories of a group of marines, and to do that from both a human drama and tactical relevance perspective we aimed to give players a much more realistic take on war.
I think Brothers in Arms was a very innovative game – they did something interesting with fix and flank where they tried to introduce a new gameplay mechanic built around a real military tactic. I thought that aspect of the game worked really well, but it was still a very hard game to play. Our aim is never to equate authenticity with difficulty.
Authenticity should be about enabling players to do things differently and in a more realistic way. Sometimes that means it's more difficult, but it shouldn't be when you're using the same tactics that the military uses. So whereas a lot of other games that are more realistic tend to be very difficult games, I think that doesn't have to be the case.
Peter Tamte: It's an interesting question. I don't know the answer to that, first of all, because we're kind of in new territory. So the rough entry point for digitally distributed military FPS games was Battlefield 1943, which was multiplayer-only, and it sold two million units between the PS3 and Xbox 360 I believe. That's pretty successful by any stretch of the imagination.
My experience is that a lot of people play through the campaign but spend most of their time in the multiplayer components. Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Halo... all great games, and their single-player campaigns are great, but it seems people migrate to the multiplayer side pretty quickly and stay there.
SPOnG: Would you say that there's a mentality of perceived value for money though? That because a product doesn't come with a single-player campaign, it's not as 'complete' as say the Medal of Honors and Call of Duties of the world?
Peter Tamte: Yeah, and it would be inaccurate for us to say that for 1200 Microsoft Points we can give you the same robustness of an experience that you can get from any of the full-price games. That's not our goal. Our goal is to say 'we're going to give you a different kind of experience that you can already get from Call of Duty or Medal of Honor and for a lower price by offering less content.'
I think other people have tried in the downloadable space with one of two approaches. They either make a small game that's very niche-focused, or they make a game whose only appeal is value. Like, offering a whole bunch of maps on the cheap. We're offering a robust, mainstream experience with a fresh take.
SPOnG: What's your opinion on the marketability of a downloadable title? With a retail product, you've obviously got the box on the shelf where people can see it and impulse buy it. It's easier to advertise I guess – I just saw a huge billboard for Call of Duty: Black Ops on the way to this event in fact...
Peter Tamte: And for Fallout too, I've been seeing those adverts everywhere!
SPOnG: Clearly, it's going to be much harder to market a game that people aren't going to see in a shop though, right?
SPOnG: What about the consoles, though?
Peter Tamte: Microsoft won't let us. If it's an Xbox Live Arcade title, they won't allow a retail version.
SPOnG: Surely that makes it even more of a challenge to market?
Peter Tamte: It's a challenge, no doubt. EA and Activision are spending over £20 million marketing their games right now. We can't possibly compete with that. What I'm hoping is that people will play Breach, like it and tell their friends. That works to offset this huge disadvantage that we have (laughs).
Peter Tamte: The Hydrogen engine, which was originally built for Six Days in Fallujah, was made for destruction. It's the sort of thing you have to architect in from the ground up – you can't just sort of slap it in.
That being said, there's a lot of differences compared to Six Days in Fallujah – in the development budget and the game's approach – so Breach doesn't really give any insight into what Six Days in Fallujah would have played or looked like. They're just very different games. It does give you an insight into the same sort of destruction capabilities, but not in terms of how the game was meant to be played.
SPOnG: I'm curious to learn more about the story behind Six Days in Fallujah. There's a debate between respecting the soldiers and creating a game that serves to provide something of an interactive documentary. Where do you stand on that?
Peter Tamte: Six Days in Fallujah was meant to recreate the true stories of a group of marines, and to do that from both a human drama and tactical relevance perspective we aimed to give players a much more realistic take on war.
Authenticity should be about enabling players to do things differently and in a more realistic way. Sometimes that means it's more difficult, but it shouldn't be when you're using the same tactics that the military uses. So whereas a lot of other games that are more realistic tend to be very difficult games, I think that doesn't have to be the case.
