AB: Really good. It’s doing well, we’re very satisfied with how it’s doing. The game’s been incredibly well received, it’s got some great scores on the App Store, and we’ve done a couple updates already - absolutely new content for no extra charge. We’ve also had a few price drops too. We actually released a patch for it recently, because the main complaint we had was that there was no skirmish mode. You either had to play the campaign or do head-to-head multiplayer. So, the team sat down and came up with a skirmish mode - six maps which you can dive into, choose a difficulty and play a good game on the train.
SPOnG: SEGA’s recently announced that it’s changing focus to more mobile and digital titles. Has that affected how you guys operate?
AB: It hasn’t affected us in any way, in terms of our aims. We have a fantastic relationship with SEGA, and they trust us to make great games - which we’ve been doing for 25 years now. SEGA does see us as one of the jewels in their crown. Total War consistently scores around the 90 mark on Metacritic, and every iteration has done well for us. We have a really strong philosophy of support in terms of new content after launch - new content packs, new campaigns, all sorts of stuff. You get all that stuff together and then there’s hundreds of hours of potential gameplay that you can get from a single game when you get all that DLC.
So yeah, we’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing. And with Rome II, that’s a big job. We’ve got a lot to do still, but we’re in a really good place, and we’ve opened the doors on what we think is going to be the most spectacular, epic-in-scope but focused in details version of Total War.
Just being back in Rome is wonderful thing. Every time a bit of DLC comes out for Shogun 2, fans go, ‘Lovely! Where’s Rome II?’ So when we announced it recently, it had a very positive reception.
AB: For a long time, the studio had been thinking that we should probably do a sequel at some point, because we know it’s really popular. But like any Total War game, it makes sense to go back to Rome because there is just so much untapped history we can dive into. We actually have a massive list of the eras and countries we want to do next, and it’s just a case of figuring out which order we should do these things in.
For Rome in particular, most of the original team is still here, as well as the historical knowledge. But, a lot of new research has come out in the last eight years. We’ve learned a lot about different cultures in that era. There’s debates going on at the moment, for example, whether the spears Romans used had soft heads (so they could stick it in an enemy’s shield) or hard heads to just use as a blade tip. That sort of stuff is what we have to burrow into to get an understanding of each weapon’s effect in the game. It’s important to know that stuff. There are a lot of heads in books at the studio at the moment.
SPOnG: How much stock does Creative Assembly put into a browser-based future? I was at the Ubisoft conference and the big message was that browsers and free-to-play is the future. Anno has been taken Online. Do you see Total War going the same way?
AB: I don’t know. Speaking for us, where we are at the moment is we’re a big PC game. We do this big PC game that comes in a box, or as a download from Steam. And that's really our focus at the moment. That's what we've done, and that's what we'll carry on doing for now.
Never say never - we're always thinking about and looking at new platforms, to see how the Total War DNA would apply on each one. It’s certainly a very interesting time right now, because the platforms you can publish on are multiplying. It’s not just PC or console now, everything in your pocket can play a game. It makes things more interesting - there’s more opportunity out there, but also more risk. At our heart, the Total War team is a PC development team. We want to make a great Total War game, and also a great strategy gaming experience.
Gamescom 2012
AB: I don’t know. I'd probably have to ask our network guys about what kind of bandwidth you'd need for that sort of thing. It'd certainly be an interesting technical challenge... But it’s not something we’re looking at right now. Our focus is as a core PC title. One that will use every kilojoule that your high-end graphics card can use to make the game look awesome.
But in the same breadth I have to mention we are aiming not to move from minimum spec from Shogun 2. Many people are gaming on laptops now, but unless you have an Alienware, they can’t really compete with a high end desktop PC. We want to make sure that people with laptops can have the same core gaming experience.
SPOnG: Thank you very much for your time.
AB: Thank you!