Interviews// Game of Thrones: Ascent - the Interview

SPOnG: What is the key thing that has inspired you during the development of Game of Thrones Ascent?

JR: Our inspiration frankly comes from the source material itself because the thing that is most true to the source material is this idea that politics is really the conflict in the world of Game of Thrones. It's about resolving these different conflicts through political machinations and sometimes that boils over into actually having a full on fight.

But more often than not there are lots of other ways to resolve conflicts and that's what we have tried to bring to life within Game of Thrones Ascent. We have done this by providing the social element where players are forming actual alliances between themselves and players marry their children off in betrothals. So it's that aspect of real social and political interaction coupled with the idea that you can make tactical decisions that are sometimes about battles and sometimes about trade and sometimes about intrigue. All because that's what you see being played out in the books.

Where licensed games fail is where they take an existing game and re-skin it and that is not something we're interested in doing.


SPOnG: Has George R.R. Martin hasd an involvement with the development of Game of Thrones Ascent?

JR: Yes! When we originally built the game we sat down with George and he was actively involved with the design. He is a gamer, he plays Dungeons and Dragons in a monthly group and he's just kind a nerd like the rest of us. He just happens to have written a book that's super popular and made bazillion dollars in the process. He's pretty down to earth actually.


SPOnG: What does the future hold for Game of Thrones Ascent?

JR: We're not going to expand onto any more platforms than we've already mentioned. Once the iPhone port is done we are going to dive back into game systems. There's a lot more we want to do in terms of Alliance vs Alliance conflict, additional stuff in terms of deep crafting systems and all of the RPG elements of Game of Thrones Ascent.

In fact there's a product road map on our website, a blog post I did a few weeks back that talks about the future direction for Game of Thrones Ascent. But it's very active.

Like Rich said, 100,000 people are playing a day, so lots of people are playing and there's always a hunger for new stuff to do in Game of Thrones Ascent even though few titles have as much content as this one does. As long as there are Game of Thrones fans we'll keep adding features and content to Game of Thrones Ascent.

RG: Going back to how Game of Thrones Ascent is in lock-step with the TV show, the Martells have been brought in [recently]. They hadn't shown up in the HBO show yet so players could not swear fealty to them. Now they are here and along with them a new crafting and upgrade system is being built and released.

Game of Thrones Ascent on its surface is very accessible, but as you dig deeper it is quite complex and has many layers.

SPOnG: Thank you very much for your time!