Slitherine’s The Hot Seat continues to be an amazing show we look forward to each month, as it brings strategy game fanatics closer to the people making them each month. In its fifth episode, the guests were Sophie Kristina James, Producer of Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition (a remaster that we absolutely loved) at Firefly Studios, and Imre Bartha, Game Designer for the upcoming Sudden Strike 5 at Kite Games.
Both developers had quite a few things to say about their respective projects, so we highly recommend watching the episode below (which also features other surprises). That said, we’ve collected our favorite bits here if you’re looking for some quick insight into both games’ creative processes.
“In testing, when we were testing mission balance for the new content that we brought to Crusader: Definitive Edition, if our QA team was struggling, like really really struggling, to beat a mission, banging their head against the wall saying ‘I’ve been at it for a week. I can’t beat it. I want to give up,’ that’s how we knew that we’d done our jobs because those players with 20 years of experience, they know exactly how everything works,” James said of the process of trying to please the old guard rather than new players with Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition’s all-new content.
She also added the team at Firefly decided to expand an already massive RTS with co-op after learning through surveys 70% of players wanted co-op: “So it was very very clear to us that we’d be adding co-op mode.” The move paid off, as it’s been one of that Definitive Edition’s most praised extras. Similarly, Firefly wanted to feed the more demanding crowd, and thus the Sands of Time trails were born, but doing timed countdowns was never an option “because those annoy everyone.”
Kite Games’ Imre Bartha, meanwhile, went on to explain how he’d quickly moved from “scenario design” to “game design” and how the jobs were markedly different: “A mission designer is more like building Lego constructs, and game designer focuses on the Lego pieces themselves. By that I mean the mission designers usually have to know the game very well, because you design player experiences… As a game designer, you’re focusing on core gameplay elements, balancing… coming up with new systems…“
Bartha also pointed out that, when working with a game like Sudden Strike 5, which tries to make historical battles fun, a tricky balance between realism and engaging game design has to be struck. That said, “World War II provides a great framework to work with… So there are lots of given data and events.” It’s easy to see where he’s coming from, yet making the same conflict enticing for players after 25 years of Sudden Strike games is no small feat. We’re hoping for the best with this one.
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