Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi sees the new Master of Orion as a form of charity.
“It was simple,” he told Stevivor in Warsaw, Poland this past weekend. “We do charity, right? Supporting museums, restoring tanks – we gifted the Sentinel tank back to Australia and support the U.S.S. Iowa in San Francisco, now in Los Angeles.”
Fair enough, but how does that translate to Master of Orion? Wargaming essentially picked up the IP in a firesale; a new iteration of the popular 4X title is now available for early access on PC and Mac via Steam.
“I don’ t want to call it charity, because this is very pro-active, interactive charity,” Kislyi explained. “We could have saved pandas or gorillas, and those are good causes too, but we realized that bringing back the legend — not just buying it out and giving away an old, free version, but reshaping it and putting it out there, outside a free-to-play model – is important. It’s important so that my son can play, and your son can play.”
Moreover, Master of Orion isn’t just something Kislyi’s son can enjoy, but something that can help him grow.
“I love gaming and I want kids to play smart games over stupid games; Master of Orion is a smart game,” he said.
To Kislyi, preservation is of utmost importance.
“Today, not many people are playing Master of Orion 2 – I don’t think many of us still have a computer that can actually run it,” he said with a laugh. “Now, we’re making something of triple-A quality; it’s close to a masterpiece. We’re listening to players via early access and we’re preparing DLC with new races.”
Kislyi explained that early access is integral to Master of Orion‘s release; as a time-honoured franchise, he wants Wargaming to get it right.
“We just released, because of the complexity of the game, and because of expectations, there was no way we could guess and put everything perfectly together without talking to players,” he said. “The game is about balance and long-term balance; it’s not about five turns, but one hundred turns. World of Tanks is easier to test; you can run fifteen minute test sessions
“With Master of Orion, one testing round requires one person for ten or twenty hours. There is no possible way we can do that within our QA process. Our players are telling us what they like and what they don’t like. There are two camps: one that doesn’t want to change anything, and ones that like the changes; you have to balance. Now, I can tell you that almost one hundred thousand players are testing it for us and telling us what they do and don’t like as they speak.”
In our review (in progress) of Master of Orion, we said that Wargaming’s got a pretty good balance as it stands.
Stevivor was sent to Warsaw, Poland courtesy of Wargaming.
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