[Pzt_Kanov]

Close Combat: The Interview
The president of Atomic Games discusses real-time wargaming and the CC series with IGN.
February 04, 1999 - With Close Combat III done and out the door, we thought it would be a good time to catch up with Keith Zabalaoui, president of Atomic Games, to find out what could be in store for the series, and what impact he thought the games have had in the strategy and wargaming markets.

IGN: Would you say that the Close Combat series--along with a handful of others, such as Sid Meier's Gettysburg--have carved out a new kind of genre: real-time wargaming?
Keith: Absolutely. The first real-time wargame I can recall was Larry Bond's Harpoon. I think it showed us how much could be done with real-time.


IGN: Do you find that most aficionados of the series are coming from traditional, turn-based wargaming or from the real-time strategy crowd?

Keith: That was certainly true of our first 7 games, which were all turn-based and hex-based. For those, we found that most of our customers were age 30+. With the Close Combat series, its more like 20+.


IGN: Are Close Combat's similarities to real-time game like Command & Conquer coincidental, or were those kind of games a motivation to do a real-time wargame?

Keith: At the time that we were doing our first games with Three-Sixty Pacific (who also published Harpoon), I watched someone refuse to get up and go to the bathroom because he was so engrossed with Dune II. When I saw that, I thought, "I want to make a game that will inspire people like that!"


IGN: Does it become frustrating to see so many publishers on the RTS bandwagon, and seeing so many RTS games succeed (and even more fail)?

Keith: I am disappointed by so many "me too" products. I think we've lost the spirit of experimentation that we had in the 80's. And yes, it is frustrating to see Close Combat sell only 200,000 units when other RTS titles sell 5 times that or more. Its frustrating because I know how much work we put into these games. We also have to model reality and history, which are constraints our competition doesn't have.


IGN: Why do you think there have been so few other real-time wargames? (We can't even think of any others recently apart from Sid Meier's last game.)

Keith: Wargames are a niche market. And as we get further and further away from the time period we're covering, I think we lose more and more people. I had a 20-something person tell me he didn't know the difference between World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. It's also extremely difficult to design a game that's really a simulation at its core.

I tell people that Close Combat is a game, not a simulation, but there are many parts of the game that end up being a simulation. For instance, we simulate as closely as we can, the characteristics of small arms fire, including muzzle velocity, throw weight of the slugs, rates of fire, etc. Most RTS games don't do this. They don't have to. They also don't have to worry about historically accurate maps or units or weather or supply... This is all overhead that we have to deal with and it's daunting.


IGN: How have sales been for the series? Has Atomic been satisfied? Has Microsoft?

Keith: Worldwide sell-through of CC1 and CC2 has been around 200,000 units for each game. That tops sales of our previous games by a factor of about ten. So, yes, we're very pleased with the sales.


IGN: What is the status of your relationship with Microsoft now? Are you working title by title with them, or was it a three title deal? Will Microsoft publish your next game(s)?

Keith: Contrary to what I've read on Usenet(!), Microsoft did not purchase Atomic Games. We are still wholly owned by, well, by me. The Close Combat series has been done title to title. Our relationship with Microsoft has always been very good and I have every reason to believe that if we were to propose a game that interests them, that they will want to publish it.


IGN: What is next for the series? Is an expansion disc a possibility? Why hasn't there been any expansion discs in the past?

Keith: We really haven't decided. I doubt there will be an expansion pack. The general feeling is that most expansion packs are given short shrift by retailers. There are exceptions, of course.


IGN: Many of the current real-time strategy games like Myth, Shogun, Wargames, etc. have or will use 3D engines instead of the 2D engines pioneered by the earlier titles. Do you see Close Combat going in this direction, or perhaps another Atomic wargame done in 3D?

Keith: I don't see Close Combat going to 3D. I don't think it would add anything to the game but it would take a lot away. 3D has its niches now and I think it will become more attractive as the technology matures. Atomic does have a 3D research project underway, however.


IGN: Could a land-based wargame be done in real-time and in a 3D engine?

Keith: Of course. But before Atomic does it, we have to make certain that we don't loose the crisp look that you get with pre-rendered sprites or at least that the trade off is worth it.


--Jason Bates

[Jatke]

IGN: Could a land-based wargame be done in real-time and in a 3D engine?

Keith: Of course. But before Atomic does it, we have to make certain that we don't loose the crisp look that you get with pre-rendered sprites or at least that the trade off is worth it.

This is the crux of the TBF debate. Other than the graphic presentation look and feel, the game mechanics of TBF are considerably more advanced.

[dj]

[Jatke]

"realism and authentic graphic presentation of 2D top down view"

Simulating a real world 3D battlefield strictly in top down 2D isnt realistic. How exactly does 3D sacrifice more realism than 2D, which is missing most of the spatial Z axis.

Authentic is an adjective that isnt applicable given that neither 2D or 3D iCC s authentic. Authentic is 150 guys in full regalia, LARPing a gun battle somewhere in NW Europe with live ammo and explosives.

And it isnt an industry-wide issue. The industry has embraced 3D whole-heartedly, leaving 2D behind for family games, low budget titles and flatworld die hards. If TBF had the budget for AAA 3D graphics, CC would have seen a dramatic resurgence in players. Had TBF been done in 2D, the shrunken remains of its fan base would have been happy with it, but sales would have been confined largely to that relatively small demographic.

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