Snagging pertinent Q&A's during the 4th Quarter is often a tall order. Unless you have compromising pictures/correspondence, you're left waiting and waiting, hoping that it comes back sooner rather than later. This particular Q&A with Mario Kroll, Associate Producer on Codename: Panzers, was assembled prior to the release of Codename: Panzers but didn't get the answers back until a few days ago so some of the questions seem dated. Be that as it may, we ask about the appeal of World War II for games, sacrificing realism for the sake of fun, real-time strategy games, on consoles, and getting behind the controls of a real tank (among other topics). Thanks for your time, Mario!

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Mario Kroll (Codename: Panzers) Interview Conducted by Omni

The introductions: Who are you? What is your role on Codename: Panzers? How long have you been in the game industry? Have you ever been at the controls of a real Panzer tank?

Hi, I’m Mario Kroll, and I’m the Associate Producer and English language Community Manager for CDV’s Codename: Panzers. In my position, I wear several hats, including being the guy who keeps the English-speaking games community current on Panzers and other CDV titles (through the various forums and Web sites) along with showing off Panzers to game industry editors and writers.

I’ve been with CDV since July 2004. Prior to CDV I founded Wargamer.com in 1995 and held a number of key management roles there for roughly the past decade.

Regarding a Panzer tank, actually Panzer is simply the German word for tank. I served in the U.S. Army for several years during and following the Gulf War and had a chance to see and play with several during that time. Last month, however, I had a chance to take a number of journalists to Sherman, Texas where a company called Tactical Tanks split us into teams and taught us how to drive and navigate self-propelled artillery pieces. That was a blast.

In case some people don’t know, describe what Codename: Panzers is?

Codename: Panzers is a World War II Real Time Strategy game (now there’s a mouthful) that’s being developed by Stormregion and published by CDV. The game takes players into some of the most heated battles of World War II and puts them in the role of armchair general. As each battle begins, you’re assigned prestige points, which you can use to buy men and equipment, or upgrade those you already have. Then you hit the battlefield and fight it out with the enemy.

Panzers also has an online multiplayer component, which allows players to go head to head over the ‘net, or, if you prefer, to fight the 30 missions in the single-player campaigns cooperatively. If you haven’t had a chance to check out our single and multi-player demos, you should head over to www.panzers.com to give them a try. They are a lot of fun, and give you a good taste of the game.

Codename: Panzers is already out in some territories. Does this help at all when it comes to finding bugs in the software before it releases in other territories? Or is the time spent strictly on localizing?

The time is typically spent on localization, though I can’t say it doesn’t help with some of the bug hunting. The advantage is that, for example, the U.S. and UK release versions have benefited from several patches compared to the original German release.

One of the clichés of the real-time strategy genre is the “tank rush.” With a title like Codename: Panzers how do you avoid the idea that it will all be about the tank rush tactic? What kinds of tactics can gamers expect to use?

Codename: Panzers is about tanks and, make no two bones about it, playing tanks in the game is a lot of fun. But so is handing out a real ass-kicking with grouped mortar or anti-tank infantry teams. Because there are so many different mission objectives that all require their own tactical subtleties, and because how a player chooses to build and compose his core army, game play is really very varied and requires far more than the typical RTS’ “tank rush”; at least if the player wants to be successful. ;-)

Is there one particular aspect of Codename: Panzers that the team is most proud of?

Probably the graphics engine. It is so gorgeous for a RTS title that it has inspired many of our fans to compose incredible in-game situations and then share the resulting screenshots. I can’t remember any other RTS title where such a fan culture spontaneously spawned.

Is Codename: Panzers an “evolution” of the real-time strategy genre or is Codename: Panzers more of a refinement on the genre?

I’d say Panzers is more of a refinement of the genre. We’ve gotten rid of the clichéd features like resource foraging and placed the focus on tactics and a broader gameplay experience. We’ve done everything we can to make the player feel like he’s really part of the battle, not just “Commanding from Above.” While the “raze your enemy” RTS standard can be a lot of fun, we’d like to think our varied mission objectives are a bit more sophisticated and interesting.

Codename: Panzers is packed with detail. Were there any sacrifices made in the graphical splendor department to get Codename: Panzers to run at an acceptable framerate?

I’d like to think that with one look at Panzers, most people would feel that there were no compromises made. For Panzers, Stormregion used a new graphics engine called Gepard (German for “Cheetah”) and the engine shines in every way. It’s not only fast, but it delivers lush, detailed environments 100% of the time.

The only area where I wish we had been able to do more is in the cut-scene animations where close ups of characters from the game are involved. All the cut-scenes were rendered using the in-game engine, which simply is better suited for the pitched combat scenes than for cinema-quality character interaction cut-scenes. (For example, lips don’t move during spoken dialog, on the characters.) It’s a little thing, but we’ll continue to evolve the engine and the game.

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The destructible environments are one area where the game shines brightly, as you watch barns get blown into so many matchsticks, yet the game doesn’t chug or slow down at all.

Even while you watch your troops rummage through their packs for bandages, or the enemy launches a blistering rocket volley from the Katyusha rocket launcher, there’s no noticeable slowdown or degradation of image quality.

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How much realism was sacrificed for the sake of fun?

Codename: Panzers is clearly about fun. Whenever fun and realism collided, we opted to go with fun. But, that doesn’t mean that realism was thrown overboard either. The game system does a lot of sophisticated abstraction of real world equipment and soft factors. For example the fog of war system is fairly complicated for a game of this nature. Your troops typically have no, limited, or full awareness of enemy unit presence and type based on your troop experience and dependent on whether you have direct visual contact. Your troops might get blindsided by an off-screen rocket or artillery attack, might know that there is some type of wheeled enemy vehicle ahead, or might know that there are two T-34 tanks atop a nearby hill. These kinds of subtle touches of realism, in my opinion, enrich the gaming experience but also allow players not to get bogged down with the typical aspects of games that make World War II strategy titles sometimes less accessible to mainstream gamers.

How many people from start to finish were involved in Codename: Panzers?

Hundreds. <grin>

A lot of the recent World War II first-person shooters tend to revel in cinematic action with plenty of scripted events. Does Codename: Panzers take the same approach during its campaigns?

Codename: Panzers has a pretty impressive graphics engine that makes the entire gaming experience visually attractive. However, there are plenty of embedded cut-scenes also that gracefully take the player in and out of the RTS experience to provide crucial pre- and mid-mission details, offer side missions, and the like. I think it’s tastefully done and not so numerous that the cut-scenes themselves take away from what is essentially a top-down RTS title.

It’s my opinion that custscenes have suffered ever since full-motion video was eschewed in favor of pre-rendered or in-game vignettes. How are Codename: Panzers cutscenes being handled?

As I mentioned previously, all cut-scenes in Codename: Panzers were created with our own Gepard graphics engine. This makes for really incredible battle scenes but, in my opinion, offers a little lower quality in terms of close-up scenes where there’s a lot of spoken dialog. Still, for example, when you watch the intro movie to the game, you actually get to see what the game engine can produce and more than one editor have uttered phrases like “sweet” or “wow!” That’s its own reward, and since most of the game focuses on fighting battles, I think it was a very appropriate choice.

What mission types will Codename: Panzers offer?

There are probably more than a dozen different types of mission objectives among the three campaign’s thirty missions. There are traditional search and destroy missions, but also escort and resource protection missions. There are missions that start the player in a defensive posture and require careful force protection as the mission then becomes an all-out counter offensive. There are personnel rescue missions and counter-espionage missions. There are those in cities with snipers and forward observers making your life pretty miserable, battles amid Soviet factories, the capture of a German V-2 rocket base, and many others. Codename: Panzers really packs a wallop in terms of mission variety.

It seems to be a popular setting for game, so what is the appeal of World War II for gamers?

WWII really pushed man and machine to their limits. Battles were fought, and then fought again, over a huge variety of battlefield environs, which meant you could never stick with one strategy. The best generals were always on their toes, looking for a hole in the enemy’s plans that they could exploit. And once they found a weakness, they didn’t let up, it was a constant drive for victory.

For gamers, I think this is appealing because it pushes their knowledge of the RTS genre, forcing them to pull out all the strategic stops when planning their attacks, or forging their defenses. It’s also appealing as it lets gamers test out literally hundreds of unit types in a variety of situations, something wargames from other periods don’t really offer.

World War II also involved, as the name implies, nearly the entire world. As a European publisher, we always try to find titles that have global appeal, and games based on World War II definitely have that.

Why don’t real-time strategy games show up more often on the console systems?

That’s a tough question that’s sure to incite a flame-war depending on who you’re talking to. It’s certainly not that consoles aren’t capable of running an RTS title, so I think it’s probably a control issue. With an RTS, you’re in control of dozens of units and you need quick access to those units. So a console controller, with its limited amount of buttons, just doesn’t offer the flexibility of a keyboard. In a heated battle, what would you rather do: hit F12 to call in an artillery strike, or press and hold “Triangle” “Square” and press the D-Pad left to call up a squad?

I also think consoles lend themselves to a bit more fast action play than a PC does. That’s not to say consoles are all about “twitch” gaming, but they are definitely more friendly to the casual gamer. A RTS typically requires a significant time investment to play a round, which casual gamers might find off-putting. Many strategy gamers I know tend not to take consoles seriously as gaming platforms, so there probably is also some bias against console systems that will need to be overcome before strategy games can be more successful there. Games like Full Spectrum Warrior have begun to show that non-twitch games can be done, and done well, on consoles but I don’t think the marketplace as a whole is there yet.

(October10, 2004)


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