I want to start off by asking you a question; where did the last shooting game you played take place? I’m pretty sure most of you will probably answer World War 2 or some time in the future. This is completely understandable as we got so sick and tired of having nothing but WWII shooters for almost a decade straight, companies just stopped making them all together. Now I’m going to ask you an even harder question; What was the last shooting game you played that took place during the Civil War? Odds are you’ve never experienced one, but not for long. Campfire Games is currently working on a game that will take you back to September 1862 so you can experience the Maryland Campaign during the Civil War. Using CryEngine 3 and with over $140,000 raised through 2,500 backers, you know this is going to be very realistic. We recently got to talk with Campfire Games Co-Founder Mads Stojko Larsen to discuss War of Rights.
GC: While most developers tend to do a war game setting in World War II or futuristic, you decided to do a game based during the Civil War. What made you decide on taking that direction?
CG: I’ve always been interested in history and especially the American Civil War. Having a FPS market saturated with futuristic and modern set games as you pointed out, certainly made us pick the era of the Civil War. In short: we’re very passionate about the conflict and we feel like we’ll be able to hit a rather unique period and way of fighting with our game.
GC: You have also done crowdfunding through both Kickstarter and PayPal. Can you give some insight on how well that went?
CG: It went very well! Due to our succesful Crowdfunding campaign we’re now able to work on the project full time as well as hire the most needed team members in order to bring the project to a finished state.
GC: How important would you say it is to make sure that it is realistic to how it truly was during the Civil War?
Campfire: It’s very important for us to achieve the highest possible authenticity while at the same time achieving an enjoyable gameplay experience for the players, perhabs, less interested in all of the minute details of the Civil War.
GC: Did this influence the decision to use CryEngine 3 as the game engine?
Campfire: CRYENGINE has always been a leader in terms of the graphical features and especially well suited for large levels with a large amount of vegetation. Further more, it is built to support a FPS game from the ground up, which helps us quite a bit.
GC: Will this game allow the player to choose whether they want to fight with either the Union or Confederacy?
Campfire: Yes, in the first test release “Skirmishes Phase 1” players will be able to choose to join either the Union or Confederacy. Within each faction will be a number of regiments available that fought at that perticular battle (level) which is loaded on the server.
GC: How large are the maps players will be playing on?
Campfire: Our maps are 4x4km, which means we’re featuring the battlefields of the Maryland campaign of 1862 at a nearly 1:1 scale. The first test releases will, however, only feature certain sections of the maps known as Skirmishes.
GC: Can you give us some insight into some of the customization players will have with their uniforms and bodily features?
Campfire: The uniforms will be tied into which regiment the player chooses to join. I.e. a hardee hat will be required to be worn in the black hats brigade etc. Further along in the development we want to allow players to customize their faces and facial hair.
GC: Since War of Rights will feature online battles, do you have an idea or goal on how big you want it to be?
Campfire: Skirmishes will be relatively limited in scope and support what is commonly supported in most of the games today. The complete experience featuring our historical battles game mode is set to support over a hundred players.
GC: If the game does well on Windows PC, would there be a possibility to have the game be ported over to Mac, Linux, or consoles?
Campfire: There is a possibility, yes. At the moment we’re 100% focused on the PC Windows version though
GC: How can our readers keep up with the ongoing development of War of Rights?
Campfire: If you want to know more about War of Rights, please feel free to check out http://warofrights.com/ or our forum at:http://www.warofrightsforum.
