IGN.com ETW Post-Mortem with CA

[PBI]

I'd like to see CA finally throw a bone to the fantastic modders it has supporting its games by paying a selection of mod crews to create the expansion campaigns for them.

Napoleonic, US Civil War, Fredrick the Great, and many other explosive events all across the globe during the period that this game engine could cover would make a fantastic "must have" expansion. And, personally, I have much more faith in the decisions of the better mod crews backing this game, than I do the CA standard employees when it comes to what should and/or should not be in a campaign.

And just imagine the quality of a mod/expansion that would be created if the mod team(s) were allowed licensed access to the full game code.

It's a nice idea, but I don't see CA releasing their source code to modders on a freelance basis any time soon. As I understand it most companies tend to be VERY protective of their source code (understandably so, since their entire business hinges on it staying a secret).

Besides, as I see it two of the main advantages of mods over vanilla are:
*Because modders work for free and don't have strict deadlines, they can put a lot more time and manpower into their mod giving it a level of attention to detail that CA just can't match with a paid staff and a shipping deadline.
*Because mods don't need to turn a profit, they can afford to focus on a niche market which only a fraction of the customer base will be interested in (such as a very intense focus on historical accuracy, or an unusual setting for the campaign).

I suspect that, rather than any deficiency on the part of the CA staff, is why the quality of the better mods tends to be higher than vanilla. I suspect it also means that if the mod teams were required to work to a deadline and a budget and cater to a broad customer base, we would see the level of attention to detail drop.

I think the best bone CA could throw to the mod community at the moment would be to release some tools to make the game possible to mod in the first place. I'm very interested to see what the standout mods for Empire will be, but I'd like them to stay free, esoteric and lovingly detailed for the time being.

[NimitsTexan]

One real interesting thing is, because the data for the 18th century (both statistical and narrative) is so, so much more plentiful, once the modding tools are released it should be relatively easy to make a hyper-historical version (tactically, anyway) of ETW.

[The Spartan (Returns)]

IGNPC: Are there any particular games from other developers that have inspired or informed the overall development of Empire?

Kieran Brigden: Naturally we play a lot of strategy games, but we also try and sample everything that's out there. There's a Left4Dead contingent in the office, a big Team Fortress 2 following and I'm still playing Imperium Galactica 2.

Awesome.