Supreme Commander
- Platform: PC
- Published by: THQ
- Developed by: Gas Powered Games
- Release Date: Q1 2007
- Genre: Strategy
- Multiplayer: Yes
- Online: Yes
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Chris Taylor Interview Continued..
-- August 8, 2006 by: Chris Remo
Shack: In terms of the balance side of gameplay, one thing you've frequently mentioned is that you're not a big fan of the rock/paper/scissors model of balance. Can you speak a bit on the distinctions between the three factions in Supreme Commander, both in gameplay and background?
Chris Taylor: Well, with rock/paper/scissors, you create a unit that very specifically has a weakness against another unit. Imagine in a computer wargame, you wouldn't really create a rock/paper/scissors, you'd create a circle that has twelve components, or ten components or eight components, and you'd say this beats this beats this, until it goes all the way around and the snake eats its own tail. That system means you have to look away from reality, and nothing can be superior just because. In real life, there are things--units and vehicles and equipment--that are completely superior. They have no weakness. There are examples, where if you have the XYZ, it's the best there is and nobody can beat that. And why do you have the XYZ? Because you have superior technology.
The Germans in World War II had all kinds of things that were just superior, hands down, to their Western counterparts. The reason they failed was that they had bad strategies, bad leadership, they were too ambitious. They thought they could do ten times what they could really do. That's what their fault was, but some of the equipment they had was fine. If you were trying to design the game that accurately reflected World War II, you would purposely make the panzer weak to such and such, because you'd say, "Well, it's a rock/paper/scissors game, we have to give the panzer a weakness!" But there were very few weaknesses of that tank, and it would be meaningless to capture those in a game so you'd have to create a meaningful weakness.
Do you know, offhand, what the weakness of the panzer was?
Shack: I can't say I do, off the top of my head.
Chris Taylor: It was called twenty Shermans banging on it at once, okay? [laughs] That's not a weakness! That's Western production superiority, that's what it's called. If you design a game based on rock/paper/scissors, you're stepping away from reality. You've moving away from reality to make something to fit a spreadsheet, and a good design does not belong on a spreadsheet.
Shack: So, presumably, the factions in Supreme Commander still have themes or, I suppose, gameplay tints to them. Can you speak about that?
Chris Taylor: Sure. So the United Earth Federation is effectively a future version of modern NATO today, so a person who really doesn't want to get too bogged down on a lot of alien units can jump right in and play UEF. The Aeon are the weirder spherical shapes with harder to recognize visual design, but I felt some people would really enjoy that. When you're playing the game and you're fighting that faction, you want to feel like you're fighting something that's very different from your own faction. The Cybran were enslaved by the institution that is the Earth with cybernetic augmentation, which is when you take a computer and implant it into a human to create a superhuman.
The fictional backstory of the world really supports the three more than pure arbitrary design. Our website has the whole timeline from beginning to end that you could probably read in fifteen minutes. It's so concisely and beautifully written out, that I would love it if you could point your readers towards it, hyperlink to our timeline, because it's good. We love our fictional universe and we've done so much work on it, but I'm not the guy to succinctly summarize that entire timeline, which takes place over a thousand years with all of these wonderful bits of fiction.
Shack: I'll be sure to send them in that direction. On to other things, can you say anything about the cooperative multiplayer?
Chris Taylor: We haven't officially made any statements about that. We're not not really talking about it yet.
Shack: This may also fall into the category of things you can't talk about yet, but in regards to both single- and multiplayer, what kind of other goals are you exploring rather than just "Destroy everything on the opponent's side"?
Chris Taylor: We have a lot of really cool things planned for our campaign to break it up from the routine that you're used to. I can't go into detail right now, but I can at least issue that teasing promise.
Continue to the next page to hear about aircraft and Supreme Commander's economic model.
