I am Mike Hergaarden, one of the brothers from M2H Game Studio, working on the WW1 Game Series (Tannenberg and Verdun). AMA!

Why World war 1? What aspects of the war did you want to nail 100 percent?

Well, overall I can't say 100% (there's no trench foot/endless waiting, and just having 1 life - it still needs to be an enjoyable game as well), but we did want to make a big effort on the realism part so that you can really catch a glipse of the WW1 experience.

As for individual aspects:

We do nail uniforms and weapons 100% (sometimes if we do miss a tiny detail our community quickly points it out and we'll address that) We also have native voice actors for all our factions, so the french actually speak french, buglarians bulgarian etc. Gameplay wise, we did want the more realistic 1 shot kills, instead being able to catch multiple bullets like in the bigger titles. Because WW1 was so much about trench warfare, we wanted the battles to be actual trench warfare ;). On the western front at least (Verdun). Overall we're really trying to stick to the facts and only "improvise" if it's required to still make it an enjoyable game.

Yeah!

I remember a few years back Ian McCollum from Forgotten Weapons made a post on the Steam forums describing the incorrect sighting of some French rifle and you guys responded being like "we know but we made it slightly bigger to make it easier to use in-game" and I thought that was really cool.

Ah you're right indeed, the sights are off as we needed to find a balance with the game/fun.

Hey mate,

Several people have complained about women being present in fighting roles in WW2 games. What is your stance on this authentic nature of keeping it male?

Well we did very briefly consider adding female soldiers to the russian army as those were actually present (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Battalion). However relatively speaking they were few in numbers, we did not want to over exaggerate it but stay true to history.

will you add these lads great history along with Harlem hell fighters.

“Tirailleurs were formed in 1857 and served France in a number of wars, including World War I (providing around 200,000 troops, more than 135,000 of whom fought in Europe and 30,000 of whom were killed”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senegalese_Tirailleurs

Who knows! Our next update for Verdun contains a new map and squad:

"This squad we’re going to leave as a surprise - what we can say is that it will be representing some of the lesser-known combatants involved in significant actions on the Western Front."

https://www.ww1gameseries.com/roadmap

What is your advice to a guy who wants to start his own indie gaming company?

What did you learn later on that you wish you knew before starting?

Start right now! Never doubt too long or ask too many advice, you'll learn best&quickest by just going for it and possibly(/probably!) even failing a few times.

I can't recollect a specific thing that I really wish I'd knew before starting, except of course that every step on the way was in hindsight so valuable and I wish I'd done that sooner (for example hiring extra freelancers).

What is it that appeals to you about starting a gaming company? The business side, programming/art..or do you already have a specific game in mind?

What are your plans going forward? Do you guys plan to support Tannenberg after it's release? What are your plans to bring players back to Tannenberg? And are you working on a new project?

We started updating a public roadmap and keep supporting the entire WW1 series (https://ww1gameseries.com/roadmap).
First thing is to get TB released (and Verdun will receive all of those fixes as well). The next big thing will be to update Verdun on PS4/X1 so that'll it be on par with the Steam version again.
As for getting more players in TB: We do notice that the long early access is harder to maintain nowadays. That was easier back with Verdun when we were one of the first early access games on Steam. The current launch announcement+sale and upcoming winter sale(s) should help us get to the TB launch with a nice player base, the launch itself should attract quite some more players as we can see that there are a lot of players who have wishlisted TBand those seem to be waiting for it to leave EA. Our main focus is on the things I mentioned above, but we are of course already very slowly exploring what could be next!

Hi mike. PS4 player here. Really enjoyed Verdun and played it for a while til an update pretty much broke it. (Sound problems, pink and white character textures, etc) Came back when a new update fixed it all. Servers are pretty quiet now so don't get to play much either. Will Tannenberg see a console release and if so what would you do differently to better maintain the playerbase? Also is there a fear of splitting said playerbase with two games? Cheers.

Yeah that was an rough update on PS4! We're actually first officially launching TB on steam in Feb 2019, and then our main focus will be to update Verdun on both X1 and PS4. So it'll get all fixes/improvements of Steam. It'll also get bots in the frontline mode to ensure a long lifespan even if there are truly no other players around. And yeah, we'll triple check that update so no more pink characters ;).
TB for console has not yet ben confirmed, but we have been designing all our work so that it'll be much more streamlined to get there. For maintaining the playerbase that time: The game should be much stabler and there will be bots from the start, so games don't die out as easily. I think those 2 differences will be the biggest chance.

Thanks for doing this AMA Mike. I really enjoyed Verdun back when it released a couple of years ago, I remember coming across a review for it and becoming interested someone was making an authentic WW1 trench warfare-esque game. Sadly, the Verdun servers have since died out which makes me and most of my mates a little sad that we can’t play anymore due to dead servers or player count. Besides Squad Defence, are there any long lasting plans to ensure a long lifespan? Cheers man, best of luck with the game.

Yeah this is a common issue with (indie) games. To make this less of a game breaking issue and to try to kickstart matches we always have bots enabled in Tannenberg.

For Verdun we'll also be enabling bots in the next big update, details will be announced soon. This was done especially with console in mind and low populated servers/the night hours of the day. We know not all players like having bots around, so we'll try to find a middle ground.

Pineapple on pizza, yes or no?

Nah! Never tried it though :O

Verdun was and still is one of my favorite FPS's but, by the time I really got into it the servers got really quiet. Is there any plan (if possible) to bring people/bots into Verdun as to bring it back to life? Or is all development focused on Tannenberg from now on?

Awesome to hear it's still among your favorites! Our main focus should be Tannenberg plus supporting the entire WW1 series. (I'm saying "should" as that has not yet really been the case, we are making this shift now). However, besides Verdun "maintenance" updates we will be doing a big Verdun update so that it can have a longer lifespan. We hope that will bring more people to Verdun, and more importantly, keep players longer. Bot is also a very important topic there as it's definitely required on consoles and low pop server regions. We'll announce these plans quite soon.

What are some of the toughest parts of researching uniform and equipment for the various factions?

I don't do or oversee this research myself. But I do think it is finding the correct source references. It's hard to find correct source material for all of the squads. Furthermore sometimes there are different variations, e.g. we had a player complain about an australian medal being incorrect and gave proof of the correct medal. However, we based that one on a medal that someones australian grandfather actually received. So sometimes it's even hard to decide which of the several options we'll display as being the default for a certain squad/uniform etc.

This is perhaps one of my favorite Indy games I have over 200 hours in verdun but less in tannenburg. I was really glad when I saw that sound update for verdun.

When you update something on tannenburg do you carry those over to verdun? I know the games are similar just not the reciprocity between their designs.

Also Player count has been an issue do you see that changing much?

Thanks!

Thanks for playing both games and cool to hear you liked the sound update especially!
We designed our "codebase" so that both games are in the same (Unity) project, so when we make a new "build", both games share the exact same .exe and code. So by default that does indeed mean that every change goes to both games "automatically". Of course we do (need) to make some changes apply only to a certain front. We have recently also made the console share this same project, making it much easier to bring all changes to console as well.

Player count is an ongoing issue for all indie multiplayer games i guess. This is why we want utilize bots more: it helps to kickstart games and keep players around a bit longer so that actual player matches can be formed. We are announcing some plans for Verdun soon that will hopefully bring it a longer lifetime.

How are you planning to bring in more players? Because I have a problem finding games not populated by bots, which is kinda sad for games this good.

Luckily both games are on the rise recently and upcoming sales will help. Furthermore we see a huge amount of people who have wish listed Tannenberg and who seem to be waiting for the full release. People seem to be reluctant during early access which I understand. So I have good hopes for TB's release. For Verdun we're announcing plans soon which should help attract more players but most importantly to retain players longer.

Any chance of having a demo or a free weekend to check it out? I've been interested in both titles but I've read reviews where the shooting is arcade like which is not what I'm interested in. I'd like to see for myself before purchasing. Does this play more like red orchestra 2 or battlefield?

It's in between those games, but a bit more towards RO2 I guess. Best is if you give it a try indeed. We do want to do free weekends and I believe we are discussing that with Steam, just can't say when that is though. If you wishlist the games you should get a steam notification(?). Also don't forget you can always try the game for an hour and if you reallydon't like it use Steam refunds.

If you could go back and make Syrnia again, what would you change?

Hah, fun question and cool to see a question about Syrnia! I don't have any regrets or things I would change. I did hate the fact that players always nagged about moderation and claimed there was mod power abuse, but I can still truly say that was always nonsense and that that fear seemed based on nothing. Perhaps I could have change the communication to try and prevent this? Although I fear gaming communities(/people) will always have a negative side.

I would do things differently now but that's more because both my own skills/opportunities and the gaming landscape have changed (so nowadays it would be a 3D RPG and have more of the open world/survival aspects)

Hi Mike! Also a Syrnia player, but not an old one. Started after the ten year anniversary. Thanks for the hundreds of hours of playtime! To answer your question, I got logged out of reddit and happened across this post while viewing all subs ;)

I’ve played with the idea of making something akin to Syrnia, but probably more along the lines of a 2D idle/rogue-like. However, I often find myself rebuilding the initial protocol/architecture details over and over again, never quite happy with them. I think I’m on iteration ten or so. While making Syrnia, how much effort did you put into that early design/prototyping phase, or did you just kind of run with it and use the experience to learn?

I wish you guys the best with Verdun!

Hah damn, so you joined Syrnia years after I already passed it on. Awesome to hear that it still attracts new players up to this day.

" While making Syrnia, how much effort did you put into that early design/prototyping phase, or did you just kind of run with it and use the experience to learn? "
I didn't throw away any prototypes(or features) when making it. I launched it having only the first island finished and with some limited features (Mostly mining/smithing/woodcutting/combat levels 1-10 I guess?) and just went from there.
I did make a few other browser based games before Syrnia(Warrior Fields, Robot Revolutions and some smaller stuff), so that helped me gain the required experience in terms of programming etc. and that's also a good practice in terms of "finishing" something.
I hope you'll be able/dare to finish one version, you'll only learn by going for it and possibly failing. It can be quicker to just go for what you have in mind right now and if you really think an overhaul is in place it can become a version 2.

" protocol/architecture " Is it the codebase that you're constantly redesigning..or is it the gamedesign?

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Hey, good to see an AMA from one of my favorite games. I do have a couple questions

1-Is there any plan in the future to limit the impact of high tier players either through skill or ranked mm? Only reason i ask is there are some players (the [PC] clan, most particularly [PC]Zab) That singlehandedly wipe every game to the point where lobbies empty a few minutes after they join.

2-Is there any plans to make Artois(i think? It’s the tiniest map) larger or change it; the German side always suffers in this map.

Hey, thanks for the questions.
1: Trough matchmaking is not possible I'm afraid as you really need thousands of players active at the same time in order to create separate matches based on skill. CCU is already a problem on consoles and low pop server regions. We are evaluating if we could&should address this a bit on a gameplay level perhaps. Alternatively we could possibly have the autobalancer also take skill or winning-side into account (currently it is based on playercount only). So this is on our mind.

1. Hm, we could double check this in our win/lose stats. If it's clearly the case we would make such adjustments when there's time for polish, we've done quite a few of these tweaks in the past.

How many people do you guys have to do game of this size? If possible, how many in arts/programming/story/general design?

We've been working on this full time since 2013 or so. But back then it was just us 3 founders (so we'd do everything from game design to art & programming).

Nowadays it's about 15 people full time. When I compress the people into full time roles: 3 founders (we do mostly programming, design, history), 1 animator, 2 3D artists, 3 mappers, 1 audio, 6 programmers, +/- 2 marketing & community support(multiple people).

There are also a few exception, when we did the big sound overhaul we briefly had an external audio studio of 3-5 people fulltime extra. The UI overhaul also had an extra UI artist, trailer work is only when we need it, voice actors are a one time job, etc.

Do you think you guys will add 64 player servers to Verdun in the future?

We're announcing our plans about player count very soon!
Would you like default 64 player servers? And would you then change anything about the game?

How do you market the game on a budget?

There's no single answer that I can give that'll work for other games as well. It's all timing and creating opportunities. People sometimes say it's all about "luck" but I think you can create "luck" by not giving up and just keep creating more opportunities.
In the case of TB we're "lucky" to have a healthy WW1 Series community via Verdun, so that definitely helps. Verdun was "lucky" to be among the first Steam early access games.

I loved playing Verdun for a while, but one of the problems I had was that it seemed almost impossible to make any progress on unlocking squad abilities. I'm almost guaranteed to not be in a squad with someone I have experience with if I join random squads, and so I'm basically always in a 1914 squad. This is usually ok because everyone else is also in the same situation, but I'd really like to be able to play with some better abilities unlocked. Do you think you'll ever change how squad years work, possibly like tying it to the year of the map?

Yeah we are thinking about this these days. We have for example discussed to make it a personal squad level per player (e.g. Im level 100 Landser), and then take the average of the 4 players squad levels (so instead of tieing it between two players) you'd always be at least level 25 when playing with brand new players, instead of level 1 when playing with strangers. But we havent decided yet as we'd have to see if there are players who do prefer the current/old system.

Will we ever see golipoli or a siani based game? IE anzac vs ottoman empire?

Too early to say! We need untill feb 2019 for the TB steam release and next up would be a few months focus on the Verdun console update. So it's not planned, but definitely not off the table either.

May I please ask you something? I’m graduating in December with a degree in Interactive Media, and Game Design soon. What would you recommend for a portfolio? Are you looking for interns? I hope this is okay to ask you, I really appreciate this AMA.

I've recently talked with some other game studio CEOs and everyone says the same: The best people by far always go a little bit extra, we never want anyone to work more hours or so, it's simpler then that.
When you ask someone to do something like "fix this bug" or "create this weapon 3D model" the best people don't just literally do just what's asked and nothing more(this is so, so common!), but they actually think about the task, verify that it works they even think whether we actually missed something in our request and add that themselves. This is really important since it's impossible to literally write down the exact specs for, say, a programming job.
We have not had any interns yet, but I'm currently in the process to get this going and hopefully select our first early next year.
As for the portfolio: I really appreciate to see you have made some work on your own and managed to finish something (even something small).

Is Verdun still multiplayer only? Any plans for single player in Tannenberg? I love the looks of it, but I'm not a plan if multiplayer.

Both games do not have a story/campaign based singleplayer. However, the Tannenberg main game mode can now be played alone with bots (so 64 player battle). That can be offline or just in an private match(so that you can adjust the games settings, bot difficulty etc.).
Verdun will be getting bots as well and can then also be fully played offline with bots (or as private match).

Hi, I'm actually not going to ask you about your new games, I am old school ;). I grew up with Syrnia, started playing when I was 11 and stopped when I was 20ish.

- I wanted to know what inspired you to create Syrnia.

- What it was like to see it grow in popularity?

- How did you decide to let it go?

Hah awesome that you knew I made Syrnia! Did you find this AMA by chance, or are you following our social media etc?

I was of course inspired by many other games I played, Runescape was the probably the biggest inspiration as I have played that for a few years. It's mainly the class-less gaming (all seperate skills) and freedom that attracted me there.

Growing was cool of course, especially if you somehow saw proof of it being mentioned in a local game magazine in some other country, or when some fan made themselves a custom tshirt with the Syrnia logo or so. It's stuff like that that really makes you realise when something becomes bigger. Seeing the registered player numbers rise from 10,000 to 100,000 registrations easily grows normal as it happens so slowly.

To let it go: Well I knew the game had more potential, and deserved more work but I had lost interest a bit: it was mainly hard to work on it because it was such a big and set world already, even the smallest change had more impact and/or more community resistance. Maybe most importantly was that the community (issues) cost a lot of energy. It still was hard to actually let it go because I wanted it to go to the right people.

Oh man, +/-10 years later I'd now love to make a somewhat similar game, but then as 3D MMORPG with the lessons learned and gameplay ideas of this time.

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I’m a bit late to this AMA, but I figured I check - what was your handle for Verdun? Would be cool to know if I actually got to play with you fantastic gentlemen!

You can easily recognize us when we play with dev tags: "[DEV] Mike", where the "DEV" is marked red. You can always verify it's us by checking the steam profile (https://steamcommunity.com/id/M2H_Mike/)

When I just need to work and test stuff I'll play as just "Mike" to avoid the chat...but you could still check the steam profile to see if its me;).

This reminds me, I want to build in a statistics that keeps count of how many matches with developer(s) in it you've played.

I'm 33, but for reasons that don't matter, wasn't allowed video games as a kid and as an adult now, am not at all a gamer. Just a disclosure.

I've always felt conflicted about video games that portray actual battles of WW1 and WW2, that it's somehow disrespectful or something. I mean, we're 1 day away from the 100th anniversary of the day of armistice when WW1 ended, and you're talking about a game.

I understand how crazy that is, because of all kinds of reasons. It's touchy because American Civil War reenactments are totally okay, but a reenactment of 9/11 or some battle from Iraq or Afghanistan.. Wouldn't be okay.

And regardless, the work you're doing: A) is popular And B) takes an incredible amount of time and skill to execute I'm sure you are professionals etc. So I'm not knocking you.

You said AMA, so... I guess my question is: How do you find that balance between a good game vs showing respect to the fallen?

In the simplest answer: I do believe that even a good WW1 game does honor the fallen.

Yes when plainly put it sounds cruel to be enjoying a game about (or making a business out of) WW1, however there is a much more important problem, being that WW1 is too easily forgotten/overlooked. Here in the Netherlands I feel like my history lessons were 95% about WW2. However, the recent worldwide political issues remind me all too much about the messy start of WW1, I do hope we can learn from history to stop repeating it. The difference with those recent wars you mentioned is that there is much less personal emotions/opinions attached to WW1 compared to 9/11 etc.

As for the balance: We haven't experienced WW1 being a touchy subject, so the balance we're mostly busy with is realism vs gamifying elements.

What was the main reasoning behind making tannenberg so different from verdun? With the new ui and spawn system, it is a completely different game compared to the early beta

We will also be bringing these changes to Verdun actually, the UI at least. We believe the old UI is one of the weakest links of the game so we felt we had to improve that. Graphically it is now much more up to par, functionally we will be working hard to make it much more user friendly as well. As for the spawn system: The spawn map can really help players understand the battle and where they are plus give some freedom in spawning (You can choose to risk more spawn killing and be closer to the battle... or spawn safely and flank from somewhere etc.). We think that new Verdun players are quite overwhelmed right now with the immediate spawning in that cramped trench with no further explanation, so the spawn map could also help address that.

I'm pretty sure the first time I played Verdun was through an internet browser, am I correct?

Yep! Before Verdun actually took off we made many smaller web games and hosted them on our webgame portal www.wooglie.com. That was quite big back then with unity webplayer games. Many external webportals cross-linked our games so it got a huge reach.
It was called beta.verdungame.com back then and I think it only featured rifle deathmatch in vauqious in the beginning?

The webplayer support died when all browsers started killing Flash etc. plus when we had the game on Steam it quickly grew too big for browsers.
I think it was really helpfull that we had that webplayer in terms of getting the game tested&played plus beginning a first community.

How will this be different than BF1?

Verdun is already out, and was out a while before BF1 actually. The main difference is that have a bit more realism over the whole: Realistic uniforms, weapons and one shot kills. You didn't see tanks and machine guns all over the trenches back then ;). BF1 is a great game, but for a more realistic take on WW1 theres our series.

Plus aside from the realism I personally love our pace more: the 1 shot kills make every shot count.

Will we see any games that take place in some of the less-well-known battlefields such as the Middle East, China/the Pacific, or Africa?

Otherwise, are you guys thinking of Gallipoli?

We'd love to do more fronts, but we have our hands full with Verdun&Tannenberg for steam and the console updates for the next year at least. Nothing has been announced yet, but we are of course already making future plans.
Every time we'd expand the WW1 Series with another front it would automatically be one of the lesser-well-known remaining fronts ;)

Have you thought about just adding the new fronts to the older games? With relatively low player counts, it can divide the player base to add new games.

We could have made Tannenberg as a "DLC" for Verdun, but I think that would make it even harder to sell and reach more players. Adding it to the older games for free wouldn't be realistic.
Instead we think we can reach more players by making each front easily accessible (so as a standalone game) and keep attracting old&new players + keep all games in the series up2date so that even the older (Verdun) will still be attractive to play in years to come. This is also why we have the front switching in-game.

I love your games! I haven’t played Tannenburg in a while, what new additions can I expect when it fully launches? Keep up the great work.

Thanks, I hope we can lure you back in for a few matches once it launches :D.
We'll have a special launch event which is still a secret.
Furthermore the bulgarians will be added (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=iyUjCk03a0Q) other possible (post)launch updates will be planned on the roadmap: https://ww1gameseries.com/roadmap

Is there any plans to release any games about the Korean War?

That and musket warfare would be very interesting alternative themes for a shooter, but we're sticking to the WW1 series for now.

Given what you know about WW1 and the conditions in which they were made to fight, how do you think they'd feel about President Trump skipping the memorial visit because the weather was bad?

They should have used a better excuse.

Will it include Russian army?

Tannenberg? Yep it already does! Also romanians and with launch bulgarians.

Did you guys fix the issues of glitching in the terrain on Verdun? I bought it early access and have nearly everything unlocked I've been to lazy to sit there and unlock everything lol

Haha, hope we can entice you to finish unlocking one time ;). What terrain glitches do you mean specifically?

Mmmm, Never heard of these games, but they sound really cool! But I wonder, How did you make a realistic WW1 game without being a constant trench warfare?

By making it the big feature;)! Verdun (Frontlines game mode) is all about the trench warfare which can be very interesting strategically. But yeah sometimes it is a big standoff between 2 trenches with just an impossible no mans land in between. As for Tannenberg historically the trench warfare was much less prominent on the eastern front, it was more about open fields with a lot of room for maneuvering (TB Game mode: Maneuver).

Seeing how you've done an authentic take on WW1 are there any other games bassed on wars/battles you're intrested in making?

If it must be another FPS: My first thought would be something with musket warfare would appeals to me, so pick a battle in 16th/17th century ;).

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I think so, even if it's just for the motivation of keeping up the hard work. It helps to set these PR milestones and release some news every week or month.
How: Depends on the product, but you should try different outlets and stick with the ones that work for your game & yourself (i.e. how much effort is it to keep posting per platform).

Have you played battlefield 1776? That's my current favorite non WWII game.

Ah no never played it. Did play BF 1942 quite a lot on which this was modded, just never really got into mods.

Hi there Mike. I've been a supporter of Verdun since early access on steam all those years ago. And Tanneberg as well.

Apologies if this is a repeat question but, are there plans for any other fronts making a appearance in the future? I remember in 2015 or so (100 years since Gallipoli) there was talk in the community about a Turkish front or a Gallipoli map or of a desert/arabian front with the Ottomans. Is this a future possibility?

Thanks for your support over all the years!

We did poll about future fronts back then indeed and Gallipoli was indeed in the top 3. So yeah it's still a future possibility as we'd love to add more fronts to the series.

Gallipoli/Dardanelles expansion/game coming up in the future? If so, you should totally do a beach landing mission a la Saving Private Ryan.

We'd love to do more fronts, but have no public plans for this yet. Would definitely be cool.

How does one startup a gaming company like this? Do you source your own employees right off the jump and start working. What type of licenses do you need?

Well a lot of time has passed haha, I bet you could do it much quicker if you have set goal. I never pictures myself at this point, but just took 1 step at a time.
2005 Made websites & web based games, 1 person

2009 Officially registered a company as individual

2011 Got my masters at University

2013 Verdun Early access (now with 3 people: my brother Matt, friend Jos and myself)

2015 Verdun launch ( +/- 7 people fulltime?)

2016 Verdun PS4 & X1 launch

2018 Now: +-15 people full time working on the WW1 Game series

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No licenses are required here in the Netherlands, if I undertand your question correctly. You do need to register your company and pay taxes of course. We work only with freelancers right now so we don't even have employees, I would like to change that though and get fixed staff.

I have a family friend who loves the historic and overall accuracy of this game. Wanted to say amazing job and keep it up for him.

As a question, any plans on the Spanish civil war getting done at all? I know he's bang into it and owns land that covers old battle sites.

Thanks!

Interesting setting, but we'll have our hands full with possible other WW1 fronts for the foreseeable future.

So why not 2MH?

Ah man, missed opportunity, we'd be listed first in every alphabetically ordered list.

Were you to make another game like Verdun and Tannenberg, but it couldn't be based in WW1 or 2, what time period would you base it on? Do you see another game coming from M2H that isn't based on one of the World Wars? For example, the Napoleonic Wars which put into use muskets and baker rifles? I think it would be really interesting for players to experience the conditions that soldiers use to work in!

Hehe fun "dilemma"!

If it must be similar to Verdun&TB in the sense that it must be a multiplayer FPS, then I would indeed go for the "musket shooting era", so yeah Napoleonic wars sound really interesting. I have actually jokingly discussed this before with Matt. I love the "simplicity" of these older weapons so much more compared to the "futuristic" rifles we have nowadays.

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" I think it would be really interesting for players to experience the conditions that soldiers use to work in! "
Then we'd best build a "Trench builder tycoon" game where you're only responsible for the upkeep of trenches, so Verdun without warfare ;).

Good lord and I late to this. But here I am with a question you’ve probably heard loads before.

Just as you’ve brought Verdun to PS4 and Xbone, will we see Tannenberg come to console? And maybe see both see their way to Switch eventually?

No switch plans as have limited time and best first focus on PS4 and XB1 then.
We are interested in bringing TB to consoles but there are no officially confirmed plans. We first bring all recent changes to Verdun-consoles. And as all platforms share the same code in our project nowadays, a TB console version should be much easier&smoother to deploy...

Why did you have to listen to a small minority of the community and leave Verdun a jump-shooting strafe-dancing game?

The problem is we really do care about the community. It's hard when for a choice between A or B you'll be disappointing a vocal group either way. It was safest to keep it in-game, while we ourselves never intended this and have never liked it.

However we'll be announcing our Verdun plans soon where we address some issues in Verdun to give it a longer lifespan.

First off I love Verdun. I personal think it was better than Battlefield 1. Second do you think that y’all could make a something like a dlc or texture pack to make everyone look like sponge bob character and make a Bikini bottom map ? ( Just like the game battle for the bikini bottom) Lastly I just want to say keep up the good work and Work !

Heh, flattering to hear you love the game and even like it better then BF1! It is however surprising you love Verdun and still think it needs more sponge bob ;). Short answer: We could, but I don't think we will :P. Thanks!

Hello! Thanks for doing this! My question is, are the characters historically accurate? Reason I ask - these days it seems game companies have to sacrifice historical accuracy to be more politically correct. I’m curious if you feel that pressure as well and if players will find themselves in a battle in WWI being yelled at in a trench by a black female captain for example.

Thanks in advance!

Yep! Once we have received feedback about the buttons on a specific uniforms being off once and we corrected that as we do aim to keep it accurate. This is also why our voices are really native (french don't speak english with a french accent ;) ).

No we don't feel any pressure to be "politically correct" as we are plainly aiming to be really historically correct.

Why did Verdun suck so bad? Why are people still online?

Apparently and luckily it didn't suck so bad for everyone!

Also we as developers are still supporting and actively updating the game so that definitely helps in keeping the game alive.

Does your company arbitrarily decide not to add reticles or cross hair for non-iron sighted play to its FPS'? Does Verdun deny me easy center screen reference?

Its one of my "ok, i won't even try it, then" qualifiers if i have to guess where the middle of the screen is.

I should say i've heard some of your games do support reticles, though i don't know which ones are which. I'd like to commend that decision if you allow for center screen reference.

Thanks for sharing your view on this, we always appreciate also hearing why people choose not to pcik up our games.Well, we see it differently: in Verdun you should almost never actually shoot without using iron sights, that is why the cross hair is almost non existent when not aiming down.

We go for a bit more realism (1 shot is usually 1 kill) we couldn't combine that with a game that allows perfect targeting when hipfiring (which is also quite unrealistic on itself). Sorry to hear that doesn't match your preference though!

Are you planning on using microtransactions (ofcourse you are, the gaming industry is sick with them) and how much is the hitler as a foot soldier dlc?

Hitler DLC: Impossible as we'd have to make him invincible in order to be historically correct ;).

Microtransactions: As founders we are personally also sick of lootboxes and other DLC. However we do see where this idea originally came from and and do believe it can be done respectfully/ethically for both players & the company.

We have players that played Verdun for close to 3000 hours, at some point the server hosting costs wouldn't be properly covered as our base price is quite low (but then again, there are players who only play a few hours of course).

Next to those costs, we also do maintain our games for much longer, Verdun is being worked on for 5 years now and now that we have the games branded as the WW1 series it'll keep receiving fixes for years to come. Having some form of DLC would help keep this sustainable.
We currently have no plans for DLC for TB or Verdun (besides the completely optional supporter edition). But we are evaluating if there can be a sensible extra DLC income source, but of course the community should approve of it as well.

...but why more War games? Why not trying to develop something.. not being redone over and over and over again? Doesn't feel like we were at the pinnacle of Gaming 10 years, or so, ago? Isn't everyone tired of war game after war game. Hell we ran out of wars, so it's back the old WWI drawing board. I stopped playing war games, why? I'm colorblind, and this repeating pattern of "grey uniform, on a grey foreground, with a slightly less grey background makes it really fucking unbearable to play these games.

I strongly think we need some fresh ideas.

Good luck and I hope to see your company grow!

Heh fair point, as you can see on our website we did make so many different types of games ( https://www.m2h.nl/games/ ) and I personally would love to make something completely different, so we will. Business wise our WW1 series is very healthy plus it's awesome to work on such a big product. So we'll keep working on these war games as well. However even when working on this "war" game, we do share your opinion that the big war games all do the same tricks and are very shallow, so we do have a drive to try and innovate within this static genre (which is hard: Players are so used to the standard set by big games such as CoD&BF! Trying to innovate does come at a cost, players aren't always open to change or learning new systems).
Thanks for the question & the good luck wishes!