Interview with Blackmill Games, developer of Isonzo

Interview with Blackmill Games, developer of Isonzo

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Discussing the new "Caporetto" expansion and the development process for Isonzo

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure to speak with the developers of Isonzo, the newest World War 1-themed first-person-shooter game co-developed by M2H and Blackmill Games, (who both previously co-developed Verdun and Tannenberg,)and published by the latter. Participating in this conversation were Thomas Jager, the game's Producer, and Jos Hoebe, CEO of Blackmill Games.

Interview with Blackmill Games, developer of Isonzo

Dan L:
Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. I appreciate it. I think it's going to be fun.

So this is the third game in your World War I game series, released five years after Tannenberg and seven years after Verdun. What lessons did you and the team take away from that development process and the player perception? I'm just curious how that may have influenced the development.

Jos Hoebe:
Do you want to take this one, Thomas?

Thomas Jager:
Well, I mean, you've been around for Verdun and Tannenberg.

Jos Hoebe:
There were many. So for Isonzo, we wanted to really double down on that we wanted to improve the game across almost all fronts. First of all, the accessibility component needed to be better. So we made sure that the class system was simplified, versus the one we had in Tannenberg, where [the process] to get your weapons was quite rigid. The interface made certain things appear a bit hidden.

Not that we have a super rich diversity of weapons, of course, because it's World War 1. We reworked the death experience, where now you can sort of reconfigure your role and adjust to the gameplay that emerges. That kind of [quality of life] thing was sort of missing. We also wanted to add different ways for players to grind, [to reward and encourage] players who play for longer periods of time.

Interview with Blackmill Games, developer of Isonzo

Dan L:
Which is better than, you know, just you know, paying to unlock the weapon right away. I appreciate that cosmetic DLC that you guys have been putting out. It's exactly that: just cosmetic. There's no, you know, ‘spend $10 To buy a loot box to get the weapon’ nonsense.

Jos Hoebe:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So. We definitely improved upon [the issues] we saw. Tannenberg didn't really have strong character customization and progression systems, per se. So we doubled down not just on Italy, but also on the experience.

Dan L:
Gotta give you guys credit on that. I had a fun time playing with friends. I would mostly just, you know, play in private lobbies with my friends. It was always a fun experience running around the map.

Jos Hoebe:
Yeah, yeah.

Dan L:
So let’s jump forward into something you've already touched on. Progression is one of the core aspects of the design. Since launch, it's probably fair to say that the player reception has been slightly mixed, with the loudest criticism that I've seen is that sometimes progression feels a bit too uneven and random. What changes can players expect from this in future updates to potentially mitigate those concerns?

Thomas Jager:
Since launch, we’ve already made a couple of passes there. The idea of the challenge system has always been to introduce new playstyles. In Verdun and Tannenberg, the focus was on running and shooting. That is, of course, at the core of Isonzo also. But we also wanted to give players options to, for example, be a resupply kind of person, or an engineer who builds defenses, that kind of thing. And I think the progression system that we made does play into that well, in the sense that we can ask players to just try these different play styles a little bit at a time, to invite them a little bit out of their comfort zone. And I think that's definitely not universally accepted. Say. But I do think it makes it even more interesting than simply saying ‘this much XP gets you either a new weapon’. That’s not very fun.

Thomas Jager:
I think now, because you're doing it as a conscious act, I personally feel that it also can mean more to you when you finish the challenge. And we do want to be careful here that we don't make it more of a grind than it has to be. So for example, in the latest major update, Caporetto, we introduce a class prestige system where your XP [is reset] to zero, but you, so you will lose access to the weapons again. But we did make sure that you don't have to do the challenges again, for this exact reason. We don't want it to become a chore or something. That's why we also went for numbers like do this 10 times, maybe something 20 times, but not like 100 or 200.

Dan L:
You don't want players to spend dozens of hours grinding to accomplish one single thing.

Thomas Jager:
Yeah, we don’t want players [spending most of their time] unlocking the core of the game. Like, if we have every match be, you know, ‘okay, you have to play this class for I don't know, the dozens of hours to get a shiny new badge’. That's sort of choice-driven, you don't have to do that if you don’t want to. You can basically unlock 100% [of the content] pretty quickly.