Interview with the author of "God of War: Remake" Return to the buyout system from free system

2025-09-23 22:18:37|Myriagame |source：minecraft skins

Yesterday, the first completely remake of "The Challenge of God of War" was officially launched.This 18-year-old RPG game not only adapts to modern devices, but also integrates all DLC content, adds new careers and tasks, giving a new generation of players the opportunity to explore: why this game twenty years ago made everyone crazy.Since its initial release, developer Infinity Plus 2 has launched a number of derivative works and sequels, including the popular mobile game "Gem Wars" and the slightly inferior free value-added game "God of War Challenge 3".But little known is that the origins of God of War Challenge date back to the longer-lasting late 1980s, and its original floppy prototype was even thrown into the trash by publishers.To restore this history, the media interviewed Steve Faulkner, the chief developer of "The Challenge of God of War".

When "The Challenge of God of War: The Challenge of Warlords" was released in 2007, the game industry was completely different from today.At that time, the personal computer game library had not been completely moved to the Steam platform - even the first 3A game "Bioshock" that started the digital distribution precedent has not yet been logged on to Steam - games released through digital are new.At that time, manufacturers such as Baokai Games occupied the field with popular works such as "Gem Maze", "Spelling Tycoon" and "Fantasy Ball", but digital distribution has not yet become the "next trend"."The Challenge of God of War" was born in this context: it was deeply inspired by "The Maze of Gem", but expanded the elimination gameplay into a complete RPG experience, which eventually triggered a craze.However, what most people have not noticed (even at that time few people noticed) is that the "warlord" in the game's subtitle is not an element that is added at will - it directly points to Steve Faulkner's previous successful work: the turn-based strategy RPG "Warlord" launched in 1990.

·Looking up at the stars in the trash can

“That was the eighth game I developed at the time,” said Australian developer Steve Faulkner. “My first game was released in 1983, when I was 15 years old and I only sold 32 copies in total.”

The game is called "Looking for the Holy Grail", and it is available on the ZX Spectrum 48K platform.On the note (with his home address) accompanied by the game cartridge, he begged all players who like the game to send $5.In the end, 32 people sent the money, and this experience made him completely obsessed with game development.Since then, he has been creating new games, distributed through exhibitions or sent to growing mailing list subscribers, until 1989, when Faulkner developed Warlords, a game that combines role-playing and turn-based strategies for the Amiga platform.He firmly believed that this work was of great value, but the publishers did not agree with it. He repeatedly hit a wall, and even his last hope, SSG, rejected him.The president of SSG had no interest in the game and even threw the floppy disk into the trash.

The publisher's boss didn't pay attention to it again until he saw his son playing the game on Amiga computer - even so, he still commented that "the picture is terrible."It turned out that the boss's son picked up the floppy disk from the trash can and installed the game, and had a lot of fun.Under the persuasion of his son, the boss was finally willing to examine the game seriously and finally decided to sign the contract.Today, "Warlord" has released three sequels, one physical card game, and has also derived the "Warlord: War Cry" series.Obviously, that child's persistence was confirmed.

I was really surprised when Faulkner continued, “To be honest, now I have basically bid farewell to the strategic game field, and I have hardly played strategy games since then.”I blurted out: "You must have played Total War, right?" It's hard to imagine that a person with such an important position in a certain game field can completely get rid of it."I just try it out," he admitted, "I'll buy all the strategy games, but I only play one game each, and then I'll think, 'Great! Have a great time! But now it's time to change one'."

Instead, since the development of God of War Challenge, elimination games (and "a large number of Diablo games") have always attracted him.It is reported that he should have focused on the development of "Warlords: War Cry 4", but he was addicted to "Gem Maze" late at night and realized that this game contains special potential and was eager to incorporate it into his creations.As early as 2004, he began to develop this game that combines gameplay and traditional fantasy RPG, originally named "Warlord: The Brave".In just a few days, he built a core gameplay prototype, and then wrote a plot with the world view of "Warlords" as the background, and completed the complete game in just a few months.But three years later, he still has not found a publisher willing to issue it.

“To support the development team for three years, I sold almost everything I could sell,” Faulkner said, who always believed in the unique value of the game.Eventually, Japanese publisher D3 Entertainment became interested and signed the game, and planned to simultaneously launch the PC version and NDS ported version.The final version is much more complicated than the prototype that was quickly built in 2004.“Give an old-school developer three years,” Faulkner said with a smile, “we can make such a work.” It turns out that the publisher’s initial indifference became an advantage: “It actually works for us because we have enough time to add more content to the game.”

·Anti-"cheating" technology

In "God of War Challenge", the Gem Grid style of Gem Maze is given "combat function".Gems of each color represent a kind of magic power. Eliminating gems can increase the character's magic value, and accumulate to a certain extent to release more and more skills - some skills will change the grid layout, some will directly attack the enemy, and some will have both effects.Skulls will also appear in the grid, which can launch attacks after being eliminated; in addition, there are gold coins used for store consumption, as well as experience values ​​for increasing character levels.It covers all the core elements of RPG, but it is presented through Baokai Game's elimination gameplay - in other words, it builds the most attractive elimination mechanism into the core of a huge fantasy story, where players can explore maps, complete tasks, and make friends.The key to the success of God of War Challenge, and one thing that many games trying to imitate its modes, overlooked is that the enemy will also "play actively eliminate".AI will not only use its own skills to attack players, but also need to match gems and accumulate magic values ​​like players, and even deliberately avoid leaving grid layouts that are beneficial to players at the end of the round.This also led to the general impression of the game by players at that time: "AI seems to be cheating."But the truth is exactly the opposite.

"This is the thing," Faulkner explained. "We did some focus tests, and the player reported that 'feeling AI was cheating', so we found a way to solve this problem." To find out the root of the "feeling of cheating", the team tracked various data in the game and found that the problem was in what they called "lucky events": when a skull that triggers attacks randomly appears in the grid, or forms a "four-trick" combination, if it happens in the player turn, it will be considered "normal luck"; if it happens in the AI ​​turn, it will be considered "cheating".Experiments show that only when the player's "lucky times" is 2 to 3 times that of AI will he feel that the game is fair.Therefore, the game was released after the release of the market, reducing the "lucky probability" of AI: if the grid should randomly generate "match three" gems or a row of skulls for AI, the system will occasionally replace it with a weaker combination, and such adjustments will never be made to players.So, although many people think that the game is "targeting players", the reality is completely the opposite.Not only that, the development team also specially added a "mistake mechanism" to AI - sometimes missing opportunities to eliminate triggering advantages.As Faulkner said, the team summarized the experience from the "Excellent AI Design" series of "Warlords": the more mistakes AI makes, the more people can feel "humanized".

From paid games to free value added mode

Twenty years later, "The Challenge of Gods" is still of great significance to Infinity Plus 2.The first generation of games is still available to players (the sequel with excellent reputation "God of War 2" has been removed), and there are also authorized works such as "Marvel's Challenge" and "Magic: God of War 3". Even the average reputation "God of War 3" is still in operation.Of course, there is also "Gem War".

"Gem War" reshapes "God of War Challenge" into a free mobile game, building a huge fantasy world view.Players need to form a four-person team to combat AI enemies by eliminating the grid.The game also adds a light online element: players can fight against "other player customization teams controlled by AI", and can also join the guild to complete the goal together, constantly "liver" level and unlock new character cards.From a design perspective, "Gem War" has a variety of in-game currencies, and at least three continuously updated "battle passes" are obviously to maximize player consumption.But I played for two months a few years ago, but I never had the urge to pay.I remember talking about this with the late Kotaku excellent contributor Mike Fay, who proposed a "conspiracy theory": Infinity Plus 2 was deliberately designed to "let players avoid paying" because they themselves are opposed to freemium models.So I thought, I might as well take the opportunity to pay tribute to Mike and ask Faulkner this slightly embarrassing question.

“What he said was not completely unreasonable,” Faulkner responded.

“We want to make the game as 'free and friendly' as possible,'" the veteran developer explained. "There are several core principles for this game. I made it clear from the beginning: make sure that nothing in the game is something that players cannot get through hard work; at the same time, make paid players feel that it is worth spending and feel real value." Although the game still includes a "game mechanism" (players can pay for random rewards), Faulkner said they deliberately avoided the drawbacks of such games, and this design is the key to the success of "Gem Wars".The game has been in operation for 11 years and is still updated twice a week, which is enough to prove the effectiveness of its model.“We are in a good state right now,” Faulkner added, “but it has never been and will never be a ‘billion dollar annual revenue’ game. But we are very happy with that. Maybe the publisher partners will be a little dissatisfied because we are ‘not greedy enough’, but there is nothing we can do about it!”

This means that "God of War Challenge 3" has to be mentioned.This freemium game is considered by many players to "do a very poor balance".After two years of updates and adjustments, its Steam platform's evaluation has barely reached "mixed reviews" - partly because of major changes in the gameplay (players can move three times in a row, and the gems support diagonal movement), and the other part is because of its "too demanding in-app purchases"."I'm not ashamed of this game," Faulkner said. "I'm proud to deliver a 'high playability and beautiful graphics' work on time." But the development of this game coincides with the lockdown period, and Australia is particularly hit by the epidemic.During that time, people were often banned from going out, and team members were scattered everywhere and panic.Faulkner told me that the studio was just one step away from his home, but sometimes it was impossible to go there at all - policemen on the street would ask those who went out to show relevant certificates.“I don’t want to blame the pandemic,” Faulkner added, but he also admitted that the pandemic is indeed an important factor influencing.The game was under bad reviews after the sale, and the team was in trouble for a while."Can we still make it what we originally thought?" He mentioned that the reviews improved later, but so far, the number of reviews of the game is still less than 1,000, and the peak number of online players has never exceeded 221.“Players clearly expressed their feelings,” Faulkner said, “we received all this feedback.”

·Return to the origin

So, the team decided to return to the "paid buyout game" model."God of War Challenge: Immortal Edition" launched this time is a remake of the first generation of games. It is further optimized based on the remake of the 2019 Nintendo Switch version. It not only includes the additions to the first generation of "Revenge of the Plague Lord" DLC and the Switch version of "Legend Return", but also has added new chapters.The game is faithful to the first generation in almost all aspects, with only major adjustments to the "grid processing mechanism when no turn is available".The "magic loss" mechanism in the first generation - both sides will lose all magic power for no reason - has always made players dissatisfied."That feels bad, right?" Faulkner asked, "like 'I was punished for no reason'. So I thought, might as well change it to 'storm'? When the grid can't continue to eliminate, let all the gems explode and the magic is divided equally by both sides. This way, the player can get a lot of magic."

After personal experience, I found that this change is indeed effective.The game screen is excellent even at unconventional resolutions, and the replacement of the "magic loss" mechanism is even more pleasing.I quickly fell into the cycle of "stop fighting another game" - the sense of accomplishment brought by character growth and plot promotion, the expectation of unlocking new tasks and upgrading skills, are all irresistible... These classic elements from 2007 still exist today, but the picture has become more exquisite.I can't wait to know if it will log on to my Android tablet—and once it goes live, you may not see me for a while.At this moment, this game is running in my PC background, constantly tempting me to return to that fantasy world.

Infinity Plus 2 hopes that if "God of War Challenge: Immortal Edition" sells considerably, they will remake "God of War Challenge 2" in the same way.In addition, Faulkner also said: "I really hope to change "God of War Challenge 3" to a paid version, so that it can be more closely related to "God of War Challenge 1". I think this will be a very interesting project."

As for whether Warlord 5 will be released? Has Faulkner really given up on the strategy game completely? "I want to play a strategy game a little bit," he said, "but I want to develop one myself." Oh my god, he added: "I hope to form a team here to develop it, I will supervise and add some special content. I think this will be the ideal result. So, everything is possible! After all, Warlord is a classic series full of sentiment. Maybe only a few turn-based strategy games will be successful, and then you can easily convince the management: 'You see, we have a strategy game IP on hand, which has both professional experience and sentimental blessings, and you can do it.' It only takes 'the right time and place'."

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