Off Duty Gamer: I’m excited about Privateer Press Interactive and you should be too

WhiteMoon Dreams

This week, after years of hearing almost nothing out of the licensed Warmachine action-adventure videogame, Privateer Press launched Privateer Press Interactive, a cooperative group with WhiteMoon Dreams to create videogames for the Iron Kingdoms setting. They also launched the Kickstarter campaign for their first game, Warmachine: Tactics, which as of this writing has reached nearly $500k in 24 hours. Now, there are a few really cool things to come out this partnership besides this first game, and many of
them may not be completely obvious at first glance but could have some potentially huge impact in the next few years.

The videogame industry as a whole is at kind of a weird/crummy place right now. Much like the blockbuster film, the cost of creating a Triple-A game like Grand Theft Auto or Halo is astronomical and most (pretty much all) developers just don’t have the assets lying around to fund their games. This means that when a team of developers has a great idea for a game they need to find someone willing to lend them the money to pay their wages and expenses for anywhere between 1 and 5 years that it might take to finish the game. The problem is, the people who have this money aren’t gamers; likely most of them have never made it through World 1-1, let alone a 12-hour Skyrim binge. As investors, their “job” is essentially to bet money on other people’s success, and they don’t like dangerous bets. As such it has become very hard to get funding for unproven projects; if you’re not making a sequel, a remake or a licensed game from a popular franchise you better be a big developer with a lot of success under your belt. The unfortunate reality of a lot of entertainment these days is that the audience isn’t really the customer, the publisher/studio/network is.

WhiteMoon Dreams; Privateer Press

This is where the beauty of Kickstarter (and others like it such as Indie GoGo) comes in to play. Players are able to directly fund the projects they want to see made, and developers only have to answer to the players. In a lot of ways it’s similar to how they’ve handled Warmachine and Hordes for the past decade and PP is obviously good at figuring out what people want and delivering it.

Now, obviously there have been videogame adaptations of tabletop franchises before. The Dawn of War games are a fantastic way to experience the 40k universe from your PC, and Space Marine gave you a chance to play from a whole new perspective; the Baulder’s Gate series lets players see their DnD campaigns like never before. But by and large these games had little to no effect on the works they were based off of. You can spend all the time you want playing as the heroic Blood Ravens, but that doesn’t mean they’ll have anything new on the tabletop. With Privateer Press Interactive we’ve already seen more cooperation than any crossover game before. The Kickstarter launched with the release of 8 new models for the tabletop game, all of whom will be featured in the videogame with stories and development that will be part of the overarching fiction of the setting. And there’s no reason to think they’ll stop here. Most of the new models are Novice Warcasters; those with the gift to control Warjacks but lacking experience on the battlefield. Who’s to say these six, after completing the trials and tribulations of the video game, won’t progress into their epic forms as full-on Warcasters?

The possibilities are pretty fantastic. Perhaps one day they’ll make an RPG, where you’ll be able to bring your own character to life alongside the existing cast. Tournaments in the videogame could translate to real prizes like limited edition models. Hell, they could take a page from Defiance’s book and make an MMO whose events can actively affect the overarching story of the Iron Kingdoms. A Civilization-style strategy game could pair with High Command to create massive campaigns in which your Warmachine/Hordes and Warmachine: Tactics battles are mere pieces of a vast player-vs-player war.

Could that all be hyperbole? Maybe. Maybe they won’t do any of it. But they could, and I think that if anyone will, it’s the people over at Privateer. Because as anyone who’s seen Matt Wilson and crew talk at their convention panels can tell you, these guys are just as nerdy as we are and they fucking love their game. And that’s why I’m excited.