Questions
by Cody "Micajah" Bye
style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">
Answers
by Herb Yang, Producer
Nexon has enjoyed great success with their games.
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style="font-style: italic;">MapleStory
and
style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi
are wildly popular, but Nexon doesn't want to limit itself to
fantasy-themed games in North America and has started exploring other
play styles. In Combat
Arms, Nexon
presents a first person shooter (FPS) whose graphics and game play look
nothing at all like the teen-friendly titles that brought the publisher
success. Ten Ton Hammer's Cody "Micajah" Bye wanted to find out more,
so he got with Producer Herb Yang for a Q & A session.
Ten Ton Hammer: Although
there are plenty of people familiar with Nexon due to the success of style="font-style: italic;">MapleStory, there
arent many individuals totally knowledgeable on style="font-style: italic;">Combat Arms. To
start our questions, could you give us a brief example of what style="font-style: italic;">Combat Arms is all
about and why online gamers should pay attention?
Cody. To start off, Combat
Arms is a fast-paced multiplayer first-person shooter, and
like all Nexon games, its free to play. If youre familiar
with FPS games, youll be able to dive right in, but were also adding
more depth and customization than existing similar products, as well as
streamlining some features to make the game experience more friendly
for all users. With Combat Arms, youll be able to hop
online, create a persistent mercenary character, pick your weapons and
gear, customize your weapons with modifcations, and jump quickly into a
variety of 16-player battles. As you play, youll be able to
rank up your character to get access to new weapons and gear, and earn
GP (Gear Points) from playing matches to buy that gear.
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An AK-47 would have
been reeeal handy against this giant spider from Nexon's
style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi.
In terms of why online gamers should pay attention, weve got something
for both veteran FPS players and for players new to this
genre. The immediate and most obvious plus players will see
is accessibility of cost since its a fully-featured game thats free.
On the technical specification side, its a small download and only
requires a low-end system to play. So for any gamer whos
ever thought Well, FPS games look fun but I dont want to invest in a
high end computer or have to buy a game up front just so I can get try
it and probably get my butt kicked before I get good. Well, weve got
the game for you! Itll cost you nothing to try out
style="font-style: italic;">Combat Arms, and
work on your FPS skills without paying anything upfront. And
beyond that, you can continue playing for free without ever buying
anything.
But thats really just the surface. For veterans of the
genre, Combat Arms
offers a high degree of customization, across the board you can
customize your character, your weapons, and your gameplay.
You can equip your soldier with multiple weapons from an arsenal of
over 30 modern military arms, from assault rifles, to sniper rifles, to
mines and rockets in addition to different gear such as helmets,
armor vests, camouflage uniforms, and gas masks. Youre not
limited by any sort of class preconception, only by the gear slots you
have, which can be increased by wearing backpacks. Any
class you want to fulfill is dictated by the weapons and gear you
choose to equip, and as we add more functional gear items into the
game, youll start to see players choosing to fulfill specific roles.
Once youve got all that set up, you can jump into a variety of game
modes. Weve launched with 4 well-known game modes
Elimination, One Man Army, Search & Destroy, and classic
Capture the Flag that can be played on 6 different maps. In
addition, you can modify the match parameters to create games where no
explosive weapons are allowed, or games using pistols only, or games
that disallow backpacks so that players can only carry one primary
weapon. Plus, because we are a live, online game, we will
constantly be adding new weapons, new weapon mods, new equipment, new
game modes, and new maps so the game will be evolving over time.
Over all that, were streamlining and adding a lot of community
features to make Combat
Arms more friendly to play. We have an in-game
Messenger system that allows you to track friends, invite them to your
game, or go to where theyre playing. When you create a
character, youll also automatically create a player profile on our
website, where you can track your performance against that of your
friends, and check your rankings to see how you stack up against the
rest of the Combat Arms community. And finally, we have an
in-game Clan system where you can recruit and manage members, and find
other clans to play official matches.
Ten Ton Hammer: You
recently announced the start of Open Beta for
style="font-style: italic;">Combat Arms, which
is a big step in the release of any imported game. How has the
localization of the game been going, and where have you had the most
difficulty in transitioning it to a North American market?
were doing a lot of work beyond just language translation. In fact,
weve probably made changes to or added 30-40% more content than whats
in the Korean version. For style="font-style: italic;">Combat Arms, the
primary part of localization has been evaluating the tastes and
expectation of the US FPS audience, which is substantially different
than the Korean audience, and tailoring the game for the North American
market.
As for some examples, weapon balance has been substantially tweaked,
and weve introduced the concept of ranking up to unlock
gear. New characters and gear items are being made to
specifically appeal to our audience here. American players
expect a certain feature set in an FPS, so adjustments have been made
for that. The expectations of the US FPS player the primary
being that game play in an FPS must absolutely remain fair and
skill-based is also a major consideration in molding our approach to
creating the business model for this game.
In terms of transitioning to the US, the biggest obstacle were trying
to overcome is actually the impression that free-to-play means low
quality and/or being able to pay for game-breaking advantages, which
unfortunately, is a view thats pretty ingrained with the American game
audience.
Its pretty telling that when most people have checked out and written
about our game, and see, for example, that the AK-47 costs 800 GP, they
immediately jump to the conclusion that they have to pay real money to
buy weapons. To clarify, GP, or Gear Points, is our in-game
currency, and is completely separate from Nexon Cash, which is real
money. In reality, we havent opened the games cash shop, so
theres no way for you to spend money in our game yet, even if you
wanted to!
To be very clear, we wont be selling any weapons for cash.
Its extremely important to us and our development team that the
integrity of the skill-based FPS is kept intact, so all weapons will
be obtainable by all players even if you never buy anything from
us. You will be able to pay for cosmetic, convenience, and
community based items so if you want an AK-47 with a different
camouflage or skin (but the same stats and function) or a cool set of
shades to set your merc apart from others, youll eventually be able to
spend real money for these types of things.
Hopefully, well be able to change some of these preconceptions about
free-to-play games with Combat
Arms.
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It's hard to believe
that this game comes from the makers of the ultra-cute
style="font-style: italic;">MapleStory!
Ten Ton Hammer: Compared
to Nexons other games, Combat Arms seems like a pretty big step away
from the norm. Why did Nexon decide to create a FPS / combat-based game
after the success of Mabinogi
and MapleStory?
look at Nexons games internationally, and the stable of games we have
in Korea, Combat Arms
isnt that big a step away because we cover such a wide variety of game
genres. That being said, its an important step in the North
American market, where we found a big blank spot in the availability of
a high-quality, free-to-play FPS. Given how large the FPS
market is in the US, it was natural for us to introduce a game like style="font-style: italic;">Combat Arms.
Our business model especially lends itself to this genre because
typically, FPS games are intimidating to those who havent already
played a lot of them. Because these games are twitch-based,
and require specific skills which take time to develop, unless youre
already good at an FPS, youre less likely to spend the $50-$60 up
front for something youre probably going to be terrible at at least
for a little while. Plus, many new FPSs have extremely high
system requirements, which require you to spend more money on a
high-end gaming rig. With our game and business model, new
players can try the game, practice their FPS skills, see if they like
it, and then go from there.
Ten Ton Hammer: For
a lot of gamers, there has been some confusion on whether Combat Arms
is an MMOFPS or simply an online FPS? Which is it and will MMOG players
feel comfortable playing Combat
Arms?
your definition of MMO, which seems to be quickly becoming
broader. Combat
Arms doesnt have a graphical hub so its not an MMOFPS
in the traditional sense of an MMO. But it has a lot of
persistence and community features which are consistent with an
MMOG. Our players have a persistent character, with a
persistent profile where you can track your performance. They
can form clans (guilds) online, and manage members.
But in answer to your second question, I think it comes down to whether
you like action-oriented games or not. All players
who like fast-paced, twitch-based action, as well as those who
traditionally have enjoyed online FPSs but have wanted more persistence
and customization features, and perhaps a deeper game-based
relationship with other players, akin to being in a sports league
these players will be very happy to play style="font-style: italic;">Combat Arms.
Ten Ton Hammer:
style="font-style: italic;">Nexon has been
consistently known for making games that are accessible by a large
audience, but judging from the game play videos on the
style="font-style: italic;">Combat Arms
website, the graphics look pretty good. Will the game be accessible for
most gamers from a system spec standpoint?
consistently surprised at how low the system specs are for how good the
game looks and were very happy with their reaction. On the
minimum end, we ask for a Pentium 3 1 Ghz with 256Mbs of memory
running at least Windows 2000, and our client size is about 440Mbs so
the game is very accessible. And even on a low-end rig, the
game runs very smoothly.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Combat Arms Game Page.