Author: Jason Logue

Shrapnel Games and eSim recently released Steel Beasts, a modern armoured combat simulator. The Wargamer staff are currently playing the game and will soon have a comprehensive review of the game posted to this site. In the meantime, you can check out our preview or read over this Q&A Jason Logue did with the development team.

Introductions

Alexander H. Delaney

Age: 34.
Residence: Sunnyvale, California
Education: Ph.D. In Electrical Engineering.
Al has been working full time on Steel Beasts for the last four years now. Prior to that, he worked as a digital design engineer.

Ssnake

Age: 32
Residence: Germany
Ssnake served for ten years in the tank forces of the German Army (Bundeswehr), holding the positions of instructor, platoon leader, tank commander, gunner, driver and loader. In addition, he has extensive experience with both military and civilian simulations.

The Wargamer: Where and how did Steel Beasts start?

Al: Shortly after finishing school (well over four years ago now), I was teaching myself computer graphics while finishing up some papers I had to write. I created a terrain-rendering engine and my wife and I decided that I should try to work for myself and make a game out of it. It wasn't that difficult a decision, since we weren't used to a dual income anyway, with me being in school the previous four years. Little did we know how much work this would actually be! Simulations and tanks always appealed to me, and there had not been a decent tank sim, at that time, for quite a while. In fact, I was quite disappointed with the current crop of tank sims, so we decided to make our own. A year or so into the project, while researching information for tanks and tank warfare on the Internet, I ran across Ssnake, an ex-officer from the German Army, who has since come on board as the Technical Director. Many other great guys have also contributed heavily in many ways during development and space prevents me from naming them all. It really has been an international effort.

Ssnake: We met at iMagic's discussion board of iM1A2. I was wary in the beginning, but when I saw the first screenshots (which were superior to any quick rendered landscape back then), I almost fell out of my chair. I felt great potential here, and my immediate intent was to help him as much as I could to finally have the tanksim of my dreams.

The Wargamer: How did you sell the idea?

Al: There really was no need to sell the idea at that time, since I was working for myself. Later on, when we were looking for a publisher, it became a very hard sell, since publishers seemed to be abandoning tank sims left and right. We ended up going with Shrapnel Games, a small publisher more suited to independent developers like eSim.

The Wargamer: How much have previous armoured simulations influenced the game design?

Al: Well, there is always a lot of influence from previous games. That's unavoidable, since you can't forget what you've seen. There are good things that you incorporate and try to improve on, and then there are all the bad things that you try to remedy. We found a lot of bad things in previous games that we have tried hard to remedy. That's probably been our biggest inspiration.

Ssnake: Yes. We were afraid sometimes about the tidal wave of tank sims flooding the market two years after iM1A2, but every title we saw confirmed that they were all no threat to our targeted group of customers — maybe except M1 Tank Platoon 2, which sure looks good.

The Wargamer: Was the day Tank Platoon! cancelled the happiest of the development? Could it have been a real threat?

Al: Well, I wasn't crying over it's cancellation, but then again it's never nice to see a game get cancelled. In addition, that cancellation meant that yet another publisher felt that a tank sim would not sell well enough to warrant the expense of marketing it. Only time will tell if they were right.

Ssnake: I must admit some jubilee. It's an incredible feeling to be a world monopolist... in retrospect, I'm not sure if the Tank Platoon! gameplay would really have been a strong competitor as far as the simulation aspect is concerned. But it would most likely have impeded sales numbers. I doubt many people would buy two tank sims in short succession, and the ability to link it with Gunship! would have been quite a killer feature.

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