Magicka Vietnam to launch 'in about a month,' Arrowhead CEO says
If there's one thing that Arrowhead Game Studios has proven with its accident-prone wizardfest Magicka, it's that they can make me laugh. But is that an appropriate reaction in Magicka Vietnam? Arrowhead Game Studios CEO Johan Pilestedt suggested that we'll find out "in about a month."%Gallery-115067%
"Something that people do wrong in comedy is that they go overboard in every single way. It's like riding a rollercoaster and it's always on the highest level. It's going to get boring," he told me during a meeting at GDC. Pilestedt made a comparison to the Scary Movie franchise, in which he believes the overall humor is dilluted by a constant bombardment of jokes.
In this first Magicka expansion, he sees the concept of wizards in Vietnam as inherently interesting -- being a good vehicle for comedy is a nice bonus. "Obviously, we have to focus purely on the fun aspects of the Vietnam War: rock music and cool explosions," Pilestedt assured. "The actual Vietnam War was a horrible war," so we probably shouldn't expect to see many mages writing home to grandma about the front line.
Pilestedt, who spent time in the Swedish army, revealed that players would never learn how the mages got on the scene. Their contributions will apparently mirror military operations -- players will rescue captives from P.O.W. camps, trash enemy ammunition supply depots and ... shoot goblins with machine guns.
While Magicka debuted to strong sales, its launch brought to light a plethora of problems in the game. Early adopters were forced to struggle through a grueling period of constant patching, eventually earning the free Mea Culpa DLC as a peace offering from Arrowhead.
"The minute we saw the response [to the bugs], we made a decision to stay in the office until we fixed most of the issues. And we did." Pilestedt detailed a 14-hour workday his studio went through to get Magicka in shape, starting at 8AM every day.
With this expansion, he assured me there would be much more quality assurance work done than was done on Magicka proper, prior to its release. Heck, I know the threat of a 14-hour workday is enough to motivate me to get it rihgt the first tiem.
