Inside Wardogs

Jake Lucky: Can we get some introductions from both of you?

Brian McCrann: I'm Brian McCrann, the community manager at Bulkhead. I've been working on the game for about four years now. First game in the industry. It's been good so far.

Joe Brammer: On the other side of that spectrum, I'm Joe Brammer, CEO of Bulkhead, and I've been working on Wardogs for four or five years now. It is not always rosy. This is a nice moment. Enjoy it now.

Jake: It's definitely been a rosy last few weeks, but I'm sure you guys have been on this journey much longer than that. I wanted to open up with when development first started on Wardogs. When was the first inception of this idea?

Joe: I love telling this bit of the story. We were in a car visiting the devs from Squad. I played Project Reality loads as a kid and did a lot of Battlefield 2 modding, so I loved that game. When Squad came out, I thought it was brilliant. We became friends with them, flew out to Vancouver to visit, and they took us for a walk in the mountains. We were all jet-lagged, so we fell asleep in the car, and they drove us through the mountains. We go for a hike and we're talking about Arma, King of the Hill, and how good it is. And we're like, 'Someone needs to make that. We should make that.' We were talking about doing it together at the time, but everyone was too busy. That was probably six years ago and it just stuck. We kept thinking, this is a huge game, we should be doing this.

Brian: The conceptualizing started around January 2022. I joined halfway through the year, and that was when Joe was doing all the crazy deals with the publisher and all that scariness. It was greenlit in June 2023.

Joe: We have a joke that every system in the game has been built three times. You've basically played three versions of everything. That's because performance in Unreal Engine is death by a thousand cuts. We'd build a system that was great, but not quite good enough, and we'd have to go rebuild it. It shows in the end, but it took so long because we were pretty pedantic.

We keep saying it in interviews, but you don't get Wardogs without our Battalion experience. Very few people get two shots at making a shooter. We're very fortunate to have been given that opportunity, really by the players. And I think it's showing in the gameplay that we learned from our mistakes. We professionalized. For four years, people didn't know about it, and then it came out of nowhere. We were licking our wounds, but also very much punishing ourselves. We had no confidence. So now we look pretty cocky by default, but for four years it was not that.

Brian: It keeps us grounded. I came in four years in, not having lived through the Battalion era, and I was just like, 'It's going great, let's push harder.' And Joe and Howard would go, 'Let's stay grounded. Let's keep our eyes open. We know where this could go.' There's so much more to it.

Jake: There's still a long way to go, but it's exciting to see the progress, especially the last couple of weeks. When it comes to trying to put this game in a genre, you're not a battle royale, you're not an extraction shooter. How are you describing this game, whether in the office or publicly?

Joe: Our creative director is Tim Nightingale, and he is not a big camera guy, but he has been the beacon for all of this. His thing from day one was, 'It's not like Battlefield.' From a marketing standpoint, you're like, 'But it is to most people.' And he goes, 'It's nothing like Battlefield.' If you've played FPS games you may have been sold on the idea that it's Battlefield, because that's an easy way to get people to think, oh, it has bombs and tanks and guns and planes, you've got a bit of everything. But beyond that, it's not really Battlefield.

If you ask an Escape From Tarkov player what they think of it, they go, 'It's pretty arcadey.' If you ask a Battlefield player, they say, 'It's pretty hardcore, more like Tarkov.' We play all of those games because we're professional game developers, and we go, it's none of them.

Brian: Somewhere in the middle. Familiar but new.

Joe: People want to be able to explain it quickly. They want to say it's like this, it's not like this. And the honest answer is it's all subjective. It is like all of those things, but it's also not like any of them. Egotistically, I'd like to think we're about to start a little genre called economy shooters. That would be the biggest honor, if our heroes at Infinity Ward and DICE went and copied our thing. I really hope they do it unsuccessfully, of course. But that would be pretty cool.

In terms of what it actually is, we came up with this tagline. It was actually one of our UI artists, Aaron. He said, 'Play like you used to.' And we were like, that is exactly it. Then all the players said it back to us without us saying it first. What Wardogs delivers is almost what we wanted to do with Battalion, which was bring back old school shooters. I don't for a second want to imply that War Dogs is an old school shooter. But there was a time when it was simpler, and people could just sit down and play with their friends and have fun. It's okay for bad things to happen with your friends. Getting team killed, crashing a helicopter, that's fun. That is fun. And Wardogs remembers that better than anyone. Emotionally, it's an older game. Mechanically, it's very modern.

Brian: We saw that over the beta. I was screenshotting loads of posts for Joe. We were getting paragraphs from playtesters. Just, 'Man, this reminds me of playing games ten, fifteen years ago.' Exactly what Joe was saying. The players were saying it themselves.

Jake: You mentioned your heroes and inspirations, whether it's Call of Duty or Battlefield. What is it like to draw inspiration from those games, but now also be competing with those titles?

Joe: We are very proud of the fact that we outperformed them on Twitch during the beta. But in the way of playing basketball against your dad and finally beating him. It's a little bit sad, a little bit satisfying. Everyone's like, 'Oh no.' But you're also happy for him. We heard in some big meetings that people weren't happy, but the response from devs was warm. We got messages saying, 'It's really cool, keep going.'

The two numbers we were really proud of weren't concurrent players or Steam rankings. It was getting to number one on Twitch, and the refund rate being very low. We told people to refund it if it wasn't for them. But the sentiment from people who did refund was almost always, 'This game just isn't for me.' And that's fine. It's not supposed to be for everyone. They came in expecting Battlefield, and that's not what it is.

Brian: I was eleven years old modding Battlefield 2. I love DICE. My mom knows who DICE is. She used to say, 'He wants to work at DICE.' And now we're showing them where to go a little bit, which is a bit sad. I'm still hoping they come and recruit me. DICE, if you have any slots for a junior level designer, I'm available.

Joe: You're not allowed to leave.

I don't mind saying, actually, that it was really sad this year losing Vince Zampella. He would DM us all the time. 'This is awesome, keep going, this is great.' We obviously didn't feel necessarily able to publish any of those messages. That wouldn't be appropriate. But as someone who played Battlefield as a kid, and then COD 4 and COD 2 religiously, having Vince Zampella come on and say, 'You guys are crushing it,' that's a pretty cool feeling. He was big on Battalion first, and then he was really big on Wardogs as well. While he was doing COD stuff, he was messaging us about Battalion. When he was doing Battlefield stuff, messaging us about Wardogs. And yeah, that was pretty sad.

Jake: You've also mentioned how AAAs have maybe come in and tried to tell you how to shape this game. Can you elaborate on what you meant?

Joe: It's not AAAs specifically, it's publishers. And there are good ones and bad ones. I want to be balanced about this. If people are putting money in, they deserve a certain level of insight, control, and oversight, absolutely. We need to be held to account. But ultimately, if you want to make a good game, let the people whose job it is to make a game make the game.

In these really big AAA publisher-type meetings, everyone has to have a voice in the room. I'll give you a couple of quotes. We do these show days where we go, 'This is the game, this is where it's at.' We had someone ask, 'Have you completed your port from the Armor engine?' We had completed it a month before. Just checking a box. And then suggestions like, 'We think it'd be better if you had two teams.' So, Battlefield? And they're like, 'Yeah.' No team killing. Remove the sun. Generally, sand off the edges.

There was a point where we had to make redundancies. There was a point where we were getting close to shutdown Christmas last year. We got the company back, and when we one hundred percent believe in what we're doing, we're going to take that same attitude with players for the next twelve to twenty-four months. We know what we want to make. We're going to make it. We are not going to get wavered along the way. Even if players could be right, there will be times we are wrong. But going down a path we believe in at one hundred and ten percent, we at least go down a path we're committed to. That's the promise to players we want to make. Not that we will deliver content every second of every day. This is a long journey.

Jake: You guys know how to execute a plan, like the way you executed getting banned on Twitch for a day.

Joe: That plan didn't go exactly as intended, but we got the same outcome. We were trying to get banned from Twitch for 24 hours. The plan was to get banned for using shock collars on stream.

Brian: Not what we actually got banned for.

Joe: The tag you get banned for is sexual content. For a jelly worm. I'm still not over it. But we moved to X, and it worked because the viewership doubled after we tweeted about the ban. People came to see what the fuss was about. What sucked was we lost all our clips. So it wasn't as successful as we wanted, but we live and we learn.

Brian: We had double the viewership after the ban because we tweeted it. Everyone came to check out the stream.

Jake: Breaking 100,000 concurrent players was obviously a huge milestone, and you also mentioned no creator spend. Can you expand on that?

Joe: I don't want to boast about it, because it's not really something to boast about. We don't like the economics of games right now. We look at Bulkhead as an entertainment company that makes video games, not just a game developer. Our job is to provide entertainment in all different forms, and one vehicle for that is our game. We know we need to provide a way for streamers, influencers, and YouTube creators to make money from our vehicle. But paying them directly, the returns aren't really there anymore. It has to be organic because players don't believe paid coverage. That whole economy is broken. We would never pay streamers now. It just doesn't work. Not because we don't think they're valuable.

What we're looking at instead is finding new ways to provide a space for them to make money, like through supporter packs or letting players direct money toward creators they enjoy. We haven't figured it all out yet. We had a call with some guys like Shroud and asked them, 'What features would you like in the game that would make it great entertainment?' We know that dragging is a great mechanic for saving a downed teammate. But it gets used more for dragging people into the forest and just messing with them.

Brian: Dragon boy combos. It's entertainment.

Joe: That's what they want. You can just play it as a game. But we need to provide a space for entertainers to really be able to make their living as well. And taking a bottom-up look at games, the people playing, the people making, they should be getting the money. Publishers who fund things, they should get money too. But all these middle layers in between, I really don't want to be boasting we're not paying streamers, because they absolutely deserve something. We just don't know what that is yet or how to make it work.

When I tweeted about it, it was because people were going, 'Oh, they're just paying all these streamers and so they're just praising the game.' We haven't paid anyone. We didn't pay anyone for Battalion either. This is just how we operate. But the important thing isn't just that we don't do it. The system needs to change so the people actually playing games, making games, and covering games are the ones getting paid.

Jake: Are any new modes planned?

Joe: Modes is a weird one. We might do smaller event modes, but when we have a bigger mode we're probably going to put that into DLC so we can give it significant time and investment. We're really trying to avoid lots of monetization, but putting it into something like Wardogs Wasteland, which is something we want to do, would let us do it properly. But it would always link back to the persistent economy. Your War Dogs money carries across. You could play a DLC with a different mode and those resources come back into your main account. We're looking at a few different ways to make that work fairly.

Brian: In the immediate future, server admin tools are coming. We tested them in the beta on Sunday. We did infantry-only servers, hardcore servers, that kind of thing.

Jake: A big focus for the community is what the future of balance changes is going to look like, because players who play these kinds of games are very particular. How are you going to approach that?

Joe: Balance changes are interesting because creators can't just praise the game forever. They're going to have things to discuss and bring up, and that's what makes content interesting. Every season, and early access seasons may be a month, six weeks, or eight weeks depending on the dev timeline, we're going to change the order of things. Maybe AKs come later and M4s come forward. Maybe shotguns replace SMGs as the medic weapon for a season. We can change the tracks that things sit on to make each season feel different and encourage players to take a different path.

Your skills will always be persistent, so you're always progressing there. But the path to unlocks can change. Something we didn't communicate well about the beta is that we took the full progression of the game and basically squished it into three days. People were hitting rank 80 by the end of the weekend. That won't happen at launch. We pushed it forward so everyone could see all the toys. The tank situation is a good example. There are a lot of tanks right now because they're in the main Wardogs unlock track. Normally, you wouldn't unlock a tank without driving loads first. At launch, that's going to take much longer. People are worried we've stretched the content, but this was always the plan. The beta compression was just for the beta.

Jake: Will there be a roadmap or a set of near-future goals you're putting out there?

Joe: We absolutely will not be putting out a roadmap. What is most important is that we deliver our 1.0 and get through early access. We're going to treat early access as it was meant to be treated. We're going to be super strict about what that means. We'll always try to communicate what we're doing, show stuff, tease stuff. I even mentioned Wasteland today. We're working on skills coming soon, a new currency called Intel for the meta game, and the wager system. Actually, should we talk about the wager system?

Jake: Tell us about the wager system.

Joe: This is one we are so excited about. You know how you go up to a vendor and buy weapons or vehicles? We're adding a wager vendor. It works like a parlay, or what we call an accumulator in the UK. You say, 'If I get ten kills in the hot zone, two of them headshots, revive three people, and only go down once, I'll bet one thousand dollars for a twenty thousand dollar payout.' But all of those conditions have to come off. If any one of them fails, you don't win. We had a little playtest on it and it's really good. We're going to put it behind some of the ranks so it opens up as you progress.

Hunter Grooms: Are there any limits on what you can parlay?

Joe: Yes, for sure. There will be limits. We're working through the specifics.

Brian: The meta game that goes alongside this isn't out yet either. There's a mini game in the front end where you can buy an ammo packing station for around five hundred thousand in-game. A vendor says to you, 'Pack ten magazines and I'll give you one back.' And you sit there and physically load the bullets in. It's all interactive, physics-based. You can catch the magazine and you get really good at it. Some people will just do that and then jump into sessions. Just loading up ammo and going in.

Joe: And we have a mobile version of it. So you can sit at work and just reload magazines to earn ammo for later. Loading magazines for your session later, boss. You wouldn't get it.

Jake: Speaking of early access, will there be a wipe at 1.0?

Joe: The cache already wipes every season, that's by design. As for a full wipe at 1.0, there are no plans for that right now. We absolutely don't want to do it. But part of early access is finding problems, so I wouldn't be surprised if at some point we had to go back and say we're sorry. What I can say is that we are already recording your skill progression in the backend, even though the front end isn't live yet. So the more you play now, you're still building toward those skills. It's all being tracked.

Brian: We're going to have to roll back certain things anyway. The sniper ADS for example. Right now when you ADS with a sniper and fire, you stay in the scope. We'll have to undo that, and then staying in the scope after firing becomes a skill you unlock. So some things will go away temporarily and come back as earned progression.

Jake: Will you be doing another beta session for people to play before early access?

Joe: Yes. But what we need is for people to come and break our game. Come and stress our servers. Absolutely ruin us. I need to find out if this game is broken before we launch and everybody pays for it. My ego cannot take another day one crash. Please come and help us find the problems. That is the call to action. Come break it.

Jake: You have no monetization and no cash shop. Can you speak to what that looks like going forward?

Joe: Will we monetize eventually? Probably. Will we monetize during early access? Absolutely not. No way. You come and help us make the game. That simple.

The problem is we genuinely don't know exactly what we're going to do yet, and saying we do would be wrong. What we know is that what's currently out there isn't interesting enough. Battle passes feel like optional subscriptions. I don't think people can keep up with more than one or two at a time. It doesn't sit right for Wardogs. We have a plan to do something better, or at least different, and try new things. What I'd like is for our community to give us the time and space to try different things and make mistakes. It's not going to be a perfect road ahead. But we believe in what we're building and we're going to see it through.

Brian: September 10th is not a finished game. Early access as we're treating it is a genuine development stage, not a marketing gimmick. The alpha was an alpha. The beta was a beta. We're not just saying that. We are genuinely using these as playtests. We're going to try things. That's how they're meant to be.

Joe: Come and help us make the game. That's all.

Thanks to Xsolla for sponsoring our Gamescom coverage this year. Xsolla works with developers around the world, giving them tools and support to launch, monetize, and grow their games.

This year, Xsolla had a scholarship program that flew 20 indie devs from across the world out to Gamescom, giving them the opportunity to showcase their games, meet the industry, and get their projects in front of more people.