PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:

Luke Hughes lead designer. Started gaming seriously age 12 with board wargames and then got captured by 1st Edition DnD! So roleplaying and military gaming interested me for a long time :-) Professionally I did MAs in Psychology and Neurophysiology (Oxford) and doctorate in AI (Yale). Lot of attention to animal studies (got to train Chimps!). Normally I leave off the latter details but figured this interview is of interest. Worked in Silicon Valley and was a partner/Research Director for Accenture at one point.

TELL US ABOUT BURDEN OF COMMAND.

Burden of Command is a turn based leadership RPG. Think “interactive Band of Brothers” (as Forbes called it). It focuses on emotional, tactical, and historical authenticity with WW2 while still trying to keep gameplay streamlined in the tradition of XCom. It draws on RPG and tRPG, interactive fiction, and wargaming traditions (especially boardgames). Mom and Dad served in WWII and Dad was a professional historian. So authenticity (plus my academic background) had to be in the cards ;-)

It came to me when I was playing Crusader Kings II (or was it III?) one night and I suddenly thought “What if your followed a band of brothers rather than a family of nobles across Europe in WWII. I had also been thinking of doing a Panzer General/Panzer Corps like game but focused on the squad tactical level. So the two things came together with my life long interest in leadership.

HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN

Yeah I was a research director and then I made a terrible call when I looked at Unity like 10+ years ago and decided it wasn’t a good enough match. DOH. If I were to do it again I would use such an engine. But I decided to build a custom Python engine. Many years to deliver 1990s tech! OK exaggerating, we have a pretty sophisticated dynamic event engine and also other aspect under the hood. But the graphics and UI would have been SO MUCH EASIER then building from scratch if done in an engine ;-)

WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?

I use the Pygame library at base with SDL2. Of course it is nice to have a custom engine now. I can do anything I want ;-) Problem is just me (and part time other programmer, between us basically 1 codeer) where as UNity has tons of OTHER coders doing stuff “for me” :-) :-(

WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?

See above LOL. UI and graphics ate tones of time (development cycle with full team was 2017 to 2025 :-( . I was toying with a fair bit for some years before that while working.

ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?

Guess from above. Yeah use an engine.

On the business side 18,000 games on steam last year. Decide on your ‘hook’ earlier. What makes your game distinctive? Be able to say it 1 or 2 words. Then a phrase. “Elevator pitch” as Silicon Valley would say. Then be prepared to spend a lot of time pounding the pavement digitally trying to build your marketing presence with influencers. 18,000 games. In many ways it is more about being heard at all these days!

ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?

Think of your job as marketing and game design. Not game design. Do what you believe in rather than strictly what you think will sell. Spend a lot of time studying Gamasutra, Youtubes on game design, books on. Podcasts. There is a lot of content out there to learn from and it is a tough market these days!

Spend a lot of time upfront deciding on that hook.

Then during development listen, listen listen. Meaning do as much playtesting as you can possibly manage. We did TONs. With surveys, live playtests, weekly meetings with playtesters etc etc.

Thanks! - Luke

Burden of Command™ on Steam

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