Development

[icycalm]

With the upcoming full release of Alex Kierkegaard's Battlegrounds—the 1.0 release widely expected by experts in the summer—industry interest has shifted to what the rumored sequel might look like. Today Insomnia is proud to announce a world-exclusive scoop: a leaked private Discord chat between the director and a friend and Battlegrounds player that fully unveil the game's main feature! And as a bonus, we also learn what the long-rumored Cult Intelligence (CI) initiative is all about!


CULTxschadenfreude
Oh right, I remember you saying you planned to combine West Marches with Kingmaker. I'll definitely make time for the launch when you are ready! The main concern I have going forward however is with the level of commitment needed from me, because as you've probably noticed over the last few years, my interest in gaming waxes and wanes, partly due to traveling or new interests. I have no problem playing for example a FP4X for a few weeks but then dropping out out of gaming for weeks or months, and the drop-in drop-out nature of those games helps because sessions could occur without me, but I wouldn't want to be a hindrance to you or the other players if I wanted to take weeks off from playing. Also I never know what time zone I will be in, so it makes choosing a dedicated time slot difficult because I never know how it will shift. But after typing all this I just read that link you sent me and I believe I can be accommodated for scheduling if it's on an ad hoc basis.


CULTxicycalm
If you take weeks or months off, your character does too. This is fine for West Marches. For the Azlant campaign on the other hand, I have a solution I am preparing to show to people. It’s a Cult Intelligence algorithm that takes over your character(s) and, based on a full analysis of your playing patterns, plays them exactly as you would. More or less ;) This is essential for the 4X layer because it’ll be a complex game running constantly with no breaks. I can’t expect anyone to keep that up forever with no breaks, and at the same time I can’t let one person hold up a dozen people (and hopefully two dozen and more some day, with multiple GMs etc.) So really there’s no problem. You play as much or as little as you want. And if at some point you want to drop out completely, we’ve already had this happen twice and the characters were passed off to other players who were happy to play in more campaigns.

Btw I liked your argument in favor of FP4X. I’ve never seen anyone defend them this way. Quite the opposite: people attack them just for that reason. Me included lol. But what you say makes sense to me now. I suppose it’s your particular and very rare lifestyle and temperament that allows this. We have similar lifestyles but different temperaments. I can’t live without games for long.


CULTxschadenfreude
Ah okay, that scheduling point with West Marches makes sense. And cool, I look forward to reading about your absent player solution once you write it up. I believe in typical campaigns when a player is absent, someone else volunteers to play as him, and I assume he attempts to mimic what he believes the character would do as best he can, presumably with minimal dialogue, but I doubt this process is formalized, so I'm interested to see how you would handle it.

Regarding FP4Xes, if I had a 9-to-5, I doubt I would feel the same way, especially with wipes usually happening mid-week. I'd be willing to take off a few days and play through the weekend though.


CULTxicycalm
It’s just me running your character lol. If you are away for a few weeks, it’s the easiest solution for everyone involved. Only if you drop out do I hand the character over to another player for good. Which makes a lot more sense now that characters are assets in a 4X overworld. Before that, the extra characters were ways to play more campaigns for people who want to play more. Now they are still that, but on top of that they are major assets with which to later staff e.g. a kingdom.

I love immersing myself in a survival-builder like you, but the problem with FP4X is that... it’s supposed to be a strategy game. And I don’t care how intensely you play for a few days, it’s not enough time to strategize. Rust is fine for a few days, but you won’t get anywhere in Atlas or Life is Feudal like that. And that kills the games. Moreover, for the ultimate immersion which is the metaverse, short bursts don’t work no matter how deep they go. Same reason as for strategy: immersion and strategy take time to develop. That’s part of the reason my game beats everything, because you can play it in the background of your life for years, and it never ends, there’s always more of it to see and do. Which isn’t possible if you expect the player to be online all day, because we already have a life. The game can’t be the primary life. It has to be the secondary, assuming the player wants a secondary life of course.

But despite my game’s lower intensity, people will still need breaks from it, because it lasts so long (basically as long as I am alive) which is where Cult Intelligence comes in.

The really fun part starts when programmers make real-time VTTs lol. Right now Cult Games dominates all turn-based genres, but with real-time VTTs I will also dominate all real-time ones lol. And I will use them properly: not running the whole world in them, but only short, intense scenes where the camera zooms in and now for the next 10 hours you personally deal with an urgent situation or lead your troops to battle etc. This will happen this decade.


CULTxschadenfreude
I see, it's all really exciting stuff!


And there you have it: Alex Kierkegaard's Battlegrounds 2.0 will include fully real-time sessions where the camera zooms in and the players take part in the most intense and visceral gaming ever, at which point Cult Games will take over also all the real-time genres!

Want to help make that a reality instead of just a plan? Even better, want to be a part of it? Subscribe to Insomnia, join Battlegrounds, and buy something from the Battlestore when you can, if you see something you like. And above all, play the game, because without players there's no game.

ETA for BG2.0?

Sounds like TBA 2030 to us.