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AusGamers: Ladies and gents, welcome back to AusGamers. You are here once again with Stephen Farrelly. I have Mr. Greg Goodrich, who is basically the man behind Warfighter, the new Medal of Honor game coming out. Everybody knows it’s coming out, because you guys have been talking about it quite a lot.

I want to get straight into multiplayer, because last time I had a chance to speak to Richard Farrelly [Danger Close Creative Director] -- he’s my long-lost brother apparently -- he couldn’t talk about multiplayer, so let’s go there. It seems like you guys have tried to one-up everybody in this space with your offering.

Greg Goodrich: Well you need to nowadays right, to get noticed? It’s such a competitive space, and our competitors are so good at what they do. We’re just trying to carve our own spot, and make something that’s uniquely Medal of Honor. That’s why we went with the 12 different Tier One units, with the 10 different nations -- taking a much more global and international look to it.

Historically, Medal of Honor has always been an American-centric game, focused on the American soldier, and when you start talking about brotherhood, respect, and all those traits, those are not American-owned traits; those are warrior traits. So we wanted to open it up and give gamers, our fans, a sense of national pride, and to feel what it’s like to be in the boots of their home nation’s operators.



AusGamers: Can you pinpoint specifically where that genesis actually came from?

Greg: Yeah absolutely. It actually came from the guys; the consultants -- the Tier One guys that we worked with. We’ve worked with probably a little over 30 guys now since the last game, that have come in and spent time in the studio. One of them is actually a full-time producer on the game.

They talk a lot about camaraderie and brotherhood, but they also talk about this fierce sense of competition; they’re all alpha males. So in these units -- especially at the international level -- there’s a common respect, and a mutual respect, but there’s also that sense of national pride, and esprit de corp, and wanting to be the best at everything you do.

So we figured “hey, let’s answer that age-old question, or at least attempt to answer it: who’s the best special operations unit in the world?”. So we came up with this concept of blue-on-blue; best versus the best; heroes versus heroes; and essentially, who would win in a fight? Batman or Superman? And let gamers suit up, and wave that flag, and give it a go.

AusGamers: Now of the 12 representatives, can you talk about whether or not there’s going to be any of those guys actually appearing in the single-player campaign? I’m asking specifically if the SAS-R are going to be in the single-player campaign.

Greg: The Aussies? No, unfortunately they’re not in single-player. The units that we focused on in single-player: Task Force Mako, Blackbird... Grizzly, from the United States Marine Corps make an appearance. The GROM show up in a level, that is based on a situation where the SEAL teams actually work with the GROM quite a bit overseas. And then obviously in the Philippines, we’re working with the Philippine counter-terrorism forces.

So we just tried to remain authentic, and focus on those operations, and the types of things that we’re doing with the types of units that they’re doing it with. But in speaking with the guys, they’re the ones that helped us choose the twelve units, and the Aussies were one of the very first units that they brought up and said “you’ve got to have them in the game”, because almost every guy that we’ve worked with had fought with the Aussies overseas.



AusGamers: You guys aren’t afraid to talk about the fact that this is a... I mean, the multiplayer is what it is, but you have this really rich single-player campaign; this rich story pulled from the headlines, if you will, and from the mouths of the guys actually out there doing that.

it seems fitting to me then, that any post-release content that you do should include single-player content: which is something that none of the guys in this space seem to be doing. So I’m wondering: is that something on your radar?

Greg: You know, we haven’t talked about our DLC plans, or post-release launch support. Obviously, any big franchise -- a shooter especially -- you have to support the game post-launch, and you could fully expect that we would do something like that, but we haven’t officially talked about it.

But I think we’ve set ourselves up really well, in the sense that you’re talking about global Tier One, you’re talking about international operators. There are more Tier One units out there than the ones that are in our game. So we’re in a pretty good position to extend and continue to support our product.

AusGamers: In terms of the multiplayer stuff: we have a real issue in Australia with latency, and it was a question that I wanted to ask, about the dedicated server situation. I’m not a hundred percent sure if you guys have spoken about your plans for that at all, or if there is a plan for that at all, but if I could beg you to do that, that would be fantastic.

Greg: Yeah, so you can fully expect for us to have the same setup as Battlefield 3 had. You know, same technology, same server-base. So we will support and follow their lead in the groundwork that they’ve laid with the technology.

AusGamers: In the demo that I just got hands on with before, there was a bit of an emphasis on potentially/hopefully, some of those modes going into e-Sports. In the production of multiplayer, was that something that you guys were actively seeking?

Greg Yeah. So with the spirit of competition, and taking a page out of the FIFA playbook, and like I said, that national pride -- wave that flag, and play for the home-team. And the mode that you saw behind closed-doors, the home-run mode, was built specifically for that sense of competition; that sense of sport.

Actually, we’re in the Sarajevo stadium, it’s an Olympic-themed map. But that real sense of close-quarters, always being in an engagement, and those tight spaces, and the rounds are really, really fast, if you noticed. And just get that sense of “keep moving”, there’s no respawn in that mode. If any of our modes would support that, that certainly would be it.



AusGamers: So you guys are on the home stretch. What’s left internally?

Greg: Finishing it up. Taking it over the finish line right, and getting that every last turn of the crank... [studio electricity blacks out] The power’s going off.

AusGamers: We’re going to keep going!

Greg: Yeah, the power went off; we’re going to keep powering through it!

...you know, just bringing it over the finish-line, and giving every last turn of the crank on quality and polish that we can get before they tell us “alright, stop working on it; you’re done”.

AusGamers: What was probably the biggest thing that you learnt going into Warfighter? From critical feedback, and just internally with the team, from the first Medal of Honor reboot.

Greg: Yeah, we did a lot of things, and we set out to do a lot of things with that game. You know, we brought the franchise out of World War II, into the modern times. We were building a new studio in Danger Close, we were building our team, and we’re very proud of that game. it wasn’t a perfect game, but we were very proud of what we were able to accomplish in the timeframe that we were given to accomplish it.

And with this game, we’ve just tried to double-down. We have a lot to prove with multiplayer, so we’ve really bolstered our internal DNA, and sort of mindset around multiplayer. Historically, MoA has been a very single-player focused franchise, so we’ve brought on a lot of new blood, and a lot of new individuals that cut their teeth in that space. Like I said, just taking that feedback, and trying to just carve our own spot, and deliver something that’s uniquely Medal of Honor, and give our fans an experience that they can only get in a Medal of Honor game.

AusGamers: I’ll wrap it up with one more question Greg: Are you guys going to support any kind of... similar to the Battlefield: Premium model? Are you guys going to be doing any of that at all with Medal of Honor?



Greg: Again, we’re still finishing off the main skew, and again, we’re going to continue to support the product post-launch and give it some legs, and hopefully fans will love it, gamers will appreciate it and just really get into that sense of national pride, and give us a reason to keep building more content.

AusGamers: Well, I’m in. And national pride is pretty big with us in our shooters, so I think everyone’s going to be pretty happy back home, to be able to play as the SAS-R. So thanks for including them in the game; thanks for your time today, and cheers.