PCG: As of this morning, The War Z is no longer purchasable on Steam. Was this a surprise to you, or has Valve been in communication with you after release?

Sergey Titov: No surprise, Valve contacted us to let us know their concerns based on some of the info circulating in the press and we completely understand their need to sort things out and make certain we are communicating correctly to their audience before we relaunch with them. They have an obligation first and foremost to their customers and we recognize that.

Do you agree with Valve's decision to temporarily unpublish the game from Steam?

Titov: Yes, we think this is the best way to serve their customers and we respect their decision. As you know we’ve been publicly available since October 15. Over that time I think we (the developers) got used to and took it for granted that players knew what state the game was in and how it was a constantly evolving project, with new features being added on and ongoing basis. Clearly the release on Steam introduced the game to players who never followed War Z and we made the mistake of not communicating effectively to the Steam community. Also, during our pre-holiday crunch time with development extending late into the night, there was a major disconnect between our development team and marketing team that resulted in some of the “coming soon” features being listed as current features on the Steam sales page. Namely the following:

1. Servers being able to support up to 100 players—This is actually true, but at the moment we launched the servers were capped at 50 as a result of an in-game survey we had conducted. That information had not been communicated properly to our marketing team that was handling the Steam integration. Currently the servers support both 100 players and 50 players.

2. Map Size—We have always stated that our maps would range from 100—400km squared and that we would launch with one map “Colorado,” and then follow up with additional maps in the first quarter of 2013. Nothing has changed, however I believe the wording on the Steam page could have been interpreted as there currently being more than one game world available.

3. Server Rental/Strongholds and Skill Tree—Again, this was not communicated correctly to the marketing team and once it was realized it was corrected.

We recognized the above quickly and made the update to the Steam page within the first day of going on sale, however we completely understand that players were upset and felt that we mislead them. We absolutely take responsibility for these inconsistencies. Ultimately, despite all the controversy that has surrounded The War Z – even since the early Alpha launch, we have cultivated a large and loyal player base that is very active in the game and we want to make sure that new players coming into the game now will be satisfied and feel that they are getting a great game experience.

When will The War Z be purchasable on Steam again? When you do relaunch the game, how will The War Z be different?

Titov: We are working currently with Steam to ensure that they are comfortable that all of our communication is accurate—which it currently is. As for differences—this will be the same WarZ game as available on our own website. For Steam version—our goal right now is to clear up all support requests and refund requests for Steam users.

From our very first hours of being available on Steam and right up until sales were disabled, The War Z was the number one top grossing game title on Steam. We really feel that this is not only a testament to the game’s popularity, but also largely due to our loyal and vocal community. We are looking forward to getting things sorted out and being available again soon.

Survarium is a new IP, but it does have some things in common with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Is it fair to call it a spiritual successor to the series?

We indeed see Survarium as an evolutionary successor of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. concept. Many familiar game elements, such as factions, anomalies, artifacts, mutants, the atmosphere in general are going to be in common with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, but all of those elements will be new as itfs a different game with its own world and rules.

As opposed to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe, with Survarium we are no longer going to be limited by the Chernobyl exclusion zone. The ecological catastrophes in the game have a global nature, so in terms of locations and events, we plan to demonstrate not only Ukrainian post-apocalyptic areas, but move further around ex-USSR and beyond. The gamefs concept allows us to implement practically any place on Earth.

Q: One of the things that's been changing in the industry is the business model. In addition to classic retail sales and subscriptions we now see free-to-play, ad-supported and other variants. Do you think these new business models will affect the game designs and the design process?

Rob Pardo: Definitely. I'm personally a big fan of game designers being involved in the monetization design, because that's what will ultimately make for the best game. A lot of times I think those become very disconnected in the industry. Someone that's more business-oriented or production-oriented will graft a business model onto a game because that's what they think is going to drive the most revenue, but the game doesn't really support it. That's one of the things you've seen a lot with the subscription-based business model. I personally think subscription-based business models can still work, but you can't over-value your game. There's been some games in the past where they've put the subscription model on it because they thought they could get away with it. The reality is if you're going to do a subscription model you need to deliver an immense amount of premium content over time, because people are going to be looking at as 'If I'm going to be $10 or $15 per month, what am I getting month after month?' If I'm not spending enough hours in your product, it's just not going to make sense as a value proposition.

Free-to-play is a much more friendly business model for a lot of people to try out. People can try these games with no risk, and then only decide to pay for games that they really see the value in or want to spend on. I think that is a really strong model. Free-to-play is almost like a genre of business models, there are so many different ways you can apply it. I think for free-to-play to work really well it has to be deeply integrated with the game design itself. What is it that people are going to buy, and how much are you going to pay for this versus the other thing? One of the biggest issues with free-to-play models these days is the feeling that a lot of games give me: That for me to progress in this game, or to really have a deep game experience, you have to pay. That's where free-to-play gets a bad rap. But that's more the game design than the model.

Q: Do you think that the big-budget single-player game is an endangered species at this point?

Rob Pardo: I do. I don't see there being a great business model for it these days. It's really sad, there's just a lot of elements out there that conspire to make those games difficult to make now. Between pirating or the ability for people to rent games, it's hard for publishers to pour millions and millions of dollars into a game and not necessarily see the return they need to make those budgets realistic.

GamesBeat: Cyberpunk is pretty much the complete opposite of The Witcher.
Iwinski: Yeah, and I think that's really what a lot of people on the team are excited about. We want to have a world on which we can base the game, a great setting. You can go on and invent it - write a story, describe the world, pretty much what a lot of people are doing in the industry - but why do that if you have something really great that you can use?

GamesBeat: How difficult is it to translate over 5,000 pages of pen-and-paper mechanics into a video game?
Iwinski: Well, you're not talking about translating the 5,000 pages. It's more taking from it and building on it something that will feel good in the medium of computer games.
Michal Platkow-Gilewski: Using that in a wise way.
Cyberpunk creator Mike PondsmithIwinski: We are not recreating what Mike Pondsmith (pictured) did. We are making a game based on that, so we'll do some new things, and we'll probably change some things. Of course, it's great that Mike understands computer games. He was a game designer and still is, including computer games, so we are consulting on a medium-high level with him on certain design decisions.

GamesBeat: What's it like working with Mike?
Iwinski: We were talking for the last several months, and it's great. I think he's open to ideas. We were talking about a certain difficulty, for example, in the gameplay side. He totally digs it, and he's like, "Yeah, OK guys, maybe you should do this and that." So, it's a great benefit to work with a person that's experienced in computer games.

GamesBeat: During the press conference, you said you wanted to create "an outstanding new standard in the futuristic RPG genre." That's a pretty lofty ambition. How are you guys going to accomplish that?
Iwinski: I think we've created some new standards in terms of storytelling in the RPG genre, in terms of having no compromise in the way the story is being told, how we shape the world, how believable the characters are, how similar it is to what we see around us. We are really looking at totally new ideas on telling a story and involving the gamer in it. I think we're looking at what the critics were saying and what the fans were saying. I think we've delivered something totally new.
Second, we don't see any reason why RPGs should look worse than shooters. They should actually look better. The story's always the thing, because that's the thing which keeps you playing, but these days - and especially in the next generation when you have the new consoles, when you have the new HDTVs - you're going to want bells and whistles on the graphical side, and we want to deliver on that as well.

GamesBeat: How has your experience with The Witcher series helped you in making this game?
Iwinski: I think both The Witcher 1 and The Witcher 2 really were the fields where we learned how to tell a great story. We'll be taking all these lessons learned to build an even more gripping, non-linear experience in the same fashion, so no distinction between good and evil, no easy moral choices. We are making a game for a mature audience, and we are very vocal about it. I think it's very important, so we are treating our game right, and we are not insulting your intelligence.

GamesBeat: Is Cyberpunk going to be a PC exclusive when it first releases?
Iwinski: No, no. We are looking at Macs as well. Definitely. We come from a PC country, we are PC experts, but we wouldn't like to limit the experience and the audience.

You are actually more like Diablo 2 than Diablo 3, certainly with most of the game functions. You have played the Diablo 3 beta which is very slow to start and it’s really like being on training wheels at the start, In TL1 and TL2 it’s not difficult to pick up but you kind of expect players to know what they are doing.

Blizzard is really incredibly good at making game accessible to people that have never played them before and I think they are definitely doing that with Diablo 3. Out approach with TL2 is just getting and play quickly. One of the things I loved about Diablo 2 is I start my character, sprint outside of town and immediately y start laying into stuff, and that idea is something we wanted to keep. Because ideally we want you to play the game again.

We don’t want to scare people away, ideally you get in the game and there are monsters within a few steps and your beating on them and they’re exploding and hopefully that’s satisfying enough. We really want you get you to that immediate satisfaction. Killing stuff quickly and getting a lot of shiny things.

A couple of the ways you are more like Diablo 2 is you still have stat points and you still have skill points as opposed to auto-stats in Diablo 3. So what is the benefit in your opinion of having stats points?

There’s always the problem that roles will dead-end themselves with stat point investment. But I think for it to be rewarding there has to be a chance for it to be not as rewarding, sometime things should occasionally go wrong. And one of the reasons I think that worked so well in Diablo 2 in that it’s such a fast game. You get through the game relatively quickly so if you make a mistake you can try again.

We want people to make alternate characters that have a unique flavour and are thought of as unique characters and there was a set of decisions that resulted in a character. I like to have an identity for a character and it’s not something we want to steer away from.

We have attempted in this stat system to make dead-ends less perilous. We have tried to give each of these stats more utility for every class and every character you want to make and hopefully we have succeeded with that. We do like to give you choices.

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How much in-game testing have you guys done?
We test all the time and the testers are constantly paying through all of the game, which at this point, is assembled end to end which means a lot of hard work through all the acts and balance and tuning. But right now we are going through the game step by step. The kind of testing I am talking about is more dev testing, we are sitting down, playing with the numbers, playing in the zone and seeing how things feel.

In an interview to PC Gamer, John Carmack said, "When we started on the game six years ago, I looked at the consoles and said ‘These are as good as the PCs that we're on here’, and our development strategy was set up such that we basically developed live on all the platforms there. And now when we’re looking at PCs that have ten times the horsepower of the consoles... I’m making a large change in my direction, just saying ‘We should be focusing on building things efficiently on the PC and [then] deploying on to consoles.’ And we didn’t make that as crisp of a distinction as we should have."

Carmack further explain how that will change going forward, "My development system now has twenty-four threads and twenty-four gigs of memory, and we can start putting on half a terabyte of solid state drives, and these are the things that are gonna drive the development process on the PC. So, I’m actually as excited about how we’re developing tht titles in this coming generation as the graphics enhancements and things that I’m gonna make."