The atWar Press: #2

Table of Contents:
Section 1: atWar Gossip (GONE MOLESTION??!!) EVERYONE WANTS TO BE ALBANIAN
Section 2: Ivan's Interview

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atWar Gossip
Gossip is back, and it sucks when people don't finish their sen

Have you ever thought who is Sexy Girl?

Have you ever received message from Sexy Girl? If not, you are lucky one!
We can just guess what is going to happen with atWar, if everyone receives messages from Sexy Girl.

From our reporter, we've heard that Enigma is reviving, will it happen? For how long will Enigma last? We can just guess for now, Enigma as Stalin's Martians descendant should live, Stalin's Martians should have their representatives in this community.

At last, but not the least important, we bring you the newest image from SP Police forum:


Has the long Balkan war come to an end? Have people finally accepted a winner? Will Albania shine as the new CW pick for atWar? Here are people that can't hold in their thoughts any longer, they want to be Albanian!

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Ivan's Interview
We present to you an interview conducted by Crow, asking Ivan about atWar related stuff, and an insight on the future.

Question #1 (asked by Darth.): I remember reading old threads which talked about releasing atWar on Steam and you (or Amok I don't remember) had said you'd like to make that happen someday. Is that going to happen soon? By 'soon' I mean the next 1-2 years since it would need a massive server revamp but I'd love to see a larger player base. Is there a reason you and Amok haven't released it on Steam yet despite the fact it would boost game revenue, which by your own admission is pretty low?

Ivan: Steam release is tied to the editor. We feel that releasing a game with essentially an external editor wouldn't be ideal, and we should finish that first.

Question #2 (asked by JFreders): What direction are you taking atWar towards?

Ivan: Pretty much the same as before, but hopefully more stable and more successful. At this point we're not planning any dramatic changes in direction - we don't have time to pull it off, and even if we do, I imagine it wouldn't be very popular - too many players are too invested in status quo. Just look a the reaction to pretty much any change over the past few years.

Question #3 (asked by Darkmace): Does he plan to remain active as a administrative member of this game? It is understood he has a life outside atWar but few small updates a month (or even every few months) is much better than none at all

Ivan: Yes, I am planning to remain as active as I can be, though balancing AW, work and life has become quite difficult. I am hoping to go back to freelancing at some point though, which should free up more of my time for AW.

Question #4 (asked by Clovis): Have you ever though about expanding your knowledge in the tools/languages used to make this game?

Ivan: Both me and Amok are now way more proficient in the tools/languages used for AW. We gained a lot of experience during the making of the game and over the course of our professional employment (where we work with similar things). I would definitely do a lot of things differently if I had to make AW from scratch now.

Question #5 (asked by Clovis): What are your though about restructuring the hierarchy of powers that the game has?
Details of the question, if needed: basically to split some of the responsibilities among the community members. You could have a "header" mod that appoints other mods, the supporter header could use mod powers into the supporters forums to reorganize it more efficiently. There could be language mods able to edit their respective international forums. ATN & Radio members could have powers to edit their own forum and so on.

Ivan: We might do that, although I have personal fondness for flat structures. In case of Mods, I'm not sure what it would accomplish - certainly a group discussion is better than just one guy having absolute power over appointments. This is very much the case of "who watches the watchers". We simply don't have the ability to appoint perfect people for every position and monitor their activity to make sure they remain "uncorrupted". Adding more hierarchy wouldn't really help in this case.

Question #6 (asked by Clovis): Do admins ever get in touch with the community events?
Details of the question, if needed: I've always wondered if admins used to read the ATN articles, PotM/S/Y awards or even the newly started atWar Press. I also wonder if they support community initiatives such as the atWar Recordbook & Hall of fame, atWar Database by Columna, atWar fandom wikia, Croat's Fun Screenshot thread, have they ever looked at the Encyclopedia Dramatica (if they haven't looked at this one then they'd better not) and so on.

Ivan: That's a lot of reading. I remember browsing through ATN articles occasionally and I skimmed through the atWar Press thing. Though trying to keep up with all the goings-on is not easy - most of my AW non-development time is spent on replying to PM, occasional forum thread and doing tech support. But I certainly support any community-driven initiatives - I think it's awesome to have such enthusiastic and passionate players.

Question #7 (asked by Clovis): Quite a long question: what are your views about the game's strategy and units balance?
Details of the question, if needed: as one of the top criticizers of the changes that have been happening over the years, I do seriously question what do you guys base to make theses changes. Taking up the latest changes for example, they were pretty unpopular (like perhaps any change since top hat's era), pretty weak-logic based and on the top of that, you seemed to base theses changes into a single person's opinion. They also doesn't suit your "good case scenario" as it pretty much made a lot of person angry over a single person happy.
I do also wonder if you guys incorporate the possible effect over the custom maps / scenarios that the changes could have. Particularly the NC destroyer capacity ruined a pretty large number of scenarios once it was implemented.
Lastly, many strategies have long though to be balanced and remained unaltered over the years. That's the case of the Sky Menace strategy that received an update recently. The same guy who PM'ed you with theses changes had also said previously that the strategies needs to be changed periodically rather than to keep them intact until they're considered unbalanced. I wonder if you guys agrees with his views and plan to change the strategies just to "change the dynamics" or eventually plan to balance all the current strategies and focus on adding new ones?

Ivan: Amok's view is "let's never touch them again", and after the responses to the latest changes, I tend to agree with him. Every change that is supported by a group of people (in this case it was Laochra and co) will be vehemently opposed by another, even though it might seem like a net positive and rather uncontroversial at the time.

Question #8 (asked by Clovis): When will be the next "Ivan & Amok here. Ask us anything"?

Ivan: Well, I'm answering questions right now :) We might do an AMA in the coming months, but there's no point doing it before the editor is released, because I suspect it would be mostly just people flinging shit at us

Question #9 (asked by Dr. Trollface): How much money do they want for that game?

Ivan: The minimum number would be $100K, but even that would be up for discussion. Personally, I would be more interested in investment/partnership that would allow me to work on the game full time.

Question #10 (asked by Trystane): There has been a considerable rise in popularity recently on atwar, A lot of older players have returned and the game has expanded. Now what's next for Atwar? obviously things like Map maker and more reliable servers are key but where do you see atwar heading into the future should you wish it to continue, for example which new features are you keen to add? I know there is something about "buildings" ? being added and some new strategies but past that what are your future goals for the game as a whole.

Ivan: I have a lot of plans and ideas, but I wouldn't be able to find time for anything big anytime soon. Map editor and getting onto Steam are current priorities, but both rely on Amok. He's the only one who can sort out server issues as well - actually the machines themselves and connection are fine, so throwing more money at the ISP wouldn't help. Optimizing server-side code is the only way, but Amok claims he has no idea where the problem might be. As for units/strategies updates, this is something well within my power, but I have to say I'm a bit chicken about rolling anything out - I don't think any of the changes I've tried in the past year have been received positively. People have ideas that sound great; I implement them; everyone else shouts that it's ruining the game.

Question #11 (asked by Waffel): Do you still enjoy having an actual ''working'' game and being a part of that game, as administrator?

Ivan:I do, despite everything (including Waffel's endless sarcasm). Really missing the days when I had more time to spend on the game.

That concludes the interview questions, and yes Clovis is quite the curious one.

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