Command & Conquer 3 - mega interview

GamesRadar: Multiplayer is crucial to the success of any real time strategy game. What innovations are you bringing to that aspect of C&C 3?

MV: I think the biggest thing that we're adding is depth. This new feature we're calling BattleCast lets you broadcast your game out to hundreds or even thousands of people. You can go to a website, kind of the YouTube of game replays, and there's all this functionality designed to support the community - clans, ladders, all kinds of statistics that we track for your profile.

GamesRadar: Why did you add that feature? Why do you think it's important?

CC: I think there are two audiences for this. First, there's the hardcore player who craves ways to dissect strategy and to constantly get better. Once you're at the highest echelons of play, it's pretty hard. It becomes a game of inches as you learn those final top tier techniques. One of the best ways to facilitate that is by watching replays. In the past, making replays has been a diffuse exercise where there have been fan sites that would take replay files and host them. But we wanted to do something that was a little more centralized... a central storage facility for all replays or at least the highest quality replays. We want as many people as possible to play C&C 3, but more than anything, we want people to understand what real time strategy is about. Having a sort of way to watch RTS television in the form of BattleCast is absolutely one step in that direction.

JB: You can hear commentary and the commentators tell you what's happening. You can watch and say, "Oh my gosh, I didn't think about the third refinery on the expansion point. Man, no wonder that guy's able to pump out seven tanks while I'm only able to pump out five in the same amount of time." That's going to help people get into it and add a lot of depth into the multiplayer experience overall.

CC: We're even going to be making a BattleCast viewer available which will be a free download from the site that you can install much in the same way that you would install a demo. Using the BattleCast viewer, you can watch live matches in progress or you can download and watch those archives without ever buying the game. Again, it's about letting people ease into a genre that, in the past, has been a bit intimidating. There's a lot of "inside baseball" - you need to know the unit chain and tech trees. For some people, that requires a bit of an investment. This is a risk-free way to learn about RTS and to start becoming a great player.

JB: You can hear commentary and the commentators tell you what's happening. You can watch and say, "Oh my gosh, I didn't think about the third refinery on the expansion point. Man, no wonder that guy's able to pump out seven tanks while I'm only able to pump out five in the same amount of time." That's going to help people get into it and add a lot of depth into the multiplayer experience overall.

CC: We're even going to be making a BattleCast viewer available which will be a free download from the site that you can install much in the same way that you would install a demo. Using the BattleCast viewer, you can watch live matches in progress or you can download and watch those archives without ever buying the game. Again, it's about letting people ease into a genre that, in the past, has been a bit intimidating. There's a lot of "inside baseball" - you need to know the unit chain and tech trees. For some people, that requires a bit of an investment. This is a risk-free way to learn about RTS and to start becoming a great player.