Building the Best: Producer Chris Wren Discusses the Process of Creating “Warhammer: Mark of Chaos”

by Louis Bedigian

“We wanted a triple-A game with this franchise.”

When you take on a project, you want to go big. You wouldn’t use a sandbox shovel to dig up a grave, so why use a regular hammer when you could use a Warhammer?

With an army of warriors and the most powerful weaponry known to man, Warhammer isn’t just about pounding nails – its units will help you take down the entire building!

Dubbed Mark of Chaos, this new beauty gives the guys who make Craftsman tools something to cry about. 

Producer Chris Wren agrees. “We wanted a triple-A game with this franchise,” he says. To do that, they didn’t just dive into the development process. Though it’s good to get an early start, they needed to be certain that this was the kind of game they wanted to make.

“Namco really wanted to make PC games,” said Chris, explaining how the deal got started. “We had an open discussion to decide what kind of a game we wanted to make. Real-time strategy was one of the first genres that came to mind.”

Chris knew the hurdles that were ahead. They were well aware of the kinds of strategy games that were out there. But more importantly, he says, “We knew what we loved. That’s when Warhammer came to mind.”

Next they had to decide how to proceed. Was Warhammer the right choice, or should they keep looking? Ultimately they decided to stick with Warhammer, a decision that proved to be wise not only during development, but also in working with those closest to the Warhammer license. 

“When you get to know these guys, they like the way things are,” Chris told us. “They don’t want to be on the cover of every magazine. They don’t want mass-market appeal. They kind of like the fact that they’re a niche.”

At the same time, they knew it would be possible to reach a broader market with Mark of Chaos. “The game can appeal to a bigger group of people but still be niche.”

Which led them to toward a collaborative effort with the Warhammer creators. “Why write the story when you can get the people who do Warhammer to write the story?” Chris asked himself. It was obvious that the writing should be left to the writers, and that the developers could handle the rest.

What made that experience even better is that they all love video games. “They’re really big fans.”  

Testing 1-2-3

Warhammer: Mark of Chaos recently went through its first public beta. The beta was created not only to give players a chance to play the game before its release, but also to gauge its content and learn of any areas that needed tweaking.

I asked Chris how he, a producer, is able to judge game difficulty when he is so close to the project. He agreed – it’s very tough for developers to say that their own product is or is not challenging. “We’re a little too good at this game,” he says.

To solve this problem, Chris looked to those who participated in the public beta. “The difficulty is something we got a lot of feedback on.” They’d listen to what the players had to say about it, and try to work out a happy medium. “We were trying to get to the middle road.” But they also wanted a “challenge for people who wanted to be challenged.” For bragging rights or whatever. They wanted the hardcore audience to be satisfied.

“And for people who want to play a level,” he continues, “and maybe it’s not as easy as they expect, there’s an easy mode they can turn on for any battle.” Lose a battle using the default difficulty setting? Turn on easy mode and try again. No need to start the whole game over just ‘cause you found this one area to be too tough. “That kind of thing would [normally] hold you up. But the easy mode makes the game a lot easier.” 

Chris says that, above all, if you were willing to buy this game, the team wants you to be able to see it through. “We want you to see the whole story.”

Like any hardcore gamer, I am a huge supporter of games that challenge my skills. But I have to agree with their decision to make the game easy if/when necessary. Looking back on some classic, story-driven games, there were some that became too frustrating to finish. They lost their fun. There were a couple I stuck out (Parasite Eve comes to mind), but most were dropped. The story has now been forgotten, and I’ll never know what happened. But that won’t happen with Warhammer.

Chris concurs. “We’d hate for you to sit down to play it and get stuck because part of it was too difficult.” 

From Off to On

Warhammer: Mark of Chaos lets you build an army offline for the single-player campaign, then lets you take it online for some serious multiplayer excitement.

Chris informed us that this was “something that came from the table-top game.” You can “build your army anyway you want.” Thus, it was necessary to bring this element to the PC game.

However, every army upgrade costs points.

“If you want a heavily upgraded army, you’re going to have to spend a lot of points.” You’ll acquire points by playing through the single-player campaign. Whether you’re in easy mode or not, it’s going to take a long time to collect enough points to build the army you desire. But that’s how a great, lengthy strategy game should be.

Chris concludes, “It’s going to be very diverse when playing online. How you choose to build your army is up to you.”