The other day, the once Russian and now Lithuanian mobile gaming giant Game Insight announced the third incarnation in the My Country series, known in Russia as “My Country”. The main feature of the novelty – My Country 3D – will be, as its name hints, three-dimensional graphics.
If a couple of years ago one of the distinguishing features of GI games was extremely detailed game art, today, apparently, largely due to close cooperation with Unity, it gives way to full-fledged 3D, which is still not so common for the mobile market.
Actually, we talked with the general director of the company Anatoly Ropotov about why the mobile series of builders, which reached the mark of 30 million downloads on isometry and sprites, has three-dimensional graphics.
App2Top.ru : The main feature of the new My Country, as far as can be understood from the press release, will be the transition of the series to the third dimension. In fact, when we talk about casual projects, such an emphasis is rarely placed on the technical part. Why did you decide to do this?
Anatoly RopotovAnatoly: Because we can (laughs).
In fact, since the days of the first bodybuilders, I wanted to fly around my virtual city by helicopter, land on the first roof I came across and see how the citizens walk along the streets. This is a strong thing emotionally!
Until today, before the mass availability of phones and tablets with console-level “stuffing”, this was impossible. Now, yes. And we can’t wait for new announcements from Apple on the ninth of September.
App2Top.ru: Also, for me, as a fan of projects such as Caesar, Pharaoh and “Natives”, it is not at all clear why there is a three-dimensional graphics in the builder, especially if we are talking about a mobile project after all? Why did you switch to full 3D, especially considering that relatively recently, for example, the second paradise island was released from you, which is visually quite a classic project?
Anatoly: The series “My Country” has always been about the city and its inhabitants. When my studio innoWate in 2009 created the world’s first fritupley citybuilder, which was so simply called “The City” – we already decided then that the game would not only be about houses. We had little men walking around the streets, buying balloons at stalls, renting bicycles. The mayor ran around our houses and personally collected money; there were thieves that we could manage ourselves, but there were also police that other players put up; it was possible to collect all the cats from neighboring cities, and there were many more such cool things.
And then we see for ourselves the development of the genre in two directions. On the one hand, you need to constantly increase the scale – more houses, more objects, more events. On the other hand, it is very difficult to feel empathy for a city if it is a simple pile of buildings. There should be some kind of story, preferably personalized. Here it is appropriate just to recall the “Natives”, where the plot is very important, the saturation of the environment with unique objects, heroes and events. Here the Leader will come running with his problems, enemies will raid, someone is hiding in the cave – there is an incredible amount of interesting details in the game.
The story with the “Island” is a little different, there the player experiences warm feelings already from the atmosphere of a vacation at a seaside resort, so the sun, water, elegant parallax and a soft, lulling camera are important there.
But both “Tribes” and “Island” are quite intimate – building a village or building a tropical resort is not the same as developing a huge metropolis or even a country. In My Country, we wanted to ensure that right now the player was building a skyscraper, and the next moment he could descend to the pedestrian level. This is simply impossible to implement if there is no honest 3D.
App2Top.ru Q: How much has the gameplay itself been affected by the transition to an additional dimension?
Anatoliy: We were able to go down to the street level and start telling the story of the townspeople, showing their relationship. A wilted bush is no longer a decoration, it is an occasion to pump up the skills of a gardener. We were able to return to the era of the first My Country, where every building, even in 2D, had hundreds of customization options, and made it possible to drag people there: to the roof – to sit in the Jacuzzi, to a bench in the yard – to catch your breath after a run from robbers. There was a desire to spend hours in the game, just flying in a balloon over the city and follow what is happening, helping residents to take care of the city.
Here it is worth remembering all the games in which the player was an overlord-the lord – and what could be done with his wards there. Do you remember the feelings that old business simulators caused – hospitals, amusement parks? Where it was possible to lock a sluggish cleaner in a distant closet for not having time to clean up the garbage, or put annoying visitors on the most infernal attraction. Fans of Nintendo games will remember the Dōbutsuno Mori (Animal Crossing) series, where the character has some personal worries and a history of relationships with the player.
We tried to balance these feelings by adding a kind of linear narrative to the sandbox – after all, all those old games had specific missions with specific goals. And here we did the same, opening up new zones for players with completely new goals: build your original city, put an abandoned district in order, equip a summer village around the lake. In each of the new locations, the player will meet new professionals with new items and skills that they can begin to apply throughout the city.
One of the things we thought about very strongly is the camera. Both about the game camera, which allows you to fly between buildings, and about the camera-camera mode, which allows you to apply different filters, for example, “fisheye”, distorting the perspective and creating the feeling that skyscrapers seem to get out of the tablet. Nowadays, when players stream and tweet their game progress around, for a more casual game, we decided to focus on this special mode, which allows you to catch the best moments, play with characters and create your own gallery of the best scenes.
App2Top.ru Questioner: And the last question is about monetization. As far as I know, you are a supporter of the rigid free-to-play model. At the same time, one of the most commercially successful Game Insight series is the “Natives” series, where monetization is very light. What can we expect from My Country 3D in this regard?
Anatoly: In terms of monetization, My Country 3D also follows in the footsteps of the previous parts, that is, everything is pretty soft. Our strategy, as I have already mentioned, is to support and develop games for years, and this makes sense only if the project has a large loyal army of fans. This is very difficult to achieve if you overdo it with paywalls.
Thanks for the interview!
P.S. Game Insight promises to release the game closer to the end of this year. The game will be released exclusively on the App Store.