Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
10 Years of MachineGames - A Retrospective
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
A note from Executive Producer Jerk Gustafsson
year anniversary of MachineGames. It was only a couple of months after the Starbreeze 10-year anniversary that we decided it was time to start up a new studio — what would become our permanent home — MachineGames.
This was early 2009, and the first year after departing Starbreeze was a lot tougher than we expected. I wouldn’t say we were naive in our ability to land a publishing deal, but we most certainly became aware that we were game developers and not businessmen. We had a very strong and versatile core team, and we were really excited about what we could accomplish together and what the future would bring. But we suffered financially, and as time passed, our struggle to secure a publishing deal became mentally exhausting too. Our plan was simple and straightforward: continue until we are stone-broke and then, if all fails, apply for work at another studio as a group. And honestly, we got very close to doing just that.
Fortunately, our breakthrough came after only a year. Our talks with Bethesda about publishing opportunities resulted in us visiting id Software for three weeks in June 2010 to study idTech and work on a game concept based on one of their IPs.
We went all in on the opportunity as Bethesda was already on the very top of our list of publishers to work with; we had previously met a few people from the Bethesda Softworks publishing team while at Starbreeze to discuss potential collaborations, and they were extremely nice and supportive. Even after all these years, we still work with them and are close friends. During those extremely hot summer weeks in Texas, we laid out the plan for what came to be Wolfenstein: The New Order.
I love this picture that Fredrik Ljungdahl, our Gameplay Director, took at the end of those three weeks. The image shows the full plan for The New Order on a whiteboard in the id Software conference room we made into our home base during the stay. What I like most about it is that it shows exactly what we delivered almost four years later at launch. We have (fortunately) always been good at that: once we have a plan that we all agree on, we stick to it.
Joining Bethesda and ZeniMax in October 2010 was a huge win for us. We quickly realized that being part of a game publisher, compared to our previous time as an independent developer, came with great benefits: not only a better understanding and deeper involvement with the publishing process, but also meaningful contact with other developers within the organization. Being able to share experiences, ideas, and knowledge with amazingly talented teams is a blessing; and even though our studios are each unique and working on wildly different games, the support we provide each other with has been an important part of achieving success.
Some of our initial recruits had worked at Starbreeze where we got to know them well. The first two additions to the MachineGames team were so supportive, they put their notice in months before we could even offer them a job. Both are still with us today: Magnus Auvinen, one of most versatile and competent game programmers I’ve ever worked with; and Torbjörn Åhlén, a superb and extremely reliable environment artist.
Here’s Torbjörn with Kjell Emanuelsson, one of the founders of the studio, placing the MachineGames sign on the door to our newly acquired office space in November 2010.
Prior to opening our office, we had been renting a conference room in a nearby hotel, doing script and walkthrough work for the Eisenwald Prison chapter which later became Wolfenstein: The New Order’s first playable area. Here’s a picture of the conference room whiteboard with some very rough and early sketches and notes:
In this picture, you can also see the top of the head of the smartest guy in the room, our CTO, Jim Kjellin. He has less hair today.
This photo is a very special memory too:
Torbjörn and Magnus are in front, followed by the MachineGames founders. Second on the left is Magnus Högdahl, founder of Starbreeze and the guy that hired me and Creative Director Jens Matthies, back in 1998. Time truly flies.
We’d made a plan to celebrate signing our publishing deal at a Nando’s restaurant. However, we unfortunately don’t have Nando’s in Sweden! So, we took an early flight from Stockholm to London, went to the nearest Nando’s from Heathrow airport, ate a lot, and then returned home to Sweden in the afternoon!
The first year after joining Bethesda was rather chaotic, as we were building the team and constructing the office while at the same time being in pre-production of our first Wolfenstein game. We were entrusted with this amazing opportunity to work with one of the most classic and iconic gaming IPs and we were not going to fail - we were going to make one of the best first-person shooter games ever made! It was important to us for so many reasons: to show id Software and all Wolfenstein fans that we were equipped and able to bring the legacy forward; to show ZeniMax that MachineGames was going to pull their weight and become an important part of the organization; and most importantly to us, to develop and release a debut title that the entire MachineGames team could be proud of.
In retrospect, I think we accomplished most of what we wanted, but at the time of release, we were a bit disappointed in our meta score. Our development plans were extremely ambitious, and there were some challenges—we were developing for then-current consoles as well as the next-gen PlayStation 4 and Xbox One simultaneously, while still building out our team. Adding to that, The New Order was originally planned to be released late fall 2013 but we were forced to move our launch date to late spring 2014. Having to ask Bethesda for extra time was hard, and it was embarrassing to feel like we had failed the company that took us in by not hitting the date with our very first title. Having seen firsthand how Bethesda and ZeniMax put quality first and were willing to support us, we knew we were truly lucky to be part of the organization.
We started work on Wolfenstein: The New Colossus directly following the release of The New Order. We felt that, for the sequel, we needed to dial it up to eleven, especially when it came to the story. We didn’t want to hold anything back. We didn’t want to play it safe. We did the same thing we always do: laying out the full game with all chapters, locations and important story beats on a whiteboard - then Jens and Tommy Tordsson Björk, our Narrative Designer, started to break down and write the scenes.
Meanwhile, we had already began work on Wolfenstein: The Old Blood to keep our team busy while getting ready to move into full production of New Colossus. The Old Blood was a homage to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, a game I love and used as our main gameplay reference for The New Order, especially as I was so focused on preserving that retro-feel I felt lost in new generation shooters. The team did an amazing effort shipping Old Blood just one year after the release of New Order. We were criticized for the story in The Old Blood not living up to the level set by the previous game. While we felt it unfair to compare directly to a full price title, it was great to see that a new MachineGames release suddenly came with high expectations. To be honest, the lighter story in The Old Blood was a product of the production timeline and the fact that our main narrative focus had already shifted to The New Colossus, our next big title.
The main theme of The New Colossus was “freedom”. Here is an excerpt from our game presentation deck that shows our mindset and our ambitions to have that core theme influence key aspects of the game:
The New Colossus was released on time in October 2017, but it came in hot and it put a lot of pressure on QA and production departments. Shipping the game required some truly heroic efforts from everyone involved, including valuable assistance from our colleagues over at Arkane and id Software. We were tired as we wrapped things up that fall and we didn’t really know what to expect in terms of reception - we were just so focused on finishing the game.
Then, on October 13, I received in my mailbox the first mock reviews of the game:
Subject: Wolfenstein II | US Mock Review
Review attached. Please don’t share with anyone just yet.
XX scored it 65
XX scored it 74
MC score prediction: 69 – 74.
Considering how happy we were with the quality of the game; those reviews were difficult to handle at the time. Jens, who usually is the one I confide in with these type of things, was at a press event in Australia and I didn’t want to share such depressing news when he was down there focusing on selling the game. So, I just kept it to myself.
As it turns out, even our US PR team was shocked by the scores, and felt they were dramatically low. So much so that they immediately (and secretly) delivered the game to a third mock reviewer in Los Angeles, sending a console with the game installed along with an employee who happened to be flying to LA that week. That review – from a Wolfenstein series fan -- came back at a 90. Now it was impossible to know what to expect from the actual reviews.
I never even thought about telling anyone on the team – especially considering how hard everyone still was working to get it done. On the day of launch, I took some of our hard-working artists to a beer lunch - we were having our release party the same evening - and while I was prepared for the first reviews, the guys were browsing internet and various sites and one after another we saw positive reception. It was all high scores in the 8-10s and seeing the happiness among the team at that lunch, I would say that is one of the absolute best moments of my career.
This photo was taken a few hours later, at the Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus release party.
New Colossus was a critical success, but it was a challenge getting there and we needed to find ways to improve how we worked. To do that, we needed to look back at the development pragmatically. We always have to strive to become better developers, because in this difficult, technology-driven and problem-solving business that we are in, it’s crucial that we learn from our mistakes to grow as a team, as well as individual game developers.
Looking back at New Colossus, one of my mistakes was that I was so set on transferring the injured state of the character into gameplay. B.J. was severely injured at the end of The New Order and I wanted that fragile state of his body to be reflected in the health system, which resulted in the design of limited health during the first half of the game up until B.J. got his new body, which then brought the player back to full health. This provided game balancing challenges that could have been avoided for a better game experience. We made several updates to address the issue, but in retrospect, we should have killed that idea early on. Another thing I would have changed was the system to hunt for Nazi Übercommanders. Supporting the system and creating those extra missions took a lot of effort that could have been spent on further polishing and balancing of the main experience. We should have held off on this work until post-launch and instead made it part of our downloadable content.
(Not many know this, but if you’re a completionist and play through and unlock all the Übercommander missions, you will end up on a Manhattan riverside (through a very simple and lately added map) with a view of the destroyed Statue of Liberty. Linking the absolute end back to the core theme of the game.)
After the release of New Colossus, we wanted to try something different for our next Old Blood-style, “in-between” title. Our initial thought was to make it a prequel (similar to how The Old Blood was a prequel to The New Order) set to take place while B.J. was recovering from his injuries, featuring Caroline as the playable character. However, it was still a little bit too close to home and we felt like we had an opportunity to take bigger risks compared to what we would’ve done with a proper sequel, like Wolfenstein 3. In addition, we had been talking about doing something together with our friends over at Arkane Lyon, and after some back-and-forth we decided to change direction and we decided to do it together. A co-op game and a co-op between our two studios - __Wolfenstein: Youngblood. __
While there are several things that we could have done differently to make life easier for us and to improve the quality of the game we shipped, I’m proud of the team and everything they managed to accomplish in the relatively short development time. It’s quite an amazing accomplishment when you think about it: it’s the very first Wolfenstein co-op title, it’s our first game with non-linear RPG progression, our first with female leads, the first Bethesda game that has been simultaneously released on Bnet, Steam, PS4, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, and also the first that was released with a Buddy Pass. In addition, Youngblood was also the first Wolfenstein game to be released in an uncensored format in Germany.
It was a risky project, but a risk that paid off in many ways and one that I will never regret; Wolfenstein: Youngblood has resulted in a MachineGames team and studio better equipped for the future. And our future is a very ambitious one.
Looking back at this decade of Wolfenstein, and the Starbreeze years before that, it always comes back to the importance of the team and how we communicate and help each other out in our combined and shared goal of delivering great games. At MachineGames we will never be afraid to take risks and the work we do will always be difficult and challenging, but it needs to be difficult and challenging for the right reasons – to grow as developers and as a team and to build amazing gaming experiences.
We all know, or we have at least learnt over the years, that there are more important things in life than work. It’s amazing how we have members of our team that joined as young kids in their early twenties and now have kids and families of their own – so many personal journeys that we have the privilege to have been part of. But work still needs to be an important part of our lives. We need to stay passionate about what we’re doing. And looking at what we have in development now and the great progress we are doing, our passion for games and game development is stronger than ever.
The great MachineGames team:
