First, Tripwire has come a long way since winning the first Make Something Unreal contest. Did you guys have any idea how successful the developer would become?

John Gibson: I could answer this question a few different ways, depending upon how far back you go. Back when we were a young and cocky mod team with our heads in the clouds we kind of figured we'd be an overnight success once we started a real company. Now fast forward a year or so into the early days of the business when we were struggling to pay ourselves and afford to finish our first game. If someone had asked me back then if I thought that in a few years we'd be a fully independent developer self funding our own games, setting our own development schedules, making the games we want at the pace we want, and even publishing our own games and other people's games – well I might have said that was crazy talk. It took a lot of hard work, some good decisions early on, and a little bit of luck to make it all happen. Keeping ownership of our IP rights was one of the things we really did right. I like to joke though that if we had known how hard it was going to be to get to where we are now, we might not have started the studio. But now that we're here, I wouldn't trade it for anything. We've got a ways to go before we're the next Valve or Epic though ;)

Alan Wilson: Well, you always try and make plans – but, for a small company, they are about how to stay out of the dirt, not what to do when you are successful. I reckon we are probably about where we thought we would be – just that we got here by a different path to the one we thought we would take. We thought it would be oh-so-much-easier. Ha!

Your new game project is Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad. Why did you want to return to the WWII genre when it seems other shooter franchises are moving on?

John Gibson: There are a few reasons for us doing another WWII game. First we really have a passion for the setting, and really feel like there is a lot more that can be done with the genre that hasn't been done yet. And as any Red Orchestra fan will tell you, we offer a completely different take on WWII than the scores of "Hollywood" style shooters out there. We give players an experience that they can't get anywhere else. With that said, we think there were a lot of things we could have done better with the first game, so we're really excited to take another swipe at it and build something truly unique and compelling.

Second, we'd rather be setting the trends than following them. Back in the mod days we were one of the first WWII FPS games out there, before Call of Duty, before Brothers in Arms and scores of others. Our team pioneered things like 3d iron sights, the Eastern Front setting, and more. With the new game we're continuing this trend by adding a lot of new and innovative gameplay and features to the genre. Also with every major publisher in the industry throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into the modern and near future shooter setting we figure we're just the right team to fill the void left by the other guys. Gamers are still hungry for some great WWII action, and we're hoping to give them what they want.

Alan Wilson: Because everyone else has ignored WWII for a while now, would be one answer. The other is that we still believe that we are tapping into a huge volume of scenarios that have never seen the light of day before. At least, outside Russia. Besides, WWII is still such a great period for a wide variety of combat.

The first game was more realistic compared to other WWII shooters. What kinds of realistic gameplay can we expect to see in Heroes of Stalingrad?

John Gibson: The realistic gameplay of the first game really struck a chord with a lot of gamers and we gained a lot of fans because we gave them gameplay they weren't getting from the other developers. There seems to be a popular mythos that realism and fun are mutually exclusive and that making a game more realistic makes it less fun. One of the reviews for the original Red Orchestra by G4TV even had a comment that the game would appeal to "about 4 people". Nearly half a million sales later I think we've proven them wrong. Unfortunately there are a lot of developers out there that equate "difficult to play" with realistic which helps perpetuate this line of thought. Even though we had a motto of "if it is easy to do in real life, it should be easy to do in game" for the first Red Orchestra, we fell short of our goal in a lot of ways. We ended up with a lot of things that were actually much harder to do in game than in real life and ended up feeling clunky or difficult to use.

So one of the big goals with the new game was to find ways to make the game more realistic while also making it easier to play and more accessible. While those might sound like a contradiction in terms, they really aren't. One really good example of this is the Peripheral Action Indicator in the new game. One of the most frustrating things for players is getting shot by an enemy just outside of their view on the screen. This happens a lot in video games because a real person's field of view is about 180 degrees, while in most games the field of view is about 80-90 degrees. So that enemy that is just off the left side of your screen is something you would have seen in real life but missed in the game. That is where the Peripheral Action Indicator comes in. We display really subtle visual cues on the edges of the screen when there is an enemy outside of your in-game view that would be visible in your real world view. Now players have a much better awareness of their surroundings making the game more realistic, but also less frustrating to play. This is just one example of the many small touches that we've put in the game that add up to a game that is a lot more realistic but easier to play than the original game.

Another way we're making the game more realistic and more accessible is adding a lot more things the player can do that they would be able to do in real life. Things like blind firing over and around obstacles, mantling over obstacles, controlled breathing for steadier aiming with all weapons, adjusting the range on weapon sights, an all new recoil model that is more realistic and easier to use (no more insane recoil on SMGs), and interrupting reloads all make the game more realistic and more accessible. A big goal we have for Heroes of Stalingrad is to retain the core realistic combat that our current fans love, while appealing to a broader audience. To this end we've worked hard to find unobtrusive ways to give the player more information about the overall tactical situation in the game so they easily know where to go and what to do. The Tactical View is one way we're doing that. The Tactical View gives the player information about the status of their player, where the objectives are and their status, and more whenever they press the Tactical Key. And when they release the Tactical Key all this information quickly fades out leaving a view that is more immersive and not cluttered by a bunch of icons on the screen like many games have. It is a tall order for sure – trying to appeal to fans of other games in the genre without alienating the current Red Orchestra fans, but it is something we're pretty confident we've pulled off.
What can you tell us about the single player campaigns in the sequel?

John Gibson: We'll be giving out more information about the single player at a later date.

What multiplayer plans do you have for Heroes of Stalingrad?

John Gibsob: It wouldn't be a Red Orchestra game if it didn't have some really robust multiplayer. But this time around we're taking things much farther than we ever did for the first game. In the first game we only had one game type. This game type which involved players battling it out for zones of control has returned for Heroes of Stalingrad with a lot of additions and enhancements and is now called the "Territory" gametype. For players that are just looking to jump in and get frags we've added a gametype called Firefight which is our twist on Team Deathmatch. The new gametype we're the most excited about though is called Countdown.

Countdown is an innovative new gametype that has the intensity of a single life gametype without many of the downsides usually associated with single life gametypes. Single life gametypes usually have two flaws. The first is that when players die in a single life gametype, they are often heckling the surviving players telling them to "hurry up and die" so that they can respawn and play again. The second flaw is that single life gametypes usually require that maps be fairly small so that the round times can be short and the gameplay can be focused. Countdown solves both of these problems. Countdown features multiple objectives to complete, but only one objective is active at a time, and each player only gets one life per objective. If the attacking players take an objective, all of the dead players respawn and the front lines move forward. If the defending team kills all of the attackers, they win the round and the teams switch sides. Because players respawn when an objective is completed you hear players shouting "hurry up and win so I can respawn" instead of "hurry up and die so I can respawn". And with the moving front lines much larger battles can be recreated than with traditional single life gametypes. And to keep all of this moving a Countdown timer for each objective is always ticking down. With only two or three minutes to capture an objective and move the frontlines forward the gameplay gets very intense and focused around the objective while still allowing for more open levels with lots of flanking opportunities.

Tying all of these game types together is a whole new concept for multiplayer FPS games we call the Multiplayer Campaign Mode. In the original Red Orchestra you would have some very intense fifteen minute matches, but when the match ended it all started over again. We wanted to create something that would have more depth and give more meaning to the individual matches. With the Multiplayer Campaign Mode every level represents a territory on an overall map of Stalingrad. Win a match and your side captures a territory, lose a match and your side loses a territory. Both sides battle it out until all of the territories are captured or one side runs out of manpower. In essence it is like a meta game of Risk where the individual matches you fight feed into the results of the overall battle. Players will now be able to spend hours fighting a battle that will go back and forth across all of Stalingrad. Having spent some time play testing this I can say that things get VERY intense when you have hours invested in a battle and it gets down to the last few territories.