GAMES had the opportunity to interview Vogster’s Vice President, Daniel Prousline, about the latest features in their MMOFPS, CrimeCraft, as well as details behind the partnership with WarpPortal." Big thanks to them for taking the time to do this interview.

1." It must be very exciting for CrimeCraft to be joining WarpPortal’s online platform." Can you tell us more details about how this happened? How was the partnership reached?

Obviously it is a very exciting development for our game to be present on a major online platform such as WarpPortal. As an independent developer we really came to appreciate the value of partnerships and ability to showcase our game on established online portals that have already existing user base" that is a right fit for a free to play shooter like CrimeCraft.

I think that our game presents a fairly unique opportunity to our partners. There is a huge opening in the market for this kind of games and CrimeCraft can really stand out ­ this has made us an interesting partner. I should also mention that the game has a fully developed item mall and monetization system ­ I believe that also was a factor in making us an attractive partner.

The partnership such as we have with WarpPortal is a product of work of many people ­ on the portal side, on development and operational side and on marketing and community side. Such relationship requires sustained effort on the part of manypeople involved. We were very happy with the relationship we build with Gravity over the months working on integrating CrimeCraft into WarpPortal and preparing for launch. It is great to work on something when you feel that there is real" excitement from both sides and the support that we received from Gravity was tremendous.
I should also mention that CrimeCraft fits very well into the product mix on WarpPortal and surely will find" good response among WarpPortal players as it offers a different kind of gameplay but also fits within the WarpPortal brand very well.

2." What does Vogster expect to see in the near future? Any new MMO titles?

Our main focus in the near future is continuing to expand and improve CrimeCraft. As with any online product you always keep working on improving the existing game as well as adding new content. We have just pushed our first expansion ­ an episodic ³Bleedout² campaign. We have more episodes coming in the very near future, as well as new gameplay areas and new features. After that we will continue to work on game improvements and content. Among our key goals is making easier the experience of first getting into the game so we will be decreasing the initial download size dramatically as well as improving the new player learning curve.
As a longer term strategic goal it would be interesting to see CrimeCraft available on consoles and on cloud gaming services.

3." How has CrimeCraft grown since it first launched? What do you expect to see from CrimeCraft as the weeks go by?

We are seeing constant population growth since the game became free to play last year. We have a long way to go before reaching our ultimate goals of world domination but in the immediate weeks we hope to have a sustained growth in player population and revenue ­ this rate has been achieved with the CC: Bleedout launch and we are hopeful about the game picking up more momentum as the time goes and more episodes of the gangland campaign attract more players.

4." CrimeCraft seems to stand out as an MMO shooter game amongst many other MMO shooter games such as CrossFire and Combat Arms. What are your goals for CrimeCraft and what do you suggest to players who are interested in playing CrimeCraft?

CrimeCraft is definitely more ambitious than other F2P MMO shooters, and part of that comes from our original scope with the ³traditional² MMO revenue model. However, I think we¹ve seen over the last few launches of MMO shooters with the pay-to-play model that the market won¹t bear it, so it pays to be agile. We were able to quickly shift gears to a free-to-play model and it¹s definitely paid off for us.
As to our goals, job one is continuous improvements to CrimeCraft. Our BLEEDOUT expansion was a huge step forward for the franchise. We brought a true weekly episodic campaign to market and delivered a quantum leap forward in the game play experience. Our community continues to grow daily and we are delivering hot fixes and updates on an extremely aggressive schedule to respond to player feedback.For players who are considering our game, I would say just download and give it a try! The game is free, the shooter is extremely solid and fun, and the RPG elements add hours of compelling game play. There¹s also the deep story behind the New Age of Ruin told through 10 episodes of BLEEDOUT, and all of our players get the first episode for free.
There¹s a lot of content waiting for you to try for free and once you¹re in Sunrise City, we think you¹ll want to stay for a while.

5. It seems that CrimeCraft is a game with very high computer specifications since it uses the Unreal engine." Does Vogster have any plans of making CrimeCraft easier to play on computers with lower computers with lower
system specifications?

When we first launched the game it was considered fairly hi-spec, however over the last year the kind of machine that can play CC has become a fairly standard specification. There are plenty of laptops and desktop PCs that can play CrimeCraft without trouble, remember the minimum system requirement is a GeForce 7600/ATI Radeon X1600 with 256MB of memory and the recommended is a GeForce 8800 with 512MB of memory. Those are cards that came out more than four years ago and are quite affordable. It is important to realize that" the kind of game play depth and graphic fidelity that is offered by Unreal is not something you can get in a simple casual MMO or a browser based game so there is a certain commitment that you have to make
for a really immersive experience such as CrimeCraft.

We thank Vogster for their time in doing this interview and we hope to talk to them about future updates regarding CrimeCraft soon! You can check the game out on their official website at www.crimecraft.com/.