Empire of Sin Interview: Brenda Romero, Chris King, & Katie Gardner

Screen Rant spoke to game director Brenda Romero and designers Chris King and Katie Gardner about the Precinct update coming to Empire of Sin.

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In 2020, Romero Entertainment released Empire of Sin, a strategy RPG set in 1920s Chicago, during the reign of Prohibition. It sees players taking the role of a crime boss striving to build up a criminal empire and eliminating competition along the way. At launch, reviews of Empire of Sin were mixed. This underwhelming response to the game prompted a number of post-launch updates from Romero, addressing concerns and patching shortcomings in the gangster title.

In that vein, Romero Entertainment is now working on Empire of Sin’s biggest update yet. The Precinct update will considerably change the way the game is played by splitting the map into Precincts, which must be conquered as a whole. This is a departure from the way the game functioned at launch; players could freely attack and take over individual buildings, regardless of where they were located and who their previous owners were. The update also introduces new win conditions, which will allow the player to buy out their competition instead of defeating them through force. The Precinct Update launches on November 18th, alongside the Make It Count DLC, which will in turn add a new playable character in the form of Maxim Zelnick.

Screen Rant recently talked about Empire of Sin’s new Precinct update with game director Brenda Romero, senior designer Chris King, and narrative designer Katie Gardner. They spoke about the process of adding a major update to a game like Empire of Sin, the value of community feedback, and the influence of real-life history on the development of the game.

Screen Rant: How did the Precinct update come to be? What was the process that inspired this major overhaul to the game’s systems?

Brenda Romero: The process for any game post-launch is two-fold: What do we as a design team think the game needs and what do players think the game needs. We’re fortunate in that the design team and the players were in agreement. As a territorial acquisition game, we felt strongly that we needed to give the player a better sense of painting the map and controlling their turf. We turned to history for our answers–Chicago was already laid out not just in neighborhoods (called wards), but precincts. In creating them, it allowed us to divide up the map and create areas for players to control as well as supply lines which are critical to keep your empire running. It gave a level of depth to the game that wasn’t there before.

On a similar note, what were your biggest priorities in developing the Precinct update? What did you know, right off the bat, that you wanted to do, and what came later during the development process?

Chris King: The biggest priority for me was to make the choice of where to conquer more interesting to the player and make the overall path of expansion more strategic. Thus I knew right off the bat that the player would need to be restricted in what they could initially attack in order to make that decision more interesting, and this decision had to then unlock the future decisions in order to make it more strategic. It then was a short step to precincts.

Much has been made of the impact of fan feedback on the development of this update. What specific criticisms from players and critics most informed the Precinct update, and how is that reflected in the new content?

Brenda Romero: Player feedback is critical no matter where you’re at in development. When we launched the game, the first few big updates dealt specifically with improving the player experience in response to exploits and bugs the players highlighted, such as the safehouse rush. We moved on those super fast to get the game into a non-exploitable state. We also created a private, closed testing group called The Family. They get early access to pre-release builds and provide critical feedback on design decisions, either confirming or criticizing the decisions made. In a sense, it’s not unlike early access. In terms of “what criticisms from players…” most informed the Precinct update, it wasn’t criticisms in this case. We’d addressed the major issues when we began development. What we were looking to address specifically, are two player requests: a desire to really control and improve their turf and a desire to have more rackets available.

On a similar note, to what degree did positive feedback inform the development of the Precinct update? Was there anything you knew you didn’t want to change from the base game, based on what fans enjoyed and responded to at launch? Was there anything that got expanded or refined based on positive feedback?

Katie Gardner: Players regularly highlight the bosses, gangsters, rackets and combat as some of their favorite things about the game. So, we’ve expanded and improved on all of these systems. Maxim Zelnick is our new boss. Maxim is an accountant who’s known for burning the books and the bodies. He’s smart, deadly, and has his own way of doing things. His signature move in combat is to call two bodyguards in to handle the riff-raff alongside him. Some members of The Family say that he’s their favorite boss now. We have a long wish list of rackets that players are hoping we add, and the Loan Shark was top of that list. So, we brought in some new gangsters that specialize in exactly that sort of thing. One of my favorites is Judge Ma “The Pillar” Miller, an underhanded judge turned gangster. She’s loosely based on Ma Ferguson, who was a well-loved, if corrupt governor of Texas. Ferguson was also the second female state governor to be elected in the United States. Ma’s personality really shines in combat where she dishes out equal parts sass and ass-whoopin’, but she can also use that silver tongue and a well-placed bribe to dissuade enemies from ever setting their sights against her in the first place.

Did you have plans for any of the content in the Precinct update before the game launched? If so, how did those plans change when the game released and you saw the reception it received?

Chris King: We always had ideas bouncing around for a territorial system in the game. It is very thematic for a gangster game, although we could never quite get the killer idea. I wouldn’t say the reception of the game drove the notion of precincts, what it did do was drive the idea that we should do something in this area. What happened is that I had a moment of inspiration that led to what I felt was the killer idea that got territory into the game.

What would you say is the most important thing to keep in mind when producing a major update for a game like Empire of Sin? How does the development process differ from the creation of the game itself?

Brenda Romero: When it’s a live game, the most important thing to remember is that it’s no longer your game. It’s our game, ours and the players’. It requires a lot of active listening to the community across the various social channels and forums as well as testing early versions of features with The Family. It’s better to know before launch that something’s just hitting wrong or right.

When Empire of Sin launched, players had a lot of freedom to go almost anywhere and attack whatever building they wished (even if it wasn’t a very good idea to do so). With the added border and territory rules in the Precinct update, how does this change the strategy of the game? How did adding these borders and territory rules strengthen the strategic aspect of the game?

Chris King: At the core of any strategy game are the choices the player makes and how this influences the future choices the player makes. A really nice way to picture this is chess players thinking 5,6,10 moves ahead. With the open system we had previously you could attack anywhere and anyone, there was no need to think 5 moves ahead. At its core, the precinct update creates this thinking of the moves ahead. It is not only the precinct I take but the neighbours to this precinct that I can take afterwards that create this deeper strategy.

A major aspect of Empire of Sin is the distinct personalities of each of the playable bosses, as well as their unique play styles and mechanics. With a new gangster launching in the Make It Count DLC alongside the Precinct update, was there any consideration for how much of that individual identity would be reflected in the new precincts? Did any changes have to be made to pre-existing systems that were individualized to each boss, like their personal questlines?

Katie Gardner: So with Maxim Zelnik, our new boss, we wanted to use his missions to really make the new precinct system shine. And not just precincts, but other new mechanics as well. In one of Zelnick’s early missions, you’re tasked with taking some precincts, but it’s ultimately up to you how you’re going to do it. You can go in, guns blazing, and take precincts the old fashioned way, but even that has a choice element to it: do you take the depot of a precinct, risking a tougher, longer fight, or do you take out the reinforcement rackets first, ensuring an easier takeover when you get to that last depot fight? Your other choice, if you prefer to settle things sans combat, is to try to Buy Out the faction that owns the precinct. The Buy Out feature is a new mechanic introduced alongside the precinct update. Buy Outs take time and diplomatic (and monetary) investment. But in the end, it’s a way to “convince” a faction that it might be better if they skipped town, for a price, rather than endure a war with you. With Maxim’s new missions, we wanted to reward both play styles: combat and diplomatic, and we hope it brings players back to try his missions out in new ways.

On that note, how have the game’s random encounters and sidequests been changed to support the Precinct’s new system?

Katie Gardner: Most missions that already exist in the game rely on the player having a racket available already, or space outside for a mission to spawn. In some cases, missions take place in other factions’ rackets. For those missions, sometimes the precincts add a nice little bit of complexity to some of those missions. For example, if the goal of your mission is to take out a precinct that is two precincts away from where your base is, you’ll have to strategize a way to get to that precinct. Do you want to take over the precinct next to you? Buy them out? It’s up to you! And when you do get to that precinct, maybe you just want to sack it rather than take it over. That’s okay too! Flexibility with playstyles is super important to us, and letting the player make their own decisions about how they want to complete missions is a big part of that.

And on the topic of DLC, was it challenging developing new DLC content alongside a major update like this? Did any changes have to be made to the Make It Count DLC to account for the Precinct update?

Chris King: They were developed together and designed together. So there were no changes to the Make it Count DLC to account for the precinct update. From the developer point of view we are giving our fans a whole host of new stuff some of it free in the Precinct Update and some paid in Make it Count DLC.

What was the most difficult thing about developing the Precinct update, overall? What gave the team the most trouble?

Brenda Romero: There was no specific thing that was the most difficult. When you’re dealing with a game that has a lot of systems, everything is surgery. Fortunately, our game is based on history, and therefore, if something existed at this time we know it’s possible to introduce it into the systems and have it work. For us, it was really just a question of which features of the many features did we want to bring together to make Make it Count a solid DLC.

Conversely, what is your favorite aspect of the Precinct update? The thing you’re most excited for players to experience when it launches?

Brenda Romero: After hearing players say, “We really want to feel like we’re owning our own turf,” I’m delighted that we’re going to deliver on that. Strategically, I think it adds a depth of play that players are going to really enjoy.

Were there any aspects of the Precinct update that you wanted to include but which didn’t end up making the cut? If so, why did you have to cut them?

Chris King: Hippo Chariots, we ran out of time. (Editor’s note: the team also attached an image of a hippo-pulled carriage at this point in the interview.)

Would you say that the Precinct update brings Empire of Sin closer to or farther away from the team’s initial vision for the game? Are there any major differences between your ideal vision of Empire of Sin and the state it will be in with the Precinct update?

Brenda Romero: A game’s vision and direction is always evolving. There are always some things you thought would be amazing that turn out to be so-so, and things you didn’t really give top priority turn out to be things players can’t get enough of. So, our vision for the game evolves with that.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/empire-sin-interview-romero-king-gardner-precinct-update/