The document provides a detailed post-mortem analysis of the game 'Söldner - Secret Wars,' covering its development history from 2000 to 2004, including challenges faced in design, coding, quality assurance, and marketing. It highlights failures such as inadequate resource management, poor planning, and unexpected technical issues leading to subpar game performance and reception. Despite some marketing successes and sales accomplishments, the overall launch resulted in a disappointing outcome, attracting criticism and revealing significant lessons learned for future projects.

1. Söl dner - Secr et War s
A Post Mortem
Teut Weidemann
Managing Director, Wings
Direcor of Design, Jowood

2. Overview
• History
• Examining Issues
– Design
– Experience
– Code
– QA
– Marketing
• What we learned
• Q&A
– Wings Resource count
– Söldner Sales

3. History: 2000-2004
Gamestar Test Quote: “When you die you loose
all your hard earned money”
Wrong: You always get a minimum of 3500
when you die, if you had more you even keep it.

4. History: Year 2000
• Acquisition of Wings in Mai
• Plans: Base Tech - Söldner - MMO
• Pre Production, Planning, Staffing
• Meanwhile:
– Counseling: acquisition of Massive
– Counseling: acquisition of Products (Spellforce)
– Online Presence, Websites
– Web/Ftp Server setup & management
– Teamgrowth: +4 Artists (team 7 total)

5. History: 2001
• Team Growth:
– Programmers: +4
– Artists: +1
– Admin: +3, team total: 15
• Preproduction Base, Design
• Interim:
– Panzer Elite Spec. Edition
– Community Management: Jowood forums
– Managing Online Games (WW3, Cultures2 etc.)
– Being Development Director of Jowood

6. History: 2002
• Jowood Crises:
– Cash flow limits to Salaries only, if at all
– 25% of employees have to go, incl. Co-founder
• Team Change:
– Programmers: -3
– Admin: -2
• Living with the crisis: month to month worries
– Too many tasks on some resources
– Planning failsafe: looking for alternatives
– Effectivity drops by 30%

7. History: 2003
• JoWooD: surviving! Replanning, Cash still tight
• Second growth: ordering process, planned 12/2003 release
• Oops #1: QA? -> Build your own
• Oops #2: no Marketing (Spellforce took it all)
– We had to do Online Marketing
– We had to do Offline Marketing
– Cover and Packaging
• Oops #3: We had to do Worldwide Serverdeals
– Not task of Partners (BigBen or Encore)
• Oops #4: Release of public beta bombed
• 16. December 2004: delivery of beta candidate

8. History: 2004
• QA starts slow
• Soon being discovered: we need more time
– > rescheduled March 2004
• Delivering Master Candidate each month
• BigBen insists on 2 more polishing months
– > Rescheduled May 2004
• Release end of May/04 (EU)
• Release end of June/04 (US)
• Since then monthly updates as planned

9. Launch
• We were caught unaware how big the hype was
• Bad reviews
• Bugs
• Problems we never seen before in testing
• Angry customers
• Sales ok in GAS, bad in EU/US
• But WHY?

10. Examining Design
Gamestar quote: It takes forever until you have
enough money to afford a vehicle for the huge
maps
Wrong: with $3500 startmoney you can always
afford a Lada ($800) and equipment

11. Design
• Dropping weapons: it’s so much easier not to
• ADS, changing environments
– Lightning the scene is hard, no precalculated lightmaps
– No static mesh in 3d cards (speed issues)
• One world design
– no level load/reset means errors add up on time (and
servers run days/weeks)
– all real time, no pause (even in menu’s)
– Remember: this tech was designed to be MMO
• No experience in Avatar games means cyclic
approach to design

12. Design: good
• Overall design worked: people believed in
the product, expectations high
• Generating content: settlement, landscape
and foilage generation works
• Combined Arms works
• ADS, UCS, unique player names, no
preselected classes: work together well

13. Design: Bad
• Designer overloaded since 2002: Producer,
Designer, Managing Director, Marketing
Support, Mastering
• Design not complete at stages due to this
• Cyclic design and re-evaluation took too
long: too many cycles
• This led to unnecessary code rewrites
• Wanting too much: (see next slide)

14. Single Player Components
Multiplayer Soldiers UCS Portal
Client: Wheeled SWS: 70 Unique Name
3d Renderer
Physics
AI Tanks AFV: 60 Serverlists
Netcode
Particle/FX
Scriptsystem Helicopters TCM Chat
Overlay/GUI
Terrain
Landscape Generators
Scenatio Generator
Jets AGS: 200 Patcher
Debug tools, etc.
Server CCP CD Keys
Linux Server CMM Messenger

15. Experience & Complexity
GameStar: “... In game xyz you had intuitive
controls like “wasd” etc. but in Söldner ...”
Comment: Söldner has the identical interface, it has
been adapted to “the” standard

16. Experience: Avatars
• Animation & Avatars: we rewrote soldier code 5 times. Still
not right.
Zur Anzeige wird der QuickTime™ Zur Anzeige wird der QuickTime™ Zur Anzeige wird der QuickTime™ Zur Anzeige wird der QuickTime™ Zur Anzeige wird der QuickTime™
Dekompressor „TIFF (Unkomprimiert)“ Dekompressor „TIFF (Unkomprimiert)“ Dekompressor „TIFF (Unkomprimiert)“ Dekompressor „TIFF (Unkomprimiert)“ Dekompressor „TIFF (Unkomprimiert)“
benötigt. benötigt. benötigt. benötigt. benötigt.
Zur Anzeige wird der QuickTime™ Zur Anzeige wird der QuickTime™ Zur Anzeige wird der QuickTime™ Zur Anzeige wird der QuickTime™
Dekompressor „TIFF (Unkomprimiert)“ Dekompressor „TIFF (Unkomprimiert)“ Dekompressor „TIFF (Unkomprimiert)“ Dekompressor „TIFF (Unkomprimiert)“
benötigt. benötigt. benötigt. benötigt.

17. Experience: Multiplayer
• Multiplayer: no experience meant suboptimal netcode and
side effects
– Designing async game flows is a pain
– Synced databases are the future, but why did we do our own?
• MP and changing environments: some things no longer
work like “Bomb-Run”
• Server as master meant sacrificing speed and efficiency:
server runs 32 clients (theoretically)
• Always developing 2 games: SP and MP
– Coders always need 2 comps (server - client)
– Many things need to be load tested (16 players min)

18. Experience: Physics
• Physics: meant adjusting whole project to it
• Taiming physic engines is an artform by itself
• Collision code was finally working when we
enslaved it by the physic system
• We used ODE (open source physics engine) which
helped a lot

19. Experience: Portal
• Portal: no GameSpy, meant an additional whole project:
– Login/Logout
– Unique Name handling
– Server Lists
– Load Balancing
– Messenger
– Auto Patch System
– Cd Key Handling
• You ask why? GameSpy makes business with YOUR
game and YOUR customer ... And charges YOU for it!
– No secure cd keys
– Endusers don’t like it
– Many features we needed not available in 2001/2002

20. Code
GameStar: “The game has serious problems with
water: any vehicle touching water explodes”
Comment: Your beloved Bf1942 does the same
and you weren’t bitching at all about it

21. Code: Good
• Open Source Physics were painless more or less
• Landscape Renderer: streets, dynamic texture
generation, 25km View distance
• Auto Generation of content: Terrain, Roads,
Foilage, Settlements saved thousands of level
editing manhours
• ADS: simply worked
• Data driven design: Integration without coders
• Re-iterating 3d Tech (although FarCry hurt)
• Late Optimization: 12fps to 50+ fps in 3 month
• Localisation Technology: mastering with no code

22. Code: Bad
• Missing code reviews in 2001/2002 nearly killed the
project (-> lead was fired)
• AI: late design, monster of state machine
• Tools: not enough (balancing 130 game units)
• Lack of performance sensivity/control
• Lack of consistent preplanning and structuring
• Applied standards weren’t strict enough: bad resources
spoil code quality and stability
• Submit discipline -> stable builds (much better in 2003)

23. QA
Gamestar: “.. If they now get their
bugfixes done and balance a little
then ...”
Petra: “IF! If ever ...”
Statement: Professional Journalism?

24. QA: Good
• Internal QA increased productivity, short
feedback loop, build discipline
• Automating builds: from 42 down to 12
minutes
• Closed beta: feedback, organisation

25. QA: Bad
• External QA not up to the task:
– Load tests: 16 testers minimum needed
– Testplans: too many things to test
– They were functionality control, not quality control
• Beta
– Hosting at foreign providers: not good
– No dedicated beta manager: not good
– Automation feedback of logs was missing
– Only 10% give proper feedback, only 1% are perfect

26. Marketing
Florian Stangl (ex-Gamestar):
“The vehicles don’t work”
Comment: So how else could you
complain about the Vehicle Physics?

27. Marketing: Good
• Our own Online Hype exceeded expectations
• Marketing Online Games Online
• Community Management before Release
• Getting Game and Fan-Sites into Beta
• Cover
• Packaging
• PR (germany only)

28. Marketing: Bad
• Up to 12/2003 we were doing it ourselves
– So Marketing started late: requests during crunch added load
on team
• Germany: perfect PR
– France: horrible
– UK: arrogant, incompetent
– US: lets not speak about it
• 1st MP Game of Jowood: lack of customer knowledge
– No real online campaign despite Wings concepts & plans
– No understanding of internet marketing as a tool

29. What we learned
Gamestar, Commenting on bugs they
copy/paste into their review from our tech
support forum:
“I don’t want to repeat what’s being said
in the forums, we are building our own
opinion after all ...”
Comment: none ...

30. What we learned
• Code pre planning for all modules
• Code reviews for all modules
• Optimize early: implement automatic performance
tracking
• Without Perforce we wouldn’t be here
• Automate build process early: saves hours of time
• Incorporate debug output early and automate
feedback: makes reproducing much easier
• Automating localization works: export, installer,
done

31. What we learned
• Generating content works ... To a limit
• Be sensible to resources leaving
– Restructure
– Transfer orderly
• Be honest: no experience in one field: hire
contractor for counsel
• US Server providers suck

32. What we learned
• Multiplayer Games have their own rules
– Linux Server is a must
– Server must not use DirectX
• And many other specs we won’t reveal here
– Clan Support is #1 priority
• When Clans don’t play your game noone will
– Server Provider Support is a necessity
• Their demands differ from your view
• Understand their business and you win

33. Top Reasons Söldner is like it is
• Code planning/structuring: should have
acted sooner
• JoWooD Crisis and it’s consequences
• Lack of proper QA for MP games
• Lack of resources in critical time
• Wanting too much

34. Q&A
Gamestar: “money has nothing to do with
reviews”
Comment: LOL!
(GameStar canceled a Söldner preview after
they learned from PC Games deal)

35. 10
15
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may
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aug
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Year 2000
dec
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Year 2001
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apr
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Year 2002
oct
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apr
Wings Resources
may
jun
jul
aug
sep
Year 2003
oct
nov
dec
jan
feb
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apr
may
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jul
Year 2004
aug
Misc
Prog
Sum
Artist
Admin

36. Söldner Sales: Deutschland
14000
12000 11974
10000
8372
8000
Sales
6000
5453
4000 3782
2596 2404
2000
1069 880
731 727
0 6
kw21 kw22 kw23 kw24 kw25 kw26 kw27 kw28 kw29 kw30 kw31

37. Söldner Facts
• Measured in week 22-31, Coverage 82%:
44.844 sold units in Germany
• For weeks 22-31 Söldner is second best
selling title in Germany (#1: Panzers)
• Söldner spend 2 months in the top 10
• Info: Joint Operations sold 13227 (D)
• Info: Joint Operations sold 27800 (US)

38. Stückzal Vollpreis
38
20
10.000
15.000
20.000
25.000
5.000
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0
10 3
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12 3
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16 3
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18 3
20
0
20 3
Kalenderwoche
20
0
22 3
20
0
24 3
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26 3
20
0
Battlefield 1942 - Verkaufsentwicklung seit Release
28 3
20
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30 3
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32 3
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36 3
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38 3
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03

39. Misc Facts
• 3200 Bugzilla entries • 1544 xml files
• 717 textures
(08/2002-05/2004)
• 651 Animation files
• 18054 Perforce submits • 722 x-files (Objects)
• 656 test builds • 1991 wav files
• Full master build: 20 • 18 mio square km terrain
minutes generated
• 225 villages generated
• Master from submit to • 775.000 lines of code
CD: 1 hour • Languages: 10,
• Patch from submit to De,Fr,Sp,It,Uk,Us,Jp,Cz,Hu,Ru
exe: 30 minutes

40. 100
200
300
400
500
-100
0
Ja
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Fe
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M
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Ap
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Ju
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M
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Ap
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Ju
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Ju
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Au
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Söldner Task/Bug Hunt*
Delta
Fixed
Created

42. Tools used
• Visual .Net • 3D Studio Max 4/5
• Perforce
• Character Studio
• Incredibuild
• Visual Assist • Photoshop
• Granny • Kaldera
• ODE
• Miles
• zLib
• Python
• DoxyGen
• BugZilla

43. Thanx very much
cu online