Matrix Games

Where I argue that maybe one day we'll sell Stukas in space and laser firing Panthers

"There is no peace amongst the stars..." and thanks for that, I say.

With the release of Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon, we've just hit the fourth sci-fi release this year. And if one adds Pandora: First Contact, it makes it five in fourteen months. Call it a trend, call it a coincidence, call it the call of the void, these four (+1) releases are charting amongst the best selling titles for the group this year. And there is more to come.

Creating credible, futuristic, imaginary worlds is not an easy exercise. It has its own challenges as much as, if not more then, re-creating historically accurate scenarios.

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe". Carl Sagan

We've had the luck of working with very talented groups of people so far. Elliot Gibbs at Code Force, with the help of Erik Rutins and the guys at Proxy Studios have done an amazing job at making all this happen: Distant Worlds Universe and Pandora have generated a whole new world of opportunities for us as a group of companies, for the players and for themesleves as small, talented, development studios.

It was slightly different for Polar Motion and one would probably not rate Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager as a Sci-Fi game just because it has stars in it. I classify it in that area because, as a sandbox game, Ignacio and his development partners, have created an immersive world which turns pure management into an adventure of technical innovation and reach for the uknown that comes so close to the excitement of the exploration of a whole new universe.

Armageddon is of course a very well known Sci-Fi world that required a totally different set of skills to be re-created. In this case the exercise was much more similar to the crafting of an existing historical background and there is probably more literature about the 40k tanks then about most of pre-World War II war machines.

The home of wargamers is changing. Or maybe wargames are changing. Which doesn't mean leaving the traditional wargames (or old fashioned, or one could even call them 'the real thing') aside. Hex based is still cool, turn based is still the word and IGOUGO/WEGO are still very much in our DNA.

But, hey, the stars are all so bright and we definitely don't want to be "condemned to vegetate upon this globe, never able to venture into interplanetary space".

Marco A. Minoli - Marketing Director HoW