Game of Thrones has always seemed like a natural fit for a strategy game. Westeros is defined by clashing armies, fragile alliances, political betrayals, and powerful houses with dramatically different identities. With Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, PlaySide is translating those elements into a classic real-time strategy game inspired by titles such as The Battle for Middle-earth, Dawn of War, Halo Wars, and Age of Empires.

I got the chance to go hands-on with the game a few weeks ago and was immediately enamored with the spectacle, production values, and flow of battle. It really felt reminiscent of classic RTS games in the best way. It's baffling that it's taken this long to get a true GOT RTS that isn't a mod of an existing game.

The Starks, Lannisters, Targaryens, and other factions are being designed around their individual identities, with different units, buildings, economies, and progression systems. The political side of the universe will primarily emerge through a replayable sandbox campaign, where players can forge alliances, betray rival houses, conquer territories, and determine who ultimately claims the Iron Throne.

During Gamescom, we spoke with Game Director Ryan McMahon about why Game of Thrones works so well as an RTS, how their previous game Age of Darkness helped prepare PlaySide for the project, and the studio’s collaboration with Warner Bros., HBO, and George R.R. Martin.

Before we talk about War for Westeros, what is your background in the game industry?

Ryan McMahon, Game Director: I actually started as a 3D artist, then became an Art Director and managed the art team at PlaySide across all projects. From there, I moved into our original RTS title—our first step into the PC space—Age of Darkness as the Game Director. That’s where I started to take more of a step into design. Design is something I’ve also always had a hand in. While my title was artist, working at a smaller company means you wear a lot of hats and do a lot of different jobs.

Now, outside of being a Game Director, I oversee all internal development of original IP at PlaySide and manage multiple teams. My main focus right now is Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, using my experience to help bring it to life and see it through development.

I think anyone with experience in the RTS genre probably heard about this game and thought, “Of course! This obviously makes sense as an RTS.” From your perspective, why was a classic-style RTS in the vein of StarCraft, The Battle for Middle-earth, or Age of Empires the appropriate fit for a Game of Thrones game?

Ryan McMahon: When we talk about real-time strategy games, that is where they really exist. The most successful real-time strategy games in history all exist within that space, and a lot of the innovation hasn’t really held on to the same mass appeal that those games did.

It’s really about trying to capture what RTS fans want first and foremost, while bringing in the strength of the IP to broaden the reach of the RTS genre and bring new fans into it who perhaps haven’t played it before—or haven’t played it for a long time. IP has had a very big influence on the success of the genre. We’ve seen that with The Battle for Middle-earth, Halo Wars, the Star Wars RTS games—Empire at War—and, of course, the Dawn of War series.

There have been a lot of successful IP takes on the genre because it allows you to look at an IP at scale and have all the different factions at play. That is generally what brings more mass appeal to the genre. We’re big RTS fans, but we also wanted to widen the reach of what we could do off the back of our previous game. Having a really strong IP like Game of Thrones, which we all love, helps us do justice to the genre—or that’s what we hope.

To your point about the genre’s evolution, it feels as though asymmetry has softened over time to make games feel very even and balanced. You seem to be embracing how different every faction can be. Can you talk about that?

Ryan McMahon: I think what a lot of RTS fans love is the depth and complexity that can come from playing a different faction, as well as mastering it. We didn’t want to shy away from making each faction feel unique, because the factions are also where we can really let the IP flourish.

When we talk about the Lannisters, the Starks, and the Targaryens, we want to make sure that when you play them, you feel like you’re playing them and that they’re true to their identities. They aren’t just carbon copies with the same swordsmen or cavalry units across each faction. They all feel different, down to the buildings you construct and the way you work through your economy and progression over the course of a game.

Game of Thrones is obviously well known for the scale and spectacle of its battles, but perhaps even more so for the political intrigue among the houses and the royal court. Do the politics of Westeros play a part in the game?

Ryan McMahon: Politics is more of a layer that comes through in the single-player campaign. We have ideas about ways we can introduce politics into the skirmish layer, but given the speed and pacing of matches—about 10 to 40 minutes, depending on your opponent and skill level—there isn’t a lot of time to pull off great political maneuvers. Politics is more of a long game, and you see that in grand strategy titles.

We want to let the skirmish side of the game thrive as a solid skirmish-style RTS for this demo, then let politics be expressed more through the campaign and its progression.

Do you have any personal perspective on why it has taken so long to get a Game of Thrones RTS like this?

Ryan McMahon: It’s a tricky thing to get into, but first, there needs to be a studio that wants to do it. There also needs to be a studio that wants to invest the money in doing it. We are very passionate about the IP.

When we were working on Age of Darkness, it was initially inspired by Game of Thrones. Some people picked up on that, and some didn’t. We were inspired by the Long Night in the final season—the whole idea that you’re the last bastion of hope, with a horde of undead coming at you, and you’re facing overwhelming odds. Our survival mode essentially revolves around that concept. Even our main hero in that game, Edwin, is very similar to Beric Dondarrion in that regard.

There was already a lot of inspiration from and love for Game of Thrones, as well as a love for RTS games. When we had the opportunity to discuss a potential licensing deal for a Game of Thrones game, it was something we jumped on straight away as fans of the IP and the genre. Ultimately, those things need to align. Bigger companies aren’t necessarily going out of their way to create these games or licensed products in those genres. There needs to be a studio that is actually chasing after it.

This is such a complex universe. You have the original book series, which is still unfinished, the HBO series, and the spin-offs. War for Westeros is set within the original timeline of the HBO show, and the hero characters share the actors’ likenesses. How closely did you work with HBO, and what has that relationship been like?

Ryan McMahon: We have a licensing deal with Warner Bros., which is obviously the parent company of HBO, and we work with the licensing team. Through that, we also work with HBO and George R.R. Martin when necessary. They have to approve everything in the game: all the assets you see, all the art, and the design intent we have for the factions. Everything goes through them and is discussed with them.

I would say we have quite a good creative partnership in which we approach these problems together and really try to work toward the best solution. They trust us as the RTS experts and, at this point, as people who are getting closer to being experts in the IP as well. We’re all big fans of the show and the books. We play the board games and the miniature games. We love everything Game of Thrones.

We have a lot of trust with the IP holders to do the right thing by the IP, but they still need to approve everything that goes in. It has been a great experience overall.

Have you played any of the popular Game of Thrones mods for other games? There are several especially popular ones for Crusader Kings and similar games.

Ryan McMahon: A bunch of the team and I have played the A Song of Ice and Fire mod for Crusader Kings. We’ve also played the A Song of Ice and Fire mod for Mount & Blade: Warband. There are also a few Age of Empires II mods with A Song of Ice and Fire-style mini-campaigns. We’ve played all of those, and we’re big fans.

It’s something we’ve spoken about internally a lot: this game isn’t meant to copy those mods or take the spotlight away from them. It offers something entirely different, which is why the RTS corner is such a good fit for us. It can coexist alongside those mods, because they’re awesome at what they do and exist within fantastic games.

Personally, I’m a big fan of Mount & Blade and Crusader Kings and have hundreds of hours in those games. They’re also games that have had multiple iterations over time, so trying to compete with them at what they do isn’t something we’re interested in. What we can do is build on our RTS experience and bring that to a great Game of Thrones experience, while taking a lot of inspiration from the mods that are out there. We can appreciate and coexist alongside them without necessarily taking the spotlight away from them.

I’m curious about the team’s experience, the software you use for different aspects of the art, and how you take something from a live-action TV show and adapt it for a game. What is that process and pipeline like?

Ryan McMahon: We use Unreal Engine 5 as the engine, so a lot of the rendering is done through that. We use Maya for much of the 3D modeling. Our concept artists use some Blender combined with Photoshop, and the character team uses ZBrush to sculpt the models. All the environment and character artists use Substance 3D Painter for texturing. We also use some Substance 3D Designer for the tile maps and environments.

We have a material library in Substance 3D Painter that is used across many of the characters and environments for metals, non-metals, leather, and similar materials across the different heroes.

For the likenesses, it’s all done by hand in ZBrush. If a photo scan is available, we use it, but we don’t have much photo-scan data for the actors. A lot of it is hand-sculpted, which is a massive challenge. A lot of time and effort goes into getting the likenesses right, with some back-and-forth with the actors as well. The artists use PureRef to build large reference boards of all the characters from different angles. They gather as many shots of the actors’ faces from different angles as they can.

For the environments, we use a lot of procedural content generation for map set dressing. We have a good PCG workflow, so much of the design can be done by the game designers while building a map. The artists then do quite a minimal set-dressing pass at the end, dressing over the terrain. We also use some Houdini for procedural-generation work where we can.

Our animation workflow is very interesting. We use a technique called VAMP, which is basically a vertex-animation material pipeline. We rig and animate the characters normally, then use Unreal Engine to bake all their animations down into a texture on a material. On Age of Darkness, we used a technique called VAT, which is the same kind of thing but through the texture pipeline. Essentially, it’s a texture through which the UVs run in the material, and it offsets all the vertices to play an animation rather than requiring a rigged skeleton on the character.

One challenge we had on Age of Darkness was that we didn’t have animation blending because it was just a texture, so it snapped between animations. With the VAMP version, we now have animation-blending support. We do this because it allows us to render many more units on screen at a lower cost. We don’t have to account for the rigs and bones on the characters as well.

I could feel the detail and fidelity in the animations. It seems like a lot of thought and care went into them. In many RTS games, I don’t feel like you look at the individual units fighting very much. With a game like this, being able to watch it play out and see the spectacle is a big part of what makes it feel so much like Game of Thrones.

Ryan McMahon: Spectacle comes back to one of our gameplay pillars, which is the combination of spectacle and visceral action. A lot of our gameplay and the art around it try to reinforce the idea that combat is something worth watching. That comes through the wildfire and through the physicality of units colliding with their hit animations. We’re really trying to reinforce that combat is something you want to stay and watch rather than move on from.

One piece of feedback I have is that I would love to zoom out more. I think it would be great to zoom farther out so I could see more of the conflict.

Ryan McMahon: Of course. I think every RTS player, in every RTS game ever, always needs to zoom out more. It’s something we’re always tinkering with. Finding the right level of zoom in and zoom out is something we’ll constantly tinker with up until launch.

For us, it’s a balance between allowing the player to zoom out as much as possible and making sure we’re close enough to maintain unit readability in battles. If you zoom out too far, the units become too small. Because we’re a more realistically styled game, it becomes harder to maintain readability. When you look at many of our reference titles, such as Halo Wars, The Battle for Middle-earth, and Dawn of War, they have a closer zoom for that reason as well. But it’s definitely not the final zoom. We’ve received a lot of feedback about it, and we’ll keep working on it.

What feedback have you seen in previews? Has it been what you expected? Has anything surprised you or given the team notes to work on?

Ryan McMahon: We were getting a lot of feedback during the preview period as well, with people leaving feedback through different creators and press. Much of the feedback aligns with what we had already received. Some people have obviously mentioned the lack of politics in the preview they played, but that’s a known point we’ve raised throughout this process: it will come later through the campaign, while this is skirmish gameplay.

A lot of the feedback aligns with what we’ve already received and the things we’re already working on, which is great to hear. Overall, it has been positive. I haven’t read or watched everything yet because I’ve been at Gamescom, so my plan is to dive into it. There are hours and hours of content; some people are posting 20- or 30-minute videos, so there’s a lot to get through.

Who knew people love Game of Thrones?

Ryan McMahon: Exactly.

One final topic I’d love to discuss is the campaign. If you can’t answer this yet, I understand, but is there a single campaign, or does each faction have its own storyline, or is it dispersed around storylines like Heroes of Might and Magic?

Ryan McMahon: Each faction has its own campaign. It isn’t a linear narrative storyline, though. It’s more of a player-led sandbox campaign in which you pick your faction, are placed on the map of Westeros, and have to lead your conquest of power to claim the Iron Throne.

You do that by taking control of different territories. To capture a territory, you play a skirmish match at that location against the house that currently owns it. Over the top of that is a political layer with alliances, betrayals, and high-stakes tension that emerges over the course of the game. It influences which houses survive until the end, as well as which hero within your faction can sit on the Iron Throne.

All of that is for the player to control and lead. You could replay a faction’s campaign multiple times and have it play out differently, with different endings.

The sandbox element sounds compelling because you could start as Daenerys, but by the time you reach King’s Landing, there could be a Stark or a Lannister on the throne. There’s a lot of replayability there, and it lends itself well to being scalable over time. Does Daenerys start in Westeros, or does she start in Essos?

Ryan McMahon: She’ll probably start on Dragonstone.

That makes sense. So it’s all set in Westeros?

Ryan McMahon: Yes.

Great. I don’t think I have any other questions. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat. I’ll admit I was disappointed to see the demo removed from my Steam library, but I’ll survive.

Ryan McMahon: We’re going to do a beta soon as well, so you’ll be invited to play again soon. That’s also being shared publicly, so anyone can sign up now to take part in the beta, which will take place later this year.

Ryan McMahon, Game Director and General Manager at PlaySide

Interview conducted by David Jagneaux