Microsoft veteran Stuart Moulder talks about his work on the Close Combat series.
In the mid-1990s, Microsoft did something unexpected: they threw themselves into the strategy game market with one of the most realistic and critically acclaimed wargame series in PC gaming history. Close Combat (1996), Close Combat: A Bridge Too Far (1997) and Close Combat III: The Russian Front (1999) were all published under the Microsoft banner, marking an ambitious push into hardcore strategy gaming.
Behind the project was Stuart Moulder, who appears first as «MS Joint Chief of Staff» on the original, then in management and production roles on the sequels. Developed by Atomic Games, the series set itself apart from contemporary strategy titles by focusing on small-unit infantry combat in real time, with an emphasis on morale, fatigue and realistic battlefield behaviour.
We reached out to Stuart Moulder with a few questions, and here are his answers.
What were your initial thoughts on the Close Combat concept when you first joined the project?
When I joined Microsoft in 1994, I was asked to bring in more «games for gamers» as opposed to Microsoft Flight Simulator and the casual games we were currently offering.
I became a gamer in the late 70’s playing historical simulation board games and remained very interested in them in digital form. Atomic Games (the real developer of the Close Combat games) showed us their latest offering, a move away from traditional turn-based simulations to a real-time offering. It looked great and the gameplay was very interesting and we signed them up. I thought they had done a great job balancing the real-time aspects with the degree of control traditional gamers wanted.
Each of the three games covered a different theatre of World War II. How did you approach the historical research, and how important was accuracy to the team?
Atomic did the research (they had someone full time for that). The first game benefited from the work they had already done on earlier Normandy games. Market Garden was a campaign I pushed for personally. I had always been fascinated by that campaign, feeling it was one of the great «What if?» campaigns of the war. I also liked that it afforded opportunities for attack and defense for both sides and was intrinsically balanced and tense.
The third game was based on the Eastern front, the biggest and most consequential front of the war. The challenge was in how to approach such an enormous campaign on the tactical level of a Close Combat game. Moreover, it was personally important to me that we never imply that Germany could «win» this one. Rather, players could affect their local battles but could not change the overall outcome. We worried that folks would find that unsatisfying, but it turned out not to be an issue. The biggest thing we added was the idea of points and custom-building your side using points. This wasn’t historic, but it was great fun for PvP games set late in the war where players could get King Tigers and other crazy and rare vehicles to their heart’s content.
During this game, Atomic lost their historical research person. By the time that happened, the only impact was on the in game historical notes (which weren’t written). This came up very late in development and I cheerfully volunteered to write them myself. I wrote them over a weekend, mostly from my own knowledge with occasional detail verification online. It was enormously satisfying to get to do this and a welcome break from my day-to-day managerial duties.
Of the three Close Combat games developed under Microsoft, which is your personal favourite, and why?
I personally played the third game the most because of the points system and PvP. That was a part of our post-work game rotation for a long time.
Why did Microsoft decide to discontinue the Close Combat series after the third game?
The Close Combat games were very niche games with a narrow appeal. For historical simulations, they sold quite well. But for a company like Microsoft, those sales were not very interesting. The Close Combat games were like successful Indie movies whereas Microsoft was looking for blockbusters. We signed Age of Empires from Ensemble Studios and that was the game we really felt would be our breakout hit. Which turned out to be true. From that point on, our focus turned to broader appeal (or potentially more broadly appealing) games. And not long after that, we decided to make our own console (the Xbox) taking us even further from niche simulation games.
How did audiences respond to the games? Did the titles meet their sales targets, or did they fall short of expectations?
The games by and large hit their modest sales goals and were generally well-received, at least by the hard-core gaming press. They gave Microsoft a bit of street cred with real gamers, which was our larger goal. I am personally proud of these games and I think Atomic did a great job.
Microsoft’s strategic ambitions meant that these games were probably doomed as far as being published by us, though I didn’t really grok that till much later. Atomic was eager to continue, but we declined. We also gave all the IP that we owned (mostly the game titles and documentation) to Atomic when we relinquished our publishing rights. This was highly unusual – publishers never gave IP back to developers. But it felt like the right thing to do, and it cost us nothing (literally). I wish more publishers behaved that way.
The series was later revived by other developers. Have you followed those later entries, and do you feel they captured the spirit of what you originally created?
I saw those titles existed and I may have even picked on up at one point, but then never got around to playing it. I guess I’m content with my memories of the originals and my small part in bringing them to the market.
We would like to thank Stuart Moulder for taking the time to answer our questions