Oruç Dim: How is your success in Turkey so far? How is your game’s success after importing to Turkey? And how did importing your game to Turkey increased your playerbase?

Christian Wehrlin: We’ve been a successful company in Turkey for many many years, being the publishers of Cabal Online. Cabal Online was always a very popular title among Turkish players . We’ve launched the Turkish version of the client. Players can download the game and play it on their native language right now. We’ve opened a new server for Turkish players called Red Moon. Turkish players are jumping on it and we are quite happy and they seem to be quite happy. At the very moment, there is some kind of player meeting going on and I’m really curious about the results and the experience Turkish players had on the new server, I’m looking forward to seeing the results. Actually we are going to translate all of our games to Turkish. Turkey is the one of the most important markets for us. Game Masters is currently launching several titles including Navy Moves. It’s not currently launched but you can go to http://www.navymoves.com, select the Turkish language and go for it in your native language and play the Turkish Facebook version of the game. There is an HD version coming in a few days, which you can download it and play on your computer. Navy Moves is a spy oriented thing with lots of action and console style gaming, really really interesting game that’s easy to start but hard to master. It’s very easy to play, the controls are very very easy, your mother probably could play the first level…

O.D: (Interrupting him) No, my mother probably could not.

C. W: Maybe not your mother, but you understand the concept right? Playing the game is easy but reaching to high score is pretty hard, it needs some training. Also you can play without paying anything, paying is not required. Another big title we currently have is Tower Worlds, a tower defense style strategy game that could be played on Facebook.

O.D: So how do you fare in popular “Facebook games” market?

C. W: Facebook market is something we cannot ignore. But we only publish worthwile games on Facebook. Tower Worlds is our own development, the development team at our Chinese office developed the game. It’s actually the first game developed by the GamesMasters but it won’t be the last. We are going to launch another title next year named BattleCaster which is a PVP style MOBA game. It’s going to be very awesome.

O.D: PVP-style MOBA game? That’s a very popular concept nowadays.

C. W: It’s incredible and devastating, especially visually. It’s going to be extremely appealing and we can’t wait to present this to Turkish players.

O.D: Are you happy with the Turkish playerbase? What do you think about them? How much of your playerbase consist of Turkish players?

C. W: First of all, in comparison, while I don’t know the exact numbers, I can say that their numbers are very similar to the number of German players. Turkish players always has been a very important and loyal group for us, they were always a very important part of it. I think there is a bit of misunderstanding, every culture has their bit of problems. While Turkish players are always seen as “the Whiners” by the rest of the community and German players are called “the Lawyers” as everytime there is a problem, they always come with a lawyer. There isn’t any major difference between Turkish players and the others, not seriously. In the end, Turkey a very interesting and very European oriented country with very sophisticated economics. Nearly all of the countries are going down but  Turkey is still going up in terms of financial strength. I really like Turkey, that’s why I’ve been here six times including this time.

O.D: Your game does not look like the very popular World of Warcraft at all. Does that impact your playerbase negatively or positively?

C. W:Cabal Online was basically different from other games when we picked it. We did not want to buy rights to a WoW clone, if you want to play World of Warcraft clone, why don’t you play the original and go for World of Warcraft right away. Cabal Online is an action-packed thing with a totally different set of features. It has small maps in which you can quickly access to all the things you want to have, you can quickly go into battle, PVP is much more important and it is an integrated experience, the game is more about the action, it’s not about “that shiny item.” Quality of effects are really good, even for today’s standards. The game was done in 2005 but the graphics still competes with the other games as well. Tower Worlds bears a cute look, and the new BattleCaster will be a Steampunk oriented game.

O.D: So your next game’s art style will be Steampunk, right? That’s nearly an unexplored area in games, we don’t have many steampunk games. And it’s also a very “should be explored” area in my opinion.

C. W: That’s the point. Why always do the same thing over and over again? This is why we chose steampunk as the art style, not only because that’s an unexplored area, but also because the devices we need for the storytelling, we could not explain everything just with magic or other elements. The maps in the game will be dynamic and it’s a very strong hint towards “the game is not going to be easy”, because even the maps are changing.

O.D: Steampunk is a very good concept in my opinion. Will you enter into other “nearly” unexplored areas with your upcoming games?

C. W: The Tower Worlds is going to get a visual overhaul because we do not want it to look like standard Facebook game, and we will also add more items to it. There will be changes within the game according to the storyline, the game’s focus is going to change a bit more  in terms of visuals. We are one of the companies that released a game with flash 3D and we are still optimizing the engine to allow more of the features. To answer your question, yes, we will continue to create games with different and exciting art styles.

O.D: Thank your for the time you spared for us.

C. W: No, thank you very much.