News

Roger:
The game I have the most hours in is Warhammer 3.
It’s awesome.
I’m a terrible Total War player, but I love playing it.

Roger:
Right now, Returnal. Amazing game — and I’m bad at it. It took me seven hours to beat the first boss.
Games I’ve spent the most time in:

• • Oxygen Not Included
• • Final Fantasy XIV
• • Final Fantasy XI
• • And thousands in strategy games like Civilization IV–VI. Civilization IV is my favourite.

Roger:
Making video games.
I spent six years flipping burgers and worked as a government secretary — and now I make games for a living.
Twenty years into this career, it still blows my mind.
My work life balance is terrible, but it’s because I love the work so much.

Roger:
One of the most fascinating challenges is balancing what’s right for the game and what’s right for the players.
The relationship between developers and the community has evolved dramatically.
Finding that balance is complex — but essential.
Streaming helps with that. I’ve been advocating for this because it helps us connect with people who care about the same things we do.

Josh:
In the December end of year message, you shared an email address. Why did you open that inbox?

Roger:
Partly because I’m a sucker for punishment — but honestly, I’ve probably received around a thousand emails, and the vast majority have been lovely. More than half contain criticism, but it’s constructive.
I’ve tried to answer as many as I can, and I’ve forwarded many to the team so people can see the feedback directly.
I want to be more connected to what we do. And yes — all those emails go to me. No one else. I’m the one who reads them, and the one who responds. If you're having a conversation in that inbox, you're talking to me.

Josh:
A common question: Do you read the emails?

Roger:
Yes — I read every one of them.
Some people have sent multiple long emails, thousands of words, packed with images, especially about Warhammer 3. I can’t act on unsolicited design documents, but the messages are fascinating, and I genuinely read them all.
Everyone gets an automated reply explaining I’m one person and it may take time, and I can’t take unsolicited design. But yes — I read them.

Josh:
What are things people shouldn’t send — either legally or practically?

Roger:
I can’t take unsolicited design.
I can’t accept anything that’s your own IP pitched as if it could become ours.
We’re a business, and these things have legal implications.
Same thing with job applications — those must go through official channels.

Roger:
The most useful emails are feedback. Tell me what you’re seeing, what you want more of, where the pain points are, what you like, what you want us to keep doing.
Criticism is great — but knowing what people appreciate is also incredibly helpful.
Short emails or multi page essays — all welcomed.
I forward a lot of them: Warhammer 3 feedback goes to Todor and Rich; Medieval 3 feedback goes to Pav and Leif. (All relevant dev directors)
Keep it coming.

Josh:
People have been asking: Will all Character Packs have the same number of units, heroes, lords, and spells?

Roger:
No — don’t expect a fixed pattern. What matters is value. As long as Character Packs continue and players enjoy them, we’ll focus on making sure each one feels worthwhile, not identical.

Josh:
We saw people designing hypothetical Bretonnia packs and trying to force content into a fixed structure. It’s better to think in terms of: “What makes sense?” rather than “What fits the format?”

Roger:
Exactly. The format is flexible — value comes first.

Josh:
Have you considered older or more obscure characters for future DLC?
More broadly: How do you choose which lords and characters get included?

Roger:
Short answer: Yes, we consider those.
Long answer:
It’s a combination of:

• • What players want
  
• • What we can design fun gameplay around
  
• • What our partner, Games Workshop, supports
  

Games Workshop has been wonderful, but we still need to go through their approval process.
They must protect their IP, and we care deeply about it too.
We look at what’s fun, what players are excited about, and what Games Workshop will greenlight.

Josh:
How was the content chosen for the first Character Pack?

Roger:
We looked at what felt interesting and a bit “left field” compared to our usual packs.
Tiger Men, Tiger Women — that’s just inherently cool. We had many discussions with Games Workshop to get the right elements approved. It was one of those ideas where, once discussed, everyone went, “Obviously we should do this.”

Josh:
We’d explored Bhashiva content for a long time but couldn’t find the right pack structure for it. Some ideas — like Nefarata — moved between pack types.
Character Pack just finally clicked as the right fit.

Roger:
Yes — we’ve planned dozens of packs that never happened. Some ideas get recycled years later; others don’t.
Nefarata was originally set to be the first Character Pack. But once we reviewed future plans, it fit better somewhere else.
The Tiger Warriors were something we’d wanted to do for years — this was finally the right moment.

Josh:
Why is the siege beta not released yet?

Roger:
We have a lot going on.
As seen in the December update — Total War: 40,000, Medieval 3, End Times, Character Packs — it’s all about prioritization.
We’re passionate about Siege, and it will happen, but game development is nuanced.
We trust the team to make the right decisions about timing.

Josh:
From my understanding, siege changes are fundamental. They’re disruptive.
There’s discussion about whether to release them directly or run a second beta.
Some people liked the changes; others prefer the current system. We must consider all audiences.

Josh:
Is AI passivity still on our radar?

Roger:
Yes. Absolutely.
AI is one of the most important parts of Total War. It determines how players interact with the world and how the world responds to them.
AI makes players feel smart and ensures decisions feel meaningful.
It’s one of the most critical systems we work on — and these are incredibly complex problems.

Josh:
There’s promising development and testing happening — but AI is foundational, like the Siege system.
Changes take time, because the system underpins everything.

Josh:
What is the focus for Warhammer 3 this year?

Roger:
The focus is delivering End Times and the first Character Pack — on time and at high quality.
We’re also fixing bugs, releasing patches, and possibly doing another Proving Grounds or beta.

Josh:
How is End Times development going?

Roger:
Really well.
Some content we make is immediately fun; some is not, and we refine it.
The team is stressed — but in a good way — because releasing something special is important to them.
A couple of lords are already in a playable state, so iteration is underway.

Josh:
It’s fascinating watching that iteration loop — seeing content gradually tighten and improve.

Josh:
We get this question constantly:
Can you clarify the working relationship between the Sofia and Horsham teams on Warhammer DLC?

Roger:
We’ve also sent Sofia streaming equipment so they can join streams more often.
People often imagine walls that just aren’t there — we talk constantly and share meetings daily.

Josh:
When will we see more of it?

Roger:
Soon — soon.
I’m passionate about showing our work to players so they can see what we’re building and give feedback early.
But End Times content involves a partner (Games Workshop), so we need approval before showing anything publicly.
Still — we want to be as open and transparent as possible.

Medieval 3 — Why Announce So Early?

Josh:
We announced Medieval 3, and then we streamed to show the intent and direction.
The community question we saw the most was: Why announce it at such an early stage of development?

Roger:
First, I’m incredibly proud of all our teams, but the Medieval 3 team especially.
Some of the things we’ve shown in early streams are things CA has never shown publicly before.
People worried we were showing "vaporware," but internally we agreed:
We must show things in progress.
We need to involve players early.
Medieval 3 is one of the most important games CA is making.
My biggest concern is meeting player expectations.
After internal discussions, we decided the best approach was transparency — showing what we're doing and bringing players into the process.
We have a strong vision and an incredibly talented team — some have wanted to work on Medieval 3 for a decade or longer. Some have advanced academic backgrounds in medieval history.
But none of that matters if we don’t meet expectations.
So we announced early to take players along for the journey.

Josh:
It’s about taking players on the journey and being transparent. We’re not crowdsourcing the game — we’re showing the vision.
Some forum discussions wondered:
“Is this a thousand cooks?”
But it’s more like the head chef showing the direction and the dish, not letting everyone rewrite the recipe.

Roger:
Exactly.
Sega asked me the same thing — how do we avoid a thousand chefs?
My answer:
You need creative people with enough ego and confidence in their vision to know when they're right.
We’re building the game with the community — but not by the community.
A fully crowdsourced game would be terrible.
We have smart people who know when their direction is right.

Josh:
It’s complex.
Many old code features literally lived on individual developer hard drives — which are gone now.
Old CA wasn’t as large or organized.
Now we have the new unified engine: Total War Next (Warcore).
When we look at older features, we ask:

• • Does this feature already exist in the new engine?
• • If not, what would it take to rebuild it?
• • What features do players assume are mandatory for a Medieval game?

Some features become “false memories” — like how people swore Elder Scrolls always had sprint, even though it didn’t.
We must identify what players expect to be there “by default.”

Josh:
Follow up: What does it take to decide to build an entirely new engine?

Roger:
Making a game is enormous.
Historically, we’d build a new game by branching off the previous engine — this created dead ends:

• • Weather here, no weather there
• • Feature in Game A, missing in Game B
• • Systems becoming incompatible

In the past 3–4 years, we unified all Total War games into one shared engine.
From now on, every new game inherits from the core engine.
This means:

• • Features developed for one game propagate to all future games
• • We avoid divergence
• • We stop needing to rebuild systems from scratch

For example:
Why is co op campaign in Warhammer 3 but not in Pharaoh?
Because they inherited from different branches.
The new engine solves that.

Josh:
The team asked me to give a specific answer: we’ll be showing more this Thursday in a new Rally Point stream.
And to be clear — this won’t just be another iteration of what we showed last time.
It’s something completely different to share with you and get your feedback on.
I do have the title of the segment written down here…
BUT the team has asked me not to say it, because there’s a blog going out this week that will formally announce what we’re doing.
So I won’t spoil it on stream — the blog will reveal the details.
We saw a build of it today, and it looks fantastic.
With our upgraded room setup, we can do much more:

• • Live gameplay
• • Pre recorded footage
• • Art showcases
• • Flexible format changes

Roger:
Wonderful. I’m a massive 40K fan — honestly, that was one of the main reasons I joined CA. They told me we’d be working on this project. Right now, I’m deep in the trenches with the team, working shoulder to shoulder. We’re pushing hard to get this game ready. I’m not cutting my hair or shaving my beard until we ship — so when we do the next one of these streams in a few months, I’ll look even more dishevelled, partly from stress and partly from life. But truly — development is going really well.

Josh:
We had a studio wide playtest recently. I got to jump into some battles.
One thing that absolutely blew me away was what the designers call ambient units.
I called it “this feels real.”
I loaded into a battle and before even pressing Start Battle, there were already small skirmishes happening — orcs fighting each other, little engagements.
The correct tactical move would’ve been to sit back and form lines…
But I charged in to save my little allies and lost far more units than I needed to.
Those small touches make the world feel alive.

Roger:
It’s already an incredible IP and an incredible game. The team is having a lot of fun building it.
You’ll see someone reading hardcore medieval history books for Med 3 on one side of the office, and someone painting 40K minis on the other.
Two different passions, same studio.

Josh:
Do we have space battles?

Roger:
Space battles are very lore appropriate.
Do I want them? Yes.
Does the team want them? Yes.
Will they be in at launch? Maybe not.
We’re working on a lot of new systems, and we have to choose what fits for launch.
Space battles may or may not make that cut — but they will definitely come eventually.
The “when” is the big question.
40K is enormous. I’ve read around 40 books and that’s barely scratching the surface — not even half of the Horus Heresy.
There’s so much fans want, but it’s a huge universe to adapt.

There’s a big discussion in the community: How do we make 40K feel like Total War? The foundational elements need to come first. Real time space battles would be incredible, but only after the core Total War experience is rock solid.

Roger:
Exactly.
If the foundation isn’t fun, the additions don’t matter.
We already have things in the game that are fun, and things that aren’t fun yet — that’s normal. We’re working through it.
Right now, space battles are not the focus.
The focus is delivering an awesome core Total War: 40K experience.
Even if we don’t have real time space battles at launch, we are looking at how to represent ship warfare.
And the game absolutely feels like space — warping, galaxy travel, the eerie, horrifying, iconic feel of 40K.

Josh:
We only have one question left for this section:
When will we see more?

Roger:
I’m working with you and others to stream battles as soon as we reasonably can.
I’d love to do it tomorrow — but we have many stakeholders.
People really want to see the campaign most of all.
We’re planning a public campaign deep dive in early summer.
After that event, we’ll likely begin showing and streaming more.
There are marketing beats we have to follow — we’re still a business — but I’m itching to show as much as possible.

Josh:
So — the big question:
Are we going back to update older Total War games?
And what inspired that decision?

Roger:
Yes — 100%.
Some interesting facts:

• • In any given month, about as many people play Warhammer 3 as play the entire back catalogue combined.
• • More people play Medieval 2 now than at its launch.
• • Huge mods like the LOTR mod for Attila are extremely popular.

It feels crazy not to revisit our back catalogue and ensure the games are fit for the future — performance, compatibility, and even small content updates.
However, we must figure out:

• • How to fund it
• • How to staff it
• • Which games to tackle first
• • Which tools we need to rebuild

We’re developing a strategy internally. Games we’re discussing — not promising — include Rome II and Shogun 2.

Josh:
It ties back to earlier — it’s not just desire.
It’s about getting old tools working again.

Roger:
Exactly.
When I think about 40K, Med 3, and older titles, I must decide where to assign developers. It’s a tough balance.
It’s something we deeply care about — but it will take time.
As I said in my thank you message:
We’re aiming for this, but it’s a stretch goal.
The spirit is willing — but please be patient. It’s a journey.

Josh:
One more question: When we go back to older titles, what’s the intent?
Fixes? New content? Improvements?

Roger:
All of the above.
Fixes are the top priority — performance issues in Attila, Rome, etc.
Players want us to address these, and we do too.
There’s also room for small pieces of new content — low hanging fruit that could refresh older games.
But everything is still “wet paint.”
There are many dependencies: internal discussions, Sega, tooling, scheduling.
It’s not simple — but we’re figuring it out.

Josh:
As we approach the wrap up:
What do you think about keeping games alive longer — building strong foundations and releasing content for 10 years, with new factions and updates?

Roger:
I personally love that.
One of the joys of modern game development is the ongoing relationship we get to build with players — that back and forth as we create content together.
It feels collaborative, grassroots, and it brings me a lot of joy.
We do need balance, though.
Some players worry: “Will I need to spend £1,000 to enjoy the game?”
We must ensure new players can join at any time without feeling overwhelmed by choice, and long time players can enjoy variety.
Not every game fits the long term model — but some definitely do.
Warhammer 40,000, for example, is a 30 year franchise with thousands of books (I can’t stop reading them).
That’s a great candidate for long term support.
Some games, though, aren’t suited for a decade of expansions — and that’s okay.

Josh:
A chat question came in asking if, in the spirit of transparency, you could talk about cancelled Total War projects.
I won’t ask that directly, but instead:
When you eventually write your autobiography — not all ideas make it.
How much more does that make you appreciate the games that do ship?

Roger:
Games are a labour of love.
But not every game can exist.
Over my 20 year career, I’ve worked on as many cancelled games — maybe more — than games that shipped.
Usually, cancellation is the right choice:

• • The idea wasn’t strong enough,
• • There wasn’t enough interest,
• • And many other reasons.

It’s always hard for creators to “murder their darlings.”
I’ve been on the receiving end of a cancelled game, and I’ve had to tell a team their project was cancelled — neither is fun.
But every cancelled project teaches you something.
Those lessons make future games better.
Maybe not all devs agree, but I do think you bring something from each old project into the next.

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Players can email you at roger@total.com