Gaming Lariat co-founder Jonathan Ridgway spoke to Pykrete Games developer in an exclusive audio interview about the release of their latest game Championship Wrestling Promoter.
Championship Wrestling Promoter is a professional wrestling management strategy game released on November 9th, 2022 on Steam and at a later TBC date on Itch.io. Championship Wrestling Promoter is developed and published by Pykrete Games and is their first commercially released video game. A week after the game’s release, we sat down with Pykrete Games founder and lead developer of Championship Wrestling Promoter, Adam Bishop as he shares his thoughts on why he made a wrestling game, the development cycle, release and what’s next.
I’ve been watching wrestling for 35 years or so, back since the 80s. I’ve got an appreciation for a lot of periods of wrestling history, but the game is based on a modern-style of wrestling. The idea of the TV ratings war being the centre of the game, that goes back to the Monday Night Wars of the 1990s, that was definitely a big influence on me in terms of what the game should feel like.
Championship Wrestling Promoter took around 3 years to develop using the Unity game engine. We spoke to Adam about video games that he may have drawn inspiration from when deciding to develop Championship Wrestling Promoter and he also shared a bit of his design philosophy and vision for what he wanted to achieve with the game that sets it apart from other competitors in the market space.
Fire Pro Wrestling [World] has a Promoter Mode that I had been playing a lot of shortly before starting [development] on this [Championship Wrestling Promoter]. One thing I kind of wanted to do was you know there are games like Total Extreme Wrestling that are these really deep simulations, and so I thought it would be kind of interesting to try and tap it from a slightly more strategy game standpoint. Rather than having an open-ended simulation, you have a set of resources and goals that you’re trying to balance, to give the game a bit more structure. So if the game says ‘the goal of the game is to win the TV ratings war’ or ‘the goal of the game is to earn money’, I feel as a player maybe that’s a little bit easier to jump into. You kind of know what you’re trying to do when you start the game, rather than having this giant sandbox which is awesome once you put all the time in but is a little bit difficult to get your feet wet when you don’t really know the game very well. I thought it would be a good way to give players more direction in the game.
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During the exclusive audio interview, Adam also spoke about why he wanted to put a greater emphasis on visuals, his reasoning behind creating a fictional global world that the game is set in, updates coming to Championship Wrestling Promoter, what’s next for Pykrete Games and more!
The Full Interview Is Available Below
READ MORE: EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: A WORD WITH PUBLISHER FREEDOM GAMES (AUDIO)
