'83 Interview: Tony Gillham On Upcoming Content And Creating Authentic Warfare

Story Highlights

’83 aims to capture the spirit of a Cold War gone hot in 1983.
The game’s roadmap includes more maps, vehicles, and expanded factions.
Blue Dot Games assures the title is performing well on the technical side, with further improvements expected over time.

The Cold War is about to heat up in ’83, an ambitious multiplayer shooter from Blue Dot Games. After acquiring the IP from EG7, the team has rebuilt it from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5, with a clear focus on scale, intensity, and authenticity. Set in an alternate timeline where global tensions boil over, ’83 places players in massive combined-arms battles designed for fast engagement and immersive realism.

To learn more about how the game is evolving, I joined the exclusive virtual event held before Gamescom and spoke with Tony Gillham, who brings decades of experience from Rising Storm and Red Orchestra. In our interview, he discussed the design lessons carried over from past projects, the studio’s approach to early access content, and how community feedback will continue shaping the future of ’83.

'83 — The Name ’83 Comes Directly From The Year When The Game’s Conflict Begins.

After acquiring the IP from EG7 and restarting '83 under Blue Dot Games, what core changes in vision or scope did you introduce compared to the original concept?

The biggest change was to switch entirely to Unreal Engine 5, and also to tone down the map size to encourage more of a “30 minutes round time, 15-20 seconds time to engagement” style of gameplay.

With two factions and a raft of classes, how significant are faction-specific traits or vehicle access in shaping replayability and asymmetrical tactics?

The classes and weapons are fairly symmetrical between the US and USSR – that said, the British (who we plan to bring in some way down the line) had a more powerful semi-automatic rifle in the SLR. Regarding the 2 Early Access factions, it is more a case that tactical doctrine is reflected in vehicle loadouts, etc., though this will develop much more beyond Early Access, when we have the core gameplay nailed down.

Rising Storm set a high bar in multiplayer realism and tension. Which specific lessons from that project have most directly influenced the design of ’83?

The #1 lesson I think we all learnt was that realism can create its own fun – if we concentrate on getting the details right, and listening to experts, then we can relax, knowing that we have given our community what they want.

Beyond the Early Access roadmap, how do you envision ’83 evolving in its core gameplay identity? Do you see it leaning more into large-scale warfare, competitive balance, or narrative-driven events?

I think that the main thrust of updates throughout the life cycle of a game like 83 has to be, “More stuff… more of what our players enjoy… more weapons, more vehicles, more maps, more factions. Attempting to change the overall direction of a popular experience can be very risky. With Red Orchestra 2, there was an attempt to draw in fans of ‘sweaty shooters’ – it was called Action Mode, and it was an abject failure… You can’t compete with CoD on their terms, so why bother? all you do is alienate your core fanbase.”

How are you structuring the order of new content drops before, during, and beyond the Early Access? Will it be maps first, new factions/classes, or gameplay systems?

Ideally, we would like each major update to feature a new map, but there will be minor updates with things like, maybe a new weapon, or a new gameplay function in between. A new faction or new class of vehicles would be a more significant addition, and you’d expect to see that at major milestones, like hard launch, etc.”

'83 — Weapons Are Being Designed To Match Period-Accurate Cold War Technology.

Considering your match lengths and fast respawn system, what are the core progression hooks, unlockables, and upgrades you plan to add into Early Access to keep players invested?

“As in RS2, we expect to have a uniform/cosmetic progression system, but that will not be for Early Access – such a system needs to be fleshed out fully before it can be introduced, especially as there are XP ramifications for what you give people, how and when.”

Your 'Cold War Gone Hot' scenario is visually striking. How do you plan to deliver narrative context or story through gameplay, map design, or events without traditional single-player storytelling?

It’s fair to say that there cannot be much context delivered in a standard multiplayer game…any lore-building we do will very much be through choice of locations for maps, and through our trailers and other such material.

What are your primary performance and stability benchmarks for Early Access before considering a full release?

We want to see 80 players playing combined arms on a server that has a tick rate of 30. As recently as this January, we could not have more than 20 players on a server without massive rubber-banding. We’re now in Alpha, and we have just hit 80 players on a combined arms map with minor loss of tick-rate. There is still work to be done to address rubber-banding, etc., but we are making huge leaps with every build.
We also aim to have smooth graphical performance across a variety of PC platforms – this has required that we invest a lot in the tech art side of the game development. Nanites and Lumen are great, but currently, they are not optimised out of the box – a lot of work is required to get all that UE5 goodness in front of the maximum number of players.

What does 'post-launch' look like for ’83? Do you see it as a live-service style expansion, a series of paid DLCs, or more of a complete package with occasional updates?

Paid DLC often can split communities into ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’… unless it is purely cosmetic. Our priority is to enable ALL 83 players to enjoy their experience with all other players, regardless of whether they have a special uniform pack, etc, etc.

You bring decades of experience from Rising Storm and Red Orchestra to ’83. What design philosophies from those projects still shape your vision, and what new bold experiments are you introducing?

Every time we venture out of our safety zone with, for example, a new game mode, we are really careful to run it past our community; our playtesters are usually die-hard RO and RS fans, so we generally know what they like. That said, any new experience is a risk, and sometimes what seems like a good idea gets ‘Darwined’ out of existence on servers – ultimately, no one likes it. So we have to learn from that and focus on what players DO want. We need to always be listening to feedback.

How will you gather and act on feedback during Early Access to ensure ’83 evolves with its player base?

Questionnaires, trawling Discord chats, plain, straight-out just asking – it’s not rocket science and it reaps great rewards.

'83 — The Developers Emphasize Teamwork Over Lone-Wolf Playstyles.

’83 is a Cold War multiplayer shooter developed by Blue Dot Games. It will soon be available in early access on PC. We thank Tony Gillham for sharing his insights with us and Plan of Attack for inviting us to the event.

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