War for Westeros Targets Game of Thrones Fans With 'Set and Forget' RTS Design

PlaySide Studios is preparing for a collision of two very different audiences when War for Westeros launches on PC next year. The real-time strategy game will draw hardcore RTS players looking for their next competitive fix, but the Game of Thrones license guarantees a flood of newcomers who have never queued a build order or managed a mineral line. Game director Ryan McMahon told press at gamescom that the studio is not trying to dumb down the genre — instead, they are designing approachability into the core systems so that first-time players can survive the learning curve without sacrificing the depth veterans expect.

The stakes are high for a licensed strategy game. HBO's continued investment in the franchise through House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms means the fanbase remains active and growing years after the original series ended. For players who have only experienced Westeros through television, War for Westeros represents their first chance to command armies across the map — and PlaySide knows that if the onboarding fails, those players will bounce before they ever reach multiplayer.

Approachability Built Into Core Systems

The most significant design departure from traditional RTS convention is the 'set and forget' worker system. In most games of this genre, players must constantly assign villagers or SCVs to resource nodes, then reassign them when deposits run dry or construction finishes. That macro loop creates a persistent attention tax that overwhelms newcomers. War for Westeros eliminates it entirely — once a building is placed, it generates resources automatically without further input.

McMahon explained the philosophy directly: "At the base top level of the game, there's no high level micro mastery required of your workers or your builders. All they need to do is build a building and it's 'set and forget.' You don't have to assign workers to buildings to farm resources. The buildings will farm the resources on their own once they're built." This frees mental bandwidth for unit control, hero management, and strategic positioning — the moments that actually define an RTS match. For a Game of Thrones fan who wants to recreate the Battle of the Bastards, this means less time clicking on gold mines and more time flanking with cavalry.

The AI has been tuned with the same philosophy. Single-player difficulty scales to give newcomers breathing room to learn systems at their own pace, with the explicit goal of eventually funneling them toward multiplayer. "If they ever want to dip their toes into multiplayer or play with their friends, there's enough layers of complexity that they've been onboarded to over time without having to master straight away to enjoy a game," McMahon said. A solid tutorial campaign teaches skirmish mechanics progressively, ensuring that by the time a player finishes the story, they understand the tools needed for competitive play.

Iconic Characters With HBO Likenesses

War for Westeros leans heavily into its license with commander heroes modeled on their HBO counterparts. Jon Snow's likeness received personal approval from Kit Harington, while Gregor 'The Mountain' Clegane and Arya Stark were announced at gamescom for House Lannister and House Stark respectively. The Mountain uses his massive frame to shock battlelines and strike fear into enemy formations, while Arya operates as a master assassin trained by the Faceless Men of the House of Black and White.

Soundalike voice actors handle dialogue — a practical decision McMahon acknowledged openly: "Obviously choosing the actual actors would be a very expensive endeavor and also some of them aren't necessarily available to work with us on the timelines that we have." The visual fidelity of the character models matters more for recognition, and the HBO partnership ensures each commander feels authentic to their screen counterpart. These heroes function as force multipliers rather than solo carry units, buffing nearby troops to reinforce combined-arms tactics over hero-centric deathballs.

Weekly Playtests Drive Balance Decisions

PlaySide runs structured weekly playtests every Friday afternoon, followed by bracket tournaments at each development milestone. The winning team claims a traveling trophy that rotates desk-to-desk — a low-stakes ritual that generates high-value data. Heat maps track building placement patterns to inform level design, while win rates and hero spawn frequencies guide faction balance adjustments.

This data revealed a surprising shift in hero popularity. Early tests saw Jon Snow and Jaime Lannister dominate pick rates due to raw individual strength. As the meta matured and unit importance increased, Tywin Lannister and Robb Stark rose to the top. "The cavalry definitely helps so they can get around the map really quickly. But they have a strong kit in how they buff units around them as commanders, which helps reinforce the army rather than being individual strength," McMahon noted. The design goal is clear: commanders should amplify armies, not replace them. "You can't just have one hero fighting off hundreds of people."

What This Means for Players

The 'set and forget' economy is a smart compromise that preserves strategic depth — build order timing, expansion decisions, and tech progression all remain — while removing the busywork that causes new players to quit before the first battle. It's a more elegant solution than the simplified resource systems some recent RTS titles have attempted, and it respects the player's time without insulting their intelligence. The commander hero design reinforces this: powerful but dependent on army support, they teach combined-arms fundamentals by necessity.

The weekly tournament structure suggests a studio that takes competitive integrity seriously, even at this pre-launch stage. Heat map analysis for level design is a sophisticated touch rarely seen outside major publishers, and it bodes well for map variety and faction asymmetry. If the single-player campaign delivers on its promise as an extended tutorial, War for Westeros could become the rare licensed game that serves both its IP's fanbase and its genre's hardcore audience without compromising either.

All eyes will be on the campaign launch to see if the onboarding holds up under real-world conditions. The true test arrives when Game of Thrones fans who have never built a barracks queue their first match — and whether they stay for the second.