Firefly Studios' Simon Bradbury, designer of Stronghold 3, answers our questions on kingdom management. With Stronghold 3, developer Firefly Studios is going back to basics. In this case, that means going back to the original Stronghold and seeing what it was that made this castle-building, real-time strategy game so great. But that's not to say the team is stuck in the past. Free-form building placement, disease warfare, and a day/night cycle are all in the works as well. We catch up with Stronghold 3's designer, Simon Bradbury, and quiz him on what the team has in store for the latest entry in the Stronghold series.

Mikail Yazbeck, designer and producer on With Fire & Sword, talks about 17th-century warfare. In addition to sounding like an awesome heavy-metal rock band, With Fire & Sword is an extremely open-ended, medieval combat game. Its battlefields involve hundreds of troops engaged in massive sieges or skirmishes, along with the unintended hilarity you get with hundreds of players running around at once. One moment, you may find yourself locked in an epic duel with an opponent, but before you know it, he gets blindsided by a runaway horse. We caught up with Mikail Yazbeck, designer and producer on With Fire & Sword, to talk about how the next entry in the Mount & Blade series is coming along.

We talk with Martin Cirulis, CEO and lead designer at Kerberos Productions, about the next chapter in the Sword of the Stars universe. The Lords of Winter are back. It's been 100 years since the events of the original Sword of the Stars, and now, these intergalactic troublemakers have returned for another round of genocide, enslavement, and whatever else they can produce. Fortunately, the other races of the universe have not been sitting idly by during these past years. Technological advances have led to massive galactic empires and the new Leviathan-class star ships. For more details about this strategy sequel, we tracked down Martin Cirulis, CEO and lead designer at Kerberos Productions.