Steel Gear Simulator is an indie project to develop a multiplayer simulator about World War II. The project is designed to get a highly detailed simulation, a great immersion, and hardcore experience. The primary goal is to put together player controlled tanks, planes, and ships in the same battles.

The project was conceived with the need to have a proper combat simulator with multiplayer tactical cooperation, in-game progression and the integration of different kind of vehicles and weapons. These features had to be made with historical perspective, and there had to be big battle maps to put all together. These battles had to be continuous and with night/day cycle. The simulation had to be very immersive, due to that, all the vehicles had to have interiors, and the game had to have a highly detailed interaction but, at the same time, had to be a fun experience.

In the market there are games that provide a few of these features but not all together and, in general, they force to the player communities to spend their time and resources editing and producing custom missions to complete these needs.

This is how Steel Gear Project was born. A simulator to put all of these together, a simulator that gives the battles and maps to the players to let them make the simulation.

Steel Gear: Stalingrad is the first step on this journey. This product will bring the basic mechanics and systems that will allow, in the future, reach all the objectives of Steel Gear Simulator. This first game will include 17 vehicles from two nations, historical maps, and multiplayer gameplay.

This is a single person project; this means that, at the moment, only one person is working on all the stuff (models, code, systems, web page and more), and, of course, the full simulator project cannot be completed with the work of only one person, so it is essential the funding.

With the financial issue in mind, there are two options to get the funding needed (or the two options that have been estimated); the first one is crowdfunding and the second one is to release an early access product. The option chosen has been this second one. Allowing the players to buy the game in an early stage, when it is not finished, bring them the opportunity of to contribute the project in two ways, first one with their money (buying the game) and the second one testing the game and participating in the development with their feedback. From the perspective of the developer, this system will allow him to get early funds and an incremental number of customers.

The funding is essential for the project and the intention is to be completely transparent with this theme: if there is not enough financial support via products sold the full simulator project won't be accomplished. Of course, the delivery of the first game, Steel Gear: Stalingrad, is guaranteed, but the server configuration could be affected too. According to the numbers, if the official server cluster is not viable, the server side version of the game will be released, allowing the player community to set up their own servers.

It is an ambitious project, for this reason, the plan is to make the simulator in parts. There will be a base game, and new content will be added to this base game via expansions. Each expansion will include new vehicles, maps and, in some cases, new mechanics. All expansions will have a lifetime; it will be the time until another expansion is released, when this happens (a second expansion is released), the expansion will be included in the base game.

The first game of the project is Steel Gear: Stalingrad and the release plans for it, as mention before, are to release it as an early access product, this means that the game won't be completed when it comes out and there will be changes, progression resets and content additions after this release in order to finish the game.

Of course, won't be the same to buy the game at the early access stage than when it is finished. The players that buy the game in the Alpha or Beta stages (early access) will receive benefits. The estimated release dates and the benefits of each stage are shown in the next table: