Founded in Türkiye, HAVELSAN is a world-class defence industry company known for its many state-of-the-art products. For the last 40 years, the company, which has gained worldwide fame with its many products ranging from military software, simulation solutions, CBRN systems to state-of-the-art battle management platforms such as GENESIS and ADVENT, announced last year that they would introduce a brand-new game. When we first heard about it, we thought that it would be a game similar to America’s Army, which is also accessible to gamers, but more focused on training active duty personnel, due to the sector that the company focuses on.
As the details of HAVELSAN’s agreement with Epic Games became clearer, we also had the chance to access new details about their new game Malazgirt. Accordingly, Malazgirt, which is an FPS game, will be a game developed for gamers contrary to expectations. While HAVELSAN directly undertook the role of the developer in the game, it also made a service partnership with Epic Games for the graphics engine. As you can guess, Malazgirt will be developed on Unreal Engine.
Mehmet Akif Nacar, General Manager of HAVELSAN, stated that the first stage of the project has been completed and the next stage has started and that the game is trying to be ready for the IDEF 2023 fair. Although no detailed statement has been made on this subject, we believe that the first in-game demonstration of the game will be held at IDEF 2023 (25-28 July), and in a very optimistic scenario, a short playable demo may be ready for IDEF.
Mehmet Akif Nacar, General Manager of HAVELSAN, said: “You can create valuable products in open source. Military platforms used in Türkiye can be given as good examples. For example, you can model all platforms such as T-129 Atak, Hürkuş, Hürjet, Anka, Bayraktar TB2, Aksungur, Akıncı, MİLGEM, TCG Anadolu LHD, and you can turn these 3D models into smart units supported by artificial intelligence. In other words, by supporting them with a game engine, you can see how they produce a three-dimensional image in the war environment, together with the effects of the outside world, how they interact, and their benefits in training. In this game environment, you can perform the military drills and certain operational scenarios you want, just like a war game. We know that there are many game companies in Türkiye in this field, there is a large ecosystem and we want to ensure that these companies are now more orientated towards serious games, war games, etc., and that the military platforms developed in our country are also developed in terms of video games.”
We are very curious about the scope, content and the level of support for modding. It should be noted that HAVELSAN’s project does not have many examples even worldwide. Lockheed Martin’s Prepar3D, a civil aviation simulation designed on the basis of good-old Flight Simulator X, can be cited as an example. Therefore, it is quite exciting to see how an FPS game will look and be interpreted “through the eyes of a defence giant”.
