The Steam Review

Kuma\War made waves during its early days for its premise and goal: to provide an ongoing series of episodic missions covering real-life combat operations, created as soon as possible after they occur and made freely available.

Kuma\War’s interesting premise is hampered by flimsy technology.

As interesting as that premise is, the rapid execution it required coupled with developer Kuma Reality Games’ flimsy technology has kept the quality of the final product low, although good enough for the US military to use it as a communications training tool. Today’s announcement of a Source license for KRG could well mark a new start for the series.

“Kuma has been tremendously successful over the last two years, but we’re ready to move to the next generation of video games,” said Keith Halper, CEO, Kuma Reality Games. “By using Source, we’ll be able to create realistic characters for our upcoming episodic television-like products.”

Using their pioneering methodology and technology, Kuma develops and delivers games with unprecedented speed, making game episodes that reflect just-released TV shows or films, and real world events. These thoroughly unique user experiences present as powerful advertiser opportunity with unique audience characteristics.

Although the press release does not explicitly state that KRG will be using Steam, the extremely episodic nature of their work (twice a month) doesn’t leave much room for debate, save for the slim possibility that their entirely advertisement-driven business model has somehow forced them elsewhere.

More information on Kuma\War from Wikipedia.