S.O.G. Prairie Fire 3 Year Anniversary
It has been three years since the release of Arma 3: S.O.G. Prairie Fire when you all started playing your deep jungle recon missions with us! To celebrate we’re going to take a look back at the path we’ve traveled and where it’s all heading next.
S.O.G. Prairie Fire
MACV SOG
When we first released S.O.G. Prairie Fire we did so with not just a passion for making games, but a passion for sharing the history of MACV SOG. Back then Codename Dynamite wasn’t published, you hadn’t heard Dick Thompson regaling Jocko with war stories, and frankly if you didn’t know you just didn’t know. If we look back at the Bohemia blog article about the release you’ll notice a paragraph at the bottom explaining what SOG is:
It’s safe to say we’ve come a long way since then in exposing people to the incredible history, stories, and living legends of MACV SOG.
Initial Release: What you got day 1
On May 6th, we delivered the following:
- 300 km2 Cam Lao Nam terrain
- 4 factions
- 50+ weapons
- 50+ vehicles & static weapons
- Multiplayer co-op campaign
- 9 multi-player scenarios
- 5 single-player scenarios
- New sounds & sound effects
- New music
- New unique gameplay modules
- New objects and buildings
This was the debut of the terrain, the living jungle, that you as players have spent so much time scouting, laying wait amongst, overnighting in, and extracting from; the first time you could play a mission as a part of a Recon Team, or RT; and the first time you heard “Unsung Hero’” from our original soundtrack.
With the first trailer we let the world know that there was a truly historically accurate game for the most secret of wars, built to remember and honor the men who served in it.
S.O.G. Prairie Fire - Launch Trailer
And you let us know that you wanted it. We sold over 120,000 copies of S.O.G. Prairie Fire in that first month. Your response as players, to support our team let us know that the mission wasn’t over but was just getting started.
S.O.G. Prairie Fire 1.1
On September 30th 2021 we released our first major update, 1.1. If 300km2 in Cam Lao Nam wasn’t enough space for you to play on, we added 225km2 in Khe Sanh. Khe Sanh was a new sprawling, immaculately detailed zone to operate in. We also released:
- US Navy SEALs, 9 uniforms (22 variants), 7 vests, and a diving mask.
- 5 new vehicles/vehicle variants
- 4 new static weapons
- 9 new weapons/weapon variants
This is also when we made the Original Sound Track (OST) available on Steam. You might remember this from the release trailer: S.O.G. Prairie Fire - 1.1 Trailer
S.O.G. Prairie Fire 1.2
On July 12th, 2022 we dropped update 1.2. If 1.1 was all about the Khe Sanh terrain, then 1.2 was all about bringing you the factions to populate that terrain set, and the vehicles to get them around.
- 6 factions
- 16 vehicles/vehicle variants
- 5 static weapons
- 7 weapons/weapon variants
- Additional multiplayer scenarios
- 2 new co-op campaign missions
- New Zeus Variants for The Bra map
Lastly we brought out ‘The Bra’ terrain which is a smaller, more dense slice of the Ho Chi Minh trail for players to run missions in. You can reminisce over the trailer here: S.O.G. Prairie Fire - 1.2 Trailer
S.O.G. Prairie Fire 1.3
Last year, on June 13th we released the 1.3 update, our final major update in the creator DLC pipeline (SOG Nickel Steel takes over from here as a Steam mod).
This release featured new vehicles, factions and both classic and niche weapons.
- 5 new factions
- 30 insignia patches
- 13 vehicles / vehicle variants including main battle tanks and flamethrowers
- Numerous textures and model variants for existing vehicles
- 3 static weapons
- 20 weapons / weapon variants
- 6 additional traps and mines
- 9 vests
- 9 packs
- 11 headgear variants
The new tanks are particularly on display in the trailer: S.O.G. Prairie Fire - 1.3 Trailer
This patch was a huge labor of love from the team and we were proud to see a strong wave of new interest in the game.
After completing the DLC with way more content than we ever planned, we turned then back to our roots - making a free Steam mod for the DLC - SOG Nickel Steel.
S.O.G. Nickel Steel & Patreon
On November 14th, 2023, we released our next step of S.O.G. Prairie Fire development: S.O.G. Nickel Steel. This is our first piece of content that we released on the workshop rather than through Bohemia’s publishing pipeline.
We chose this route because we wanted to create a flexible pipeline for releasing assets on a rolling basis, as well as giving us more freedom to introduce more experimental assets that might not pass Bohemia’s QA process.
We launched our Patreon site to support S.O.G. Nickel Steel. The asset list we’re working on comes from your Wishlist, accumulated since the first DLC release. We’ve asked for community support for our artists and encoders who’s passions still burn brightly to release more unique weapons, vehicles, and tricky assets like our Water Buffalo, the LVTP-5 “Fridge”, the G-Jet rocket pistol, and soon to be seen Tuktuks.
Currently our Patrons have access to an early build of Nickel Steel, join our Monthly Mike Force sessions early to find their favorite spots and gear before the rush, get private updates on asset development, and vote to help us prioritize what assets we produce.
If you love S.O.G. Prairie Fire and want to see more of the quality content you know us for please consider supporting our team here: Savage Game Patreon
Community
We would never have had the opportunity to do what we’ve done so far, and what we’re working towards, without the incredible support of you; our community. You’ve bought the game, streamed it, brought your friends into it, and cheered us all along the way.
Not only have you supported us by purchasing the game and spreading the word, some of you have built invaluable tools for our players. We wanted to take a moment to thank and share two of our favorite community contributions.
SOG AI by Johnnyboy
SOG AI on Steam
Johnnyboys’ SOG AI radically transforms Arma’s idiosyncratic AI into a more modern experience of controllable squadmates. There’s a host of videos on YouTube, like the one linked here, with people talking about how great an upgrade this is to the single player experience. We happen to agree and couldn’t be more thankful for Johnnyboy taking on such a Herculean task for the good of the community.
Fubar's Recondo Missions
Fubar's Workshop on Steam
Fubar’s Recondo series is a sequence of singleplayer or co-op missions that have been a staple of the community workshop since chapter 1 released in April 2022. We highly recommend that you check these out.
Veteran Relations/Special Operations Association
Making S.O.G. Prairie Fire has helped develop relationships with many of the surviving veterans of MACV SOG. It has been an honor that they’d take the game seriously, and in a few cases join the team in leadership and advisory positions.
A particular highlight for the team was our involvement in creating the visual aids for the campaign to secure the long overdue Medal of Honor for Col. Paris Davis in 2023.
(Note Spoffy, Dolly, Noel and Dick ‘Dynamite’ Thompson working on an in-engine cinematic for a talk Dick gave the next day)
We’ve now attended SOAR (Special Operations Association Reunion) three times, bringing the game along to display and get feedback. There’s nothing quite like listening to a cobra pilot critiquing how our cobra’s fly while behind the stick.
At last year's SOAR, we built a video aid for a presentation that Dick ‘Dynamite’ Thompson gave about his new book SOG Codename Dynamite.
Our documentary director, Paul Hildebrandt, recorded dozens of hours of interviews for the upcoming SOG documentary. Many of his interviewee’s had never told their stories before and spoke with us only because we were clearly trusted within the SOA community.
Our CEO Rob Graham has spent as much time in the US as his home country this year extending our network. He’s helping with the current mission to get the men of MACV SOG recognized with the Congressional Gold Medal, a campaign which has a petition that you can add to: Change.org Petition
Team Savage Going Forwards
S.O.G. Prairie Fire has been a passion project for the team for 6 years now. We’ve loved making it for you and deeply appreciate every single one of you that’s bought the game, played through it, and participated in its friendly community. While we’ve tasked many of our team with continuing to work on developing releases for S.O.G. Nickel Steel we have much more going on behind the scenes.
Firstly, we’re developing an upcoming new game mode currently titled ‘Across the Fence’. With weekly testing going on we’re making great progress. We can’t tell you exactly what the mode entails but we can say with surety that our Patrons will be getting the first taste when we’re ready for player testing and early beta access.
We have set our sights on our next primary project. We can officially say, here and now, that there is a new game in the works. It’s currently in pre-production and not releasing anytime soon, but we are working to make sure that it’s everything we would want to play in a standalone SOG game.
We are building something truly exciting and more accessible: a narrative driven, immersive, role-playing co-op SOG game in the photoreal jungles of Unreal 5. We can’t say more than that for now but we’ll let you know more as soon as we are able.
You might have noticed we’ve been saying more ‘Team Savage’ and less ‘Savage Game Design’ lately and there’s a reason for that. The release of our new website https://www.savage-game.com/ marks the end of us being ‘just’ Savage Game Design, and the beginning of us expanding the scope of the mission.
We mentioned the documentary, and we are also working on the early development of a TV show and graphic novel series about MACV SOG and the brave men who served in the secret war.
These transmedia projects all serve to spread awareness about what happened during the secret war to a larger mainstream audience.
This has been the mission from day one, and as our team capability grows, our responsibility to carry the mission into new theaters grows as well. Building our knowledge and relationships concerning the Somalia campaign is also just starting, with the aim of repeating our winning formula in that theater next, and then moving on to other areas after. We are in this for the long haul and very happy to have you come along for the ride!