|
|
|
Thursday, February 08, 2007 |
|
Crackdown Toyset
Random musings on sandbox ingredients and the experimental cookery that led to the final Crackdown recipe; from the game’s Product Architect, Content Writer, and part-time outspoken industry pundit: Gary Penn.
A city-themed toyset is a joy and a curse. There's so much you can do with it but there's so much that needs to be done with it to make the illusion work let alone provide adequate scope for interaction. Something as banal as traffic, for example, has to function plausibly, including at junctions. The city has to look and feel like a city but it also needs to function as a playscape.
City-themed toysets are also rapidly becoming so commonplace that expectations are rising, which means there's more involved in making even a basic one. This repertoire is a staple of so many films and now games. The focus is liberating.
 -Click here for larger image
The core toyset comprises action figures, vehicles and accessories such as weapons, plus a basic 'maze' playscape built from roads and structures, which is then filled with movable and removable parts for good measure. What to do with the toyset? We wanted to do something more with it - take it to another level. Typical interaction with a city is in two dimensions. Vertical has been touched on but not exploited. Using the playscape features as more than just obstacles, eg: as weapons.
We wanted to make the toyset more dramatic. More extreme. We wanted to empower players with extremes. Two critical – obsessive even – references for us were insane stunt driving and 'Le Parkour'. They stayed with us throughout development and the result, as anyone who's played the Crackdown demo will know, captures the cool, the sense of jeopardy and the vicarious thrills.
 -Click here for larger image
The toyset and loose structure encourages experimentation, which was key for us. A theme that from the outset was summarised by one word: change. We wanted a toyset that clearly evolved into something so much more, not only to reward but also to offer greater scope for experimentation. Initially we explored change in great detail, from utterly customisable characters and all vehicles transforming according to an agent's skills through to a playscape that changed according to player performance, eg: got obviously cleaner.
With the player toy we wanted to focus more on a multifunction tool like a Swiss army knife rather than a toolbox, in the way that a Swiss army knife has a diversity of functions built into a single device.
We also toyed with many other Agent skills such as surveillance, espionage, biological weapons... and gadgets. The thinking with gadgets was a specialised range of equipment developed by The Agency. The intention was to give us the scope to try anything a bit different that didn't comfortably fit into the firearms and explosives repertoire. You'd collect cool and quirky equipment – prototypes to play with. (cough)DLC(ahem).
 -Click here for larger image
What we found though was we had too much diversity in the mix. As development progressed we were having so much fun with athletics, driving, strength, firearms and explosives – in isolation and in conjunction with each other - especially as their potential became clearer through use, that everything else we'd considered started to feel extraneous or intrusive. It was obvious there was more than enough play to be had with those five skills that our focus naturally shifted to those alone.
It was important to enable the player to create ‘moments’ – the cool shit that they want to tell their friends about in fanatical detail. Extreme actions needed to be performed with relative ease. Vehicular stunts: handbrake turns, fancy skids, aerial control, big air. Aerial acrobatics: launching across a street, searching for the next hand-hold, nailing the landing, maintaining a fluid motion through space. Extreme combat: ripping off a car door and using it as a shield…and then a weapon, swinging an uprooted lamp post, booting a hapless civilian onto a freeway, tossing a cop car…at the cops. Precision targeting: the head shot on the move while still 2 blocks away, disarming & disabling, taking out the tires and rolling the target vehicle, tossing a truck or bailing from a sports car and hitting the gas cap within a couple of seconds.
 -Click here for larger image
There was a lot of design and redesign throughout of how the agents levelled up, fluctuating between being able to max out all skills and not (an agent would have a limited resource of skill and either become a jack of all trades or a specialist).
There was definitely more of a focus on a massively multiplayer online role-playing game at first - a strong desire to make that experience more accessible to more people. Play was shaping up into an interesting (and difficult to maintain) blend of real-time action and turn-based logic under the hood. But that focus changed as we started to explore the toyset and became enamoured and distracted by the real-time potential of agents with extreme skills.
 -Click here for larger image
We also knew we wanted to focus more on play than game - the scope to fool around without the need to conform to rigid formal challenges. Freeform. Emergent gameplay. A sandbox. Call it what you will. We didn't want missions tied to a strictly linear thread, which made a more traditional story almost impossible to maintain…but that’s another story!
|
| Sun |
Mon |
Tue |
Wed |
Thu |
Fri |
Sat |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
BrianLo
Feb 10 '07 7:45 pm PST
Zoonami Behind new FPS IP on Wii?
I have to ask, what is up with Zoonami. I stumbled into the midst of the intrigue and drama...
PikaPal13X
Feb 10 '07 6:12 pm PST
How To Get Your Money From Sony
Unless you've been living underneath a rock recently, then you know about Sony Computer...
SupadaMasterChief
Feb 10 '07 4:01 pm PST
This Just In: Kevin Federline Has Been Hired as a Trainee at a Fast Food Outlet
It is true. Dumbass #1 has been hired to flip burgers at your local Mcdonalds! Dont believe...
doglikepaul
Feb 10 '07 1:28 pm PST
What do you think about my handheld collection
Here my handheld collection So what you think what games do I need???...
Chantaljoy
Feb 10 '07 12:08 pm PST
Most Fun I Have Had In A Few Fridays
Despite popular belief - I do not party it up like a crazy hooligan on Friday nights -...
fenixazul
Feb 10 '07 5:34 am PST
So... Square-Enix again and a FFXII gameplay trailer
Look at this: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/763/763 512p1.html In fact, nothing has...
Erik-IGN
Feb 9 '07 3:12 pm PST
New Xbox 360 Blog Header
Dave Clayman got me thinking about making animated blog headers and this is what I came up...
chubigans
Feb 9 '07 2:32 pm PST
PS Store Update (2/9) & Blast Factor Multiplayer Pack Impressions
So it’s pretty much official: every Thursday will see a PS Store update until March, where...
sng-ign
Feb 9 '07 1:13 pm PST
I'll believe it when I see it -- or ignoring the buzz of God of War 2
The guidesteam works with an unofficial credo, 'We'll believe it when we see it', which of...
ShishouMatt
Feb 9 '07 1:10 pm PST
Fighter Franchises that need Reborn! 1 of 2
So as some of you may know I am a huge fan of fighting games. There are many different types...
|
