Going in for the big finale, Epic Games has been pretty diligent about making the Gears of War game the fans really want to play. Which does seem quite sensible when you think about it.
Talking to Gamespot, Epic’s Cliff Bleszinski describes his “I did not sign up for this” gameplay design philosophy, inspired not only by other games but by previous titles in the Gears of War series itself.
“A recent example of a game I had played was, well, they didn’t do it in Dead Space 2, but in Dead Space, was that asteroid sequence. I signed up to kill Necromorphs and be scared, I didn’t sign up to play Asteroids,” he says.
“The same thing applied to Gears 2 with the damn tank on the lake. Most Gears fans signed up to hear the story of Marcus, Dom, Cole, Locust, and chainsawing and cool weapons, and awesome set-pieces. They didn’t sign up to drive a tank over slippery ice that breaks.”
He also talks about the team’s “multi-tiered system” of balancing fan feedback with in-game metrics, and finding the right space between what the most vocal players demand and what everybody else doesn’t say.
“The first thing we do is always pay attention to forums and Twitter and social networking, that’s a good temperature check. That said, you have to be careful with that because there are a lot of super die-hard fans, and sometimes they’re the most vocal people speaking – as opposed to the casual gamer who buys a few games per year and wouldn’t go on a forum,” he explained.
“The second thing we use is metrics; we’ve found sometimes there’s a difference between what people are saying in the forums, and what’s actually going on in the wild. For instance, there was a big perception when the [Gears of War 3] beta came up that the sawed-off shotgun was the best weapon ever, but then we looked at the backend and found that four times as many kills were being had by the Gnasher shotgun as opposed to the sawed-off.”
Gears of War 3 launches on 20 September 2011.
Gears of War 3: “I did not sign up for this” lessons in mind << Comments and views
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