Making The ConduitHVS talks about the ups and downs of creating an original hardcore game for Wii in this insightful editorial.
by Eric Nofsinger, Matt Casamassina
January 30, 2009 - Ever wondered what it's really like to make games for Nintendo's system? We've gone directly to the source for the answer. The following editorial is written by High Voltage Software's chief creative officer, Eric Nofsinger, who writes about the hurdles presented to the developer when constructing the anticipated first-person shooter, The Conduit, for Wii.
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The process of game development can be a wild ride, one that leaves you very little time to stop and smell the coffee. So as The Conduit draws closer to completion, we've realized that if we don't take a little opportunity to sit down and reflect, some of our perspective on this whole experience could be lost in the shuffle of the game's release. So here we are, late at night, thinking about all of the pieces that fell into place to make The Conduit a reality.
We've been developing games for a long time, longer than most companies like ours have been in business. The way we've managed to do that is by putting our eggs in a lot of different publisher baskets and developing a reputation for getting things done on time and on budget. That doesn't always yield the most amazing games (we'd encourage you to research how many AAA games stayed within their original budget and hit their initial ship target), but it kept us going and taught us a lot of important lessons about how to do things the right way.
As we stored away our acorns over the years, our intention has always been to start developing our own IP and break out of our total reliance on the work-for-hire model. With funding finally in place for our own game in late 2007, The Conduit was born. The start of The Conduit was an exciting experience for us, but it might be difficult for you to fully appreciate it unless you have some background on how things typically go.
When you're working with publishers to develop games, they usually send out a "request for proposal" which asks a number of developers to provide them with pitches for a game based on certain genre and license. In some cases, the publisher has a very clear idea for what they want; in others they leave it up to you to define the project.
If the publisher likes your pitch and you can get the business details worked out, pre-production begins, where the design and scope of the game are defined within set limits of time and manpower. From there you move into the production phase, where you build the game, then the post-production phase where you fix all of the bugs and get it out the door. The whole process can take a few months for a downloadable title, or up to a few years for a big retail release.
Keep in mind that at every step along the way, you have to satisfy the publisher and the licensor. We could show you spreadsheets with hundreds and hundreds of comments and requests that must be sifted through, evaluated, and addressed in one way or another. In many respects, dealing with these requests (and sometimes demands) can be a distraction from the game's development, but it's a process that we've grown familiar with. We feel that we've gotten very good at making games this way.
Obviously, things were a lot different when it came to The Conduit. Let's start by opening with a nicely worded block quote by David Antognoli, one of the project's designers:
"The Conduit had no publisher for several months—most of its development life, actually. This created an interesting dynamic. On the one hand, we were free to make what we wanted; but in the end, we had to craft something we felt confident that publishers would go for. We wanted to make something appealing to ourselves, potential publishers, and the Wii gaming audience. This is largely why the game has gone through so many iterations of improvement.
Ever since the game's unveiling, the team's made an effort to scour the Internet for preview criticism, article comments, and forum posts. We even have someone tasked with documenting and tabulating it all for our records. For example, one of the early criticisms of the game involved a complaint about our Wii gesture controls for melee attacks and tossing grenades. The author noted that stabbing with the Wii remote and shaking the Nunchuk with enough force to trigger the actions caused players' aim to be thrown off. We had considered making these controls more sensitive, but some were concerned players would start accidentally triggering the actions. So, in the spirit of democracy, we decided to extend our customization even further by allowing the players to decide how sensitive the game is to these gestures in the control settings."
One of the major challenges that we discovered when moving forward with the project was that most publishers we spoke to had no (zero, less than zero, terribly less than zero) interest in seeing what we could do with higher-end graphics, tight gameplay, and integrated mechanics.
"The Wii is not a hardcore market," and variations on that theme were common refrains.Now, to say that we, as a company said "Eff 'em!" would be… well, actually, it would be pretty accurate. We knew there was risk, but many of us owned Wiis and really wanted something we could take home and play the ever-living-hell out of. This is not to say there were not moments of panic, or doubt, or all of those roiling emotions associated with the internal mental struggle that happens before you take the plunge, grab the girl, and plant one on her, hoping against hope that she won't slap you.
We started creating, building, and architecting a game from the ground-up with little-to-no outside direction. Now, we know some of you are thinking that this sounds awesome, and it was a very awesome thing, but let us tell you, it also comes with some healthy fear. As a company, we were investing our own dollars into a project without a guaranteed future… Hell, we had been explicitly told, by many companies, that it was a loser, it had no market, and none of the people that own a Wii would want it. So, while it was so truly awesome, in many ways, it was a big weight on the team's shoulders, and it was a big show of faith from the management of our company regarding the team making The Conduit. To say we bet the farm on this project may be an understatement, but then again, sometimes you just gotta roll that hard six.
We can't pinpoint the exact time that the fans, the press, and anyone who would listen, effectively became the project's "publisher," but it seemed to happen. Most of the time, we have to be reticent, even secretive, about our projects. Trying to make a great game is hard on the best of days, even with a publisher giving you direction. Here we were, hanging out there for the world to see, and hoping we showed well. And with a project announcement come the inevitable emails, forum posts and scrutiny. I promise you, we read your feedback… every developer does. If they say they don't, they are lying. We read it, we get irritated at the dumbass comments, excited when we see a fan, and thoughtful when we see suggestions. To illustrate, let's go to the well and share some thoughts from our Lead Programmer, Ed Federmeyer:
"First, I'd like to thank all the fans and previewers who have shown so much support for The Conduit! When you work on a project so closely for such a long time, it's easy to forget all the great things going into the game, and only see the bugs that creep in and the grand plans that get cut for one reason or another. We on the team are always keeping an eye out for new posts and articles about our game. When someone spots a new post, email links go around the team, and people check them out, and talk about them and get excited about them. It really helps keep the energy high on the team, and helps keep us driven to make the game better each day.
Many of the games we work on at our studio are work-for-hire, which means the publisher gets to make any final decisions, and does all the publicity. We are usually not allowed to publicly talk about what we're working on, sometimes even after the game ships. This makes it hard to know how the fans will like a game. Since The Conduit is self-funded, we've been able to talk about the game, and even better, to get it into the hands of the fans at events like PAX and E3, and the upcoming Comic Con in New York. When we hear back that the people who have actually spent hands-on time with the game like it, or even have criticisms we can work with, that is really cool. It really helps us to know what we're doing right, and even more importantly, what we still need to work on.
A great example of this was that we were not going to do online multiplayer at first. The team really wanted to do it, but we just didn't have the resources to make it work. We made plan after plan, and schedule after schedule to try to make it fit, but it just could not be done in the time we had with the people we had. After PAX though, so many fans talked about how much an online mode would mean to them, our management saw that, and brought in the resources we needed to do it. It really would not have been possible without that level of excitement from the fans!
Also, from the start we wanted customizable controls. As a gamer, it kind of annoys me when a control scheme is almost, but not quite, what I want. Especially when I just got done playing a game with say, jump on B and shoot on A, and the next game I get has them reversed and I have to re-train myself to the new controls. As a programmer, I know that it's usually not that hard to make remap-able controls. The big issue is usually whether we can spend the time on it. Often, it's a feature that gets cut in favor of some other feature that means a lot to the IP, but not so much to the gameplay. In our case, we felt it was important, and when fans saw it, they told us they liked it a lot. That showed us we really were on to something important to the people who want to play the game, and we stuck with it, and enhanced it. Now we even let you move the HUD around and even change how transparent you want it to be. We really pulled out all the stops, and gave the fans access to everything we developers get to tweak with the controls.
Here's another area we'd like fan feedback on... In every game I've worked on, there's always a debate over whether single-player cheat codes should be in the game. Stuff like infinite ammo, invincibility, that kind of thing. Every game has them during development to help during debugging, and sometimes they are left in, and sometimes they are pulled out at the last minute. When they are pulled out, it's usually because the team is worried that it will take too much time to test them to make sure that everything in the game still plays the way it was intended. When they are left in, it's often because the team thought that fans won't mind if cheats allow you to do something you should not be able to, they are just a way to get some more fun out of the game you paid for. What do you readers think? We'll be watching the comments and it really will help influence whether we leave cheats in or not."
With the overwhelming support of the fans and public, we found those very same publishers that had told us that we were developing a loser coming back, taking another look. It was a nice change of pace for us to be able to be selective, discerning… a connoisseur of publishing partners, if you will. In the end, we chose SEGA. Why? Our CEO and SEGA's president saw eye to eye on the project. In this business, relationships between companies and between their leaders are critical when it comes to creating a quality game. It seemed to us that SEGA loved the project as much as we did. They wanted us to work with them, and we knew they had the chops to help us see it through… and we've been right.
We are entering our final push for The Conduit. Long nights, long days, and plenty of hands-on testing. We want this to be perfect, our pi?ce de r?sistance… at least until the next big thing. This seems like an opportunity to drop another quote from the team, so here is some wisdom from designer Chad Kilgore that seems to fit:
"In early phases of the All-Seeing Eye (ASE), there were some mild debates on its usefulness. From the very first focus test HVS conducted, we quickly learned that we did something entirely wrong. We had to completely reevaluate the fun-ness of the ASE. What should it do? How does it work? And most importantly, how do we make it awesomely fun!? After reworking the ASE and adding several new features, we conducted more focus testing. The response was remarkable! Even though the game is a first-person shooter, about a quarter of the people had more fun with the ASE than they did shooting the baddies in the face. And we continue to seek feedback and suggestions. SEGA's feedback has been invaluable. Fan forums, even more so."
This seems to be running a bit long, and we have no idea how much space IGN will afford us, so let's wrap it up. The main idea we'd like you to take away is that, in general, developers are usually beholden to a publisher and licensor, who are quite often (though not always) their masters. Throughout much of the development process for The Conduit, you, the fans and readers, were our publisher. Let us just say, working with one master can sometimes be difficult, but working with the multitude of masters that are the buying public, that wasn't so hard at all. We hope you've enjoyed a glimpse into the mindset of the team behind The Conduit and we'd love to hear what you think.
Shoot us an email (feedback@high-voltage.com ), or leave a comment where you think we'll see it (like here on IGN).
Thanks for reading,
. Respecto a Infinity Ward para mi demostrara su genialidad cuando haga un CoD mejor que el que hay para la Wii y le saque todo el potencial tecnico y de controles a la maquina
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![[fumando]](/images/smilies/nuevos/fumando.gif "fumando")
![[bye]](/images/smilies/nuevos2/adio.gif "adios")
![[inlove]](/images/smilies/nuevos2/enamoraos.gif "enamorados")
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. Si quiero graficos me voy al PC y lloro de la emocion mientras humea la grafica. Si no quiero gastarme mucho dinero bajo un escalon y me voy a la Play 3/Xbox 360 que se ven cojonudos por lo que este punto me parece una buena estrategia comercial para diferenciarse de la competencia ("mirar como le sacamos partido a lo que nadie usa") pero lo veo como algo poco trascendente a nivel global si cumple (y el MH 3 se ve bastante mejor que este), al igual que el online. Para mi la cuestion y la clave del titulo es si los controles van a dar la talla y aqui si estan al nivel del Metroid (y tienen un online decente) tienen comprador (y tengo PC y una Xbox 360 con sus repectivas opciones) y si lo superan ya sera para ponerlos en un altar.
![[360º]](/images/smilies/nuevos/vueltas.gif "como la niña del exorcista")
![[mad]](/images/smilies/nuevos/miedo.gif "loco")
![[uzi]](/images/smilies/nuevos2/uzi.gif "uzi")
