GDC2008 Notes – Don’t Mess with Great Gameplay! How WIPEOUT Innovated on PSP
“Don’t Mess with Great Gameplay! How WIPEOUT Innovated on PSP” by Clark Davies
Main elements from development of Wipeout Pure – inhouse graphical design (no DR), easier track building for designers, DLC & better handling in-game.
For Pulse, the key element was responding to feedback – novices need ’safe’ intro to gameplay so solo events given early prominence and zone mode became emergent tutorial – the lack of weapons & acceleration meant new players only had to focus on learning handling. Code wise, emphasis on improving handling & AI improvements.
How to take Wipeout forward? psp hardware, new tools to empower & community.
PSP Hardware. Looked at PSP hardware & decided to leverage unique features – mp3 custom soundtracks, jpeg save for in-game screenshots, PSN support for logon and wifi data sharing.
Handheld – focus on bitesize gameplay
- short races, shallow menus
- auto save & auto load
- custom controls
- loyalty points & unlocks so every gameplay session is positive for the player.
New Tools – ship skin editor in flash. Used flash instead of in-game tool for mouse precision & easy import of textures from other professional tools (i.e. photoshop).
- single player campaign editor for grids with full custom race controls with more functionality than regular game grid.
- already fan sites for sharing these grids (viewed as a big win).
Community Took lots of care to not step on toes of existing hardcore community (wipeoutzone.com) with new site (wipeout-game.com). Took 8 months + 2 developers. Put link to website on the game’s front menu using in-game web browser. Website can load game profiles & show rankings, records, loyalty points etc. Long term plans to improve stat tracking, skin sharing, Wipeout HD support, galleries etc.
Lessons:
Innovation + evolution don’t have to be just gameplay. Pulse viewed as a succes through combination of existing & new features. All decisions made were player-centric – how can they improve things for the player? Pulse has a huge bunch of features over the competition for community.
My Notes:
Not sure how much this focus on community would apply to story based games. Any game with multiplayer communities should learn these lessons – see success of Halo 3 video footage for great example. Building communities keeps people playing your franchise.
