PC | Volition on co-op play in sandbox games
Saints Row 2 developer on the hassles of including cooperative mode in their game, and why it was worthwhile in the end.
Who was there: David Bowring, designer for Volition, the development team behind open-world games such as Red Faction: Guerilla and Saints Row 2.
What they talked about: Saints Row 2 was not only critically well received, it was also one of the few games in its genre to feature cooperative multiplayer. In his GDC 2010 talk titled "Co-Operative Design for Open World Games,", Volition designer David Bowring said any developer potentially looking at including co-op in their sandbox game needs to be aware that they…re in for "a lot of pain and suffering".
When it came to Saints Row 2…s QA process, almost 37 percent of bugs found were directly related to the co-op aspect of the game, Bowring said. "You have to bear in mind that every system you build has to be coop friendly, and that every system touched could break coop, and an enormous amounts of bugs were created," he said.
So why do it? Bowring said despite the hassles, the inclusion of co-op in Saints Row 2 was very gratifying, with Volition…s figures showing the people who played co-op generally played a lot more of the game. Bowring said most players also now had the expectation that games would feature some sort of multiplayer, and that providing social content helped make a game more relevant as well as extend its shelf life.
Takeaway: Untethered open world co-op is difficult to achieve, so Bowring…s advice to would-be open world co-op developers is to design everything with co-op in mind right from the beginning.
Jason Mraz - Dynamo Of Volition
Source: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/saintsrow2/news.html?sid=6253555
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