During this year’s QuakeCon, Splash Damage’s CEO Paul Wedgwood shared some interesting insight into the mission objective for his company, how they approached developing Brink – which releases early next year – and how they think Brink will appeal to a multiplatform audience. If only more developers shared this goal then the industry would, perhaps, be in a far better state.
First off, Splash Damage allowed gamers of all sorts to go hands on with Brink during the event. Wedgwood claims this is a rare opportunity for gamers to get their hands on an unreleased game; claiming that these sorts of events are almost always press-only. Later, Wedgwood talked about how Splash Damage worked really hard on ensuring the controls and experience from one version of the game, to another, are spot on.
“We knew when we started, that we could make a good mouse and keyboard game because of all the stuff we’d done with Wolfenstien, Enemy Territory, and Quake Wars. But the question is: How do you add that mush depth to a shooter if you’re limited to an analog controller with a small number of buttons? With a keyboard, you bind everything, right?.
“So, we wanted to make a shooter to where whether you’re using a 360 controller, a PS3 controller, or a mouse and keyboard, you have the same great experience. That means you need to be able to lean, duck behind things, and shoot over the top of stuff and control your profile, using the Smart System so you can vault and slide, jump between gaps, do little wall jumps and that kind of thing.
“All of that stuff is possible because we put so much effort into getting the controller right. For us, we just decided to be platform agnostic – even at the beginning when we were developing for PC we just used 360 controllers, or while at E3 we brought the PS3 version of the game. Oddly, here we are on an Intel platform but showing it with a 360 controller plugged into it. So, we’re not letting people use the mouse and keyboard because it’s nice to prove you can have that depth of control and mechanics but on a 360 controller.”
Instead of one console or platform having the ‘superior’ version, Splash Damage, hopefully, will be able to bring an even experience across all platforms. This truly is a sign of the times. Early in the PlayStation 3’s life, many developers were accused of being ‘lazy’, whether it was a sloppy port from an original Xbox 360 title or just having an inferior version. With developers bringing an even playing experience on multiplatform games, gamers are the winners. Hopefully all of Splash Damage’s hard work will be evident when Brink hits retailers early next year.
