Midway: Wheelman development blindsided by GTA IV
- Posted December 2nd, 2008 at 06:33 EDT by
- 1,936 views
- 11 Comments
Midway's Simon Woodroffe has revealed that development of free-roaming vehicular action spectacular The Wheelman was hindered by the release of Grand Theft Auto IV.
According to Woodroffe, who serves as Creative Director, GTA IV conditioned a consumer preference for more realistic driving experiences, to the cost of projects (like The Wheelman) which veer towards an arcade sensibility.
"Our game was already quite different, but GTA 4 moved the bar in terms of what people expected from an open-world driving game," Woodroffe told Videogamer in a yet-to-be-published interview. "Before GTA 4, open-world driving games generally had more accessible, more arcade-like, handling. Even the previous GTAs were like that. But GTA 4 moved the bar towards realism - even super-realism, you know?"
"We started to get feedback from our focus testers, within weeks of GTA 4 coming out, that the basic driving was dropping in popularity," he went on. "It had gone from being the most highly rated element, to one of the lowest on the list. And I'm looking at this and thinking, "There's only one reason for this. GTA 4 has changed gamers' expectations"."
While Woodroffe found the comparison "fairly frustrating" at first, he commented that it was his "job is to be up-to-date with current expectations and to manage them well." Game development doesn't take place in a vacuum, after all.
"I'm very big on choice, and I'm very big on design and control systems," he went on. "All the physics stuff stays very close to me and the design team, so it was work for a few hours or so, and polishing things up for a week or two, to change the way Wheelman felt to be a little more realistic and a little more grounded, based upon the feedback we were getting, based upon the impact of GTA 4."
The results are, Woodroffe feels, "right on the money in terms of what people expect from an open-world racer."
The Wheelman ships worldwide on February 16 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.
Comments
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Babiloo |
XavierHarkonnen- 8:02am GMT - December 2nd, 2008
- 1
god i hated the physics enginge for driving in gta4, its like it penalized you for wanting to go fast. on the other i love arcade racers like burnout and stuff, so i dont feel the driving in gta4 changed my tastes or anything. in fact gta4 disapointed me greatly i found 3, vice city, and san andreas MUCH more enjoyable.
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MMDs |
MMDs- 10:10am GMT - December 2nd, 2008
- 3
Actually after playing GTA4 for a while (especially in free roam, deathmatch, race, and GTA race multiplayer) i've become soooo dam good at driving i scare myself, i can weave in and out of traffic like a hot knife through butter at some seriously top speeds. In fact every other game i try to play that has driving of some sort in it, i keep messing up because i'm so used to the GTA4 controls.
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InfernoReaper |
GrimDarkling- 12:13pm GMT - December 2nd, 2008
- 5
If they use the driving physics from GTA4, I know a lot of people who won't be buying this game.
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Funeralfog |
blksabbath- 12:27pm GMT - December 2nd, 2008
- 6
GTAIV went far too realistic, why the heck would we want to play real world? if we want Real life physics in driving we'll stick to Gran Turismo which rocks Btw
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darthrazorback
- 2:09pm GMT - December 2nd, 2008
- 7
How do they explain the popularity of Burnout Paradise?
Sometimes focus groups should be ignored. -
Alpha2
- 2:13pm GMT - December 2nd, 2008
- 8
Arcade driving is fine as long as the gamer is conditioned to expect it to feel that way. That's a presentation issue not a consumer issue. If you want it to be The Transporter but with Vin Diesel that's what you have to get people to understand it to be. Because now I doubt people will be pulling 180 spins and shooting badguys through a broken windshield as they drive in reverse at ridiculous speeds and from the trailers that seemed to be the game that was being planned. Not a GTA rip.
As for GTA punishing you for going fast... isnt that the point? You drive fast in a city full of people and other cars and you're probably going to hit something or skid out of control, that's just realism. which is what they were going for.
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PS3-The Ultimate Machine
- 12:47pm GMT - December 6th, 2008
- 11
So,Midway IS trying to create a run-of-the-mill generic GTA ripoff.I'm so interested in this game now./sarcasm
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