Wheelman Preview

Simon Woodroffe is both a nice man and the creative director on Midway's Wheelman. Last week we sat down with him to discuss the game itself, Midway's future projects, and why the driving in GTA IV is actually very good. Read on to hear his many thoughts.

VideoGamer.com: This game has been in development for a quite a long time. Wasn't the original release date supposed to be December 2007?

Simon Woodroffe: I came on board in April 06, at which point the game had just been transferred from Midway's studios in Australia, and at that point there really wasn't much of a game going on. I think that probably the first half of that time was taken up with the whole technology sharing, Unreal stuff. Making Unreal stream well... a lot of people have failed to do that. I was just playing The Last Remnant, actually, and that suffers terribly with Unreal artefacts, Unreal effects- which is unusual for them [Square]. I think what we've done with Wheelman is to get rid of the elements of Unreal that weren't suited to the game we were making. The technology hurdle was really huge, so in reality it's probably a story that you've heard before: we made the game in the last two years. That's what it comes down to. A large part of our initial period was getting the shared technology in, working around technology kinks, prototyping and working with our Hollywood writers and Vin. So I've been on it for two and a half years now, and there wasn't that much that had been done before I got there, so it's about two and a half years old now, as far as I'm concerned. Even that isn't a bad achievement.

VideoGamer.com: But the game was being developed in Australia, before?

SW: It was a different game, really. They were working on the PS2 with their own tech. We basically started again.

VideoGamer.com: So you reinvented the project, then?

SW: Yeah, I think so. Midway had originally been commissioned for The Wheelman on the PS2, using the studio that made the Dukes of Hazard game. After a few months, the project apparently was going very well. They decided that the ideal scenario was to do it on next-gen, so they needed a next-gen developer. Which was instinct on their part. I think one of the main things was a lack of a design department. They [the original developers] were an old-school racing studio. They knew racing, but they didn't know modern gaming, so that was one of the main reasons I was brought on board - to fill that design hole from scratch, to take the creative reins on Wheelman and make sure it was the game it had the potential to be - an accessible car-chase experience. That's what I've gone for. It was very important to me that this was a polished product. I'm not interested in... you know, I don't think gamers are ones to welcome non-AAA products. For me, they [Midway] have backed us all the way. They've backed all the creative calls we've been making, they've given us the time we need, they've allowed us to do focus testing and to react to focus testing - they basically let us do things our own way.

We have been spending the last year with our full feature set in design honing the game experience, since the technology essentially became stable enough. Midway have this vision for all its studios to share Unreal tech. It's a really great idea in principle, but just recently there have been articles about some of the problems and flaws with that process. There are obviously going to be problems with sharing tech between MK, TNA, Blacksite, Stranglehold, Wheelman and This Is Vegas, as well as all our future projects. But we've now reached the point where most of those teams have shipped a title using shared tech. The tech has been used in the field, it's out there and everyone's got access to it. For the game we do after Wheelman, we can nick the brawling system from TNA. It actually works now. So it's paying off, eventually.

VideoGamer.com: So was this a gamble, in a sense? It sounds like you took a risk but that it worked out well...

SW: Yeah. I just saw a demo of a new Midway game that's in development. I can't tell you too much about it, but they've been on it for three months and it looks as good if not better than Gears 2. This is only possible because of the sharing of technology.... The stuff in Wheelman is available to all of us. Don't think it won't be used in This Is Vegas, and so on and so forth. The fact [is] that we're the first open-world game out the door for Midway. The others [Blacksite, Stranglehold] have been corridor-based experiences more suited to Unreal. We're open-world, streaming... and you know, all the Midway studios are benefiting from this. But you know, the biggest factor that hasn't been touched upon in recent articles is the shared knowledge. We have 600 to 700 devs, all with Unreal experience, all working for the same company, all of whom can talk to each other. When we hit a problem, we have more people working on the engine than anybody - by a long way. And we have a massive pool of resources to draw upon. At least one team has dealt with pretty much every feature you might want in a next-gen game. Which means that we, as designers, are in a great position - because we can now actually build games to be games, not just technology showcases anymore. It makes sense eventually.

VideoGamer.com: Before we move on, I have to ask you about this mystery game. What can you tell us?

SW: I'll probably get into trouble! The problem is at the right time, I have a tendency to run my mouth off! It's similar to Gears, but a totally different setup. I'd say that if we were to take all of the games that sold on next gen formats, averaged a couple of things out, this will as successful as anything in the top end. It's a very exciting concept. I'll tell you... no, no I can't tell you that.

VideoGamer.com: No? Ah, go on!

SW: No!

VideoGamer.com: Aw... Okay then, when can we expect to see this game?

SW: Midway have got a really cool game, not the one I'm talking about but another one, a really cool game coming out of Chicago using the shared technology. It's probably not due until 2010, and the same goes for the one I'm talking about. This Is Vegas will be out next year, and that's looking really good now...

VideoGamer.com: But you think this new game will look as good as Gears of War 2?

SW: It's already looking as good as Gears 2, but the game mechanics are kind of different in some ways, similar in others. It's going to be really big and really important. It's not often, especially when you're a cynical type, that you see a prototype or creative slice and just get blown away by it. But in this case, the hype is justified. That has only come about because of the fact that they were able to take things from several studios - even visual assets, audio assets. Sharing those is a little more risky, in my opinion, because gamers will spot that stuff. But certainly the expertise and the technology, you can share those. I think it's a plan that will pay off, in the long term, in a big way. It's certainly paying off in terms of me speccing off what I want to do with my studio after Wheelman. Obviously we want to take a lot of the cool stuff and add a different tone, a different flavour to it. Something a bit darker, a bit more cinematic. We'll see...