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Former Valve writer Chet Faliszek revealed that he is working on a new co-op first-person shooter with his studio, Stray Bombay (via VG247).
Faliszek cut his teeth on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and the Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead, and Portal series, so it makes sense that he’s stuck to his guns. He announced the news at the Reboot Develop conference in Canada last week, and also confirmed that the game will use the Unreal Engine.
Currently untitled, it will stand out from the crowd of co-op first-person shooters by adopting a matchmaking system that brings players together based on their in-game behaviour and personality. This will be achieved through co-founder and former Riot Games designer Kimberly Voll’s expertise in AI and player psychology. Explaining the new approach, Faliszek said that most matchmaking systems throw random players into the arena and if that individual match is successful, the game will encourage the players to friend each other.
‘That’s kind of like saying “hey, we had a first date, let’s get married”. It’s really overstepping it,’ he joked. ‘But if you know from session to session what’s happening, you can say, “Hey, these people play together, they’re looking for a game now on Thursday, so let’s put them in the room together and give them the opportunity to play again.” For us, the metrics are about social, it’s not about skill.’
Faliszek continued to elaborate that the game would collect player data on their styles and decisions while in a match and the friends they choose to make. ‘Then we can do cool things,’ he concluded. ‘These people played four games together and they won so let’s have the game go crazy against them, let’s give them something that will kick their asses. We can make it easier and harder, because if we’re tracking them over sessions we understand them.’
‘Nobody has done social matchmaking quite to the extent that we’re doing it,’ Faliszek added. ‘When you have a normal lobby of four people you have to make that split second decision of do I like that person’s name? No. I’m going to drop out of this. Then you keep getting the empty lobby or the one person lobby problem.’
Although Stray Bombay are hoping to shake up the genre with new data-driven matchmaking, the developer is not taking unnecessary risks. ‘We wanted to remove all technical risk. We use Unreal. We are going to ship a game that does not break ground with any new technology at all,’ he said. ‘We’re going to do that with our specialness on top of existing technology and make it our own. From day one we play tested and every single day we playtest.’
Players will take on the role of a pre-existing character in the game and will duel in a tightly-focused and highly dynamic ‘20 to 30 minute’ play session. It sounds cool and I imagine the project is still at the early stages of its development. Watch this space for updates.
