Generally speaking, it’s a rare thing for a company to hope a project fails. But recently, one member of the Capcom*Unity forums put forth an interestingly-phrased question to the staff about their upcoming Wii title, Spyborgs:
“So in case it should manage the impossible and sell a million copies,” he asks, stating that like The Conduit, the game “has no excuse” to fail, “do you have a Plan B then?”
Capcom’s VP of Strategic Planning & Business Development, Christian Svensson, answers with high hope for the title’s prospects. “Creative directors from three ratchet games and resistence isn’t bad, no?” he says.
But more to the question at hand, he says “if we’re successful, naturally there’ll be more. Fingers crossed.”
Elsewhere, another user poses a greater question that comes up with every game that doesn’t feature online co-op these days: why doesn’t it?
Svensson responds, stating that “online co-op isn’t just a ‘oh, let’s just tuck that in there’. There’s a ton of design work on top of the technological implimentation that would have to be done. Then there’s online testing to do.”
“Online is really, really hard in anything and should never be done as an afterthought,” he adds.
In addition, Svensson explains that he doesn’t believe it is a feature that will necessarily make or break the title: “[I]n 2009, I don’t think it’s absolutely required in every game. How many Wii titles have online co-op, even from Nintendo?”
With that, he seems to put the ball in Nintendo’s court. Truth be told, I can’t think of a number of Nintendo’s own games that have that feature, and it sounds almost as though they are looking to the company to shepherd the rest in how to do it properly.
Perhaps there is simply little faith in the Wii’s ability to support such a function properly? Or maybe it’s simply not suited to such Wii title as this?
Whatever the case, the topic itself beget another question: “why is online so essential in your 360 and PS3 games, but we still haven’t seen an online Wii game from you guys?”
Svensson responds with the following:
As a counter point… Dark Void (a 360/PS3/PC game) has NO co-op or multiplayer, online or offline. There we’re focusing on trying to make the best single player experience we could rather than spreading the resources we have too thinly.
Same theory here. Trying to make the best co-op brawling experience we can without spreading our resources too thinly. If you wanted online co-op, something else would have to have to have been sacrificed and if the core experience isn’t satisfying, then there’s no point in making it an online non-satisfying experience.
First time out with a new team, on a new title on new tech (while very talented, they’d never done a Wii game) with a sizable budget, there’s already more than enough risk in the project. We didn’t (and still don’t) view online co-op as the feature that was buy/no buy for the majority of the audience we’re seeking to reach if we make a good game. Everything else, as I’ve said before, can come in the sequel (God willing we sell enough to have one).
For some people there, online is a make-or-break feature when it comes to making a purchase. Do you find it to be a crucial piece of the puzzle when deciding which games to buy, or do you believe that perhaps there is sometimes a time and a place for it, and other times not as much?
It leaves one to wonder if their answers to the latter questions of online co-op could affect the former question of how successful the game might be… or potentially might have been in the end.
