The God of Gears

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You ultimately have to know what ‘done’ is in order to be able to know when you hit it, right? So, have a goal, work towards it, iterate, and hopefully you can create magic. That’s the long and short of it.”

This is not to suggest that Gears was designed according to a concrete plan, or that Gears went off without any problems along the way. He adds, “You need a really good system of checks and balances that question decisions that are made by a designer. No development is ever without its bumps along the way but I think we did a pretty amazing job in getting everything together start to finish.”

“We used a system that allowed for rapid iteration to help find that fun. Our designers were able to rapidly prototype scenarios and the programmers were able to see what was working and what wasn’t working. I was able to make the call on what was fun and what wasn’t fun and implement.”

“Making a next generation game is extremely tricky. To get it right you start with great ideas and great people and then you need excellent technology and a great pipeline.”

Marketing Tool

Gears’ success was about timing, quality and marketing; a tool that Bleszinski is happy to utilize. When the game popped up onto the media’s radar, it was already clear what it was tryig to achieve. From the first day, the game’s use of cover and its gritty environment were the focal points for all interviews and previews. There was no deviation.

He says, “The best ideas are the ones that are easily marketed. I’ve often had this conversation with our other designers. When we’re talking about new weapon ideas; if you can’t pitch this idea in one sentence then it’s too complicated or the idea hasn’t been thought out enough.

“When you do a good job of creating a universe, a game dynamic, or just a product in general then the sell-ability should transfer from the developers to the marketing people and ultimately to the customer. That message is carried all the way through, right?”

The marketing people picked up on the game’s simplicity, but also on its atmosphere. ‘Mad World’, as a campaign, sticks in the miond because it was unusual but also because it mirrored the game’s “sadness and loss” as Bleszinski says. “The proper decisions were being made with the universe and characters and those elements carried through to the marketing team. They were able to see that you can boil this game down to several key points. Gamers can latch onto the ideas. They want something that’s simple but fun to play.”

A lot of Gears success came down to clarity. The team knew what it liked and what it didn’t like. “We love games but we also find a lot of elements about games that are not very pleasurable or frustrating. We kept matching that against what we were doing with the game. Having a very forgiving check point system; cover controls that are intuitive; no-nonsense story. Those were the fundamental rules that we stuck to. We ended up with something we wanted to fire up and play ourselves.”

Provided by Next Generation—Interactive Entertainment Today