Today’s world is dominated by social networks, yet video games have been surprisingly slow about utilising the potential of these vast user bases. But if you thought Facebook and Twitter support was merely a gimmick, think again.
Bizarre Creations’ latest racer, Blur, is giving players the chance to personalise their racing experience via social networks. Community manager Ben Ward and environment artist Chris Downey talked us through its chaotic gameplay and vivid art direction in part one of our interview. In the second and final part of our interview with Bizarre Creations, they took us through Blur’s influential social network integration, why its delay was crucial and what they think about competition.
What sort of comments have you received about the community features and connectivity? At one point you expressed plans for a built-in social network.
Ben Ward: We were throwing the ideas [around] initially [for a built-in social network], but because we’ve been focus testing and showing the game to so many people we’ve really narrowed down what people want from a social experience. We’ve got support for Twitter, Facebook and the platform specific [services], Xbox menus and PlayStation Network messages. But we’ve built them in such a way so you can share experiences with your friends. So if I nail a single-player race and get a time of 01:30 I can hit the share button [to] send that to Chris. Chris will receive that message, and it will either be a dashboard message or on Facebook or Twitter. [Then he’ll] jump onto his console [to challenge my time] and if he beats it he can sent it back to me.
Chris Downey: We have a similar feature within the game as well – you can send friend demands. But the great thing about putting it out there to the social networks is that people cross-platform can challenge each other as well, which is not something that you see. So that was the kind of reasoning behind it as well. It brings all the different consoles together.
BW: You can’t actually play cross-platform, but that something we’d really like to push in the future, to actually be able to send these messages [between consoles], if I’m on my Xbox and you’re on your PS3. The reason we’re not doing it at the minute is because the platform holders don’t want us to. But we’re very eager in pushing back the boundaries, doing all of that kind of stuff, integrating with social networks even more, integrating with phones, everything like that. We see that as the upcoming future of how video games are going to interact online.
So the game’s actual interface and menus isn’t a social network.
BW: It’s built into social networking rather than being a self-contained social network. That was part of our research, people don’t want to make another account and control their social life in another place. They want the game to come to them so that’s exactly how we’ve built it. It’s a notification system rather than something where you have to manage yourself.
Naughty Dog decided to pull back their Twitter support for Uncharted 2 after fans complained updates were too frequent. Have you taken measures so updates don’t become an annoyance for Blur players?
BW: Absolutely. There’s no automatic updates.
CD: You can choose what you want to say.
BW: The only time the game will tweet or post anything is if you specifically tell it to do so. But on every screen of the game there’s an option to do that, so you’re not limited in anyway. You want to share it, you can.
We’re actually really proud of the fact that we don’t have auto tweets because I think that is not what the experience should be.
CD: It’s spam isn’t.
BW: Yeah. Then it loses its meaning, because if you haven’t personally sent a message to me then I don’t care about what that message says, I consider it marketing in way. Whereas if you’ve specifically created a challenge and tailored it to me, and taken the time to send it, I’m much more likely to get involved in that. It works for both sides of the argument I think.
Where do you want to take the Blur community in the future?
BW: We’re just going to keep growing it and keep making it easier and easier to become a member of the community and we’ve got some really nice ideas on what we’re going to do, both in future titles and for Blur itself, to really expand that experience.
Are there any plans for DLC or online tournaments?
BW: Online tournaments; we’ve got support for that built-in. It’s not tournaments as such, it’s custom game modes. we can monitor which games people are playing and you can build your own custom event in the game. So at Bizarre, we can see which [is] the most popular custom event and then we can promote that to a fully-fledged event – they’re called community events on the menu. So you can race that now. But as more and more people play and make their own race designs, we’ll pick up on that, promote them and make someone famous for their game design basically.
As for DLC, we’d like to do something but it’s really too early to tell yet. We’ve certainly got it built into our strategy, but it depends what people want from it. If people say: “This game is fine, don’t do anything else” then we might not. But if people are desperate for more cars, or tracks or something, then we’ll evaluate as we move forward.
Are you satisfied with it as it is?
CD: Oh, yeah. Really pleased with it. I’ve been playing myself all this week. So having worked hard on it for two-and-a-half years I think that’s a testament to itself really. And I’m not the only one within the development team who has been. I’ve seen a few of my sneaky colleagues online as well.
Tags: ben ward, bizarre creations, blur, chris downey, interview
