After spending an hour basking in the glory that is Brink, I had to know more. Splash Damage’s Ed Stern, Senior Game Designer, was at hand to meet my enthusiasm. In the rambling chat that followed, we spoke on a broad range of topics – embedded narrative, character progression, the role of DLC, getting online from Australia … and of course, the lack of ladies.



Ed Stern, Senior Game Designer at Splash Damage

Games.On.Net: I know you’re not yet ready or able to talk about DLC plans specifically for Brink, but I’d like to get an idea of Splash Damage’s overall approach or attitude to downloadable content.

Ed Stern: Well, we’re pre-beta on Brink at the moment, so we’re basically trying to make the game. We can’t really talk about it.

In terms of our history, you know, we come from the mod community ¬– a lot of the guys are or were competitive players – we have a history, as do Bethesda, of giving the community and players the tools they need to make the games they want to play.

So, we have no absolute plans as yet, but we all want to make something like (mod tools) available. We’ve always done so previously. Just at the moment, though, we’re trying to make the game.

Games.On.Net: There’s an idea among people who are quite anti-DLC that it’s often used by developers to finish a title that has to be pushed out for a deadline. Do you have a deadline for Brink, and is it harsh? Or have Bethesda given you breathing room? Is there pressure, or is everything just swimming along?

Ed Stern: We’re aiming at an Autumn release for this year. I think from a development point of view, there's always more stuff you could do. You get to the point of saying “oh if I could just do that”, and all you can see is the seams and the edges of things.

But we’re pretty happy with where it is at the moment. It's been really nice to be showing things off for the first time here. A lot of the systems we were talking about before are now in the game. So people have been able to see for themselves about the customisation – the character customisation, the weapon customisation, the body types, some of the other cinematics.

And some of the other environments we’ve been showing, because we want them to be as different and as memorable as possible. It was very much one of the design goals for Brink is for it to not be “oh yeah, another arena”.

Games.On.Net: Greys and browns.

Ed Stern: Well, yeah. And it’s like Team A versus Team B, and why on earth are these guys fighting? “Oh well, cause they … fight.”

So that's really what the backstory's doing, and that's deliberately why they chose that setting. Here's this isolated place – they can't just leave, they're running out of resources. There's a reason for the conflict, there's a genuine philosophical, political disagreement about what the future of the Ark should be. Are they trying to re-establish contact with the outside world, are they just trying to keep everything going…

I hope the choice of faction, whether it’s Resistance or Security, should mean something. We were very inspired by games like Deus Ex, where you've got to stop and work out what you think. There aren’t many games that require that.

Now obviously we're a big dumb action shooter. If you run around shooting people in the face and that's all you want to do, that's perfect, that's a completely valid way of playing the game. But there's no reason not to have that sort of narrative depth, it just makes thing more interesting.

So there is a story and you see one side of the conflict. You play through as a Resistance character, maybe, and then at the end of it you go through the Security campaign, and sometimes you’ll see the same action but in a totally different light. Just dramatically that's much more satisfying.

I mean, the choice between “right” and “wrong” is boring, because there is no such choice, but if you have to choose between right and right, suddenly there's something more going on there. So deliberately with the factions, we're not making it “hero cops versus terrorist”, or “heroic freedom fighter against oppressive fascist”, because that doesn't go anywhere. There are some awesome games I love that work that way, but I always appreciate (greater complexity) in games, like Bioshock, which I loved – both of them.

That's a game I played through as slowly as possible, because I wanted to read the environments, and environment really is the best narrative medium we've got. It's the best way of telling a story, so players can pull the information that they want to, rather than have somebody lecturing them "this is what's happened for the last twenty years!" Excuse me, I paid for this game, I'm trying to play it! Why are you stopping me playing this game?

Games.On.Net: So the choice of faction is purely aesthetic; they’re very equally balanced in terms of gameplay mechanics?

Ed Stern: Absolutely. We did think for a while about making it asymmetric, so one team would play in a different way to the other, and we just thought that would be too confusing.

Obviously, it would be more work for us! But we did that in our last game, Quake Wars; we made the two teams work totally differently. But it just means you've effectively got two games to learn, and one of the whole goals of Brink is to make it easy for players who do not think of themselves as either shooter players, or as online players, multiplayer players, to enjoy all this good stuff. That’s what we’ve promised.

We’ve come from a PC hardcore multiplayer fanbase and we know that both the best times we've ever had – the most fun and the best stories – we’ve had as gamers… they’re not really the story of the game, they’re the story of playing the game. Like "and then I got that headshot and I got hit with a grenade!" The unpredictability of it, and the replayability of it.

The first game we did, Enemy Territory Wolfenstein – that’s over half a billion games played, and no two of them were the same. We think that’s a pretty proven recipe. It’s just been difficult to apply for some gamers, particularly console gamers – so that some of the best experiences we’ve had have been online multiplayer shooters, and also some of the worst experiences we’ve ever had have been online multiplayer shooters!

I think we've all been in the situation we're we've played a single player shooter, and enjoyed it, and been good at it – and you go online and it's totally different. It's a different feel, the weapons do different damage, and you've gone from something you're good at and enjoyed to something you're just… you're dying all the time and you don't know why. And it's no fun.

One of the goals for Brink is that it's completely consistent between online and offline, it's the same game. So let's say you don't think of yourself as an online shooter at all, so you’re playing what you think of as “offline”. Let’s say you don’t have an internet connection (and of course the game works absolutely fine if you don’t). You can play both campaigns, and that will be in line with any top-range shooter, I think ten hours plus experience.

Games.On.Net: And then comes the transition from offline to online…?

Ed Stern: Well, but then, there's a reason to replay it . I think there are a lot of games that once you've played through them, if you play them again they're gonna be the same. You turn the corner, the same guy comes through the same door at the same moment.

With (Brink), it’s like: let's try playing through as engineer, or, oh look I've unlocked a different body type, I’m gonna try playing as an agile. Oh wow, I’ve got less health, but I’ve got more mobility. It’s the same geometry you're moving through, but in a completely different way. It's not that same on-rails feeling, like Time Crisis, where guys pop up always in front of you.

For example… at one point we were thinking of having some kind of cover system, but in the end we realised that was really bad thing to have players get used to, because the AI opponents will always outflank you (if you stay still). So it’s actually like don't, stay mobile, because these guys are as crafty as human players, and if you stay in one place they will grenade and outflank you.

The goal is that the AI opponents are as smart as human players – in fact they're using the same mission system the human players get to use as well. They're always doing the thing that provides the most benefit for the team.

Basically, we're relying on people being greedy and selfish and self-interested. If you just try and farm XP, if you just try and do things that selfishly benefit you – we've made sure that at that moment, the thing that will give you the most XP is the thing that benefits your team the most.

You know, you’ve gotta do these linear objectives, and some objectives you've got to be a particular class ¬ – you know, only soldiers can place demolitions charges, and you can change class instantly. It’s not like a race, the Engineer race, and you can only do Engineer things. It’s just that you don’t physically have that bit of equipment on you. But you can go to a command post and just get that kit, the Engineer kit, that has that equipment and those tools.

Games.On.Net: With character progression, how much will you need to grind to be competitive? One thing shooter fan can find a bit distressing about character progression is that if they don’t have time to play every day, no matter what their skill level, they can be knocked down by someone with a higher level weapon.

Ed Stern: That is a specific goal for Brink: that grinding just doesn't work that way. I could have a levelled character with a specific set up, absolutely, but that's not the point. For a start, there's a limit to how many of the unlocks you can equip at any one time. Partially that's driving the player towards having more than one character.

Take the abilities for instance. Some of them are universal, and they apply to whatever class you want. And some are class-specific, so they’re only available in match, when you are playing as that class. So sometimes I think, “well, how do I feel like playing? I fancy a bit of a game; I just want to get in. I’ll be a generalist. I’ll be a jack-of-all-trades, I’ll change classes, maybe I’ll always change class to do the current objective – whatever the present objective is, I’m always gonna switch.

So I’ll have a character that I’ve built up and I’ve customised to reflect the way I wanna play and he’s gonna have just the universal abilities unlocked. Or maybe I’m in an engineer frame of mind. I’m gonna be a supportive engineer guy, and you’ve got another character, which has got all the engineer unlocks, and maybe not some of the universal ones or soldier, or medic, or operative, or any of those classes.

But there's only so many abilities you can take with you, so it's not like, oh, I've got one spell, and he's got eighty spells. It just doesn’t work that way.

Games.On.Net: What kind of anti-lag measures are being put in place? Especially for Australians, because we have that continental gap.

Ed Stern: Oh, we've got a lot of Australian members on our forums, and they've been good as gold to us in the past. We are not deaf to their entreaties. Certainly we remember what it's like, very clearly, to have an Internet connection that will not let you play an online game and these days in Australia, you can pay a lot of money for a really good Internet connection, and it still won't let you play an online game. And it sucks.

We've always put a lot of effort into network code and anti-lag. I can't get in to too many specifics for that, but one of the reasons – the whole bedrock, you know, is id Tech 4, but a very thoroughly rewritten thing. About a third of it is rewritten. We've rewritten pretty much every single part of it – your renderer, your network code – specifically with that in mind, because we know we've got very, very specific requirements.

We’re very, very efficient with the data we're sending. We call it area of relevance; it's a bit like level of detail. We're not sending all the information to all the clients all the time; it’s much more efficient than that.

It's a concern anyway, for us, because we know how important it is, but specifically, in this day and age. I mean, we’re trying to get console players involved... it's got to be playable.

Games.On.Net: How human or superhuman are the characters? Obviously with unlocks you can get some pretty special abilities. Are these just guys that can go, go, go and fall from great heights without taking damage? Seeing the guys leap and run about using the S.M.A.R.T. system, I mean, Brink already has a kind of stylised look to it…

Ed Stern: It’s exaggerated movement aesthetic, but it's a mixed style, and it was kind of a risk, but I think it's come up really well. But the risk is you lose immersion. You just feel like “well I’m a floating god, I can just fly about, and nothing matters". Unless you've got that sweaty kind of boots-on-floor feeling, with, the bullets shooting really close, then you just don't care as much.

All the S.M.A.R.T. system is, it's there to make you feel more real, rather than less, because we got fed up with games – including our own – where you run along and you reach a wall that high, and you couldn't get over it. You'd think, I'm a six-foot tall, hyper-fit soldier, and I can't even lever myself over this? I'm a tubby man, and even I could get over that wall, particularly if someone was shooting at me.

That was what that was about, just making it so you don’t have to worry about button presses. If you can make that jump in real life, you will be able to. So even with some of the unlocks and abilities, they're never super-human. It’s never magic. It’s always just a tool that lets you play the game.

There were some thing that we found we had to cut, because they're just too powerful, or they just transformed the game, or they unbalanced it completely. There were some things we tried, and you know they sounded like a really cool idea, but we tried it and it was just no fun. Or it was really good fun for one player, and then just… prevented the other people from playing. There are some things you've just got to cut - it's just not fair on the other players.

Games.On.Net: I hate to ask this because I know you get it all the time, but … leaving out the ladies. It’s upset a lot of people.

Ed Stern: It upset us.

Games.On.Net: Was that a decision you had to make right from the start? I understand that it would have been almost another whole game’s worth of character customisation.

Ed Stern: It's the animations; it's the custom animations, which appear to be free to the player but are incredibly expensive in terms of time and resources for us to produce.

It really was that we wanted to have a huge depth of customisation. That's something we love in RPGS as gamers. This is what we want provide. (It was a question of) are we going to halve the quality of the animations and customisations in order to go from three body types to six, because we couldn't just reuse (the males character models). So it was a shame.

Games.On.Net: But it’s not something that could just be patched in later? Coming back to the DLC question, you don’t want to spark the argument of “they should have put this in before”.

Ed Stern: Oh, I see.

Games.On.Net: People really demonise DLC because of things like that.

Ed Stern: Well, you know… It’s gamers’ money; hopefully they pay money for (games)! As far as DLC… gamers have a right to expect value for money, and they should exploit that right to buy or not to buy.

Games.On.Net: I think what I’m fishing for is reassurance that it was a design decision right from the start; that girls weren’t in development, and then had to be left out – prime post-release DLC material.

Ed Stern: No. Really. It was a design decision and it was a technology decision, it's not like "ooh, well, we'll withhold this, and then we'll jump in later with it". No, definitely not. It was a real shame. Unfortunately that’s the kind of decision, a totally design decision, that you’ve got to make in development.

Games.On.Net: And the next one will be all chicks. The next Splash Damage title – all chicks, all the time.

Ed Stern: (laughs, eyes PR rep nervously) Um, I’m not allowed to... Anything I say will be…

Games.On.Net: Thank you so much for your time!

Ed Stern: My pleasure, not at all.


Note: By “autumn”, Ed means Northern Hemisphere seasons; we’ll see Brink locally in spring, on PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360