00:04www.mesmerism.info
00:38You know, our previous game, Warhawk, of course, multiplayer only and has a really strong multiplayer community.
00:44Actually, interesting note, was the first game that I've worked on in my career that built up a community around
00:50it,
00:51which was a really neat experience because we have some pretty rad fans.
00:53I worked at Sony for nine years in San Diego, and we used to play Warhawk every day for lunch
01:00for years at a time.
01:01And I have to admit, I got pretty good at the game.
01:04You know, Warhawk still has a very active fan base, and we can see how that's evolved over time
01:10and what people really enjoy about that gameplay.
01:13And those have influenced the design decisions for Starhawk.
01:16Certainly, we want to make sure that the people that play Warhawk will migrate over to Starhawk and feel that,
01:22wow, this is great, you know, this is even better than Warhawk.
01:25And we'd feel bad if we somehow left them behind.
01:29Because we don't want to fracture the community.
01:31That was something we learned from Warhawk, that we want to try to keep the player base
01:34as tightly coupled into the same pool of players as possible.
01:38You know, with Starhawk, we'll give you a place to enjoy it co-op.
01:42We'll give you a place to enjoy it by yourself.
01:45I expect a large percentage of those players are going to go online.
01:49And at this point, what we're doing is adding content, say, for certain solo missions,
01:54as well as continuing to refine what we already have.
01:58You go...
01:59You go...
02:02Like that.
02:03And then there'll be some, like, readiness.
02:05There's a lot of playtesting going on, on a number of different fronts.
02:09We have systems set up to record the game screen and also record the face of the player.
02:15And those things record in sync.
02:16So we can see people reacting to stuff.
02:18You can see someone get really frustrated, or you can see them laugh at a moment, or whatever it is.
02:22Did you play camera rolling?
02:24Okay, so right now I'm monitoring an external playtester who just playtested one of our missions.
02:30I try to watch and see if there's any common issues that they have.
02:34We generally tend to focus on the negatives more so than the positives,
02:37because the designers can work with the negative stuff.
02:40The footage and then the feedback that we get back from those people is really valuable,
02:43because that's really essential to the process.
02:46And that's where we get, I think, some of our biggest benefits.
02:49Now that's pretty single-player focused playtesting.
02:51We just do a ton of that, and we're going to keep doing a ton of that until the game
02:54is done.
02:54On the multiplayer side, we try to pull as many members of the team together as possible and play the
02:58game.
02:58We'll do playtests for fun.
03:00We call those hate sessions.
03:02So we'll have everybody get in the game, play it, everybody write down notes of what they hated,
03:06then we'll go meet in the conference room and everybody just run down your notes on what you hated.
03:10Because we don't get caught up in the stuff that we like.
03:11We all have fun playing it.
03:12But I think a lot of games go wrong because they did not have enough critical eye on removing the
03:17stuff that sucked.
03:18So that's really kind of the focus of where we're at.
03:20We're more interested in hate than love, because those are the things we want to fix.
03:25The things we love, fine, we'll leave those.
03:26But the things we hate, we're going to see what everybody has in common about it, and we'll try to
03:31address those.
03:33We have a blast when we do multiplayer sessions.
03:35They're a lot of fun.
03:36You know, you've got these guys on your butt, and they're shooting you, and then all of a sudden you
03:40lay down like a turret, you know, and just mow them down.
03:43I mean, there's nothing like that.
03:45I'm ready to go get the flag.
03:47There wasn't anybody around, and the whole thing was walled off.
03:49Like, okay, that's pretty clever.
03:50I hadn't thought to do that.
03:52Bones was on top of the wall waiting for me, and so I didn't get the flag.
03:56They give you all the toys you want, you know.
03:58It's just up to you how you want to play with them.
04:01Build walls.
04:02I'm going to build some turrets.
04:03I'm going to call some guys in, and you're kind of directing the action as opposed to being in the
04:06middle of it.
04:07It's a ton of fun.
04:08You can do the same multiplayer level hundreds of times, and it can be different every time.
04:13The kind of mayhem that you can really unleash in this game, it makes it a lot more interesting and
04:18a lot more chaotic, and I like that.
04:21And all this stuff is just dropping in from space around you and building up, and there's kind of a
04:24lot of racket and dust and impacts and stuff, and it feels kind of cool.
04:27And when all of the dust literally settles, there's a base here where there wasn't anything before, and that feels
04:32kind of neat.
04:33So it's not just, I want a gun.
04:36It's, I want an entire base.
04:38I want a whole strategic approach.
04:41And so we're a third-person shooter, first and foremost.
04:44But we also give the player lots of different ways to participate in that action.
04:56I ended up with a flag for some reason.
05:00And then, oh my god, dude, I had to sit in a bunker while the other team, while they tried
05:04to dig out the other flag.
05:05Mark, get back inside the bunker.
05:07What are you taking down?
05:08Oh my god, man.
05:09I just got yelled at by everybody on my team.
05:11What are you doing?
05:12Mark, get inside!
05:13Mark, Mark!
05:15Mark!
05:16Mark!
05:17Get back in!
05:17Get out!
05:18Get in!
05:18Get out!
05:19Get in!
05:19It's like, good lord.
05:20Mark!
05:21Mark!
05:22Get inside that bunker!
05:23Get in the bunker!
05:25Get back in the bunker!
05:27Look at this.
05:28Look at that.
05:29That's, that's, it's too much stress, man.
05:32Spanking.
05:34Here they made it feel really like a personal thing, you know?
05:38Like my three years of work is going to hit this crescendo when we can unveil it to
05:43everybody and everyone's already super excited about it.
05:46So it's really cool, you know?
05:48I know that we've put a lot of energy and time in it and personally I feel attached
05:52to it and personal bias aside, I feel objectively that we have a really good game and a great
05:59thing that I want other people to see and experience and feel the same excitement that
06:02I have.
06:02We have a lot of Warhawk fans who call them Warheads and they have a lot of questions
06:07for us which we try to answer, but our bar, no matter what they say, is actually higher
06:12than anybody's and we are our own worst critic and as we go forward we're just going to be
06:16that much harder on ourselves.
06:17The Warhawk multiplayer community did a lot of things for us.
06:21Frankly, this may sound kind of sappy, they did a lot of things for me.
06:24I mean, my career is a very different thing now than it was before then and my outlook
06:28on game design is a very different thing now than it was before then.
06:32So I'd feel really bad if we neglected those guys.
06:35You know, rest assured that that experience from Warhawk is something that we learn from
06:38and we're going to take it to the next solo with Starhawk.
06:50There we go, that's good stuff.
06:53There we go.
06:55What about, there's another guy.
06:58Let's see if it showed up.
07:00Let's see if there's anyone responding yet.
07:02This guy says, um, it looks like one of you guys, it might be you or you, look like a,
07:08He's pretty sure one of you guys is a serial killer.
07:23He's pretty sure one of you guys is a serial killer.
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