Category: News

Perhaps war never changes, but game development sure does.

As Bethesda Softworks braces for the launch of a new Fallout game, it’s worth taking a moment to look back at how the high-profile franchise got its start — with one game developer, in a room at a California game company, coding an engine in his spare time.

“It was just me working on an engine,” recalled Fallout lead Timothy Cain during his GDC 2012 postmortem of the project, which is absolutely worth going back to watch. “I just kind of wanted to make my own engine, and nobody said no. That was just kind of the way Interplay worked in the ‘90s.”

Dig into the history of Fallout, from a developer’s perspective, and you get a sense of how both the series itself and the industry it grew up in have changed since Cain first began working on the game at Interplay in 1994, just over two decades ago.

It didn’t start out as Fallout, of course. During his postmortem, Cain told the story of how the game known internally as Vault13 which came to be branded Fallout at the suggestion of then-CEO of Interplay Brian Fargo after taking a build home to play.

“Fallout had a double entendre of the radiation from the bombs and then the alternative definition, which is a lingering effect or set of consequences,” Fargo, now chief of Wasteland 2 developer InXile, tells Gamasutra. “Perfect for a game that stakes its rep on choice and consequence.“

Looking back, Fargo suggests modern game developers appreciate the boon that crowdfunding and open development can be, from a playtesting and bug-stomping standpoint, compared to the QA departments and services of yore.

“When we worked on Fallout we had a QA department, but that doesn’t give you a true indication of how players will react,” says Fargo, who contrasts the Kickstarted/Early Access development of last year’s Wasteland 2 as more of a “spectator sport” than game development ever was in his days at Interplay. 

He also advises that developers lay out a clear mission statement and vision for a project early in the production process, as in hindsight it proved a key turning point in Fallout‘s development.

“I remember us dissecting [spiritual predecessor] Wasteland 1 before V13/Fallout began and breaking the key sensibilities into a vision document — things like moral dilemmas and providing a diverse pathway for players,” notes Fargo, echoing Cain’s comments that the game only came together once the team wrote themselves a mission statement.

You can read an archived copy of that statement here, though it’s worth noting it was written while Fallout was still being designed to use the GURPS tabletop game license — something that changed late in development.

“I look back on Fallout as probably being one of the most exciting and juvenile times of my career.”

The game would go on to outstrip Interplay’s sales expectations when it launched in the fall of ‘97, though a lot of that has to do with the fact that Interplay doesn’t seem to have had very high expectations to begin with.

Cain noted that the project was “not a typical Interplay game,” because it was built on its own custom engine (rather than say, BioWare’s Infinity engine, which Interplay had the option to use) and didn’t bear a well-known license.

(Incidentally, the question of whether to use an existing engine or roll your own is one many developers still struggle with today, even as Unity and Epic have done their best to make their engines easily available and approachable.)

What’s more, Cain recalls that some folks at Interplay tried to get Fallout cancelled multiple times because they were afraid it would compete directly with the company’s other projects, role-playing games based on the Forgotten Realms and Planescape licenses that had larger teams.

Todd Howard once estimated that roughly 80 people worked on the team that made Fallout 3, and studio follow-up Skyrim boasted a team size of more than 90. By comparison, the original Fallout was developed by a team of one for months — at its height, the game had a total team size of roughly 30 people, according to Cain, who recalls the game costing “about $3 million” to develop — nearly $4.5 million in 2015 if you account for inflation.

That’s a significant amount of money, and I think it’s important to talk about game budgets (then and now) at a time when some developers are undercutting themselves and the industry by asking for too little on Kickstarter, making the cost of game development seem cheaper than it is. 

In the face of that initial outlay, Interplay started production on a new Fallout game using the same tech and assets while the first one was still being finished, and set a strict ship date of holiday ’98. 

Project lead Feargus Urquhart, then chief of Interplay’s Black Isle Studios and now CEO of Fallout: New Vegas developer (and Black Isle spiritual successor) Obsidian Entertainment, remembers hard lessons learned during that period about pushing yourself and your team to hit a ship date.

“The biggest challenge of Fallout 2 was that we had set its launch date based upon having started it in the middle of 1997. That meant we would have about 18 months to make the game in order to get it out for Christmas of 1998,” says Urquhart. “I pushed everyone incredibly hard to get the game done.  It was pretty early in my career, so I’ll admit that we (mostly me) pushed too hard to get Fallout 2 done that year…we ended up making most of the game in about 8 months.”  

The team hit their ship date, an achievement Urquhart feels is weighed down by how buggy the game was at launch — a recurring issue in the Fallout franchise.

“One of the biggest, and most visual bugs, was the car trunk bug,” says Urquhart, relating a Pratchett-esque tale of a trunk run amok. “We came up with idea about midway through development for the player to have this car that they could store stuff in. We could easily store stuff in containers on a map, but we didn’t have a system that would have that same container available on another map. To make the inventory of the container, the car’s trunk, persistent across maps, we decided to make it a companion.”

“However, it was a special companion that didn’t follow you and only showed up on certain maps.  And, when it showed up, it showed up in a specific space and didn’t follow you. Unfortunately, we didn’t find all the bugs before we shipped, so a disembodied (disem-chassied) trunk would follow the player in areas from time to time.”

PUBG Corp. has filed a lawsuit against Epic Games, alleging that Epic’s Fornite Battle Royale is far too similar to its own battle royale title PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and, as a result, infringes on PUBG Corp.’s copyrights.

The Korea Times reports that Bluehole subsidiary PUBG Corp. filed the lawsuit to the Seoul Central District Court back in January, explaining now to the publication that the move was in an effort to protect its own copyright.

This lawsuit is particularly interesting, and messy, for a number of reasons, including the fact that Epic and PUBG Corp. have an interesting relationship to begin with. Together, the company’s battle royale titles dominate the genre, both games are built with Epic’s Unreal Engine, and both studios are owned at least partially by Tencent.

Additionally, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds ushered in the big battle royale craze to begin with when it launched into Early Access in March 2017. The record-breaking success of the game was quickly followed by a sizable surge of other last-man-standing games, including a new, free-to-play battle royale mode in Epic’s existing title Fortnite.

Bluehole’s vice president Chang Hang Kim called out Epic in a press release shortly after Fortnite Battle Royale was announced, accusing the game of “replicating the experience for which Battlegrounds is known” and expressing displeasure that Epic publicly cited PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds as a major inspiration for its battle royale mode.

At the time, Bluehole said it was contemplating further action, and the January lawsuit seems to be the continuation of that earlier threat.

This also marks the second major lawsuit the company has filed against alleged copycats. PUBG Corp., Bluehole’s subsidiary for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds business, also recently filed a lawsuit against NetEase, alleging that a pair of the company’s mobile battle royale games, Knives Out and Rules of Survival, contain “similar visual and audio elements” to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

This week, indie shopkeeping game Moonlighter hits store shelves, inviting players on a rogue-lite adventure where they explore dungeons by night, and sell their loot to other adventurers by day. Late last week, we were lucky enough to chat with Javier Giminez, CEO of game developer Digital Sun (which produced Moonlighter) and its parent company WildFrame, over on the Gamasutra Twitch channel. 

What started out as a conversation about the development of Moonlighter turned into a compelling and fascinating chat about the realities of running an independent game development company in Spain. If you’re a small developer balancing contract or commissioned work in order to fund the games you’re passionate about, you should take a listen to our chat, which covers everything from the scheduling and prioritization of the company’s different projects to a look at the pipeline that produced the game’s striking pixel art. 

For your convenience, we’ve embedded our stream of Moonlighter up at the top of this story. And if you’re looking for more insightful interviews with your fellow game developers, be sure to follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel.

Newsbrief: The French mobile game developer and publisher Voodoo has received a sizable investment from Goldman Sachs’ private equity fund, reportedly $200 million, that will be used in part to double the studio’s staff.

Reuters reports that the developer is looking to bring its workforce up to 150 by the end of 2018 as it looks to create new messaging tools and ways to more efficiently use data collected from players.

Founded in 2013, Voodoo both develops and publishes free-to-play games for iOS and Android. By the company’s count, its games collectively nab the attention of 150 million players on a monthly basis and saw roughly 300 million downloads in 2017 alone. 

Though the terms of the deal were not publicly disclosed, Voodoo co-founders Alexandre Yazdi and Laurent Ritter did confirm that they maintain control over a majority of company shares following the investment. 

Newsbrief: The Pokemon Company, purveyor of little monsters that theoretically fit in pockets, pocketed $80.8 million in profit during the fiscal year ended February, according to Japanese game industry consultant Dr. Serkan Toto.

While this year’s fiscal year profits were impressive, it’s a substantial drop from the previous year, which saw a record $145.6 million in profits thanks to a cut from Pokemon Go and the release of Pokemon Ultra Sun and Moon.

Toto notes that $80.8 million is the second-highest annual net profit for The Pokemon Company. See how the last two years compare to the rest of the company’s financial history below.

From my company’s blog: “Pokemon Company’s Net Profit Drops, Still At US$80.8 Million Last Year” https://t.co/IEEYroR034 pic.twitter.com/oq9K3TuyME

— Dr. Serkan Toto (Kantan Games Inc.) (@serkantoto) May 28, 2018

Atari co-founder Ted Dabney has passed away. He was 81.

Dabney, along with Nolan Bushnell, founded iconic video game company Atari in 1972. Dabney was an electrical engineer, playing a key role in creating the video technology used in Pong. He was instrumental in the foundation of the coin-operated arcade business.

The news came by way of video game historian Leonard Herman, who also said he was a friend of Dabney’s.

“I just learned that my good friend, Ted Dabney, the co-founder of Atari, passed away at the age of 81,” Herman wrote. “RIP dear friend. Your legacy will live on a long time!”

Dabney left Atari the year after co-founding the company, following a falling out with Bushnell. Though their relationship was strained, the pair worked together on Pizza Time Theater, which later would be known as Chuck E. Cheese’s.

Dabney continued to work for major electronics companies in the later part of his career.

Seemingly implausible only a few years ago, China has quickly become one of the world’s most robust markets for premium PC games.

According to Steam’s Hardware & Software Survey from April 2018, 30 percent of its users have Simplified Chinese set as their default language, second only to English at 34 percent.

China lags behind in the number of titles its users own, but more than makes up for it in active accounts (20 percent, compared to 14 percent in the United States) according to a report from Steam Spy creator Sergey Galyonkin. When it comes to creating and marketing premium-priced games for a worldwide market, China can simply no longer be ignored.

This is our first in a series of articles about premium PC games in China. We’ll be sharing our learnings about this exciting and misunderstood new market. By sharing our personal experiences, our goal is to help western developers and publishers achieve greater success in China.

This Is Only the Beginning…

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is of course a remarkable success story—even in China, where it prompted many to purchase their first premium game on PC (Overwatch had a similar effect two years prior). For those who have studied the Chinese market over the past decade, these are encouraging trends, but what do they mean for the long term? Who are these recent converts, and where did they come from? What were they playing before PUBG, and what finally convinced them to pay for a premium game? To answer these questions, we conducted a survey of over 3,000 Chinese participants, and combined the results with our own research to identify four key drivers:

Driver 1: Overall Changes in Consumer Spending Habits

China has of course experienced rapid financial growth over the past decade, with its GDP expected to continue growing steadily in the near future. As a result, Chinese citizens have become wealthier and are spending more on entertainment such as licensed content and games. For example, paid viewership of three major YouTube-like video platforms (Tencent Video, iQiyi, and Youku Tudou) reached 70 million in Q1 of 2017, twice that of the year before. Chinese consumers are now paying for music too, as paid online music spend increased by 59% in 2017 compared to 2016. By all indications, the increase in wealth and changing consumption habits will continue driving sales of premium PC games in China.

Driver 2: Crackdown on Piracy

The Chinese government has taken a stronger stance against piracy and counterfeits in recent years, which has helped pave the way for premium PC games in the country. By the end of 2014, the Chinese government officially released a 2014-2020 plan to combat piracy and counterfeits. Between 2013 and May 2016, 1.1 million piracy cases were processed, leading to 5,000 prosecuted cases and 78,000 violators sentenced.

Notable examples from the games industry include NetEase’s successful legal campaign against Duowan for its unlicensed distribution of Minecraft, and Japanese publisher Koei Tecmo’s victory against 3DM for pirating Romance of the Three Kingdoms 13 in China.

Driver 3: Increased Discoverability & Accessibility

Streaming and digital sales channels have not only made buying premium PC games in China more convenient for consumers, but also exposed them to other games for purchase. This is combined with the explosion of influencers in China, who introduce new games to their subscribers. Based on our survey, 25% of premium PC game purchasers learned about a new game by watching a streamer.

According to a streaming industry report by iiMedia Research, China was home to nearly 400 million streaming platform users in 2017—a number expected to reach 500 million by 2019. In 2016, Twitch-like platforms in China (Douyu, Huya, and Panda TV) grew rapidly after receiving large investments, allowing them to spend aggressively on user acquisitions and expand their viewership.

Douyu, the largest among them, has more than 20 million daily active users, and hosts streamers who garner over one million viewers every day. Earlier this year, Douyu hosted a streaming event in Wuhan that attracted 521,800 attendees, dwarfing the attendance of  TwitchCon (50,000 visitors),  and bigger than even Gamescom (350,000 visitors) and China Joy (342,700 visitors).

Human: Fall Flat is one of many examples of a premium PC title that has benefited from streamers in China. After adding online multiplayer support in November 2017, the game attracted streamers that played it between sessions of their main games. One notable streamer, Lan Zhan Fei, took breaks from PUBG to stream Human: Fall Flat to his one million followers on Panda TV, dramatically increasing the game’s exposure. He went on to post videos about the game on Miaopai.com, with each video racking up some four million views. Now, more than 40% of the game’s sales are from China, up from 15% when the game was first released.

The increased availability of digital distribution channels fuels the growth of premium PC games and exposure to western-developed content. More than half of premium PC gamers in China use Steam, with PUBG being a key driver for adoption. Tencent now operates two digital PC storefronts: WeGame (which currently hosts about 150 PC games, half of which are premium), and casual game portal QQ Game. These platforms accept Alipay and WeChat Pay as part of China’s trillion dollar mobile payment industry, making it easy for Chinese gamers to make purchases.

It’s important to note that some of the biggest PC games are operated on different platforms in China. NetEase operates Minecraft and all of Blizzard’s games, while Perfect World manages Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2. Additionally, there are a handful of smaller premium PC games platforms, including Cube Games—home to the likes of Subnautica and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons in China—while others, such as Sankuo and 3DM, are essentially Steam key resellers. Given the increase in the PC premium games market, we expect more companies to build PC distribution platforms, further expanding the overall footprint of premium games in China.

Driver 4: College Students & Young Professionals

Using our survey results, we’ve grouped the respondents into eight segments. These segments can be found in the following chart; from our perspective, the “Mobile Grad” and “Big Time & Money Gamer” segments have the most growth potential:

The “Mobile Grad” group was born in the late 1990s. They witnessed the rise of PC MMOs when they were in their early teens, and were eventually swept up by mobile, free-to-play titles. Dominated by hardcore genres such as strategy and online RPGs with little variety, these gamers grew tired of playing the same types of games, sometimes complaining that even “new games” felt like repackaged older content. Amongst the 19-to-24 segment we surveyed, 40% cited “fatigue of free-to-play games” as a reason they started playing premium PC games.

Not unlike the rise of PC online shooters like Doom, Quake and Unreal Tournament in the west, college campuses in China are healthy environments for PC gaming. The majority of Chinese college students live in dorms, meaning they have connected computers, plenty of friends to play with, and a newfound abundance of free time now that they’re no longer living under the watchful eye of their parents. Word-of-mouth is a powerful influencer for this segment, as about half of those surveyed cited “influence or recommendation by classmates or close friends” as a reason they started to play (and pay for) premium PC titles. As this group gets older and becomes financially independent, they’ll spend more on these games and help fuel future growth.

Another important segment is the “Big Time & Money Gamer” group—25 to 34-year-olds born in the 80s or early 90s, who grew up in a time when many Chinese families bought their first PCs. With little income or even means of legitimately purchasing PC titles, these gamers turned to downloading pirated games or buying them at local mom-and-pop shops. More than 70% of respondents in this group admitted that they used to play pirated PC titles.

While the initial loss of revenue due to piracy was frustrating for game makers, IP owners, and distributors in the west, it resulted in a generation of consumers who are now well-versed in PC gaming and willing to pay for premium content. Gamers in this segment are economically independent, earn above-average salaries, and can now afford to buy games. In our survey, 79% of this group cited “financial independence and a willingness to pay for premium games” as a reason to purchase PC games. Additionally, 65% of this group indicated that they’re planning to spend more on premium PC titles in the future.

Immense Untapped Potential for Premium PC Games in China

Although the number of premium PC gamers in China has grown rapidly, we believe the market will further expand due to the aforementioned drivers. Based on the data we collected, about 10% of the 500 million gamers in China are playing premium PC games (compared to around 20% of the gamers in the U.S. and U.K.)—a percentage we believe will rise, given that premium PC games are still in their infancy in the country. As of March 2018, the average Chinese Steam user owns only 12 games, compared to 43 games owned by Americans, according to Steam Spy. If the percentage of Chinese gamers who play premium PC games increases from 10% to 15% and each gamer’s spending increases by 50%, the premium PC market in China will fully double in size.

Surprising Similarities Between Chinese & Western Gamers

Big Overlap of Top Selling Games

Western developers have been taught for decades that the Asian market (and particularly Japan) is impenetrable, aside from a few successful exceptions (i.e. the Grand Theft Auto franchise). The good news is that the tastes of Chinese premium PC gamers are similar to those of Americans: Of the top 50 games on Steam in the U.S. and China, 26 of them overlap (while 22 out of 50 games overlap between the U.S and the U.K.). Even more encouraging is the fact that almost all of the games that made the top 50 in China but didn’t overlap with the U.S. top 50 were developed in the west. This is likely due to the fact that there are fewer local Chinese premium game developers, thus Chinese gamers are accustomed to playing western games, even without localization. Simply put, western games go hand-in-hand with the rise of premium games in China.

We’ve spoken to a number of western developers who have enjoyed success in China, despite not directing much attention towards the market. Whenever possible, we recommend that studios add elements that cater to the Chinese audience. For example, Behavior Digital actively solicited ideas from Chinese players when creating its Spark of Madness DLC for Dead by Daylight. This resulted in a new character named “The Doctor,” based on controversial clinical psychiatrist Yongxin Yang. This DLC received 98% positive reviews among Chinese gamers. Overwatch—the first-ever premium PC game that broke five million sales in China—recently launched a Chinese New Year event, with a new mode and cosmetic items. Moving forward, expect to see more developers creating content that caters to Chinese gamers.

Games with Online Competitive or Cooperative Modes are More Likely to Gain Traction in China

Among the top 50 titles on Steam, games with online PvP or co-op modes account for 87% of the sales in China, and 71% in the U.S. Even if we exclude PUBG, the number is still 65% in China compared to 55% in the US. This is in line with our survey results, as 42% of respondents chose “social” as one of the reasons they play premium PC games (only 6% of respondents said they play single-player games exclusively). Some games have seen sales spikes in China after adding online PvP or co-op modes. Don’t Starve Together, for instance, is more successful than Don’t Starve in China, with 16% compared to 12% of its sales coming from China.

Popular Steam Tags are Similar

We’ve compared Steam’s user-defined tags between top games in China and top games in the U.S., and found more similarities than differences. Popular tags such as “Open World”, “Multiplayer”, “Sandbox” and “Fantasy” are common among top games in both regions. In terms of differences, some examples include “Female Protagonist” and “Anime” performing better in China than in the U.S., whereas the “Single Player Only” tag performs worse in China.

Chinese Gamers Use Streaming Platforms and Social Networks — But Only Domestic Ones

Similar to the west, Chinese gamers use streaming, video platforms, and social networks as a means to find and engage with PC premium games. However, given that platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook are inaccessible in China, gamers there engage with streaming platforms such as Douyu, Huya, and Panda. Because of the stiff competition, platforms are willing to pay a high price to sign top streamers to their platform exclusively. For example, streamer “Miss” signed a three-year contract with Huya for RMB100M (about $15M).

An Exciting Time for Premium Western Games in China

Like so many recent trends in China, the fervent rise of premium PC games was thought to be impossible only a few years ago. Now, not only are Chinese gamers now regularly purchasing PC games, there is virtually no stigma against western-developed games unlike their neighbors in Korea and Japan. Furthermore, given their interest in third-person action games, historical fiction, and indie games, Chinese gamers have comparatively more eclectic tastes. In the future, expect to see Chinese gamers embrace even more diverse content, and for developers in China to incorporate those learnings (yes, at times, by copying).

For every nimble indie developer that has found success in China, there are dozens more who have failed. Many western developers with games that require minimal localization, marketing, and community management have found China to be their first (or second) strongest market, while others continue to find the region perplexing and low-performing. Some developers we spoke to lament the fact that they’ve received an influx of negative reviews from Chinese gamers demanding a localized version, while others who have gone through the effort (and expense) of localizing their game for China have seen only small bumps in sales.

Next month we will release a follow-up article that digs deeper into the common issues faced by western developers bringing their games to China, and offer some suggestions on how to find success.

About the Authors

Samuel Lee – COO of Kowloon Nights, a project-based fund for independent developers of premium PC and console games.

Richie Zhu – Investment Associate at Makers Fund, a venture capital group dedicated to interactive entertainment.

About Makers Fund

A new equity fund focused on the impending golden age of interactive entertainment.

About the Survey

The survey was conducted in Q3 2017. We collected 2,312 samples of gamers who have bought at least one premium PC game and 1,098 samples of gamers who have never bought premium PC games. The sample set includes a variety of demographics of gamers, both genders, ages 12 to 50+, located in both metropolitan cities and rural areas in China. 45 questions were asked to understand how they learn about premium games, how they decide what to buy, and what their preferences are when playing premium titles.

For the customer segments mentioned in the article, we used the survey results to run a k-means clustering analysis to categorize the respondents, which resulted in eight segments that are different enough between the segments, and similar enough within each segment.

Special Thanks

Ryan Payton – Founder of Camouflaj, Director of République VR, Advisor at Makers Fund & Kowloon Nights.

Torben Ellert is the lead online designer  of the episodic title Hitman (2016) at Io-Interactive. He provided Gamasutra with this in-depth look at Elusive Targets in the game. While most targets can be taken out in myriad ways and at a time of the player’s choosing, these Elusive Targets only appear in the game for a short period of time for a 48 hour window, and players only have one chance to complete the mission.

One of our mandates for the first season was to present Agent 47 as the apex predator, traveling the world, meeting interesting people, and killing them. Part of this mandate was a challenge to the design team: create a moment in time, “a snipe where your one shot matters” – the purest possible experience of being the assassin. Another objective was to create an ongoing pulse of experiences throughout the first season of Hitman, with tense assassination missions at the heart of those experiences. 

This is where the idea of Elusive Targets came from: high-level direction to create an ongoing series of time-limited, intense assassination missions. They would be tough because players would have one chance to get them right, and the whole dynamic around how you play the game should change. 

This was a challenge because previous Hitman games have always allowed the player to replay and rehearse, gradually gaining expertise and aspiring to the perfect hit. This new game mode would run counter to everything we know about Hitman. But before we knew exactly what this new game mode would end up being, we set out to explore what we could do with our game. 

“The biggest narrative challenge was how these Elusive Targets fit into the game’s storyline. Short answer: they don’t.”

We tried a number of things, which lead to the development of Escalation Mode, for example, but everything kept looping back to the core assassin fantasy – of what it meant to be Agent 47. At the heart of that, for me, is getting the call: ”Hello 47, the ICA has a new Contract for your consideration.” But it needed more than that – we wanted the player front and center, to make it feel like each second counted, and that everything hung in the balance. 

So the first thing we decided on was a time limit. A target who was only present for a very short period of time (it was 6 hours to begin with!). And that the target could only die once, and by extension the way you managed to complete the mission would be permanent.

Then we took away the tools that normally guide the player to their target: the red target glow, the mini-map and the icons on the main map. Basically, going back to the core of the first Hitman games (and going against a lot of what we know as modern game designers).

The very first time we played and reviewed the game mode was with Io’s Senior Game Designer Jesper Hylling and Studio Creative Director Christian Elverdam. We printed out a picture of the target, and put it on the table next to Jesper and said: “This is what he looks like – that’s all you know. Go kill him!”

The eyes of a hunted placeholder man

“As we developed the Elusive Targets, we assigned each of them a code name. In this case, we used cocktails. “

Jesper tracked him down, and trailed him to the first set of trespass zones, and then had to go and find a disguise, by which time he’d lost the target. It was rough, but the core of the experience was there. 
After that, we explored save rules and restarts, and time limits. In the first versions, it was one-and-done. So no restarts, no retries, just industrial-grade pressure.

I remember standing in front of one our Friday studio meetings, and playing it live for the entire team. This was the first time most people outside of the Online team had seen it, so I was trying to be suave and smart and snipe the target through a tiny window. Needless to say, I failed, and then had to improvise. Said improvisation involved a saber in the middle of the cocktail party in Paris. It wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done! I’d made a plan, it had failed. I had improvised, and gotten away with murder. I fled the level, with bullets whizzing around my ears, and felt like a boss. 

Now that we had the basic concept, we needed to turn it into a fully-fledged design. 

We began with cocktails (as one does). The final name of anything in a game like Hitman is always up for grabs. So to allow us to refer to specific Elusive Targets as we developed them, we assigned each of them a code name. In this case, we used cocktails. 

The first Elusive Target (White Russian) had no narrative at all. But as we developed the idea, we realized that each Elusive Target needed to be memorable – not just from the tense game mode itself, but also the iconic nature of the targets themselves.  The idea was to make everyone in our community able to say “I remember when I flew to Sapienza to assassinate the Prince”. 

The Cardinal, in the Church Tower, with the Giant Bell

Perhaps the biggest narrative challenge was how these Elusive Targets fit into the game’s storyline. The short answer is that they don’t. We decided we’d have much more freedom if they were “what if” stories that simply happened in the same place. “What if Agent 47 went to Paris to assassinate a media sensation at a private party, during the fashion event of the year?” 

This guy has thrown his last party

This gave us the freedom to create new characters that fit with the spaces and themes that we had already established, without having to explain exactly how they fit with the mission’s normal storyline. 

For example, in “The Sensation”, the target is Jonathan Smythe, a controversial media star who fled underground years ago. The ICA has just learned that he will be attending a private party in Paris (with the blessings of Dalia Magolis) for several hours. There is no time to prepare, and 47 must go in without the usual time to plan. We underline this in the briefings for Elusive Targets which end with Diana saying “The clock is ticking, 47. Good luck!” as opposed to the usual “I’ll leave you to prepare.”

With the narrative framework established, we turned to the larger question: how we would structure the game experience as a whole? How much information should we give players, when should restarts be allowed, would there be a save-game or an auto-save and how would we handle player failure? 

“Playing an Elusive Target in a level you have fully mastered gives you the experience of being the apex predator. No matter what might be in store, you have the tools and experience to handle it.”

One thing that has been constant from our first prototypes was the idea that failure (and success) would be permanent. The result of this simple design decision is striking.

When players begin an Elusive Target, they play the game very differently. Gone is blasé experimentation with fire-alarms or barging into trespass zones in the face of armed guards, confident that there’s a save-game to fall back on. Suddenly they are much more focused, and serious. Every move carefully considered, and every improvisation full of risk. Every guard is a deadly threat, and every civilian a potential witness on the road to that coveted Silent Assassin rating.

In our larger-scale play-tests some players sat stone-faced, attempting to crack the Target by themselves, others conferred in small groups, and still others watched as mistakes were made and painful lessons were learned. 

Obviously, this works because players know the game well.  When a player tries a new location for the first time, they are in at the deep end (this is one of the reasons why we’ve not released an Elusive Target straight into a new level – players should have the opportunity to master it first). And when, a new target arrives, they may not know where he is, but they have all the tools they need to pull it off.

Even so, it became obvious that players needed to be able to restart, at least up until the point where they committed to the elimination. Since each Elusive Target changes the levels (sometimes quite substantially) they needed to have some way to scout and plan, or go back to choose new equipment, if they needed to. This lead to the one substantial change to the original design, which was to explicitly allow players to restart the mission at any time up until they began to eliminate their targets, or complete their objectives. This is the Rubicon moment, where each player must put his cunning plan into motion, knowing that from here on in, there are no restarts. 

Elusive Targets are designed to complement our level mastery progression system, simply because players who reach the highest levels have learned the levels, and their mechanics. They’ve gained an enormous amount of strategic agency, and can start in the right place, preplace equipment and approach their targets with consummate skill.

Much like Agent 47, they can adapt immediately to changing circumstances, regardless of whatever precautions his current target might have taken.  Put shortly, playing an Elusive Target in a fully mastered level gives you that experience of being the apex predator. No matter what might be in store, you have the tools and experience to handle it.

With the narrative frameworks and gameplay structures in place, we needed to actually be able to inject new missions into existing levels. Fortunately, a basic design decision for Hitman, NPCs, geometry and rules – basically everything we need to assemble and deliver an Elusive Target.

[embedded content]

Taking “The Sensation” as an example, we disabled all of the bricks that make use of this back area of the game – specifically everything relating to Novikov’s meeting with Max Decker. This meant that several of the most obvious approaches to the rear area were also removed, keeping players on their toes. Then we took assets from the rest of the level and built up a private party, complete with music, bubbles, nibbles and guests. We also advanced the in-game lighting by about an hour to make it seem like a little later in the evening – obviously long after Victor has already met with Decker.

It’s an ongoing thing – as we build and release Elusive Targets and see them being played, we tweak (and redesign) future ones. Players see us responding to how they played, and we learn a great deal about what constitutes a challenging experience. We’ve experimented with different types of security details, we’ve had targets with big loops, and small ones, targets in the middle of parties, and targets out in the middle of a city. And even identical twins, where you must not harm the wrong person.

Sibling rivalry! One is the target, the other is the client. Aim carefully!

Hitman is a party game. No, seriously. The game’s serious tone with its lethal undertow of grim humor makes for immensely shareable experiences. From the beginning, we knew we would see highly skilled players working together to take out the targets. But it still surprises me how quickly they crack a Silent Assassin play-through, and begin to refine it. But, obviously someone has to go first, and make the mistakes so everyone else can learn from them.

“Some players approach the Elusive Target missions blind, playing them one-and-done, and living with the consequences if things get messy, while others spend hours scouting the levels before the mission is even live.”

What we’ve seen in the community are internal differences amongst players about exactly how Elusive Targets should be played. Some approach them blind, playing them one-and-done, and living with the consequences if things get messy, while others spend hours scouting the levels before the mission is even live, based on what information they’ve gleaned from the briefing videos and the pictures we’ve published. These players often restart as much as they can, only committing to the elimination when they are completely sure they have a plan. 

And as they work together, it creates a sense of united purpose. While everyone is their own version of Agent 47, everyone is united by a common objective, and a common experience.

Our service model really shines here, as we can respond to developing play patterns and feedback on the game experiences we create. The tight scope and our ongoing releases within the season format allow us to adapt the experiences and change the common playing field.

People who took on the first couple of Elusive Targets saw this very clearly. Sergei Larin (the Forger) was almost unprotected, with only a single bodyguard to cover his back. Congressman Anthony L. Troutt had a security detail of two, and a personal assistant. Cardinal Adalrico Candelaria had an entire region of Sapienza locked down for his personal benefit, with security on every possible approach (as you’d expect). 

At the time of writing, we’ve had ten Elusive Targets, and they’ve become part of our history, alongside the Meat King and the other classics of the Hitman franchise. Each player has their own story of how they approached the Cardinal, or the Sensation, or the Wildcard. Of how they waited for the mission to go live, of how they prepared, and how they rejoiced (or railed) at the way it went down. But while every player faced the challenge alone, we all did it together. And for me that’s been the biggest success of the game mode – the way it has created moments in time when we all came together, to take on memorable targets, knowing that it counted. And knowing that we would never see them again 

We’re at the mid-point of the season right now, with several new locations ahead of us, and a lot of Elusive Targets to come, and I’m looking forward to seeing how these go over into Hitman history. 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go make a Bushwhacker.