{"id":113527,"date":"2020-05-28T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-28T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2020\/05\/feature_xcom_2s_creative_director_on_the_challenge_of_bringing_the_series_to_switch"},"modified":"2020-05-28T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-05-28T18:00:00","slug":"feature-xcom-2s-creative-director-on-the-challenge-of-bringing-the-series-to-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/05\/28\/feature-xcom-2s-creative-director-on-the-challenge-of-bringing-the-series-to-switch\/","title":{"rendered":"Feature: XCOM 2’s Creative Director On The Challenge Of Bringing The Series To Switch"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n
\n
\"XCOM<\/a>\u00a9 2K Games<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

It’s natural to think that franchises are borne out of the pursuit of profit, isn’t it? That someone in a suit sits in a boardroom, glances over a “units shipped” column, and abruptly demands a series when a new IP hits a prerequisite sales target.<\/p>\n

But when it came to XCOM<\/strong> \u2013 the 2012 reimagining of the early 1990s sci-fi strategy game that built a passionate fanbase \u2013 its sequel didn’t come about because of the success of the original game. As creative director Jake Solomon tells Nintendo Life, that’s simply not a solid enough premise on which to craft an enduring franchise.<\/p>\n

\n

Sequels can\u2019t be made just because the previous game was successful. They have to earn their right to exist with compelling new features, new stories, new experiences<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

“Sequels can\u2019t be made just because the previous game was successful,” Solomon says as the studio prepares for the release of XCOM 2 Collection<\/a><\/strong> on Nintendo Switch. “They have to earn their right to exist with compelling new features, new stories, new experiences.”<\/p>\n

Bundling XCOM 2, four DLC packs \u2013 Resistance Warrior Pack, Anarchy\u2019s Children, Alien Hunters, Shen\u2019s Last Gift \u2013 and the War of the Chosen expansion, 2K hopes that the fan-favourite strategy game will appeal not only to those who’ve been ardent admirers of the series thus far \u2013 fans that have, up until now, chiefly experienced the game on PC and console \u2013 but also entice new players into the fold, too.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s a very tricky thing,” Solomon admits when we ask how the team manages to satisfy both new and existing supporters \u2013 especially when an existing franchise is ported to new platforms. “All you can do is play the game you\u2019re making as much as you can and put yourself in the shoes of your potential players. Is this different enough? Have we lost anything from our previous game? Is this still going to be welcoming to new players?<\/p>\n

“Invariably, your initial ideas are wrong,” he adds. “So you just have to keep working at it, iterating on the core concepts until you\u2019ve found something special.”<\/p>\n

\n
\"XCOM<\/a>\u00a9 2K Games<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Whilst ostensibly a team-tactics, turn-based strategy game, XCOM is so much more than that, too, inviting its players to tell their own stories. In fact, this mantra was very much at the front of the developers’ minds when the studio sat down to work on a sequel \u2013 “our goal was to make something bigger, deeper, and better at letting players tell their own stories of triumph, and sometimes heartbreak, in the world of XCOM”, Solomon insists \u2013 but it’s the franchise’s own “positive community” that was “really important to [the team] at Firaxis”. Solomon freely acknowledges that XCOM 2 and War of the Chosen were crafted “with community feedback in mind”.<\/p>\n

“One of the lessons I learned from the original XCOM was the power of players telling their own stories,” he explains. “It can be as simple as creating or customising a soldier who ends up saving the world or ends up a casualty in a hard-fought mission. That story is yours, there is no other story quite like it, and being able to participate in those stories and experience them as a player is one of the most powerful things that games can do for us.”<\/p>\n

\n

You\u2019re shut away with this game for years, you form your own opinions about it, but the minute you release it to the world, there are millions of opinions about every last feature<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Moving from XCOM to XCOM 2 must’ve been difficult, though. How on earth do developers steel themselves for the criticism and overwhelming weight of expectations from fans, especially for a sequel?<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s the nature of the job,” he says. “If we\u2019re going to ask people to spend their hard-earned money on our games, we should welcome those expectations, and we should exceed them. It\u2019s only fair that we invite expectation from our community. That simply means that people are invested in what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

“You\u2019re shut away with this game for years, you form your own opinions about it, but the minute you release it to the world, there are millions of opinions about every last feature,” he continues. “It\u2019s very gratifying to see how people interpret the game, even if they don\u2019t like some features, or they love some feature I didn\u2019t think was all that great. Once they own the game, I consider their opinions as valid as mine.”<\/p>\n

As for what Solomon would change now, if he could go back and tweak XCOM 2 again? “I\u2019m never satisfied with a game, I never believe it\u2019s finished, and I could probably change a million things if I had unlimited time. But to be honest, it ended up in a pretty great place. It\u2019s a game the community loves, and it\u2019s so big that I\u2019m not sure we could add anything else that would improve the experience and not just weigh it down.<\/p>\n

\n
\"XCOM<\/a>\u00a9 2K Games<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

“Every game I design tends to change pretty drastically over the course of development,” he continues. “At one point you could actually pilot your giant flying helicarrier in real-time to avoid patrolling enemy aircraft. But like many ideas, that was cut as we focused on what was really working, and what was really true to the experience we were trying to create.”<\/p>\n

But while he won’t be led on how a studio manages the demand of ports against the lure of platform-exclusivity \u2013 “when it comes to deciding on platforms, we try and do what is best for the game” \u2013 Solomon wants existing fans to know that the Switch version is still “the XCOM you know and love”.<\/p>\n

“[It] provides players just a huge amount of flexibility that they\u2019ve never had for XCOM. You won\u2019t have to worry about finishing a battle before giving up the TV. This series has been a labour of love for hundreds of people. Behind the scenes, we\u2019ve spent countless hours, arguments, laughter, and work, work, work to make XCOM, and, of course, it\u2019s a privilege to do so and finally bring it to one of my personal favourite platforms, Nintendo Switch.”<\/p>\n

XCOM 2 Collection is out on Nintendo Switch on May 29th, 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a9 2K Games It’s natural to think that franchises are borne out of the pursuit of profit, isn’t it? That someone in a suit sits in a boardroom, glances over a “units shipped” column, and abruptly demands a series when a new IP hits a prerequisite sales target. But when it came to XCOM \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}