ModNation Racers developer Q&A

We get a chance to sit down with Mat from United Front Games to talk about the upcoming racing title

Posted on May 13, 2010 - 9:04pm EST

During the GDC Canada week, we had a chance to visit United Front Games for a press event about the upcoming kart racing title, ModNation Racers. As you may have already seen, we've done a full preview of the title which you can read here. However, we also had a chance to speak with Mat Thomas, a game designer at the studio. Below is the Q&A session that took place:

NGN: Having just played through a number of laps, the game looks really good.

Mat: Thanks, we have worked very hard on the title over these past few years, and are very happy to finally let the community get their hands on it.

NGN: How do you feel about being nominated for the Most Promising Game at the first ever Canadian Video Game awards?

Mat: Yeah, It’s really good. I think it is a testament to what we have created here. It’s nice to be nominated in the awards, with so many other great titles in there. I think we can stand shoulder to shoulder with any of those games. I’m delighted, it’s really good.

NGN: Since the game’s announcement at E3 2009, what would you say were the most significant changes made to the game?

Mat: We put out the public beta last year, and based on that a lot of changes were made. In particular, we were interested to know how users were able to take on the creation tools and adjusted them based on player feedback. Things like how easy the tools are to use, how well the UI is designed . We’ve also made changes to the gameplay as well – back in the public beta, shields were reported quite difficult to use, so we changed them to make it easier. There has been tons of tuning in regards to making the game more fun.

NGN: Speaking of which, how did the public beta affect the development?

Mat: Some of the biggest complaints we got from the beta were that the race camera was too low, load times and framerate were an issue. We’ve improved all those things now to a great extent. We really took all that stuff to heart, that’s why we actually wanted a beta in the first place, we wanted feedback from people. So when players are buying the game at the end of the month, they are buying the best game they can.

NGN: How did you take the kart racing genre, and made it your own for a new audience? It seems that you didn’t stick to the classic formula of something like Mario Kart, instead adding new features such as the huge customization and community support.

Mat: I think that whenever you do something like this, you can’t just put a carbon-copied game out there. We at United Front Games are all about making the best games we can, I think that we don’t take inspiration from any one game, we get inspired by all types of games. We have a lot of original game creators here. When you talk about things as specific as racing, our inspiration comes from just making the game fun and not feels like a chore.

We changed a lot of things during development - for example we made the tiered weapon system to add strategy and excitement to the game, rather than just collecting and firing similarly looking rockets over and over. We added depth to the game, and a kid that plays the title can have as much fun as an adult I think. That spans across the entire game – it’s really easy to play online, but more complex to have a series of structured events; you can easily and quickly create a track, but could also spend hours customizing and perfecting every little detail. We’ve stood by our mantra early and all through the game, that is the classic “easy to get into, difficult to master”.

Working with Sony, they encouraged us to do anything we want with the game, and we shared many of the same ambitions. We knew that there is a whole in the field for someone to make a great kart racing game, and that’s what we’ve done. I think when people play this they will realize it’s not just a racing game, but a creation tool. We can’t wait to see what people come up with.

NGN: One of the most important things in a racing title such as ModNation is the weapons balance. What was the process (other than playtests) to ensure fair and fun weaponry?

Mat: Oh man [laughs]. That’s actually quite possibly one of the hardest things to do in game development. You’ve got to play the game, literally six or seven hours a day, and provide the team with honest feedback. With a game like this, people sometimes say things like they are trying to impress you or something. What we’ve done is have the entire team play online together, and we’d meet after every single session and discuss what everyone enjoyed, what wasn’t as fun. And yeah, some of the weapons were way too powerful, to the extent of the racer in first place taking out all competition with a single level 2 weapon, and then getting further and further in front of the pack.

During early decision making process, we created the boost system so that even if you are in last place, you can still drift and gain boost so you can catch up to your opponents –you don’t have to rely on weaponry to get there. We came out with a great plan initially, and since then its been months and months of gameplay to get it to where it is today.

NGN: Was there a quick way to implement gameplay changes and test them out, for example when adjusting the strength of a weapon?

Mat: Yes, it was really quick. We didn’t have to go through the process of any code re-compiling and waiting. We have an editing system that allowed us to instantly change a few number values around and see the results in the game on the spot. If a weapon stuns you for 5 seconds and it felt too punishing, we simply went back and typed 3.5 or whatever number and then right away see what it feels like in the game.

NGN: Thank you for your time Mat, we very much look forward to the game's release at the end of the month, and good luck to you tonight at the CVAs!

Mat: No problem, thanks for coming to our event today!

Developed by United Front Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, ModNation Racers is scheduled to release May 25 in North America, exclusively for PlayStation 3 and PSP.