The first game was hyped with a lot of promise, with showcases of tech engines that could push the Wii to its limits and produce games on a visual par with its HD competitors.
What happened when the game was actually released was a fair bit of confusion. Reviewers were nonplussed with the gameplay offering, gamers were turned off with the online multiplayer cheating and the general response ranged from extremely positive to utterly venomous.
Fast forward to 2011, and High Voltage Software has learned a lot - from feedback, forums and reviewers alike - and is striving to make Conduit 2 every bit the game Conduit 1 fell short of becoming.
was able to spend a few moments with the studio’s art director, Matt Corso, to talk about the engine improvements, the feedback from the original game and how far the Conduit series could actually go...
Matt Corso: I would have to say I’m fairly pleased with how Conduit performed. When you consider that we developed this IP completely on our own… this is our own technology, it wasn’t an established brand. To see it become as popular as it has, I think that’s something to be very proud of.
I think that the amount we sold is actually quite impressive considering we sold pretty much every unit that was manufactured. That’s pretty exciting.
SPOnG: Has that success, in your mind, affected development of Conduit 2 in any way?
Matt Corso: Well, Conduit 2 was interesting because all of us knew that we wanted to make a game that was better than the first one. It was a lot easier to know what to do this time because we had so much great feedback from the fans so we were a lot more confident going into this game.
But I will say that we feel a bit more humbled this time around - we were a little bit surprised at how well the first game was received by our audience. It sort of took off and became this minor phenomenon for the Wii, and it was really hard to know how to take all that.
But when the game shipped it got such mixed reviews that I think a lot of us at the studio were left wondering, “what does this mean? Is it a good game or not?’ It’s hard to know for sure because we had everything from hardcore gamers that absolutely love the game to people that didn’t like it very much at all.
I was in some of those early groups showing Conduit 2 to the press, and I just didn’t know how people were going to receive it. We had giant Leviathons, metal snakes and all this kinds of stuff. We wondered if people were going to think this was cool or lame.
Their reaction was pretty positive, and they wanted to see more. That was great, that was very encouraging for us. We felt that we were on to something special - so Conduit 2 just really continued to develop in a strong direction, and I feel way more personally satisfied as a creator with Conduit 2 than I ever did with Conduit 1.
Matt Corso: Well, if you’re asking ‘can it be the killer app for the Wii’, I’m not the businessman - I’m on the creation side. So it’s a much more personal experience making this game, and I’d have to say that I sure hope it could be a killer app. I hope that the studio, and the very talented people at our studio, can make something and people will embrace it and it will become a killer app.
That’s hard to predict, though. With the first game, like I said, we didn’t even realise that it would become as popular as it did. Is it considered a killer app? I don’t know if it is or isn’t, I just know that it turned out to be fairly successful and we’re quite happy about that.
How will the sequel turn out? Will it sell well or will it not sell well? Will it be critically praised or panned? It’s hard to say for sure, so I think right now - again, we’re just making something that is really geared toward the consumer, something that’s based on feedback from the fans - we’ll see how well it does.