Matt Corso: That was definitely challenging, and I think looking back it’s interesting how many different FPS multiplayer shooters games we actually pulled inspiration from and researched for different features that we put into this game. Our game has a lot of different multiplayer features, and that goes back to our whole customisation mentality and focus for Conduit games.
You can do split-screen mode, which wasn’t available in Conduit 1, and yes that definitely comes from the old-school like the Goldeneye and Perfect Dark days. Those were great days in gaming and we, just like anyone, wanted to be able to relive that ourselves and let players relive those experiences.
It makes perfect sense on a system like Wii - Nintendo are very good at making single-box multiplayer experiences and that’s something the system seems well-suited for. So we didn’t want to miss that chance with Conduit 2.
Another thing to bring up is our different modes that we have in our game. We came up with 14 different individual game scenarios you can play in multiplayer, but even beyond that there’s loads of different settings where you can play hardcore online games where lock-on is disabled or sprint is disabled and there are all of these different features available for players. In addition to that are the unique perks, ranks and matchmaking that pairs up players of the same type.
Matt Corso: I really think the online mode in this game has been fleshed out to a point where it’s almost its own separate game. Hacking and some of the cheating that was going on… you know, we’re not going to claim that’s been completely eliminated, because that’s just part of the online digital experience. There’s always going to be a certain amount of that.
But we can do patching - that’s something important to know. So if that sort of thing does become an issue we can send out a patch and eliminate those kinds of people so you’re not dealing with that. That’s something we didn’t have in the first game.
SPOnG: Patches, eh? Does that extend to the ability for you guys to offer DLC at all?
Matt Corso: I think that’s a bit more challenging for us to do. Patching is definitely possible, but DLC I don’t think we’ll be doing for this version of Conduit. Something to mention on that though is that knowing we were going this route in development, we put a lot of multiplayer maps into the game. And we took votes on players’ favourite maps from the first game and we brought those into Conduit 2 as well.
Matt Corso: There’s an awful lot. Level design, that was one that stood out. And we knew we needed to improve the technology to really get the level designs where they needed to be.
Improvements to the AI, the multiplayer hacking… People were very disappointed in the fact that they’d play online for a while and someone might be cheating and that would wreck their experience, so we’ve done a lot there to make that a little more secure for people. So I would say those are probably the three big ones.
Really, at the end of the day there were a lot of comments made for and against the game, and stuff that people liked we tried to keep in there as best as possible. And the stuff that people didn’t like we took very seriously. All of the little comments, no matter how insignificant they might seem - we thought ‘this guy needs to be happy’ so we needed to get this thing into the game.
I think that Conduit 2 is the most unique game I’ve ever worked on in that regard, because the players mattered so much to us. This is for them in the end - why are we making games if not for the fans and the gamers? I don’t know if you hear that very much in the industry these days, and I think it’s something the fans very much appreciate.
SPOnG: Thanks very much for your time.
Matt Corso: Thanks very much.
Conduit 2 will be released on Wii on the 22nd April.