Crackdown - Development

Development

Crackdown was envisioned to exceed the gameplay of Grand Theft Auto, giving the player "toys" to create their own in-game moments that could be verbally shared with others. The entire playfield was to be open at the start, requiring the need to create a progression for the player, while still allowing for experimentation. Realtime Worlds had hired a number of former Grand Theft Auto developers who experimented with refining the game's sandbox element. "It was a big part of the idea to just let people do things", Realtime Worlds producer Phil Wilson said about the gameplay; "testers would do things we were completely blown away by". Dave Jones, CEO of Realtime Worlds, described the concept of the game as "How do we reward somebody for just having fun?" They had initially planned to have 200 Xbox Live Achievements for the game towards this purpose, exceeded the then-current cap of 50 set by Microsoft, and pressured Microsoft to lift the cap. Microsoft subsequently increased the maximum number of Achievements in a game to 80. Through playtesting, the team noticed that many players performed certain out-of-the-way actions, such as climbing to the top of the Agency Tower. They created in-game content to reward the player for performing these actions; for example, they created a special rendering procedure for the clouds during the in-game day/night cycle. The renderer would behave differently each day, and could only be viewed from atop the Agency Tower. An initial fear of Jones' was that in the early part of the game, when the Agent is underpowered, the player may not realize the potential of the game and would not complete it; "People weren't quite sure, because at that level, you're kind of like most characters in most other games". Jones also expressed concern that "This game does not look good in screenshots". They took two major steps to overcome this. First, the demo for the game on Xbox Marketplace allowed for accelerated growth of the player's abilities. Second, the full game included five in-game movies that would be presented early on to the player that would give them a taste for what a fully powered character could do.

Wilson stated that development of the game began in 2002 with a target release in 2005 on the original Xbox. Nine people were involved in the initial development for twelve months with plans to expand to 35 during full development. By February 2004, they were able to provide a playable demo, but recognized there were still several challenges with the game's progression. For example, the team introduced "skills for kills" where skill points were only rewarded for killing foes instead of allowing the player to gain them by less risky opportunities. They also included the frequent reporting of the player's current chance of success for a player of defeating a Kingpin to prevent the player from being frustrated by trying to fight Kingpins beyond their level.

By 2004, Microsoft brought the team the Xbox 360 hardware and suggested moving the game to that system, with a release date in the spring of 2006. By November 2004, the whole of Pacific City was in place, and cooperative mode was possible. However, in January 2005 they switched to the Renderware 4 engine, which caused many problems and was considered a "gross mistake" by Wilson. Microsoft was able to provide additional programmers to help during 2006 to correct the problems, just in time to create a demo for the 2006 E3 Convention. Wilson admitted that when Crackdown was first unveiled, the team thought the game was too early to debut. "By the time we got to the end of pre-production we were woefully understaffed and over budget", Wilson commented.

Microsoft found that by October 2006, the game had fallen into the bottom 30 percent in test player reaction of all games currently in testing, and the bottom 50 percent in interest, though the numbers improved after a month. To help the struggling game, Microsoft decided to package the Halo 3 multiplayer trial with the game. "It was a great boost", said Wilson. Jones also was positive about the tie-in with the Halo 3 trial; "We kind of knew Crackdown would need as much help as it could get to get into players' hands ... Like we've always said: It's a game player's game. It's not something that's going to sell in screenshot. So was good".

Pacific City within the game consists of 495 "city blocks" which the player could travel among, according to Microsoft Game Studio's Jami Johns. Each block had to be tested separately, so Microsoft Game Studios designed a software tool to track issues when the game was in testing. For example, the tool was able to identify blocks where the performance dropped or the game crashed, allowing the developers to redesign the area to remove the issues. A further tool was used for the "seams" between city blocks, and included a screenshot just prior to any problem, which significantly reduced the debugging time for the game; this tool was further used with Forza Motorsport 2. However, the team had found some bugs during testing that actually worked well as game mechanics without throwing off the game balance. For example, the ability to drive the Agency SUV up a vertical wall when the player has maxed out his driving skill was originally a bug within the game.