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As games have grown from niche products to full-on mainstream entertainment, developers and publishers have dedicated themselves to delivering more and more content on each disc. Much like how home video's switch from VHS to DVD (and now Blu-Ray) created more room for extra features like deleted scenes and director commentary, videogames changing from cartridges to discs has given developers more room to play and more opportunity to grant us a look behind the scenes.
Perhaps the crowning achievement in the world of extras thus far is the Insomniac Museum found in Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time. The museum is an entire playable level devoted to all the deleted levels, early concept art and tons of other pieces left on the cutting room floor that players would otherwise never get to see. We asked Insomniac Senior Community Manager James Stevenson to walk us through the creation of the museum, and his answers not only explained the way their company does things, but also got us thinking about how this same approach could really pay off for other high profile titles.
A Labor of Love, From Start to Finish
The first thing you need to know when talking about the museum is that it wasn't something that the design team slapped together, but rather a concept that had been approved before creation of the game even really started. Stevenson explained that Insomniac had originally wanted to include a museum level that reflected their offices' floor plans in Resistance 2, but due to time constraints they were forced to scrap the idea. The good news is that the blueprints were already in place when they decided to create an expanded museum in Ratchet & Clank, and so they were ready to hit the ground running.
The company also devoted Mike Stout, one of the designers, as the museum's curator, and he was the guy responsible for grabbing the pieces of scrapped content and finding a home for them in the halls of posterity. As levels were cut, Stout integrated all of these pieces into the museum, making sure that even if they were gone, they were never forgotten.
This approach to developing extra content could serve as a nice model for other companies to follow, creating a more interactive experience in a medium defined by interactivity. Imagine a similar creation for Assassin's Creed II wherein players could guide Ezio around a redesigned villa or even an entirely new city. Perhaps you could stop by Leonardo's workshop and try out gadgets and gizmos that didn't make the final build, or take up assassination contracts on lost characters. A similar structure could also be employed in the Tomb Raider and Uncharted franchises, inviting players to come back and check out all the cool stuff that didn't make the cut.
Utilize Your Resources and Commit to Excellence Early
While the plans for the Insomniac Museum had already been laid in Resistance 2, the space wasn't going to build itself and the team needed to harness its already thin resources in order to get the new stage off the ground. But why go above and beyond if you don't have to? If Insomniac had scrapped the museum idea and decided it was too much work, who would have known? In this case, a clever marketing ploy gave the team the necessary incentive to get the job done.
Stevenson told us that the team really decided they were all in on the museum idea when they presented it to Gamestop as a pre-order bonus for A Crack in Time. This concept promised hundreds of thousands of customers access to an expansive piece of franchise history on day one and transformed the museum from a side project into a full-on piece of the game. It had to be finished, polished and working when the game shipped—no excuses.
To do that, Insomniac devoted several team members to making sure everything worked, utilizing folks like dev support member, Brian Mathison and designer Bryan Intihar to lead the effort and keep everything on track. These are but two of the long list of people who were assigned to creating, testing and optimizing the museum and making sure it was up to snuff. The team worked tirelessly to integrate everything and make the experience more than just a bunch of menus and static screenshots.
So often when it comes to the extra content in a game, companies are content to merely ask their art departments to throw in a few early character models that can be rotated and zoomed and maybe have the project lead sit down for a five-minute interview. This is mainly because the hectic schedule of creating a game dictates that all hours are devoted to making sure the primary experience is as polished as possible, and bonuses are thrown in merely so hardcore fanboys will have something to satiate their desire for more. Now we've seen that it is possible to do so much more with a completely optional thing, however it requires serious dedication of time and resources. While this trade-off will likely be the hardest thing for other studios to embrace, if the extra content is mapped out early then it becomes much easier to budget the time and manpower needed to making sure it's a success, rather than trying to shoehorn it in at the end of a project.
Where Do We Go Now?
So now that Insomniac has set the bar so high, how can other games follow suit? We asked Stevenson for his thoughts on bonus content, and his response creates a nice roadmap.
"Extras are always cool for fans, and it's great to reward people with more than just a trophy when they do cool stuff... I really love all the cool unlockables in Uncharted 2 – gameplay cheats, skins, art work, behind the scenes and even rendering modes are all great rewards to give players. Another favorite of mine was the developer commentary that has popped up in a few games (especially Rogue Squadron II) – and I'd love to see even more of that in the future."
Those are just the tip of the iceberg, and there are plenty of other ideas that could be implemented as well. What about a shooting range with all the guns and other weapons cut from Modern Warfare 2 or a test track to race the deleted cars from Forza or Need for Speed? Ultimately, bonus content is good for both fans and developers, as it allows the creators to showcase all the good stuff that didn't make the final build and gamers are allowed to appreciate studios' work more deeply. Furthermore, if all museums were like the one Insomniac built, wouldn't we all visit them more?
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