Pursuit Force Designer Diary #1 - The Beginning

Pursuit Force is soon to be the latest and perhaps wildest addition to the PSP's action lineup. The game mixes frantic driving action with hardcore shooting and even incorporates a unique carjacking mechanic at the same time. We've been quite enamored with the European version of the game thus far, and luckily, Pursuit Force is now being further refined for an imminent release stateside. In the meantime, managing director Jonathan Webb is here to tell you about the genesis and execution of the project.

Ramping Up

By Jonathan Webb, Managing Director

Hello, I'm Jonathan Webb, Managing Director for Bigbig Studios, and we'll be with you over the next handful of weeks to talk about Pursuit Force, our PSP-exclusive title. Pursuit Force is, quite simply, an all-out, action-packed, vehicle-based combat game with pure adrenaline-induced gameplay. The game takes place in Capital City, where crime is out of control. The police are powerless to stop this criminal onslaught, so the Chief of Police decides to create a new, hard-as-nails police department called Pursuit Force, and you're its one and only recruit. Being the only recruit, it's your job to rid the state of the five controlling gangs, each one hell-bent on causing as much chaos as possible. Taking down these gangs is the key aim.

But what possessed us to create a title such as this? Well, to go back to the true beginnings, we'll look at when Pursuit Force started--a few years ago, before the PSP was announced to the world at large. We were mulling around with the idea of creating an action-hero game. One in which the player really felt empowered, but at the same time, a game that was grounded in reality, even if it was one that was slightly exaggerated. We started watching a lot of action movies to get some inspiration, and there were a few that really stood out: James Bond and Indiana Jones. We'll never forget the scene in Indy where he's hanging on to the bonnet of a truck fighting the bad guys.

From this, a simple idea was born: Wouldn't it be great if we could create a game in which the player gets to jump from vehicle to vehicle and fight? At the time, we didn't know the exact specifics; we didn't even know how we were going to do it. The more we thought about it, the cooler it sounded. From there, we worked on some technology demos to prove that it was possible--only then did we settle on a police angle. We wanted to give the game a real sense of speed, and we thought, "Cops are cool. All games at the moment let you play the bad guy. What can't you play a cool cop? One that doesn't take any crap and is willing to break a few rules if that means getting the bad guys?" This is how Pursuit Force was born. From here, the designers started fine-tuning the gameplay. It took a fair amount of time to get the jumping and fighting feeling fast, responsive, and cool.

Throughout the process, I have to give credit to the Bigbig team for really coming together to make things happen. The mood was really good during the entire development process...because it had to be. We didn't have the biggest team in the world, and the amount of content within the game meant that we had to stay focused throughout the full length of the project. Having the team motivated and focused on the project was essential, and I believe we achieved that.

When Pursuit Force started, the team consisted of 14 members. This was a great size for the team because we were still working on the actual mechanics and the like. After that was settled and we were down to the actual creation of the product, we began hiring more staff, until the team reached 21 members. For the amount of content in the game, I'm actually really impressed with the team size. The atmosphere was really good and everyone was really focused, and I believe it shows in the final product. We have a mixture of experienced staff and recent graduates, which really helps.

Previous to working on Pursuit Force and at Bigbig Studios, a fair number of the key staff members had worked for Codemasters. A number of the guys had worked on the Touring Car and Colin McRae Rally series from the very beginning, and this certainly helped with Pursuit Force. Since this game is largely vehicle-based, our experience with vehicle gameplay and vehicle asset creation could be taken from our past work, along with the knowledge of what it takes to create a fun vehicle-based game. Working on an original product such as Pursuit Force certainly helped as well.

It's not surprising, though sometimes overlooked, that the reason people join the games industry isn't because of tight deadlines and long working days. People generally join the games industry because of their love of games and their desire to be creative. For this reason, making sure that the staff felt creatively empowered was important to us. Also, this was Bigbig Studios' first game, and that meant that the Pursuit Force team had a lot riding on it. In essence, the Pursuit Force team was basically Bigbig Studios. I'd like to think that everyone working on the game felt that they were making a big contribution to the company as a whole. Bigbig's identity is the 20-odd people that make up Bigbig Studios.

For the next diary, I'll discuss in more detail the unique gameplay found in Pursuit Force and how we came up with and implemented these ideas.