It’s fair to say that Midway hasn’t been the most successful video game publisher of late; Unreal Tournament largely fell flat, and there’s been a lukewarm reception towards the latest instalment of the long-running Mortal Kombat franchise.  But with a new year looming comes new hope, with the February release of Wheelman.  The latest title to come from Midway’s internal studio in Newcastle is the second video game to star Hollywood’s broody strongman, Vin Diesel, and has been a co-production between Midway and Diesel’s own Tigon video game outfit.

An over-the-top, open-world, driving action game that sees Diesel’s likeness as an undercover operative in Spain’s cultural capital of Barcelona, Wheelman is trying to align itself with the likes of GTA, Saints Row, Burnout, and even Driver.

They’re certainly some heavy-hitting franchises, but can Wheelman actually live up to the hopes of its maker?  TVG sat down with Craig Duncan, Midway Studios Newcastle’s chief, to understand why the Wheelman will be arriving in top gear…

TVG: Wheelman is a new brand for Midway, and has been co-produced with Vin Diesel and his own studio, Tigon.  What sort of pressures have the team been under in developing the game?

Funnily enough, it’s more self-pressure than anything else.  My ethos as studio head, is that there are two key goals for us.  One is to execute clinically and produce highly-polished entertainment experiences.  The second is to innovate; we’re not in the business to just churn out product.  We want to innovate.  Really with Wheelman, we’ve achieved both things.  It’s been very much the case that our design, our creative, our tech, have all tried to push boundaries in each of their respective disciplines.  We’ve tried to make the game look as good as it possibly can; the frame rate and technical aspects, the physics system, we’ve tried to maximise as much as we can.

We’ve had some challenges with Wheelman, because not only do we have scripted missions, but we also have systemic systems.  Things like our police system are purely systemic, so it bases itself on your reactions in the game and reacts accordingly.  Our gangs have a lot of systemic behaviours so they’ll reinforce based on how quickly you’re killing them.  Lots of very, very cool stuff [balanced] out with the missions and the story arc, has been a lot of pressure – but it’s self-pressure to succeed and make the best game possible.

Working with the Tigon guys and Vin has really added the ‘Hollywood’.  We’ve spent a lot of time with Vin’s scriptwriters, so Vin spent a lot of time in the voice-over studio and the scriptwriters going, “No, I’d say this.”  We really do take that Hollywood approach, so he’ll do the mission, kill a load of bad guys, walk out with chaos and destruction around him, and then do a Hollywood one line.  Its a little bit tongue in cheek, but it gets that ‘Diehard’ feel to it.

TVG: You mentioned there the look of Wheelman; it seems very bold and saturated in colour.  It seems to suit the arcade gameplay of the driving, but in an age of grit and realism, why take that decision?

A couple of reasons, and my Art Director can speak for hours on this one!  One, is that the game is set in Barcelona, so we’ve tried to go for that Mediterranean city feel: blue sky, green trees…I almost think of it as an almost classic ‘Outrun’ look.  So lots of bright colours – GTA is an amazing game, but it has this dark, gritty, foggy, murky [look].  We wanted to get as far away as that as possible; so we have realism, they’re shiny, they damage, and all our objects in the environments break – but we wanted to have that polished Mediterranean [look].  You should feel happy racing through the streets of Barcelona.

The other thing that has led a lot into that is with our story arc.  In the same way that films do, Wheelman’s missions are set in different times of day.  So you’ll be racing down the highways of Barcelona with blue sky, great weather, it’s reflected off the cars, and it all looks glorious.  But then we’ve also set some missions at dusk, or at dawn, that will have a slightly overcast and murky feel, just really fitting the right artistic style for each mission, backing that up with the audio style – making that whole experience as honed as it can be.

TVG: The driving sequences seem very reminiscent of the Driver series?  Obviously both yourselves and Ubisoft Reflections are in the same area of the UK…

We have a couple of guys that are ex-Reflections, but they’re old school from the Demolition Derby days.  Driver was a great franchise when it first came out, but it kinda waned.  I like to think of our game as ‘Driver done properly’; that’s what Wheelman is.

Another thing about open-world games is that a lot of them have gone down the route of [using] cars to get from A to B.  So you get in your car, you get from A to B, and then you do your mission.  We wanted to have the driving experience as good as driving games, and our action as good as action games, so that you get in your car and it’s awesome.  It’s not just getting in one to get from A to B, it’s about having fun, smash people up, do big jumps – all that cool Hollywood stuff.

TVG: Wheelman has been described as the centre ground between GTA and Saints Row on one side, and Burnout on the other – that’s quite a benchmark to set isn’t it?  They’re also very different games, and I was wondering how you’ve ensured that Wheelman isn’t a watered down mix of both genres?

It’s very much a case that our driving is competitive with driving games, so that you go around a long bend and get the car in to a drift, and the back-end kicks out.  Having come from Codemasters and worked on a number of driving games, our driving engine is absolutely rock solid, our physics system is rock solid - even our rigid body systems and damage systems.  Those are the bits that we really wanted to take from those really keen driving franchises.

The other thing is that we’ve recreated the whole of Barcelona.  We have, as I class, that ‘classic sandbox open-world gameplay’, where maybe I don’t want to go and play a mission; maybe I want to steal a truck and start ramming traffic out of the way.  That then invokes a police response, and the police come after you; just doing that in Wheelman is immensely fun.  So it has that sandbox fun that GTA and Saints Row excel at, and do a very good job.

The other thing you mentioned earlier about the arcadey gameplay, is that as well as our story arc playing like a Hollywood movie we have our side missions, which I would describe as almost ‘raw arcade’ games.  [They’re] either very traditional driving mechanics with checkpoints and time-extends, right down to destroying everything in the environment – again, more sandbox gameplay.  Some are driving based, some are on foot based, some are a mixture of the two.  That’s where I think for game fans, if you like open-world games you’ll like Wheelman, if you like driving games you’ll like Wheelman.

A lot of our focus testing has been quite specific on that; in our initial focus test we found that our shooting sections were too hard for the guys that just played driving games.  So again, we almost had to build in two modes of play so one [is] a lock-on orientated system, very similar to GTA, so that someone who isn’t a Call of Duty fan will be able to get through our shooting sections.  But we’ve also included more precision aiming for the guys who are more shooter fans.  What we’ve then had to do is include tutorials and give people help on the driving aspects.  It’s really been that balance about not alienating one particular [group], and I honestly think we’ve nailed both – and I’m absolutely chuffed about that.

TVG: Wheelman is the second of three big titles from Midway, following Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe and looking ahead to This Is Vegas; the publisher has experienced rough times for several years now – is this the second of three last gasp attempts by Midway, a make or break time?

Absolutely not, I think our strategy is very internal studio led.  My goal as studio head is to make great, innovative product.  If we do that, if we execute on that, we’ll create great games; those great games will sell, and Midway will go on from strength to strength.  Midway has made some mistakes in the past, I think as a management team we’ve recognised a lot of those, but really it’s very much a case of going back to what we’re trying to do which is make great games, they’ll sell, and take Midway forward.

TVG: Do you think that releasing Wheelman in February is a masterstroke?  It’s fair to say that launching it in the run up to Christmas would have probably meant that it would have gotten lost amongst the other releases…

Absolutely!  Releasing a new game in Q4 is suicide.  There are some great games in Q4, I’ve bought a majority of them, but bringing it out in February has a number of benefits: it gets us out in a release window where we can be the biggest game in that [time].  It also, from a development point of view, gives us an additional three months, so what do we do?  We focus test, we iterate, we make it better, and we’ll be in a much better shape than it would be if we’d released before the end of the year.  We could have released the game, but it’s had three more months of care and attention, and it’s a much better game as a result.

TVG: Downloadable Content is prolific in this generation, so it’s safe to assume that there’s be some DLC for Wheelman…

Absolutely, there absolutely is…

TVG: …will there be Avatar and Home support too, so clothing and Wheelman spaces will be released?

We’ve looked into that, and we’re continuing to talk to Microsoft and Sony about that.  It’s really a case of really integrating all that with DLC and the Wheelman package.  We’ve not got anything firm, but we’re definitely in conversations on that.  We do have full trophy and achievement support, and some of them are unique to each system.

TVG: What form will downloadable content take?

What we’ll essentially do is release more side-missions, and we can do that in a very user-orientated way.  We can read the forums, we can see what’s popular, and if people like ‘street races’ where you can destroy people in, then we can put more of those in.  So what will happen is, you’ll go on and pick your downloadable content; it’ll appear on your [in-game] PDA, appear on the map, and you can go and play.  It’s quite a seamless integration, we’ve already got it working; it’s really a case of when we get the game done, we’ll put a separate team off to start making some of that downloadable content.

TVG: And is the movie still on course for release next year?

The last movie update I got from Tigon is that they were reviewing scripts and talking to people about the movie, so it’s very much on plan.  But the video game is a separate IP that stands on its own two feet.

TVG: Thanks Craig.


TVG would like to thank Craig Duncan at Midway Studios Newcastle and Phil Robinson at Midway for talking the time to answer our questions.  TVG’s thoughts on Wheelman will be available shortly, and the game itself is due to arrive in February 2009.