MadWorld developer Platinum Games
MadWorld is a beat 'em up hack and slash video game developed by PlatinumGames, published by Sega, produced by Atsushi Inaba, and directed by Shigenori Nishikawa. It was released worldwide for the Wii in March 2009 and in Japan in February 2010. MadWorld received generally positive reviews from critics and was a commercial failure. A spiritual successor, Anarchy Reigns, was released in 2012 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.Development
MadWorld was created by PlatinumGames, a studio founded by former members of Capcom's Clover Studio, in their attempt to make a game that would be "fun and attractive" for the Wii, but that would also have a high level of violence that would make it unique for the system. The game was produced by Atsushi Inaba, who had previously produced Viewtiful Joe, and directed by Shigenori Nishikawa, one of the designers of Resident Evil 4. The developers chose violence as the main theme of the title, but experimented with a variety of cartoon-like art styles to alleviate the violent content with a sense of humor, ultimately deciding upon a black-and-white aesthetic with splashes of red for blood. Inaba and Nishikawa acknowledged the influence of Frank Miller's Sin City in the work, but also noted they borrowed from both Western and Japanese comic book styles to create a unique style. Comic-book style text and sound effects are also used in the game. The main character, Jack, was designed to be "big and tough" rather than traditionally heroic, with an appearance that suggests he "has been worn down by the world."MadWorld was developed primarily for a Western audience, and the team extensively analyzed American pop culture in search of material that was so extreme and unrealistic it produced a comedic effect. Inaba played a variety of games, such as Manhunt 2, to see how they portrayed serious violence and to avoid making those same choices with MadWorld. Nishikawa chose to focus entirely on combat, omitting extraneous puzzle-solving or collection elements, with the goal of making the game easy to play in short sessions. The game's motion controls were designed to be as intuitive as possible, with Inaba reflecting that "we've come to believe the Wii controller is actually more intuitive and more relevant for action games." An emphasis was placed on earning high scores, while "Bloodbath Challenge" minigames were used to incorporate additional variety into the game's design.The game was developed using Softimage for creation of the game's art, and a custom engine built to handle the art aesthetic and limitations of the Wii's memory. The game's sets are completely modeled with complex lighting features, but only normal maps are used to draw the game, avoiding the high-processing costs of light maps or layered textures. This allowed the game's artists to have finer control of visibility and color balance in the game. Though the developers attempted to add reflection mapping into the game, they found it did not fit well with the comic-book style and dropped it. Explosions and other effects, normally created in other games using particle effects to achieve a factor of realism, were modeled with particles in MadWorld, but using specially-designed images to retain the comic book style.To overcome the lighting issues, the main character of Jack was modeled with two different textures, one used when he was in a bright area, and second used in dark areas that highlighted the main lines of the character's face. Jack and other principal characters from the game were redesigned with the black-and-white features adjusted numerous times to make sure they did not simply blend into the background as the lesser enemies in the game. Other characters were drawn and modeled to be as destructible as possible, with numerous versions of each character having missing limbs or other bodily harm. These were put together in 2000-frame animations that were then motion-captured; movement from one animation to another was blended out with the use of Hermite interpolation. Blood spurts from each of the methods that Jack could use to kill a foe were each uniquely modeled to capture the appropriate trajectory for the type of injury, and often increasing the realistic amount of blood in order to make it stand out in the world. The spatters of blood on the walls, floor, and other characters was modeled within the game using a collision detection system and a complex system for how the blood would interact with Jack's clothing. Early builds of the game resulted in disorientation and eye strain due to the lack of colors. To avoid this, the developers limited the amount of on-screen movement and adjusted the game's textures to include more gradual changes from black to white. While some of MadWorld relies on the Havok engine for modeling physical interactions in the game, the developers found they had to resort to their own programs to capture some of the reactions and behaviors of the enemies for many of the unique killing methods.Comparisons have been drawn between the game and Inaba's last project, God Hand, a comedy beat 'em up for the PlayStation 2. However, Inaba claims that while God Hand was developed for "hardcore" gamers, MadWorld is "a lot easier to pick up." The game's use of over-the-top violence was intentional to add humor to it.The game's story was written by Yasumi Matsuno, famous for his design in the Ogre Battle series and a number of Square Enix titles. Matsuno was given two opposing guidelines to writing the scenario. While the development team ruled that violence should acceptable in the game's world, Inaba expressed his desire for violence to be "denied in the end" due to current views of violence in the video game industry. Matsuno combined the ideas for MadWorld's DeathWatch gameshow environment: violence is both accepted and required within the show, but not outside of it.Proops and DiMaggio, who had previously worked together on animated films such as Asterix and the Vikings and Kaena: The Prophecy, were both contacted by the voice cast director Jack Fletcher to play the parts of the announcers for the North American and European release. While most of their lines were already scripted, the two were able to ad-lib during recording, with some lines being retained in the final game.
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