The Bare Truth with Andreas Roman

Midtown Madness 3, an arcade racer with nearly unparalleled freedom, recently rolled off the blocks and into your local retail game store. Luckily for me, I had the chance to talk to with design guru, Andreas Roman, one of the architects of said freedom.

Xbox.com: The title "game designer" seems to encompass so much. Can you give us a breakdown of your role on the project?

Roman: Basically, I managed and supervised all the creative work that was closely linked to gameplay, concept, and story. Art and city design was handled more by the artists, while race structure, game mode layout, voice over, script, car handling, and that stuff was handled by us on the game design side. The very wacky aspect of this version of Midtown Madness is a typical example of an area that game design covered.

What they don't teach at the academy …

Xbox.com: What would you say was the most challenging aspect of designing Midtown Madness 3?

Roman: In retrospect, I'd say it was the single-player part, since that is where players seem to be divided right now. Everyone loves multiplayer, which of course, is a delight to hear. And, multiplayer is a technical challenge for sure, and certainly a gameplay design challenge as well, but things just tend to get a lot more fun whenever real opponents play together. You're getting added value for free because players add their own styles to the game. In single-player mode, you're more or less on your own. Looking at how people respond to the game now, many really liked what we did with the single-player part, but not all. So, I'd say that this was the biggest challenge and one area where we didn't reach all our players.

Xbox.com: Midtown Madness 3 seems to strike a balance between reality (with the realistic cars and a realistic world to play in) and hyper-reality (in that it has an arcade-like feel). What sorts of things do you have to take into account in order to maintain that balance?

Roman: Things need to make sense in the world. While they don't need to match a vision of realism, they need to follow an internal logic that the game supports. For example, you don't expect cars to go 800 mph. Sure, it would be wacky and quite possibly hysterically fun, but it's just too unrealistic. However, if you take the Mustang, for example, anyone could tell you that a model of that kind just doesn't go as fast as a Dodge Viper. But, in our game it does, and it works, because it's still within the limits of what defines Midtown Madness. In the end, each time we had to make a decision about whether something made sense or not, we had to use our gut feeling as to whether it felt too weak or was too much. I think this is one of the things we've done best, to create a Midtown Madness universe that feels consistent.

I didn't think sidewalks were for semis.

Xbox.com: The Xbox Live functionality is a huge part of the game. What were your primary goals in terms of online competition, and what design challenges came along with that?

Roman: Once we decided that Midtown Madness should go online, we settled for a no–compromises goal and ended up close to a reasonable target. Most other games tasted parts of the online experience, but we wanted it all! We wanted the online aspect to be considered separate, so that people who didn't want to play single-player (but still were on the lookout for a great online title) could buy the game and feel they had enough in Xbox Live play to just ignore the single-player (and vice versa, of course).

The challenges first came in maintaining the original feel of the online aspect of the previous titles and then building on that with new game modes. We don't include the super classic game modes in this game. We wanted the experience to feel fresh and unique in every aspect, and while no game mode is far from what you've seen before, it's still shaped in the Midtown Madness form, and you just won't find carbon copies of our versions of Tag, Hunter, or whatever your preference is, in any other game. At least, not yet.

Xbox.com: Game designer is a much sought-after position in the gaming community. Can you tell us what path you took to become a game designer?

Roman: I've played games since I was seven, starting out with a Vic 20, upgrading to a C64, then on to an Amiga, a PC, a number of consoles, and so on. I got a job in a gaming store, and through my work as a novelist (a thing I do in my spare time), I got in contact with a small Swedish developer looking primarily for people with writing skills who understood video games. I got the job, and from there, I slid into design gradually as the need became greater with the Swedish developers. My largest regret is that I haven't had a mentor that could teach me the tricks of the trade. I've had to learn most of my stuff myself, by trial and error and lots of reading about what others have done. It's certainly not the ideal way to do it, but that's the only way I could do it at that time, and now, here I am.

That car sure looks good in red.

Xbox.com: Looking back at your experience with Midtown Madness 3, what are you most proud of?

Roman: The Work Undercover mode. For some, it's a bit weird, and not everyone likes the humor in it. But, those who do seem to appreciate it fully. So, it's dividing people, which usually means you've accomplished something special. I also think it's hysterically funny that many reviewers blame us for using bad fake accents for the French, when in fact, the actors in question lived in Paris, were 100-percent French, recorded their lines in a studio in Paris, and hardly understood a word of what they read since they're not very good in English! We've got a bunch of Swedish actors in the game, too, but for some reason, no one seems to accuse them of being fake, including Swedish journalists. I dare you all to find out whether they are or not.

Xbox.com: Can you give us a brief account on what it's like to be working on a game during crunch time?

Roman: It's about sacrifice and faith. You're putting your life on hold to work on something you believe in, and if you've got good friends and family, they support you through this period. It has many dark moments, but it'll all go away when one critical key feature gets implemented and turns out to work very well. That's when the wave starts, a wave that you could ride on for a long time, that just brings with it things that raise the game to an entirely new level. At that point, you're working and playing with the greatest game you've ever seen. It doesn't last forever, of course, reality kicks in, and most of the time, you're just doing something that's very good. But so far, those waves have always been worth it for me. During this wave, the sum of the game becomes larger than its parts. We had a few of those, but none so great as the one before E3 2002.

Xbox.com: Wow. Thanks for the chat, Andreas!

By Alex McLain