Massive Entertainment’s first foray into the futuristic reality-based world of Tom Clancy will come alive later this year. Tom Clancy’s The Division, which is being developed for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, is based on a real nightmare simulation the Center for Strategic and International Studies ran in 2001, called Operation Dark Winter. What the government, military and emergency responders discovered is that society would fall apart after three days in the wake of a bio-terrorist-attack.
In the video game fiction, a pandemic wipes out the majority of the U.S. and all forms of basic infrastructure collapse. Players step into the role of a self-supported tactical agent for the Strategic Homeland Division in New York City, who’s been directed by the President to do whatever’s necessary to prevent the fall of society. The online gameplay allows players to team up with other tactical agents to take on enemies in a dynamic and evolving city that’s covered in snow over the Christmas holiday. As the complex story unfolds, players will uncover a worldwide conspiracy and must fight to save New York, and the world.
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Massive Entertainment, which has a team of 400 employees working on this game, is developing this title alongside other Ubisoft-owned studios Reflections and Red Storm Entertainment. The game blends an evolving online world with role-playing game elements and plenty of shooting. Massive Entertainment managing director David Polfeldt discusses the making of this new game in this exclusive interview.
As one of the big releases of 2015, what type of pressure do you feel as a developer?
We’ve felt pressure ever since we announced the game at E3 2013 because it was received so well and we have an incredibly active community. A lot of people are expecting us to deliver an awesome game, but I think of it more as responsibility. We’ve made a promise and now we need to keep that promise. The whole studio feels the same way. We’re gamers and we don’t want to be let anyone down, so we just have to make this game as fantastic as we promised it’d be.
Ubisoft has studios all over the world, how does Massive work with other teams in creating The Division?
Travel and telephone. Can you imagine? That’s how crazy it is. Massive is quite an old studio. We’re 18 years old now, and when we were acquired by Ubisoft seven years ago it was like entering a new realm, to speak in game language. We suddenly had all these countries and studios and people everywhere to tap into. You can just pick up the phone and there’s a friendly voice on the other end that could be in Singapore or in Bucharest or in Shanghai or in Raleigh. It’s really an interesting hive mind company and we didn’t know that when we were acquired, so it’s been a very nice surprise.
How does Hollywood influence you when writing the stories of these huge games?
It’s clear the conversations between Hollywood and the gaming industry are becoming more and more intense for many reasons. They’re using more CG in what they do and we are fantastic at real-time rendering. There are many technical reasons to be in close discussion between these two industries. And then you realize that these are very intelligent people who have had interesting experiences. At Ubisoft there’s a division called Ubi Motion Pictures, which is working on movies for Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell and Rabbids. What’s going on here is incredibly interesting and I hope that one day we’re going to talk about the movie and the TV series based on The Division.
PC gamers are used to seeing these types of massive online games, what has PS4 and Xbox One opened up for you as developers?
That’s one of the things that still gives me goose bumps with this project. Once my technical director gave me the specs for PS4 and Xbox One, that’s when we decided to go into high gear with Snowdrop Engine because this was going to be a generation of consoles that we understand much better than the previous one. They allow us to bring all of our knowledge and expertise from making PC games into the console world.
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What are the challenges of balancing The Division, since it’s an open world set in New York City?
In our game you’re on foot, which means that you have a lot of distance to cover and if you tried walking in Manhattan like we have in our research, you realize it’s a huge place. We’re trying to modify the size by cutting out the fat of Manhattan. There are a lot of places that are repetitive with blocks that have the same type of buildings and that is not the perfect scenario for a game, so we’re adapting it to fit the fun factor for gameplay.
Are there things you’ve learned from Bungie’s Destiny from an online gameplay perspective?
It’s incredibly interesting to us to watch a game like Destiny, and even if you go back further with Red Dead Redemption and GTA. Those games contained so many good ideas that are interesting to study, and then they teach us a lot and they pose some questions to choices we have made. In some cases we also discovered that they made mistakes, in our opinion, that we don’t want to repeat. It’s like a school book, and it’s interesting material that we do study them from many different angles. I’m sure our game will be studied and somebody will make an autopsy on The Division, as well.
What does the online aspect of The Division open up?
Our adventure begins when the game ships. It’s not eight hours and then gamers are done and that was great. We plan to be engaged in a long relationship with the gamers.
What role does fan feedback play as you show off the game during development?
It’s incredibly important for all of the Ubisoft studios and we pay a lot of attention to fans. At Massive we even have a tradition of sending the more important emails to the entire studio because fans are either have a good question, or are making a good observation, or are challenging us on something.
What are your thoughts on the recent trend of games being shipped before they’re truly complete?
As a gamer, I’m a little bit confused about that same symptom because it doesn’t really make sense to me. This generation of consoles is in fact easier to develop for. And we’re older and smarter and we’ve done many games, so theoretically it should be easier to make great games and hit your deadlines. What I’m pretty convinced about is that apparently we need to take another step. There is a level that we need to reach as an industry. I can’t imagine that it’s going to be this difficult in the future. For our own sake, we’re not talking release date for The Division yet because it needs to be at the right state before we even commit to that.
What’s your background in gaming?
I have an unusual background for being a managing director and that is I have a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts. It has helped me to become a good managing director in the games industry because I think a lot about what the conditions are for the artists to create and what the situation is that they meet when they come to work every day. I just want them to be creative and to innovate and to feel empowered, and with my background I really understand what that means. SnowDrop is also related to this because if you try to paint with a bad brush, you can never paint well. I’ve always been very aware that excellent tools allow people to become excellent artists.
What do you like to play?
The sad thing is that I don’t have time enough to play games anymore, so I’ve been catching up on some games that I wanted to play that now seem very old, like Dishonored and The Last of Us, which I completely fell in love with and is an absolutely amazing game. That’s how detached I am from recent events in gaming.
