A couple of weeks ago we had the pleasure of reviewing the action loaded, high octane off road racer nail’d and as you know – we liked the game a lot. In an effort to get to know the makers behind the game, we sat down with developer Techland and asked them some questions, more specifically Blazej Krakowiak – International Brand Manager at Techland.
Read on below to find out what some of the ‘OH CRAP’ moments were during development, what the Polish staff likes to eat and why there are no huge trick moves during the super long jumps in nail’d.
First of all congratulations on releasing nail’d – we really enjoyed the game and so did many in the gaming community. Techland is a longstanding developer and your studio has shipped some great and memorable games including the Xpand Rally and Call of Juarez series as well as most recently nail’d. The racing and shooter genres couldn’t be further apart – why are you developing such different games? It shows great diversity.
Thank you! We had a lot of fun working on nail’d and I hope that players will enjoy playing it. As for the question, we like those genres. They’re popular, relevant, fun to develop and play. We have smaller projects like a very successful series of speedway games and even a sci-fi TPP arcade shooter. We believe in being good and getting better all the time at making games. There’s a number of business factors involved in picking our projects. Our publishing partners are also involved in those decisions. Having our own multiplatform engine and a dedicated development team keeping that technology on the cutting edge gives us a degree of flexibility in choosing genres and devising new features for our future projects.
Nail’d is an absolutely crazy and over the top arcade racer, where did the motivation for the game come from?
To be honest making it over the top was one of those ideas. We were thinking about the fun of riding dirt bikes and ATVs the way they let amateurs do it. Anyone can rent a quad and try hopping over some bumps and climbing small dunes. It feels great and it’s a completely different experience than driving a car, an armored vehicle by comparison.
While contemplating the puny and immensely entertaining hills and dunes at the local off-road track, we realized the potential for ‘vertical gameplay’ in a racing game. Thus the basic idea for nail’d was born: “extreme tracks, huge jumps and incredible speed”. It sounds like “sharks with lasers” but it’s present throughout the entire game and represents the experience we set out to create.
While nail’d is much faster than PURE for instance, the comparison lends itself due to the general format – how come there aren’t any big trick moves in the game? The jumps sure are long enough.
When tricks enter the picture, the dynamics of the whole affair change: players must think about launching themselves into the air and then staying there to pull off the mandatory tricks. It’s a good game mechanic but it requires a different pace and track design. In nail’d the terrain is a challenge all by itself. Those spectacular vistas are full of treacherous cliffs, rocks, narrow passages and jumps. Obstacles which need to be evaded during jumps or landings are also quite common. With tricks in mid-air we would have to slow down and make sure that players would be able to land safely.
Right now even during the jumps players can feel the sensation of speed: rock outcrops and treetops are flashing by and at the end of the jump there’s usually some tricky maneuvering to do. You have just enough time to admire the sheer size of the environment and the scale of the track before having to avoid another obstacle or cope with another sharp turn.
If there was one feature you could add or remove post launch – what would it be?
The temptation to keep adding more features is something all developers need to keep in mind and in check :). With all the talented, creative people in Techland’s two development studios, we always have more ideas than we could possibly fit in any single project, much less a fun-oriented back-to-the-roots arcade racer like nail’d. We were left with lots of great ideas for future projects so we’re not telling :).
Are you thinking about making nail’d into a franchise or will the next racing game be a new IP? I personally would like to see another rally game.
Techland has many interesting titles we could follow up on, we’re also interested in looking for new IP’s like nail’d. Questions like this one inevitably have to be answered the same way: anything’s possible. Regardless of the answer, we wouldn’t be able to discuss it anyway.
How many sodas and pounds of junk food were consumed during development of nail’d.
A specific count would be impossible but we all know what the fuel of the industry is. I can only speculate that Techland Warsaw devours a lot of Asian food while our development HQ in Wroclaw prefers a mix of traditional Polish food and Kebab. Pizza as the timeless classic is also always on the menu but it’s not even close to the top of the list. Soda machines are also hard at work. We could probably get detailed stats for those but I’m afraid of the truth. There are even fans of healthy food in both offices, bringing their own meals or ordering something fancy. We’re open minded and try not to judge them :P.
What would you say was the craziest or most memorable thing that happened between the beginning and end of development.
Murphy’s Law is alive in game dev so there are always some ‘oh crap!’ moments to remember. For example, both ISPs ran into problems at the same time so there was no way to send or receive some critical bit of data. The first power outage in years happened on the very night the team worked hard to finalize an important build.
Of course less disastrous things can also occur: someone forgets to put a comma in the right place in one configuration file and the game goes crazy for a while with inverted gravity. This sort of thing works best when the culprit is late for work or takes a day off and tracking down the source of the problem becomes a cross between House M.D. and Angry Beavers.
Techland’s website lists 60 team members, you’ve shipped a lot of games since 2000 – how are you able to manage such a high production rate?
60 is not even close to the actual numbers. Right now we have a staff of almost 200, with about 170 working directly on games. Nail’d was developed by Techland Warsaw, our younger and smaller development studio based in the capital. We’ve been working with those guys for a long time even before bringing them officially into the Techland family.
Our development HQ, so to speak, is based in Wroclaw. The staff here is bigger and able to develop one or more multi-platform games simultaneously. This is also where the Chrome Engine team resides, developing the technology powering all the other projects including nail’d.
Lastly – please tell us one thing for each of your three upcoming games, Dead Island, Warhound and Chrome 2 that you’d want your community to know.
Regarding Chrome 2 and Warhound I can only repeat our official statement we issued a while ago: those games are on hold for the time being. We may revisit them in the future but for now we’re focusing on other titles including Dead Island which is doing great! Stay tuned for more announcements from Techland and our partners.
Thank you very much for your time.
