Backbreaker News Post

Backbreaker Producer Q&A (ESPN Videogames)

04:32 PM - April 28, 2010 by Steve_OS

ESPN Videogames has posted a Q&A session with Rob Donald, Associate Producer of Backbreaker.

Quote:


	Jon: "What are the game modes we can expect to play?" Rob: "Obviously we have the normal Exhibition games, then we also have two season modes which are very different. The first one we just call Season mode, and it's pretty much what you'd expect from a standard season where you take a team and insert them into a custom 8, 16, or 32 team league. Then basically you play your way through the season, it's multiple seasons, so you draft new players and do everything that you'd expect from a Season mode. You can also fill the slots of those teams in Season mode with the teams that we ship with, and we're shipping with over 60 teams. You can also create your own teams and fill the Season mode up with them. You can create 32 teams and put them all in a league against each other, whatever you want to do. The other season mode is the mode where I see a lot of people spending the majority of their time, and that's Road to Backbreaker. This one is designed around a real sense of originality, and you owning your team and actually progressing your team and taking that team as far as you can. In Road to Backbreaker, you always start with a custom team, so you can start completely from scratch or you can take one of the existing teams, change the name and play around with it. This gives you the ability to do as little or as much customization as you want to do. Then you take that team and you start off in a lowly eight team league. The idea is that if you finish in the top three, you get promoted into a 16 team league then you keep trying to work your way up. It's not what people normally play in a football game, and I think this brings extra value. We're pretty excited about doing something different. In fact, we were kind of worried at first about adding promotion and relegation to the game because that is not something that is featured very heavily in North American sports leagues, but being a U.K. developer, we see the kind of drama this adds year in and year out. From a basketball standpoint, I'm a huge Raptors fan, but I end up every year hoping we tank down the stretch so we get a better draft pick. This never happens in leagues with promotion and relegation. You always have something to fight for, and that's what we want to bring to "Backbreaker."

Game: BackbreakerReader Score: 6/10 - Vote Now
Platform: PS3 / Xbox 360Votes for game: 51 - View All

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# 41 mm boost @ 04/30/10 09:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 23


	Im still not following you on this.. care to go into more detail? Why would they not need to change playing styles or player tendencies or anything?

They've been developing their gameplay for years and it is the main focus for this game. The players interact with each other like real humans. With them having an engine like that, there is only so much work it will require each year to bring it up to do date. You look at Madden's series...for the last 10 or so years, every year you play the game, the game engine has changed (for better or for worse) each time as they try to get it to play better and then it messes up other areas of the game. With the gameplay in backbreaker, you can see it in motion and can tell that everything looks so natural. They will only have to polish it up each year to bring it up to date, and in the meantime, they can focus more on adding bells and whistles and focusing on presentation.

# 42 23 @ 04/30/10 12:04 PM

I guess we will see. To say any game acts like humans is just a bit much to put on the shoulders of any dev, although you could get pretty close in alot of reactions and realtime interactions, but I've yet to see one game where everything is completely human like in that sense.

I hope they make it though because its important to the gaming industry in many ways.

# 43 23 @ 04/30/10 01:22 PM

What he meant was they rushed to implement the structure on nex gen... I said the same thing regarding nba live.

Looks like they messed up the player model frames. Til this day the body is unproportioned, legs dont fully connect to the hip area fully. You say thats silly and who's looking at that, but then you see the players runing all weird, and jumping in the air doing reverse layups without bending their legs and you consider, either they have power mechanical springs in their knees or they are doing some impossible stuff that looks all weird.

Football and basketball alike have the same issues with fundamental problems.

# 44 radatdude2 @ 04/30/10 01:48 PM

very true i remember madden 06 next-gen was a shell of the xbox version. Seems they used the same tech but upgraded the graphics to a more powerful system to rush a title for launch of the 360. Thats why you see instead of starting over they are playing catch up. Smalls things such as body proportions and balls size which are fundamentals still loom as large issues.

# 45 23 @ 04/30/10 01:55 PM

I explained that a little funny but the point it, bringing the games over on the new system was implemented wrong. It shows in the game.

Not only are there issues looming, but we dont see them taking steps to correct the problems. That is what is a bother to me. Some people see the irony in comparing this game to a game in Madden because it is supposedly more of an arcadey game.

What I see irony in is, People saying Madden will never be as good as a game made back in 2004 on an old console. This gen has been mediocre regarding sports games the way they promoted how much power these consoles can push. Well we arent getting the full effect of it yet and thats evident.

# 46 elgreazy1 @ 04/30/10 02:40 PM

Nice to see a piece by ESPN. This gives the game a pretty good shot in the promotions department and gives NM more of a chance to succeed in the pocket book if/when the game is a success.

# 47 stiffarmleft @ 04/30/10 02:42 PM

Hopefully EA already had the dev kits for the xbox 720 and PS4 or we'll be in the same situation next gen, although I have a feeling we will not be seeing any new consoles anytime soon.

# 48 mestevo @ 04/30/10 03:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stiffarmleft


	Hopefully EA already had the dev kits for the xbox 720 and PS4 or we'll be in the same situation next gen, although I have a feeling we will not be seeing any new consoles anytime soon.

They're a couple years out, the motion control gimmick stuff is the stopgap for Sony and MS while they try and get more out of this generation.

# 49 JayBee74 @ 05/02/10 01:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AttackAttack


	There is nobody on the sideline in that picture of the stadium?

I think it's possible there will be no players on the sideline. Last confirmed reports have only 13 stadiums (3 unlock-able) for all the teams.

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