Burnout Paradise: Craig Sullivan Interview
Added 03/03/2008 by Justin McBride
During Burnout Paradise Community Day, between multiplayer Burnout Paradise sessions, I was given the opportunity to sit down with Craig Sullivan, lead designer of Burnout Paradise and ask him a few questions, ranging from the possibility of a massively multiplayer Burnout to downloadable content, all regarding Criterion’s latest release.
Talk Xbox: When you guys decided to implement an open world feature in Burnout
Craig Sullivan: I’m a massive Need for Speed fan and I think Need for Speed: Most Wanted is one of my favorite games. When we made the decision make the open world with Burnout, we knew we had the power with the new machines to implement this massive, open world while still staying true to Burnout and keeping it 60 frames per second. It changed everything about the way we looked at things. We’ve played other games. Need for Speed is a great game but they still kept some of the menu systems, hopping around and defined tracks and things like that.
With Burnout, we tried to make it so that, if you see something in the game, you can drive to it. If you see a car park, you can drive up beside it and drive on top of it. If you can see some mountains out there in the distance, you can drive up to those mountains and drive around them. Everything we put into the game is about player choice and about the game meeting your expectations of “Can I do this? Yes I can.” That’s where we feel we’ve innovated and gone a way from what other driving games are doing at the moment, the fact that it is your Burnout, your way. The fact that the license progression system allows you to play the game as you want to. You’re not forced to do race events. You don’t have to do races if you don’t want to, you can do some of the other events and still finish the game. It’s all about player choice and I think that’s something players should be demanding in the next-gen.
Talk Xbox: You’ve obviously done a great job of simplifying the multiplayer experience and knowing that, was there any thought about doing something massively multiplayer?
Craig Sullivan: We did think about that, at the moment though, the game runs eight players in this big, open world at 60 frames per second, there’s not many games that do that. With the Easy Drive system we have, you can be driving along at 200 miles per hour, hit the d-pad a few times and you’re online straight away, that’s something we’re really proud of. I think it’s an innovation for how people get online and it’s certainly how we think online should be. Something easy to access, not about waiting around and wasting people’s time.
Did we think about going massively multiplayer with it? We thought about a lot of things during development but eight players seems like a good number for us at the time being, maybe that’ll increase in the future as we work with the system a bit more but I don’t know if we’ll go crazy massive with it.
Talk Xbox: So you’ve put some thought into expanding on the eight player limit?
Craig Sullivan: We looked at it, we always have guys working on stuff back in the
Talk Xbox: You’ve talked about some technical things and you’ve been pushing the system really hard. Were there any horror stories during development?
Craig Sullivan: We actually did okay. We rewrote all of the crash physics about six months from the end. That was quite scary for a lot of people on the team. We have a crashing system and a physics system in the game that was cool, it would’ve been okay for other games but we looked at it and we thought that Burnout has to have the best crashes out there. We all kind of sat around and we all got into the meeting room and said “Look, I don’t think this is good enough.” So we threw it all away and started again, which is pretty scary. A lot of people buy Burnout because they expect really good crashes and six months from the end of the project we threw it all away and started again. So we’re lucky that all paid out for us.
I think all of the crashes in the game are beautiful and the destruction is really nice. That was probably the only horror story we have. We threw it all away because we thought it wasn’t good enough, started again and made it better so we’re happy it all came together at the end.
Talk Xbox: How long did it take you to implement the physics based crash system seen in Burnout
Craig Sullivan: We were working on the crash system for two years. The game took two years to make with 120 people when the team was at its biggest. When I said we rewrote everything in the last six months, we did that using everything we’d learned up to that point and we refined it and made it better by changing it at the end. Burnout has always been about smashing the car up and driving like a lunatic so we’re always looking into improving on our crashing technology.
Talk Xbox: Is there a definitive version of the game?
Craig Sullivan: We get asked this a lot, but both games are identical as far as what they look like and I’ll bet anybody a thousand dollars if I give them a load of screenshots whether they can choose which one is Xbox 360 and which is Playstation 3 because they’re both the same. We pride ourselves on the fact that if someone buys Burnout Paradise should be determined by the console they have. So pretty much, they’re identical.
Talk Xbox: Some Burnout fans are lamenting the loss of the crash mode. What was the reason you chose to do the Showtime mode instead of crash?
Craig Sullivan: We could’ve done crash, but we feel that crash mode was in the old games and Burnout Paradise had a new feel to us and every design decision we made was about seamless player choice meaning no loading and no stopping and starting, so we designed Showtime so you can do it anywhere anytime online or off or if you’re in a race or any other event. It’s a fresh new experience for us.
The other thing that gives us is the fact that you can play Showtime with eight players online simultaneously and that’s something we could never have done with the crash mode. We always feel like the games we make at Criterion are a reflection on who we are at the time and Showtime feels more “next-gen” to us and it feels more fitting to Burnout Paradise. We understand that some people were massive fans of crash and they’ll miss it but some people are now massive fans of Showtime so you can’t please all of the people all of the time and we try our best. We’re interested in doing new things and going forward.
Talk Xbox: Do you have a personal favorite next generation feature that you feel couldn’t have been done on the previous generation consoles besides the open world?
Craig Sullivan: Besides the open world? Well, we feel that the open world is the reason why Burnout Paradise is next-gen. We could not have made Burnout Paradise on the Playstation 2 or Xbox and have it run at 60 frames per second.
I think the online stuff is really interesting. Maybe we could’ve done that on the Playstation 2 or Xbox but we probably would’ve struggled. We couldn’t have done the level of crash deformation we have now on the old systems simply because we use so much processing power. Every crash you see in the game is totally unique because we’re physically and correctly modeling everything. Since we take into account whether the car is made of carbon fiber, steel or aluminum, the force of the impact and crumple the car in a physically correct manner, smashing the windows and taking wheels off at the right time. We simply couldn’t have done this on the older machines.
Talk Xbox: You mentioned something earlier about downloadable content. Is there anything you can tell us about that?
Craig Sullivan: I can’t tell you details yet. We should be making an announcement soon. All I can say is that we’re always interested in innovating and doing new things that people don’t expect so don’t expect out downloadable content to be like all the others out there. We think there’s better ways of making the game better and having downloadable content that adds to the experience you already have so we’re going to do some really cool stuff, but I can’t release any details as of now.
Talk Xbox: Have you thought about the possibility of a sequel?
Craig Sullivan: We’ve thought about it. We’re already working on new projects in our offices in the
Burnout Paradise released on January 22nd in the
