Showdown: Legends of Wrestling Q&A with Scott Johnson - Interviews

Before the Rock even took cooking classes there were legions of wrestling fans all over North America. Even today wrestling enjoys a very strong presence in the marketplace and game makers know this, turning out wrestling games in the last few years like never before. We query Scott Johnson, ex-NASA employee and Lead Programmer on Legends of Wrestling: Showdown, on his background in gaming, the feasibility of calling Showdown an "historical" game, working with wrestlers, the influence of other wrestling games on Showdown, and the new control (among other topics). Thanks for your time, Scott!

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Legends of Wrestling: Showdown Q&A Conducted by Omni

First the preliminaries: Your name, background in the gaming industry, general education and how fanatic a wrestling fan you are.

My name is Scott Johnson and I'm the Lead Programmer on Showdown. I've been in the game industry for about eight years now working on PC and console games. I had worked at NASA for a while and then finished a master's degree in Electrical Engineering before getting into games.

The funny thing is that I loved wrestling back in 80's. My favorite wrestlers were George "The Animal" Steele and of course Hulk Hogan. My most memorable wrestling moment was when Rowdy Roddy Piper hit Jimmy Snuka in the face with a coconut during an interview. I was about twelve years old and I was so mad at Piper. That is why it is a real treat to be working on a wrestling game based on what I consider to be wrestling's best times.

What is the development team doing to address specific criticisms of the first Legends of Wrestling games?

The main improvement is that the whole game is much more approachable. The old system of chaining moves together is gone because it was too hard for most people to play. Also, we've changed the game around to show off more moves plus we've had another motion caption session to fill out the wrestler move sets. The team spends many hours carefully piecing the moves together and we would like our fans to see as much as possible of them.

How close have you been working with the wrestlers involved? (In terms of getting their signature moves right, voice-overs, etc.)

We work off wrestling reference material and on occasion we get to meet the wrestlers themselves. For instance, Brett Hart was in the studio and he did the voice work for our tutorial movies. So the "Greatest Technical Wrestler Ever" will be teaching you how to play the game.

Can Showdown be considered an historical game? Will we see any "WWF" branding to keep it accurate?

I think you could call Showdown "historical" with a few embellishments. It is something that the team debates quite often. If you watch wrestling evolve over the years you notice that the amount of pageantry has increased dramatically. It wouldn't be historical to have an older wrestler, like Ivan Putski, doing an entrance that is made for today's TV audiences, yet that is what some of today's audience expects. So we made a small tradeoff and some of the entrances are a little flashier than the real wrestler would have had.

Do developers worry about licensing issues?

Yes, we have to but it is not a major concern. There are some simple guidelines that the legal people give us to stay out of trouble and they are not difficult to follow.

As the team crunches toward launch, how has Showdown been received by the QA team?

The people in our publishing arm have been very positive about the game. We have received several compliments from the sales force and marketing people that when they are showing the game to buyers they are actually having fun doing it. This says a lot about how approachable we made the game and that our new improvements are right on track.

How did you decide which wrestlers to include and which ones to leave out?

That is a question better suited to our marketing people but I'll tell you what I know. Showdown is a very complicated license to maintain. Instead of working with a league or a player's association we work with the individual wrestlers and sometimes their estates. Each wrestler has had a contract with the WWE and so we have to be sensitive to past and current contracts. Our marketing people though have managed all of that and put together a full roster of wrestling greats that I'm sure the fans will appreciate.

How many wrestlers will have to be unlocked by progressing through the game?

That is something that is still being discussed. We want to give players incentives to explore all the features in the game but we don't want to lock out someone's favorite wrestler.

Have other wrestling games - Def Jam Vendetta, WWE Smackdown, Ultimate

MUSCLE, for example - influenced the direction or execution of Showdown?

The competition always influences your game. For instance, we experimented with removing tie-up from the game. Early on though we didn't like the change and we decided to put it back in. Then the next Smackdown came out and they were moving more towards having tie-up so we felt flattered that they were making their game more like ours.

Does the team have a driving principle that sets the artistic vision from start to finish?

We have gone for authenticity. Our artists have spent many hours with pictures improving their likeness and the same goes for the arenas. The arenas are as close as we can make them.

Who has final say as to what can and cannot be included in Showdown?

We work as a team including everyone on the publishing side of the game. For a major feature to get in the game it generally has to be agreed on by the major stake holders in the project. On the team it is our producer, Francois Bertrand, who has the most say. Francois has a twenty-year history in making games including working on Virtua Fighter in Japan, which was the original 3D fighting game. So he has earned the right to have the final say as to what goes in the game and what doesn't.

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Will Showdown's main selling point be nostalgia for "older" gamers (20 - 30 years old)?

There will be a lot of people that buy it for nostalgia but we also think some of the younger wrestling fans will be interested too. Hulk Hogan is a big draw for younger kids. I can't keep from thinking about a kid I saw at a WWE event with a sign that said, "Mr. America is Hulk Hogan!" As if he wanted to tell the world that he had figured out the secret! But anyway, we think that the game plays well enough that the younger people will want to play it.

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Has the development schedule been difficult to maintain? What specifically has the team done to remain on schedule?

We are a little behind schedule for reasons that I won't bore you with. We are doing what most teams do to make up time and that is to work longer and harder. Our other option is to cut features but we have kept away from that. Our competition cut commentary late in their project so it is especially important that we have it and it shows off well.

How has the control scheme been tweaked? Or has it?

The new control scheme is more than what I would call a tweak. People who have played Legends II will know that to counter a move you had to watch a meter in the screen corner and perform the counter in a very small window. This meant that you had to stop watching the action on the screen and carefully watch the countering meter. With the new changes, you can pick up the controller and experiment with it to figure out the buttons and their functions. We also help out the players by showing them what the controls are as the game situation changes. If your wrestler is on a turnbuckle we show you on the screen which button makes him dive off to attack your opponent. If he is next to a weapon, we show you how to pick it up and then which buttons will let you beat your opponent silly. The control changes are a major improvement from Legends II.

(March 17, 2004)


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