June 25, 2007

“Heroic” Baseball!? That’s The Aim for Blue Castle and 2K Sports’ The BIGS
by Louis Bedigian 

“We really wanted to make a game for those people. The people who just want their sport – the fun baseball game.” 

For The BIGS, the newest entry from Blue Castle and 2K Sports, development goals went further than great and exciting gameplay – they wanted to make a baseball game that could be classified as being heroic. 

“[It was] an opportunity to do something different than a sim game,” said Dan Brady, General Manager for The BIGS. “We’re big fans of the sport [and] we’re big fans of baseball games in general. In my mind, baseball games have gotten a little bit slower in the last two years. The pacing has been a little more difficult for the casual consumer to really enter into.”  

He promises that The BIGS is going in the opposite direction, imbuing “an old-school idea of what arcade can be.” “It’s faster, which makes it a little more accessible to the casual consumer,” he said enthusiastically. “However, it’s still authentic. We’re not breaking the sport in any way. We’re not taking the game out of the stadiums. Those stadiums are cooler than any other place we could put a game of baseball. We wanted to pay homage to them and make it stylish. We’re basically celebrating the sport. It is heroic baseball, and that was our ultimate goal when starting this whole thing.” 

But whatever you do, do not confuse this game for the next SlugFest. Dan said plainly and honestly, “We don’t like SlugFest. We thought it turned baseball into a laughingstock. When you see your pitcher [after a homerun] and he’s literally crying, that’s not celebrating the sport. That’s not the baseball that I like. That’s not the baseball any of my friends like. People who want baseball to be cool or think it’s cool, that [SlugFest] is not the game they want to play. We really wanted to make a game for those people. The people who just want their sport – the fun baseball game.” 

“We put a lot of effort into making sure the controls are accessible so that you can just dive in,” Jason Lee (Lead Producer) added. “We feel really successful [with that]. I think those things will grab people and pull them in. Beyond that it’s the depth – the mini-games, the power-up system, the turbo, and this game is a blast to play multiplayer. I think it’s going to get a lot of online play.” 

When it comes to his favorite content, Jason couldn’t hide his excitement for the Homerun Pinball mode. “It’ so over-the-top and audacious,” he says. “It was cool how that one came about. We were throwing around ideas, you know – where else could you play baseball? What other venues could we play a game of baseball in? Time Square came up in that discussion. The more that we thought about it, the more it seemed like we could do something a little more special with that than just playing a game of baseball. Taking batting practice in Time Square and basically earning points for the destruction and chaos that you’re causing. It sounded like a really cool idea, and sure enough, once we built it, [this mode became] one of the most fun things in the game. 

Regarding The BIGS’ approach to stadiums, Jason said that it was a “fantastic opportunity for the sport.” He noted that baseball is unique in that every stadium is different. “The footprints of the fields are different and every stadium has its own personality. What we attempted to do there was look at the signature elements of each park and just exaggerate those things – put the focus on those things.”  

“The BIGS is a very unique product. It’s not trying to reinvent the sport.”—Dan Brady  

Dan describes The BIGS as an idea and a worldview. “One of the things I’ve told my team to get to this point (and I’ve told a lot of the marketing people),” he says, “is imagine back to the Gladiator movie – it’s that moment where he enters the coliseum and he has this monstrous entrance and the people are there and they’re seeing the entire spectacle of the moment. That’s what The BIGS is. It’s over-the-top in the way that it’s hero-icizing the whole moment and the whole flavor of baseball. The words ‘The BIGS’ really summarize that. It also plays in really nicely with our primary long-term mode in the game, which is about a rookie and bringing him into The BIGS.” 

Jason took over next to explain the concept of the Rookie Challenge. “The first thing you do is create your rookie. We’ve got a character creation system. You build your guy, give him a few attributes, and enter The BIGS. 

“The [next] thing you do is go through spring training. We have a series of cool mini-games where the better you do, the more points you earn, and you can go and spend them on your attributes. Once you come out of spring training, you build your guy up a bit, and have that moment of actually entering The BIGS. It’s opening day, a massive stadium, we’ve got cinematics. From that point on it’s about building your character and getting attitude. We’ve got unlockables like sunglasses and tattoos and really cool bat graphics. 

“The whole point of the mode is that you want to take this rookie and turn him into a star and become the MVP of the World Series.” 

“This game was written 100% from scratch on all platforms. [We used] an original baseball engine and an original rendering engine. There was not a single line of code burrowed from any other game or company.”—Dan Brady 

Given that most 2K Sports games are a success, it was easy to imagine that the developers are already thinking of a potential sequel. “The BIGS has a long way to go yet,” Dan revealed. “It’s an amazing game, a very different way of playing baseball, and we have ideas for the future. They’re pretty darn exciting. We’re really excited to talk to 2K about that kind of stuff.” 

“It has been a labor of love,” Jason added. “We could not be more proud of this game and would love to see it go further.” 

Tell us about some of the dramatic wall grabs, spectacular diving plays, epic homeruns and other BIGS-specific moves. 

Jason Lee, Lead Producer: One thing that’s important to mention – not only have we thrown in animations [to make them look cool], we have also taken this opportunity to include [additional gameplay functionality]. When you do a wall catch, you don’t just hit a button and the guy goes up and catches the ball. [Instead], you enter this God of War-style mini-game where it’s a button match. The difficulty that you’re playing on, and the attribute that affects whether your player has a good glove or poor glove, there’s a longer or shorter button sequence that you have to match before the ball gets to his glove. 

We also have a Home Plate Collision where, as soon as you’re about to run into the catcher, we bring up a mini-game and if you’re head-to-head you actually button-mash against your opponent. Whoever can button-mash better wins the duel. 

One of the things 2K Sports is known for is releasing sports games that have their own unique feel. Will The BIGS follow suit? Is it being designed so that, if it becomes a franchise, you will always be able to pick up a game in the series and say, "Yep, this is a BIGS game"? 

Dan Brady, General Manager: The BIGS is entirely unique. It does share some of the common branding of 2K Sports, and we are certainly pushing this as a 2K Sports game. But when you fire up The BIGS, it doesn’t feel like any other 2K Sports titles. We’re different on everything from music on the front end to graphics on the back end – everything is a very different and very BIGS-centric worldview here that we created for ourselves. All the way from the absolute-driving, hard rock music that we’ve got for this game, all the way to the over-the-top sound effects. It’s just a very unique product in the 2K Sports brand. 

Can you compare and contrast the different versions for us? I would expect the 360 and PS3 versions to be very similar. But how do they differ from the old-gen PS2 version, the handheld PSP edition, and the Wii version, which will use motion controls? 

DB: The PS3 is going to be using the SIXAXIS controller. There are certain moments in the game where you’re going to tilt the controller to show intent to the batter as to where you’re going to hit the ball, or diving for the ball, and during the mini-games. We’re using the SIXAXIS for that. 

JL: [Regarding the 360 version] We support up to four-player multiplayer online. Another cool thing we allow you to do is upload your pinball scores. This is one of the things I am really looking forward to. I’ve posted some good scores here, but I want to see how many points [others] can score on this thing.  

DB: Our PS2 and PSP versions are really solid versions of the game. Personally I had a lot of fun working on them. Once you move up to the Xbox 360 and PS3, obviously those are next-gen, and with them we had the opportunity to put in the Homerun Pinball. It’s a mode that demanded next-gen to be [executed] properly. On Wii the most obvious thing is the control scheme. The game is The BIGS, but as soon as you’re swinging the bat and controlling the ball with the remote, as opposed to pressing buttons, it’s a very different experience. Not only the obvious stuff like throwing and hitting the ball, but even the mini-games, like Home Plate Collision. When two users enter, it’s [a game of] who can drum the controllers faster. 

Could you elaborate the application of motion technology in the Wii version? 

DB: There are some limitations with the Wii remote that we have to work within. I think we’ve done a really good job. We are using the Wii remote for the player wiggle. We have made it so that based on the unique individual stances of the players, when they’re at the box, that there are different constraints for how the wiggle looks for each of those stances. If a guy is in a crouched stance, then he has a very different motion than if he’s in a very vertical stance. From there the gameplay is timing-based. You do the wiggle, you basically show some style, feel a little bit like a king there, and play ball as the pitch comes across the plate.