The solution, according to Fergusson and Cleven, is a different sort of player education. 'We were trying to find counters or things to fix multiplayer,' Fergusson says.įergusson and Cleven suggest the developers had a sense during the development of previous Gears games that multiplayer needed to have the same sort of weapon emphasis as the campaign, which was theoretically training players to play the game a certain way. Previously, the development team made a concerted effort with things like stopping power and increasing the efficacy of the Lancer against other players as a means of resolving player tactics that were considered too effective. Part of that comes from an acknowledgment of higher-level play and its place in Gears of War's multiplayer. They're not fighting for resources.'Īnd that has allowed The Coalition to rethink how the multiplayer coexists with the campaign, and how multiplayer may be the thing that drives Gears of War back toward relevance.

So multiplayer has the same priority campaign has. With 4, the day our campaign designer started is the day Ryan started. Over Gears of War 2 and Gears of War 3, you see that allocation slightly change. 'In Gears of War, it was 90 percent campaign and 10 percent multiplayer. 'In the past we've had a difference in resource attribution,' Fergusson says. Cobbled together in the final stretch of development, it was limited in scope. When Gears of War debuted in 2006, multiplayer was an afterthought, albeit an effective one. And while a traditional campaign is a major part of that initiative, more than ever, competitive multiplayer is where Gears of War 4's sights lie. The Coalition's mandate is to change that, to make Gears relevant again.

'When we were that big, I think it was just assumed that people that were going to play the game were going to move on ,' he says.īut in the almost five years since Gears of War 3 launched in 2011, the world has largely moved on to other things. In discussing the migratory patterns of players over the course of the franchise's life, Fergusson explains that original Gears developer Epic Games could have certain expectations about multiplayer activity.

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