With it's black and white visuals and extreme violence, MadWorld is perhaps the most intriguing new Wii game. We were lucky enough to speak to Platinum Games about their new creation in London earlier this week.
Why did Platinum Games Decide To Collaborate With Sega? When they first started Platinum games, they were in talks with many different publishers but they had a vision for creating exciting and unique games and it was Sega who gave them the freedom to create the games using the vision that they had originally come up with.
You have three or four games lines up. Do the directors share ideas? We don't get on well at all! Seriously, the various concepts are separate entities. On a technical level there is a lot of sharing that goes on throught the company but, as far as creativity, each director is responsible for their own titles, but at producer level they do manage the overall live-up, making sure there is a balance.
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Can you tell us a bit about MadWorld's story and the aim of the game? As far as the story goes in Madworld, the main character, Jack, is actually taking part in a game show called Death Watch. He has personal reasons for taking part in the game show that will be revealed in the game. As he plays through the game, various missions will be related to the game show - there are lots of rules in the game show -and that determines how the player progresses through the game.
How much were you influenced by Frank Miller's Sin City? Of course the influence of Frank Miller is big, given the style of the game but that's not all we looked at. We looked at a lot of different American comics and comic creators and pooled all that inspiration for the style. It would be very hard to find an artist who doesn't like Frank Miller so whenever you try and find a new art style and make something that has a new sense to it you always see Frank Miller's name come up because he has such a unique style. So from that respect we can't say that we're not influenced by him.
It looks like you're taking quite a risk with Madworld. It's black and white and very violent. It looks like it's aimed at hardcore players. Is this the case? We realise there is a risk attached to creating a black and white game as it has the potential to make the game difficult to play. However, the way we built the game we think the art style will have enough impact to make it worth it. As far as the contents of the game, the violence and grotesque images that you saw. We feel that games aren't something to be used as educational tools and from that respect they wanted to create something that was fun to play that was exciting. They want to create something that was over the top and allow players to get into the game and have fun. As far as they're concerned it's not really a risk because they're creating a fun game
