WarCry editor Suzie Ford had the chance to put the thumb screws to FusionFall's executive producer Chris Waldron. The interview lands on WarCry just in time for the December 5-7th Preview Weekend.
Please introduce yourself and tell about your position on the FusionFall development team.
Sure. My name is Chris Waldron and I'm the Executive Producer for Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall.
You recently had a 'preview weekend'. How successful was it?
We were very happy with how our first Sneak Peek weekend went. We intentionally didn't do much advance advertising for it, because in some ways it was a test run and an extension of our current beta. The response was very gratifying, the servers stayed up just fine, the players had fun and we got a lot of great feedback on our survey. Overall it was a great success.
What sort of feedback did you receive from players?
We have a simple survey that pops up whenever you close or quit the game. The survey has numerical questions (Example: On a scale of 1-5, how did you like the game?), as well as a feedback field. We got tens of thousands of responses to the survey and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
What were players especially happy about?
The comments we heard the most had to do with how excited players were about seeing Cartoon Network characters all together in a game. We also saw very favorable remarks about the art, the different kinds of items, weapons and clothes in the game and, of course, the Nanos. Another thing that the Sneak Peek players talked about was how much they enjoyed the platforming aspect of FusionFall.
What are some of the best suggestions made by players?
One of the favorite things for players to suggest in the FusionFall beta is what Cartoon Network characters they want to see in the game. Some of the suggestions we received are of ones that are already in the game, but they just haven't seen them yet. They're giving us some really good ideas for our expansions.
Was anything overlooked that developers figured players would notice?
When players first come out of the tutorial, they are in a zone called Sector V, where the Kids Next Door tree-house is. We have jump pads that players can use to bounce up real high and get up on the floating platform that the tree-house is on. It's quite a dramatic introduction to the three-dimensional nature of FusionFall. We noticed that a lot of players didn't know what the jump pads were for, until they saw someone else using one. It was a relatively easy fix to better direct the players to the jump pads.
