While most third-party developers are currently concentrating their PSP development on porting existing brands over to Sony's handheld, offbeat developer, Planet Moon, is working on a brand new third-person shooter that makes unique use of the console's Wi-Fi capabilities.
In Infected, you must save New York from a terrible virus that's turning the city's inhabitants into psychotic zombies. Along with fast-paced action and double-helpings of gore, the game boasts a multiplayer mode that lets you infect other gamers with your own unique virus which then spreads from machine to machine.
Is this a hint at the future of online gaming as redefined through Sony's incredible machine? Planet Moon producer Aaron Loeb explains all…
So when did you stat work on Infected and what were your key influences for the title? From the description in the press release, I'm getting a 28 Days Later/Dawn of the Dead feel... Infected was born as an idea in April of last year, but we really got underway in September. The influences were the entire "zombie" genre, but particularly the new breed of fast, vicious zombies that don't have time to groan "braaaaains," because they're too busy tearing you to pieces with their teeth. Everyone is familiar with the idea of blowing up the walking dead, so we wanted to put our unique stamp on it – in this case that you're infected too and you can pass your infection on to other players.
From a development standpoint, what have been the most interesting aspects of the PSP hardware so far? WiFi is top of the list. Every user will have the ability to play with their friends from day one. That means every game can and should take advantage of multiplayer. The clarity and fidelity of the screen coupled with the high-powered GPU also has a huge impact. It means you can make portable games with cutting-edge, crisp 3D graphics.
Does the PSP hardware offer any interesting new possibilities in terms of, say, special effects, game physics, etc? Are there aspects of the hardware that are more advanced than those in, say, the PS2? Only a tiny percentage of PS2 users can play online. Only those with multitap can play with more than one other person. Out of the gate, PSP users will be able to play with up to 15 people in their vicinity and connect to the Internet through hot spots. Those are huge differences. The portability of data through memory sticks also allows players to customize their games, create unique player data, and pass those customizations and data on to their friends easily – either by passing memory sticks or over WiFi. Using memory cards on consoles has never achieved this ease of data exchange.
During the development of the gameplay, have you treated the PSP as a standard console, just with a smaller screen, or have you taken into consideration the different ways in which gamers interact with portable platforms? We absolutely have taken the differences between the PSP and standard consoles into consideration and have designed the game from the ground up for the PSP. Infected has two major game modes: missions and the lab. Missions are fast paced and immediately fun – there's not a lot of running around waiting for the game part to happen. The second you start the game, there's an Infected on the map chasing down a civilian and passing on the infection. At the top of the screen, you have a balance of power showing you at all times how many civilians and how many Infected are on the map, meaning that at all times you are under "game pressure" and at every second you know the status of the game. This is great for a portable because you may have to pause for a second to pay your bus fare or to flush the toilet, and when you unpause, you want to get right back into it without having to read a mission briefing. The lab, on the other hand, is not time-critical and allows you to purchase upgrades for your character. This is perfect for when your attention is only half on the game – you're in a business meeting or your spouse is talking to you, for instance.
What kind of weapons and enemies can we expect to see in the game? Are you trying anything new with these elements? It wouldn't be a Planet Moon game without new weapons. We will allow the player to call in air strikes and level large areas. We have guns that turn the Infected into clones of your character so they do your bidding. One weapon sets the Infected targeted on fire, and as he runs away from you, every Infected he passes also bursts into flame. There are tons of special weapons, upgrades and pickups in the player's arsenal in Infected.
The viral element is fascinating. Could you expand a little on how this works. I take it that the player takes part in one-on-one fights and then transfers his avitar icon to the loser. But how does this avitar then spread to other users? It's pretty simple – and quite evil. You and I play a multiplayer deathmatch. I frag you more times than you frag me, so I win. Each of our avatars are infected with unique viruses that we get to name – I've called mine the Wicked Laughter virus; you've called yours the Unhappy Toad virus.
When I beat you, I infect your PSP with the Wicked Laughter virus. This has two effects. When you go back to your single-player game, missions you'd already beaten in single-player have popped back up with a border around them showing they are Infected. When you play the missions, they show that the Infected in the mission all have Wicked Laughter. The enemies in your session all look like my unique avatar, chasing you down, killing you again and again. If you beat the three single-player missions I've infected with my virus, you clear it off your PSP.
The second effect that passing my virus has on your PSP is that when you start a multiplayer session, rather than showing up with the Unhappy Toad virus, you instead have the Wicked Laughter virus. Anyone you beat in multiplayer gets infected with my virus instead of yours.
There's an advantage to passing on my virus. Every player has ranking points against other players. When I beat you, I got a point for infecting you. When you beat someone else and infect them with my virus, you get a point and I get another point. When your victim passes on the virus to another person, he gets a point, you get a point and I get a point. There's a real advantage to being in one of these "chain letters" of infection – the more people in the chain, the more points you get. But if you don't care about points, you can just beat my virus in single-player or wait a few days and the infection will go away.
I presume that the multiplayer option is LAN-based? If so, how do you track the spread of your virus? Tracking the spread of the virus will be done by connecting the PSP to the Internet. Games are played by LAN only and not over the Internet to ensure a satisfying gameplay experience for all involved.
How do you see such viral gaming elements being developed in the future? Players passing around data and enhancing that data is one of the exciting areas of game design opened by the increased prominence of multiplayer. We're sure to see more player-created content in the future for consoles and handhelds – people creating challenges for their friends and passing them around. We're excited by ideas where one person creates something unique (for instance, a level), sends it to their friend, the way their friend plays it actually changes the level, then it goes to another person who changes it, and so on, until it eventually comes back to the creator and is a whole a new experience. All of this and more is possible due to: ease of interconnectivity (such as WiFi on the PSP) and increasingly cheap storage capacity (such as memory sticks).
So did Planet Moon's Wi-Fi infection concept come from viral marketing? No, but please tell your friends that it did. And please tell them to tell their friends.
