Cory Ledesma: Good question. It's great to see the superstars play our games and hear comments like, "I haven't used that move in forever!" Or, "I really like that move, I'm going to steal it!" We're now impacting the things that they do in the ring. With the relationship that we have with the WWE, we piggyback off of each other. They show our footage on WWE programming, and we're mimicking the stuff they do on television. We offer features like create-a-finisher that give superstars the ability to come up with new moves and such. It's cool that the game and the WWE program have that connection, and the two can grow together.GameSpy: What kind of relationship do you have with WWE regarding final approvals on storylines? This next game will have specially tailored storylines for individual superstars. Do you have creative carte-blanche?
Cory Ledesma: I can give you the behind-the-scenes on how this works, and we don't tell this to a lot of people. What we do is that we draft a first script for each superstar. We have a season mode designer that knows the wrestlers really well, and is a huge WWE fan. He comes up with the first draft. It may be based on a brainstorming session with the WWE writers, we work with them.
Then we work off that, and a WWE writer came and worked with us in a conference room for hours finalizing scripts. They worked out the finest little detail like, "John Cena would never say that. He never uses that word. Let's change that..." Which is great information for us, to understand what makes them tick, what's right and what's wrong, and get us in the heads of the WWE writers and how they tell a story. How the plot points work. What works best and what doesn't. A partner would remember you backstabbing them in this situation, for instance. It's giving our writers that insight into the WWE that helps us develop the stories.
The superstars don't really control what goes on, since we mimic the programming. They're controlled by the script. But we give them free reign, so if they don't say something in the show, we don't want them to say it in the game, so we can get an authentic experience.
GameSpy: What feature in '09 is going to make people want to play this game the most?
Cory Ledesma: The feature I can see would be the overall change to tag team matches. Someone recently told me, "tag teams aren't really huge overall in the WWE now." The thing is, that sometimes we'll put in features that don't necessarily coincide with the WWE, but will make for a great game feature. And gamers now are big multiplayer gamers, getting together with their buddies. Tag team is perfect for that. It has a lot of things you can do, a lot of drama, a great play experience. But it's not necessarily tied to what's going on in the WWE.GameSpy: How hard is it to work with a license that changes with every given day like the WWE? What difficulties does it introduce, and what decisions are made to come up with a good roster and so on?
Cory Ledesma: I love and really appreciate that you brought that up. I always find myself trying to voice that. It's so challenging, but I don't think how difficult this is is appreciated. In any other sports game, you have an off-season and trading deadlines. It's really difficult to keep up with it, and it's an ever-changing thing. Something as simple as a guy changing his name can make your game immediately outdated. It's difficult to deal with and we have cutoff points each year, no changes after that point. If someone really big like Chris Jericho comes in, then we'll pull as many strings as we can. The cost of getting him in is worth that addition. In some circumstances we'll pull those strings, but we try to stick to our deadlines. Downloadable content will let users update the experience after purchase so we can update, keeping the content fresh and updated, and that way fans will feel like the game they bought won't be stale and outdated.GameSpy: Downloadable content is a double-edged sword, no? You want people to look forward to next year's game and roster update, but if you're updating rosters online, will people still want to buy next year's game?
Cory Ledesma: That's a great question and we've asked ourselves that tons of times. We don't think that'll be the case because people don't buy the game for the updated rosters. Some might consider it a big deal, to have their game updated, but there's more to it than that.
The plan isn't to offer tons of new superstars. We're not telling what exactly we're offering, but it's not going to be a huge amount of content. It'll be enough content, so say if Chris Jericho or something big like that happens, we can make that big change as soon as possible.
We feel pretty content, because if we offer features like create-a-finisher that fans want, there's no way they can resist the next game to play the next big feature. The features we offer aren't so reliant on being up to date with the WWE. I think with stories that keep changing, and new features in each game, we'll keep the fans interested.
