How Geometry Wars almost never happened: and other tales from the making of a Live legend

Gamesblog meets coder Stephen Cakebread, whose test app became a cult favourite...
Geometry Wars
Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2: not the last you'll see of Geometry Wars... but perhaps the last in the Retro Evolved line? /

While at GameCity last week I managed to grab a quick chat with Geometry Wars creator, Stephen Cakebread, and Bizarre Creations games manager, Craig Howard, about the origins and future of the shoot-'em-up series.

How did the game studio behind driving titles like Metropolis Street Racer and Project Gotham actually find itself making a vector-style shooter? Here's how...

So can you remind us how Geometry Wars came about?
SC: When we started working with the Xbox prototype hardware there were some issues with the analogue sticks on the controllers – this was only on the prototype, but we were still developing on it so we had to work around it. We wrote a test app to help with the solution then inputted it into Project Gotham Racing. Then we got to the end of Gotham and went into bug lockdown mode, where no-one can make any changes unless it's to fix a bug, and towards the end of that basically, no-one was doing anything except playing the game – we were just waiting for feedback from Microsoft.

At that point I'd been playing the game for a year so I was a bit bored. So I took the test app I'd written and just started playing around with it, and I kind of turned it into a game – and because it was an analogue stick test at the start, it sort of stayed an analogue stick game. That's where the dual stick aspect of it came from. And over the next year, I would just work on it for five minutes here, five minutes there, during my lunch break, and I just added to it…

Several possible influences have been mentioned elsewhere, but did you have any specific games in mind while you were working on it?
SC: I was writing shooters in college – and before that. I wouldn't say I was particularly obsessed by them; I don't even play many of them. It's just that this is a really quick genre of game to make.

Were you surprised by the phenomenon it's become on Live?
SC: Very surprised. It was initially written for us, for me and a couple of other people at Bizarre, before it was put in PGR2 as an Easter egg. And when we did include it, we said, okay, let's make it less hardcore and more accessible to everyone else. And we got feedback from that version, so when we started the Arcade version we thought, let's make it easier still, make it more casually orientated. But yes, it completely outstripped our expectations in terms of popularity.

Why don't more developers encourage this sort of thing – small projects, undertaken in periods of downtime?
CH: I think at most games companies there are people writing games on the side, because most people who end up in the industry love videogames and have always been involved in making them in some way. So it does happen in most companies, but definitely one of the good things within Bizarre is that the culture is one of support. And there was some luck involved – we worked closely with Microsoft and the initial version that came out was very popular with key people within Microsoft. That helped the game gain a lot of traction. So we were quite lucky that the momentum gained behind it really. Other companies might have that, but the commercial reality is, staff get pulled away left, right and centre to work on other projects.

SC: To be honest, probably the only reason we got the time was that we'd just started work full-time on The Club. At that point, we combined two teams, and the team I was originally working with was kind of a concept team so it was quite small, and we were all lead people. When we merged with the other team, there were too many leads, so I was moving around, dropping between things, trying to find something to work on. And it just so happened that at that point Microsoft came to us and asked if we wanted to work on a Live Arcade game. And because I was in limbo at that moment, it made sense for me to move on to it. So it just happened at the right moment. If things had worked out differently and I'd been leading The Club, I could have been absolutely snowed under – it might never have happened.

So back at the beginning of Xbox Live Arcade, there was Geometry Wars and Mutant Storm – do you think your titles somehow created the demand for retro-style shooters, or do you think it was there to begin with?
SC: I don't know. I'd like to think it was our games! What I think is, there just weren't any dual stick shooters out at that point. I think it was rare enough for people to think it was new. It's not new, it's been done hundreds of times before, but it was gone from peoples' minds. It probably would have happened anyway – it just needed a good two-stick shooter to come out. We just happened to be there at the right moment to really capitalise on something that was missing from the market.

CH: A lot of people who still buy games are of the age group that remembers playing arcade games and have an affection for them. That avenue was dead to all but the most hardcore, buying import 2D shooters. Xbox Live Arcade opened that avenue back up to people. I mean, now I'm a busy family man so I can't sit and play a 25-hour epic, but I can sit down with Geometry Wars and try to beat the highscore. That's ultimately why I used to play games when I was six or seven, and that's another reason why we're seeing a renaissance of this style of game.

A lot of people seem to assume that only hardcore gamers are downloading 2D shooters on Live, but isn't it also – as you say - a nostalgic thing? And it's a quick gaming fix in the same way as casual PC titles like Bejeweled are…
CH: It's definitely a combination. I mean, real hardcore shooters are very niche. You look at the sales of Ikaruga on Dreamcast – I think it sold something like ten or twenty thousand. And even when it was released on Arcade, it was quite niche. I love Ikaruga, but there are other elements to Geometry wars – the twin-sticks, the visuals – it's not just the hardcore, there are also people who just want quick fix gaming.

Was the game a financial success for Bizarre Creations?
CH: Hmmmm. It sold quite well and it was a small investment. But what people have got to understand is, it doesn't mean that every indie game is going to pay for itself. It's still a product and you're writing it for other people, not just yourself – if you want to make a living out of it.

And so how did the idea of a sequel come about?
SC: It was very much the case that we'd done Geometry Wars Evolved, we didn't expect it to do well, it DID do well, and so Microsoft and all the marketing people were saying, when's the next one?! So there was definitely a pressure from that side to get one out as soon as possible.

Did it feel different working on the game, considering the gradual evolution of the first title? Did it feel more like a regular job?
SC: It did actually! This time round I had to think about it more seriously. And before, I'd had loads of ideas over many years and it was a case of, oooh, just implement them all! This time round it was a case of, oh, I implemented all the ideas I wanted in the last one…

The difficult second album…
SC: Exactly!
CH: That's what we always said! It had to have the feel of the original but it had to move on.
SC: We needed people to be able to look at the screenshots and say that's Geometry Wars, but also to be able to say specifically, that's Geometry Wars 2… Because it's such a simple visual style, it took us quite a long time to nail that aspect of it.

So where did the visual style come from?

SC: At the start there was no inspiration. I can't draw – at all. I'm rubbish at art, I didn't have any artists working with me on it so… it's easy to draw squares. There was no grand vision. But obviously as we progressed that changed. When we did the PGR version, we did talk about developing the visual style, but I was like, I have a week to put it into the game! And then it sort of set the style. And fortunately, by a fluke, we made the right choice because there was an interest in old skool games – vector graphics, arcade machines, all that sort of stuff. And because we brought that forward by taking a modern approach, it felt fresh again.

CH: Another thing is, vector graphics looked great on the host machines, when they were proper vector units, but at home – apart from the Vectrex – there was nothing like that. And at the time, machines were essentially low-res anyway, so it was essentially a bad art style choice - it would just look rubbish [He's clearly not played Mercenary – Keef], so you went for sprites.

We're doing things in, well, 640x480 which is quite hi-res for a standard def TV, but now obviously with 1080p, you can really go back to that idea of incredibly sharp lines. It's kind of weird that modern technology is only now able to make quite accurate representations of the stuff they were doing in 1980… And that's why it still looks fresh, because you never dabbled with that on the low-res consoles.

So are you working on another one?
SC: I definitely think there will be another one at some point, but we're not working on it right now… It might be us doing it or an external studio, I don't know. So yes, you'll see more of Geometry Wars but whether it'll be a Retro Evolved Geometry Wars in the arcade style I don't know.
CH: It'll be an MMO won't it?
SC: We'll converge it with World of Warcraft!
CH: We're playing with ideas, and if one comes up that looks like the direction we want to go, that's where we'll take it.

Do you see a future in which pretty much all games are bought as downloadable content?
CH: I'm pretty internet savvy and I don't mind buying things over download, but I'm still a long way away from being happy to spend £40 on something I don't physically own, where the DRM or security server could go down and I can't play my game. I think in the long-term future, people may accept that, maybe I'm just of an age where I need to see something for my hard-earned money!

SC: I've bought quite a lot of DRM music online and I'm quite worried – you hear about DRM servers being shut down, and I might be in a situation where all my music is locked to my old laptop. I'd hate to be in a situation where nobody can play Geometry Wars anymore, because Microsoft turn off their Xbox Live servers… Although Microsoft are not going to disappear over night! But you look at Steam – obviously Valve are big, but they're not the same level of big as Microsoft. It's when the really big players get behind it that you can feel a little bit more secure about buying.
CH: I think episodic gaming might be the only way you can get people to swallow buying a full-price game, as it'll be over several purchases.
SC: I was really excited when Half-Life 2 went episodic! I got through five hours of Episode 1 and I was like, ooooh, I can't wait for Episode 2 – and it took a year! I was expecting it in the next couple of months! I think if a developer could crack that, make a game, get three or four hours out initially, and then another three hours out every three months, I think it'll work.

What do you see as the future of Xbox Live, PSN and WiiWare games?
CH: I don't know. My only concern is we don't start getting budget versions of triple A retail games, I think that will kill it. To me, downloadable games should be designed as an alternative to the mainstream, that's what will keep it healthy. The most successful independent music labels are the ones that stay true to what they do, they find a market and they stay there. You know, if someone's going to buy a first-person shooter, will they buy a budget download for $8 of will they buy a pre-owned copy of Call of Duty 4? They'll buy Call of Duty 4.

With games like Castle Crashers and Braid coming out of the indie sector and onto major consoles, do you see services like Xbox Live as being really good for independent developers?
SC: Yeah, I mean when someone like Jonathan Blow can bankroll their own game… it's that thing: it's cheaper so therefore smaller studios and individuals will be able to do it. Whether it'll stay cheap is another matter. If games are successful, you'll get bigger publishers saying, yeah, I'll put some money into that. Then the amount of time it'll take a single coder to produce a game of similar quality will go straight through the roof. I think the maturation that took a decade to happen in the mainstream industry is going to happen in two or three years with downloadable games…