TGS 09: Mike Capps Talks New Studio, Scrapped Gears Of War Gameplay Mechanic

TGS is the annual opportunity to go hands on with elusive Japanese titles, to discover obscure gems that may or may not make it stateside, and to chat with gaming icons that rarely travel westward. So we never expect much news from studios firmly rooted in the U.S.

However, Mike Capps, President of Epic Games, gave a keynote speech at the show about adapting the Gears of War franchise for global consumption. While the majority of his presentation focused on the culture and development regime at Epic, a few interesting tidbits of information came to light.  

First, Capps officially announced the opening of a new office in Tokyo. The office will act specifically as a support center for the Unreal Engine, negating the need for teams to travel across the globe for training and testing. Capps even used the opportunity to announce that they have started the hiring process. Although Capps wasn’t able to confirm anything, he did make some forward-looking statements about the studio. While they intend to focus on the aforementioned support, he jested that there are some local game designers he would love to recruit, implying that eventual creative output isn’t altogether out of the question.

Capps also discussed rapid prototyping and how Epic prefers to use it as a tool as opposed to large design documents. Sometimes the concepts the team fleshes out work. Sometimes they don’t.

Capps showed us a bare bones video of “living cover,” a concept proposed for Gears of War 2 that directly resulted in the large moving rock worms. The idea was tested first, with the official design document following once it proved to work. An unsuccessful venture came from the concept of “perching.” As a way of adding vertical movement to Gears of War 2, the team tested the idea of letting players pull themselves atop surfaces and fire downwards on unsuspecting foes. We saw footage of Marcus scaling a wall and firing from above, which seemed to work well enough.

The idea was scrapped when further tested, however. Evidently “perching” ruined the balance of multiplayer and so was removed from the roster before pushing the papers. Capps divulged that playing games, even in the form of simple prototypes, keeps Epic staff happy. Massive influxes of paperwork do not.

On an ending note, congratulations must be given to Capps, who was in attendance on his honeymoon. Now that he’s married, he promised flowers to his new wife during the next unavoidable development crunch.