We produce a lot of making of features on PC games, and we thought it'd be handy if we put them all in one place for your convenience. These pieces cover the creation of entire games in some cases, but others are more granular, digging into levels, quests and even in-game vehicles. Note that the year mentioned for each piece refers to when the game was released, rather than when each feature was published.
Enjoy.
The making of Alien: Isolation
Year 2014
Developer The Creative Assembly
Article by Andy Kelly
To help them, Fox supplied an enormous archive of original production material—a whopping three terabytes of it. "It was like that moment in Pulp Fiction where they open the suitcase," says Hope. "We were stunned that all this stuff existed. For them to be able to drop that amount of material on us was great. It gave us a really good insight into how that first film was made...
The audio of Alien: Isolation
Year 2014
Developer The Creative Assembly
Article by Jody Macgregor
The sounds of the creature crawling overhead were initially placed at random, triggering unpredictably to startle the player, but van Dyck says the effect "wasn’t quite right." That changed when development reached a point where the coders and animators made it possible to realistically track the alien's position even when unseen...
The making of Audiosurf, the synesthesia simulator
Year 2008
Developer Dylan Fitterer
Article by Jody Macgregor
A telling difference between today's indie games scene and that of 10 years ago is how excited Dylan Fitterer was to hear his game was going to be on Steam. Audiosurf had just been nominated for three IGF awards. As Dylan tells it, "Then I got a call from Jason Holtman at Valve who said, 'Hey, you want to sell this on Steam?' That blew me away. That was crazy to get an offer like that..."
The making of Battlefield 5's campaign
Year 2018
Developer EA DICE
Article by Xalavier Nelson Jr.
I think what we found was a way to weave a story and gameplay in a way to emotionally reach the player. It might sound obvious, but that was our biggest takeaway. Battlefield has always had spectacular, high-agency experiences. But the 'feels' were new to the series. That was what we wanted to build on most...
The making of BioShock's twisted green belt, Arcadia
Year 2007
Developer 2K Boston
Article by Jon Morcom
So many things in game development are opportunistic, run-with-it type affairs. Once the visual identity of the fisheries and the submarine bay in the preceding levels became clear, and once we decided the player would be entering Arcadia not via a bathysphere station but via a tunnel into the lush cemetery and tea garden, it was obvious we had an opportunity for a surprising visual moment...
The making of Fort Frolic, BioShock's most twisted and memorable level
Year 2007
Developer 2K Boston
Article by Andy Kelly
Cohen's obsession with the statues had roots in cinema, particularly Norman Bates' mother in Psycho and Rupert Pupkin's imaginary basement audience in Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy. "It was psychodrama externalised," says Thomas. "We also tried to hint at, without getting pornographic, Cohen's conflict with his own sexuality. But people read that much dirtier than we intended..."
The story of Half-Life remake Black Mesa
Year 2012
Developer Crowbar Collective
Article by Andy Kelly
"The world of Half-Life is a detailed painting, where the more you look, the more you see," says Engels, speaking on behalf of the Black Mesa team. "Even though all the events were scripted, it felt like you were affecting the world. You could find hidden paths, make NPCs react to you." It was, he says, the perfect balance of letting the player create their own experiences and a summer action movie...
The making of Call of Duty's most famous levels
Year Various
Developer Various
Article by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Before Alavi became involved with Call of Duty he was all set to enter the medical profession. While at school he had produced mods for shooters such as Duke Nukem 3D, ranging from the basic—a level modelled on the Alavi family home—to larger-scale collaborations such as the original Natural Selection for Half-Life. But he had given little thought to game design as a vocation, until one of his mods was featured in an issue of PC Gamer...
The complete history of Civilization
Year Various
Developer Various
Article by Fraser Brown
"Railroad Tycoon had this sense of being a large-scale game," Sid Meier recalls. "But we were bold and wondered what’s a bigger, more epic thing we can do? Well, how about the history of civilisation? We were young, and we had no fear..."
The making of Company of Heroes
Year 2006
Developer Relic Entertainment
Article by Tom Senior
"The combined ops thing was really there from the very start. We didn't want to have an RTS where soldiers with rifles would just be pinging away at a tank and its health would be slowly going down and down and down and then the tank would blow up for no reason, right? We wanted to have this game be based in reality, and more intuitive to people who just knew something about the history..."
Story comes first in the making of Cyberpunk 2077
Year 2020
Developer CD Projekt RED
Article by Andy Kelly
"We want to give Night City a Californian feel," he says. "It's not just another abstract dystopia. I visited LA and it was very inspiring, especially walking along Venice Beach. We want to bring that vibe to the game. Sun, palm trees, but a darker side, too. It's an incredibly diverse place, with all these different people, fashions and cultures sharing the same space, but it can also be dangerous..."
Making Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's best level
Year 2016
Developer Eidos Montréal
Article by Andy Kelly
The first design was more conventional. The kind of big city bank you might have queued in yourself on occasion. "It had a front desk, offices, people waiting in lines, etc. But as the story developed and it became a corporate archive, I realised that it shouldn't be a bank where people go to withdraw money. It's a cold, elite, very secure place to keep top secret information, where the megacorps keep their most valuable data. Not something as trivial as money..."
The making of Dishonored's greatest mission
Year 2012
Developer Arkane Studios
Article by Andy Kelly
"We had a whiteboard of interesting setups for missions. Things like there being three targets, but only one of them is correct. Then in another column we had a long list of locations including a costume party, which of course became the setting for Lady Boyle’s Last Party. We were basically mixing and matching ideas..."
The making of Divinity: Original Sin II
Year 2017
Developer Larian Studios
Article by Fraser Brown
For both Vincke and Van Dosselaer, it was imperative that extra attention was given to the narrative and dialogue, two things they'd already tried to improve in the Enhanced Edition. "One of the main critiques of Original Sin was the story could have been better and could have benefited from more gravitas," Van Dosselaer remembers. "We took that to heart. So the main thing we wanted to do was work on a better, more epic narrative, give it more gravitas, and invest more time on characters and character development..."
The making of Dragon Age: Inquisition
Year 2014
Developer BioWare
Article by Chris Thursten
"When you're talking about agency, you're talking about how you're trying to put yourselves in the shoes of various types of players," says Patrick Weekes, lead writer on the series. "It's not just gay players or female players—it's also the powergamer, the completionist, the guy that wants to search out the story. You're trying to put yourself into various mindsets at the same time..."
The mind-bending science behind the planets of Elite Dangerous
Year 2014
Developer Frontier Developments
Article by Andy Kelly
"Before a planet can be made, you must first simulate the circumstances of its birth," says Dr. Kay Ross, senior programmer. "And to know what planet you're creating, you must first know what materials went into making it, how old it is, what its neighbours are doing, and which stars are nearby..."
From rough sketch to final model, here's how Frontier designs the ships of Elite Dangerous
Year 2014
Developer Frontier Developments
Article by Andy Kelly
Creating a ship is a collaborative process. The 3D and concept artists will work closely with the designers and writers to make sure a new ship like the Chieftain works in all areas: from aesthetics, to function, to purpose. "Sometimes what’s happening in the game will drive us towards designing a particular kind of ship. The lore, the progression of the story. And in those cases it's not just about where the ship fits on the backbone, but how it serves the narrative...
The making of EVE Online
Year 2003
Developer CCP Games
Article by Rich McCormick
The Reykjavik head office of CCP, creator of the galactic bastard sim, EVE Online, feels like an outpost on the edge of the world. Look at the right angle from the main boardroom's giant windows and you'd swear human beings had never laid foot in Iceland—if it wasn't for the few CCP staff members mid smoke-break gripping solid steel railings on the balcony outside and bracing against the wind...
Breaking the internet: The story of EverQuest, the MMO that changed everything
Year 1999
Developer Sony Online Entertainment
Article by Steven Messner
You don't know what success feels like until you've tanked the biggest internet pipeline into San Diego for a week—minimum. Sure, most online games have network issues on day one, but in 1999 EverQuest wasn't just coughing out innocuous error codes. It was so popular that the internet provider hosting its servers had to physically run more cables to Los Angeles just to accommodate the tens of thousands of players dying to explore its cutting-edge 3D world...
The secrets behind the exquisite handling of Forza Motorsport
Year Various
Developer Turn 10 Studios
Article by Andy Kelly
Over the years Turn 10 have conducted research projects in collaboration with car and parts manufacturers to reveal more about how their products behave on the track. "We've worked with partners such as Calspan, Pirelli, Audi, and McLaren," says Greenawalt, "and through them we've learned new things about physics that aren’t in those reference books..."
Frostpunk developers on hope, misery, and the ultimately terrifying book of laws
Year 2018
Developer 11 Bit Studios
Article by Christopher Livingston
"When we did research about survival in harsh conditions, and what makes them survive except for the physical capabilities, we found out that the most important thing was hope, because we read stories about mountain climbing [expeditions], about accidents, when people were able to crawl down from high altitudes, almost dying, but they had hope that they would survive."
Tim Schafer on the making of Full Throttle
Year 1995
Developer LucasArts
Article by Andy Kelly
Full Throttle was a huge leap from Day of the Tentacle, with fullscreen animation, 3D models, and lavish production values. "We got a lot more ambitious," says Schafer. "We had all these kinetic, cinematic chase scenes with 3D vehicles, and that scope really hit us hard when we realised how much time it would take to make. We tried cutting some stuff, but it was still a huge, expensive project..."
The making of Gone Home
Year 2013
Developer Fullbright
Article by Cara Ellison
"The reason that we could go a year and a half from 'let's try downloading Unity' to 'we have reviews of the game up online'," Steve says. "Is because we came up with a very small well-scoped plan early and then we just did it, and we didn't run into anything where we lost four months of work or anything else. There was a lot of luck to that, we are insanely lucky that we found Kate Craig who did our 3D art, because a month or two after we started on the project we happened to meet her, she just happened to be a 3D artist, and she happened to be interested on working on something new..."
The making of Sapienza, Hitman's best level
Year 2016
Developer IO Interactive
Article by Phil Savage
Hitman's second level began as two words: coastal town. "This was the only direction we got," says Torbjørn Christensen, lead level designer. "So we really had a lot of freedom to be creative." That coastal town would become the game's standout level, against which subsequent Hitman episodes are compared. For many, myself included, it was the level that proved IO knew what it was doing—that after Absolution, and despite a controversial episodic release plan, the studio was back to making quality assassination sandboxes..."
The making of Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number
Year 2015
Developer Dennaton Games
Article by Andi Hamilton
"I have a band called Fucking Werewolf and I had an idea for a long time that I would like to make a music videogame for it," Wedin says. "I started hanging out with Jonatan and his brother. He was making games, so I approached him and asked if he wanted to make this game with me, and he said he would do it on the one condition that I made all the graphics, because he didn’t want to make it all himself! So that was the first time I ever did pixel art..."
The making of Kentucky Route Zero's open road
Year 2013
Developer Cardboard Computer
Article by Joe Donnelly
"I started off saying and thinking I wanted to downplay the roles of the setting but I guess it's true: the place is really important to me," says Jake Elliott. Before moving to Kentucky himself, Elliott often travelled to the Bluegrass State to visit his wife's relatives. En route he'd wonder at the journey's contradictory landscapes and environments, and the vastness of both its surface and cavernous highways within Mammoth Cave—the world's largest known cave system..."
Logitech G900: The making of a mouse
Year 2016
Manufacturer Logitech
Article by Wes Fenlon
"The very basic starting point was I wanted to make a wireless mouse that was professional grade," Pate said when he first showed me a prototype of the G900. "The highest echelon of gamers that I can think of, that would be concerned about performance, would be Counter-Strike pros. So at a very, very high level, professional grade wireless gaming was the original target..."
The story behind Late Goodbye, the song that defined Max Payne 2
Year 2003
Developer Remedy Games
Article by Andy Kelly
"It all comes down to world-building," says Lake. "How do you create an imaginary world that feels like a real place? In a contemporary setting, things like music, television, and movies are very much present in our daily lives. And when you’re building a world, these details become opportunities to bring colour to it and add to and comment on the story’s themes..."
The making of Pandemic Legacy
Year 2008
Designer Matt Leacock
Article by Rick Lane
"By 2013, Matt Leacock was already a successful boardgame designer. Pandemic, the cooperative game in which players try to save the world from a disease outbreak, had released in 2007 to both critical and commercial acclaim. Over the next few years it spawned multiple expansions and spinoffs, and its publisher, Z-Man Games, was always looking for further ways to spread it across the globe..."
The making of Path of Exile
Year 2013
Developer Grinding Gear Games
Article by Jeremy Peel
"The thing we were worried about with our closed alpha was whether or not people would actually keep playing overnight," Wilson recalls. "This was basically us inviting our friends and family to play, and they'd play for a few hours to humour us. But if this person was willing to call in sick the next day and not go to work because he could be the number one player in the world in this upcoming action-RPG, which was his goal, then we had something..."
The making of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire's greatest quest
Year 2018
Developer Obsidian Entertainment
Article by Andy Kelly
"I'm a big fan of the Hitman series," says Jorge Salgado, a senior designer at Obsidian Entertainment "I love that kind of emergent gameplay. There are so many ways to solve problems, and a lot of them are really funny, too. So when I designed Fort Deadlight I wanted to have a couple of amusing ways for the player to deal with Benweth, not just fighting or intimidating him..."
The making of Peggle
Year 2007
Developer PopCap Games
Article by Graham Smith
"The prototypes I did were more luck based and random. The prototypes Brian [Rothstein, the programmer] did were more skill based, and there were good things and bad things about both. We got to a point where it was really fun, but it was overly twitchy. It needed fast reflexes and we sort of said, this is fun, this could be a game, but we didn't know how accessible it was going to be..."
The making of Prey's Gloo Cannon
Year 2017
Developer Arkane Studios
Article by Joe Donnelly
"Over the course of development, we had all these different types of versions. At one point we decided it was going to be an amber gun, it was going to shoot amber-like fluid and then harden into solid, transparent amber. And then we went away from that and then eventually ended up saying: let's just put an 'L' in there and then it's the Gloo Cannon..."
The making of Quake II
Year 1997
Developer id Software
Article by Rory Milne
"Kevin Cloud stepped up to lead the project and refocus us on something that was more story-based and set in a different universe. Kevin had this great idea where he said: Guns Of Navarone. That was the inspiration for Quake II, and it made sense because in the movie the Allies had to knock out the big guns that the Germans had before they could assault. So in Quake II, your job would be to knock out the big guns before the big dropships could come in..."
The making of Red Orchestra
Year 2006
Developer Tripwire Interactive
Article by Dan Griliopoulos
John Gibson, lead programmer, recalls why they made it. "No one was making the game we wanted. A lot of the 'realistic' shooters played like Quake with WWII weapons. We introduced a whole bunch of revolutionary things that are common now: 3D iron sights, proper ballistics, realistic player movement, player damage..."
The making of Resident Evil 2 Remake's Raccoon City Police Department
Year 2019
Developer Capcom R&D Division 1
Article by Andy Kelly
Drive north from Capcom's headquarters in downtown Osaka, along the Tosabori River, and in about 20 minutes you'll see a unique red-bricked building with a domed roof. This is the Osaka City Central Public Hall, one of the city's most beloved buildings and part of the inspiration for the Raccoon City Police Department in Resident Evil 2. This iconic setting, which fans count among the series' best, was confidently reimagined in the 2019 remake, and this is the story of how it was designed...
Hollow Knight: How to design a great Metroidvania map
Year 2017
Developer Team Cherry
Article by Wes Fenlon
"One of the earlier things we did was come up with the basic progression. All the character's abilities, and then we got them into a rough order. At the same time we were talking about the basic structure of the world. At the start it was basic: 'this is the shape of the world, and the characters are going to get these power ups in this specific order, what is the line, the path they take through the world to get those power-ups.' And then, from there, as the game expanded, we started to do things like change that power-up progression from a linear thing to section it out..."
The making of Sam & Max Hit the Road
Year 1993
Developer LucasArts
Article by Ashley Day
Purcell was charged with the difficult task of creating a game that got the balance between story and puzzling just right. "You try to be aware of the amount of time you have players sitting and watching as opposed to interacting. Fortunately a lot of the humour came out of the way that the characters would respond to the player’s actions..."
How Sega brought Shenmue back to life on PC
Year 2018
Developer D3T
Article by Andy Kelly
"The original code was written by Japanese developers, so all the comments are in Japanese. We used Google Translate a lot to try and get a handle on what the code was doing, but it's often not clear. Shenmue 1 had the additional problem for us that the game logic was written in a separate scripting language and ALL the function names and variables were in Japanese too..."
The making of StarCraft
Year 1998
Developer Blizzard Entertainment
Article by Adam Barnes
"Well, we had just finished work on Warcraft II," remembers Patrick Wyatt. "It was a product that ran late. And immediately afterwards there was a desire to continue the franchise and to find ways to pay for all of the salaries of the people who were still working." Patrick alludes to the vast difference between the industry then and the industry now, suggesting that the numbers of sales was often so much smaller than they are today, and it was tougher to get by...
From The Elder Scrolls to the US Secret Service: where videogame trees come from
Year Various
Developer Various
Article by James Davenport
"SpeedTree is a middleware solution for videogame developers and, more recently, filmmakers who need to make realistic trees en masse, quickly. That doesn't mean SpeedTree is as simple as a copy and paste engine, or that it spits out photorealistic trees within perfectly simulated ecosystems. It's easier to think of SpeedTree as more of a specialized tree canvas, a tool used to generate whole forests of trees that look similar but aren't carbon copies of one another..."
Crafting the unique, genre-defying horror of Stories Untold
Year 2017
Developer No Code
Article by Andy Kelly
"Given our development timeline, I spent way too long listening to and researching numbers stations. I found an online shortwave tuner, and it basically consumed me for a week straight. That became the central interface for episode three. There's a thing that happens when you get engrossed in that system, where you start staring into space, focusing all your sensory attention on picking out the slightest oddity in the noise, and I wanted to replicate that feeling in the game..."
The making of Supreme Commander
Year 2007
Developer Gas Powered Games
Article by Tom Francis
"I have a saying: strategy happens before the battle, and tactics happen during the battle. I wanted to see if I could give the player the right context for truly employing strategy, like when the Allies were planning Operation Overlord. That was the core of my inspiration for making the game bigger than ever..."
Creating a killer wilderness in The Long Dark
Year 2017
Developer Hinterland
Article by Andy Kelly
Leaving the bustle of the city behind, and the freedom that brings, is an important part of Hinterland's philosophy as a studio. "The mental and emotional process of abandoning urban life, and the relative safety of that job market, mirrors the process of us wanting to create something with an independent spirit outside of the mainstream. Our studio is in a literal and figurative hinterland..."
The Witcher 3: The making of Gwent
Year 2015
Developer CD Projekt RED
Article by Phil Savage
"A producer usually says something like: 'And you need how many cards and concepts done?!'" Monnier says. "'Who is going to draw all this?!’" Luckily, Gwent's creators were able to enlist help from others within The Witcher 3's development team. "Anyone who could help played the prototype with us and was on board instantly. We got help from our art crew, and even from the marketing department, who helped with UI design. It really was a massive team effort..."
How The Witcher 3's best quest was made
Year 2015
Developer CD Projekt RED
Article by Andy Kelly
"We needed a character that personified Velen, with all of its beauty and troubles," Paweł Sasko tells me. "The Baron is a soldier, much like we have today, who comes back from war with PTSD and alcohol issues. He’s unstable and unpleasant, but he also has positive traits. He loves his family and would do anything for them..."
The making of Total Annihilation
Year 1997
Developer Cavedog Entertainment
Article by Erlingur Einarsson
"We were pushing the boundaries in as many areas as we could, and when we stopped, we just picked that up where we left off with Supreme Commander. As for the challenge of balance, that was handled by Jacob McMahon, who although had never done that kind of work before, did a fabulous job, and spent hours and hours poring over the numbers to balance the game..."
The art of making effective game trailers
Year Various
Developer Various
Article by Alex Wiltshire
"Game trailers are almost like video tutorials, in a way," Lieu says. One of the first things he thinks about is showing the game’s principal unique feature as soon as possible to capture your interest, and then to expand on that feature, progressively showing why it's great..."
The making of Undertale
Year 2015
Developer Toby Fox
Article by Chris Schilling
The ironic twist is that the first seeds of Undertale were sown from conflict, growing from a battle system Fox had programmed in GameMaker Studio. In fact, his initial inspiration for this early experiment came while he was casually browsing Wikipedia. "One day, I randomly read about arrays, and realised I could program a text system using them," he tells us. "So I decided to make a battle system using that text system, which in turn gave me many ideas for a game. Then I decided to make a demo of that game—to see if people liked it, and if it was humanly possible to create."
The making of Uplink
Year 2001
Developer Introversion Software
Article by Owen Jones
Even though 3D graphics had been scrapped, Uplink was still vulnerable to feature creep. At one point, Chris had the player organically linked to his computer, cyberpunk-style: "You were totally immobile but you could install security such as cameras and laser trip wires to defend yourself. You had a couple of helper robots under your control, which could run around your room performing maintenance on all your hardware..."
The making of What Remains of Edith Finch
Year 2017
Developer Giant Sparrow
Article by Chris Schilling
"The contrast between the vast, sprawling outdoors and the elaborate interiors of the Finches' house are stark, and yet there's still a hint of something monstrous inside; Edith herself likens it to "a smile with too many teeth". Dallas had three words in mind when designing the house: sublime, intimate and murky. And while he's not convinced the game quite delivered on the last of those three, he's happy that Giant Sparrow struck a balance between the first two."