Topic: Severity announced: CPL competition specific game for PC and consoles

[idolminds]

DALLAS, TX – December 18, 2006 – The Cyberathlete Professional League® (CPL), the world’s most recognized brand in professional videogame tournaments, today announced the creation of project “Severity,” a new multiplayer game developed for both
PC and console systems.
 
Severity is a multiplayer first person shooter (FPS) focusing on team-versus-team and one-versus-one play modes.  Additionally, the game offers unprecedented support for gamers worldwide playing in online and live competitions both casually and professionally.
 
“Severity will be the first videogame conceived from the ground up to ensure the growth and appeal of multiplayer game competitions worldwide,” said Tom Mustaine, Director of Game Development at the CPL’s new studio.

Severity is built on technology created by developer id Software™ and includes enhanced tournament support, spectator modes, as well as detailed player and tournament statistics tracking.  By leveraging the enthusiastic community and practical experiences of the
CPL, Severity is uniquely positioned to set new standards while raising the bar for competitive multiplayer games.
 
According to Mr. Mustaine, former studio director of Dallas-based Ritual Entertainment, the league expects to begin testing the new game with members of the video-gaming community before the end of 2007. 

Sounds like it could be cool, or it could suck. First, I wonder which id Software tech they are using. Doom 3? Maybe going back to Q3 engine and sprucing it up for competition?

Though I have to wonder...how can you make a competition FPS for both PC and console at the same time? Seems like they would have to end up fairly different due to controls.

Oh well, should be interesting to see what comes out of this. (ps, someone just make Tribes 4, k?)

[Ghandi]

Well there's no way that it would be pc vs. console, it would be pc vs. pc or console vs. console. If not, it would be stupid, with the clear advantage on the pc side due to keyboard / mouse.

[idolminds]

I dont expect to see cross platform competition. I just think that if you design a game for competion...the PC version and console versions are going to end up being very different. Either that, or you'll meet half way and end up making both sides not want to play (too "advanced" for consoles, "dumbed down" for PC)

[Ghandi]

It's an unfortunate reality of what is happening in the video game industry, but I couldn't agree more. Microsoft in particular is looking at making games that both pc and 360 users can compete on simultaneously, and this is dumbing down the market. Even third party games do this to an extent, and want the best possible profit within all consoles. I know that this is obvious, it just seems like it's becoming more of a trend as developers try and make more profit.

[idolminds]

Update

Mustaine told us that he already a group of about 10 team members working on Severity and plans to expand that team to about 20 members in total. The game development studio for Severity will be based in the CPL's home base on Dallas (the studio itself does not yet have a name pending trademark searches and approvals). He also told us that the game will use id Software's Quake 3 Arena's networking system as its basis and a mix of id Software based Quake 3 graphical rendering along with refinements and improvements on their own. Mustaine said that Severity will be able to run on older PCs yet still support high end graphical features for people who have higher performance PCs. The game will also be coming to consoles and Mustaine told us he is interesting in talking to Microsoft to have Severity support Live Anywhere with the idea of having PC and Xbox 360 Severity gamers play each other.

Mustaine isn't revealing much about the game itself at this stage but he did tell us that the game will be a mix of modern day and futuristic themes in terms of weapons and level settings. While the game will not have a lenghty single player experience except maybe for tutorial levels, he did say they did plan for AI bot play for people to practice offline.

So Q3 tech with some updates like I predicted.

I still have to question letting 360 and PC players fight each other. They either ruin the PC controls (sucks), add autoaim (sucks/unfair), or the 360 gets a KBM setup (not likely)...it probably won't turn out well. A perfect example is when PC gamers figured out how to update their Quake 3 to play on Dreamcast Q3 servers. Unless the DC guys were on KBM, it was a slaughterhouse.

Ah well, I'm still interested in seeing the game in action. Might be fun. They mention a demo release Dec 2007 for the winter CPL, and a full release mid 2008.

[MysterD]

I still have to question letting 360 and PC players fight each other. They either ruin the PC controls (sucks), add autoaim (sucks/unfair), or the 360 gets a KBM setup (not likely)...it probably won't turn out well. A perfect example is when PC gamers figured out how to update their Quake 3 to play on Dreamcast Q3 servers. Unless the DC guys were on KBM, it was a slaughterhouse.

I say that the consoles start supporting KB/Mouse for FPS games, if they want an FPS to play on both the PC and 360.

And I say the PC version supports the X360 controller, as well. When players lock onto a server, there should be certain rooms --- some dedicated to X360 Controllers only, some for KB/Mouse controls only, and some rooms for "Whatever".

Same goes for Autoaim feature in a game room -- there should be rules set by the creator of the game server, on if they want to Enable AUTOAIM, DISABLE Autoaim, or "Whatever."

Ah well, I'm still interested in seeing the game in action. Might be fun. They mention a demo release Dec 2007 for the winter CPL, and a full release mid 2008.

Still sounds interesting, regardless of how it'll turn out.

[Quemaqua]

The Quake 3 engine is probably my favorite engine ever, so I'm always up for seeing more stuff with it.  More power to them.