Hardy LeBel has been around the multiplayer block. Lead designer on the original Halo multiplayer component, LeBel recently joined the team at Ubisoft Montreal to develop an online portion of Far Cry 2.

I caught up with LeBel at an Ubisoft event, where he told me why Far Cry 2 was one of the most challenging projects to tackle. We also went over the game's approach to level design, and why LeBel feels that faster is not always better when it comes to multiplayer shooters.

Shack: Were you brought in early on the project?

Hardy LeBel: No, not real early. I think I've been associated with the multiplayer for about a year now.

I was brought in mostly because, honestly, there's a lot of complexity with trying to make this multiplayer fun to play. I think it's fair to say I've got a lot of shooter expertise. I've worked on Halo, worked on the SOCOM series of games. The challenges of this particular game with the complexities of the dynamic systems, with weather, the complexities of next-gen graphics, next-gen lighting, even the level design challenges--were incredibly steep.

So the team wrestled with them for quite a while, and didn't make the kind of headway that Ubisoft really wanted them to, and that's when they reached out to me. I actually was kind of taking some personal time off to deal with some family issues, and I'd had the great pleasure of meeting the Ubisoft crew two years previous, so when Montreal was looking for someone to help out on the multiplayer side, I guess the Paris team said, "You should try talking to Hardy."

So really out of the blue I got this fascinating phone call from the executive producers saying, "I heard you might be able to help." And it's been such a learning experience for me, to really kind of go into the deep end of the pool in terms of next-gen graphics, lighting, really all of the complexity of those systems. And the figuring out how to make levels and gameplay that's going to be fun and not overly complex, and make sure that it's rewarding to the player. It was a big challenge.

Shack: How many iterations did you go through on the basic multiplayer gameplay? Was it always this shoot-and-scoot style of gameplay?

Hardy LeBel: No, it used to be.. [laughs] There have been tons of iterations. What you see right now is a very deliberate balance between what the game wants to be--which is a very fast-paced, run-and-gun wild shooter--and the creative goals for single-player, which were much more deliberative, fire and movement, kind of crawl through the jungle, picking eachother off.

That was a challenge, to try to marry those two things and find the right balance between the two of them. Because multiplayer tends to really want to play fast, faster than single-player. Single-player you're going to stop--and I'm not just talking about Far Cry 2, I'm talking about literally every shooter--it's a contemplative, you know, I'm going to stop and think about the tactical situation, I can engage or disengage with AI as I want to, in most cases. So as you put those down on the accelerator, the gameplay pacing picks up.

A lot of multiplayer games can evolve into something like Quake, where it's just so fast, and the action is split-second. But that really felt wrong in these natural settings, characters flying by like Quake, just shooting eachother. So what we've been trying to do is find ways to make the pacing so that it's still fast and fun, but it's slowed down a little bit so it's not Quake in the jungle.

Shack: There are some similarities to Halo there.

Hardy LeBel: Right. I mean yeah, it's true. The gameplay pacing in Halo is very much about understanding what your tactical options are, that are available to you, and understanding that you have a suite of them right in front of you, and then choosing what you're going to do.

And to a certain extent, we did something similar here in the sense that, you can melee, you can use weapons, you can use the environment itself, explosive objects and that kind of stuff. So we're trying to give you kind of a palette that you can play with and then let you figure out what are your tactics, what are your strategies. In some ways it's similar.

Shack: So for modes, you have Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Uprising, and Capture the Flag--

Hardy LeBel: Capture the Diamond. [laughs]

Shack: Right. Sorry. [laughs] So with the deathmatch modes--you know, I grew up playing deathmatch, and moved on to games like Tribes before the end of the 90s, and now we still have deathmatch modes. Are they still necessary as kind of an entry-level mode for newer players? How much do you think about your audience in terms of adding complexity to the modes?

Hardy LeBel: There's no question. Our thinking process for this game specifically was very much tied to the fact that we had the level editor. The editor was a big focus technologically, and a big focus in terms of trying to, from a design side, trying to take the robust enemy tools that we had, and figure out how to put a wrapper on them so that they're accessible and easy for people to use.

And with that in mind, also making incredibly complicated game modes just seemed like, if were looking to the community to create content and enjoy it, it could very easily turn into rocket science. Because like, okay, well we have these incredibly complex game modes that require all this logic to successfully pull off.. and in point of fact, and I don't mean for this to sound.. whatever..

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Shack: Go ahead.

Hardy LeBel: It's really hard to make a good level. And it becomes really, really, really hard to make a good level if you also have really complicated game modes. And I would point to the fact that there are a lot of Battlefield levels, but Wake Island is really one of the best. [laughs]

Shack: Yeah, I'd agree with that. [laughs]

Hardy LeBel: And they all kind of cascade down from there. And so the more that you have complicated mode structures, the more you have to actually do, the less likely you are to get successful levels.

Anyway, that's the long-winded way of saying that we didn't want to make game types that were like rocket science for people to be able to put them up and create their own content. But to be honest with you, I've got 15 years of level design experience behind me, and the lead level designer on the multiplayer side had a comparable amount of experience, but it was really hard for us to make levels for Far Cry 2 that were fun. [laughs] And it's just because of all of the challenges.

As an example, we made a level, and we're playing it with dynamic weather and dynamic light. And one time it was foggy and dark, and we couldn't play the damn thing. We were like, "Wait a minute, that's not fair. My level design principles tell me this level should work." But it doesn't work.

So we literally had to go back to the drawing board and relearn new ways to do level design in a next-gen setting, where you are dealing with dynamic lighting and weather, and the complexity of these layouts. And at the end of it, the lead level designer and I looked at eachother and we were like, "Damn. Thank god we managed to get some good ones." [laughs]

And I don't mean for that to sound like people can't do it, because they will, and I'm excited to see what the community is going to produce. But for me, as a long-time level guy, I kind of came to the dance with my kit bag of tried and true level design "stuff." Like, "Well I made a couple good levels in my day, you know, Blood Gulch. I know how to make a multiplayer level!" And that didn't work. And I was like, okay, better go back and try to figure out some new stuff.

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