Spider-Man games live and die by their swinging.
So when we say a Spider-Man game feels good, what we mean is…
… it feels like a roller coaster.
That’s gonna build up a lot of momentum and speed as you’re going down, and if you
swing at the right moment that all transfers into your next swing.
On a coaster, you’re slowly, maybe excruciatingly raised up.
You hang for a moment in the air and then — you fall.
At the last minute, all that potential energy drags you upward again, or whips you
through a loop or around a curve.
On a good roller coaster, this repeats over and over again, and each time you drop,
your heart is in your throat.
The same goes for a good Spider-Man game — take Spider-Man 2, basically the gold standard
of swinging.
I wanted it to feel a bit like you're hanging from a rope and falling through the air and the
rope is catching you and you're like a human pendulum.
So you'd have that visceral experience of both the drop when you jump off the edge of the
building or whatever, and then when the rope catches you and you swing forward.
You want to feel it in your gut.
Conveniently, our bodies translate fear and G-forces into a feeling of euphoria.
Man on roller coaster: OH HO HO!
WEE!
The new Marvel’s Spider-Man captures that feeling.
Our number one thing was that the webs had to attach to the buildings.
It had to feel like swinging and not flying.
Now that sounds obvious, but it wasn’t always the case with Spider-Man games.
In older ones, the webs would just shoot off into the sky, and you’d have to suspend
disbelief that you were … well, suspended.
Like most fun game mechanics, attaching webs to buildings is done with a lot
of serious math.
John: Ryan, you gotta talk some math now. Math and Physics.
Simone: Tell me about trajectories.
But the developers of Marvel’s Spider-Man wouldn’t reveal exactly how they did it.
So we reached out to Jamie Fristrom
to tell us what he did.
That system relied on what we call ray casting.
And ray casting is simply the act of, okay, if I've got this virtual environment with
a bunch of obstacles in it and I draw a line through that environment from one point to
another, what does it hit?
Attaching the webs to real objects sustains immersion.
But sometimes, realism isn’t the way to go.
Spider-Man: I'm good!
Case in point: if you make Spider-Man dive, and shoot out a web at the last second — his
arc should carry him right into the pavement.
But in a game about being Spider-Man, the last thing you want is to stop swinging.
So the developers cheat physics: Spider-Man basically hovers until his next web attaches.
They break the rules to maintain flow.
In contrast, the controls are grounded in realism.
Sometimes the way your hands feel on the controller feels more like you are there, you are the
character than other ways you can use the controller.
Like cooking games are really great at sort of tricking you into feeling like you're being
a chef.
In Marvel’s Spider-Man, you press the trigger to shoot a web, and you hold it until you want
Spider-Man to let go.
It’s a one-to-one action that makes it feel like you’re the one holding the webs.
When you let go of your web and plummet, the field of view tightens.
If you play a racing game when you accelerate they'll change the field of view and it feels
like you're accelerating more.
Even though all they're doing is changing the camera lens.
You also get this motion blur effect on the edges of the shot.
And a comic book touch: wind lines.
As you fall, the sound of traffic and voices on the street rush up to meet you.
Just like a roller coaster —
Man on roller coaster: OH HO!
WEEEEEEEE!
You can almost feel it.
At the last minute you catch yourself, and the ride starts all over again.
If you liked this one and want to learn more about gameplay mechanics
like why the ax in God of War feels super strong
or why the bow in Horizon Zero Dawn is just very very cool,
you can do that here.
And if you just want to watch more Spider-Man gameplay,
you can do that, too.
Thanks for watching!