In this GDC 2019 classic game mechanic postmortem, veteran dev Jamie Fristrom breaks down how the widely acclaimed web-swinging mechanics in Treyarch’s 2004 game Spider-Man 2 were designed and implemented.
Fristrom served as technical director and designer on the game, and in his in-depth talk he walked through the process and compared it to similar systems in games like Bionic Commando and Insomniac’s recently-released hit Marvel’s Spider-Man.
It was an illuminating talk that offered some interesting perspective on how designers can design traversal systems for open-world games and the ways in which such systems can give players meaningful feedback about where they’re going and how they’re progressing in the game. If you missed seeing it at GDC, no worries — you can now watch it for free over on the official GDC YouTube channel!
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