Hi, my name is Christopher Stockman, Design Director for Saints Row. In today's diary I'll discuss some of the design philosophies regarding one of the core features of Saints Row: Activities. I'll discuss the general vision and design, and the evolution of Activities.
Origins
During the initial research phases of Saints Row we noticed, in the open world genre, people loved wreaking havoc, causing mayhem and generally acting out their anarchist dreams. Players didn't follow the story; in fact, most people rarely finished the game. They were too busy killing AI characters, jacking cars, completing mini-missions, etc. The problem with these fun side-events was that they never really tied into the overall game. Sure, they provided some cash and some cheap laughs, but they never progressed the player through the story. For all intents and purposes, the core focus of previous open-world games has been the story, which is a problem. If the story is the main focus but everyone is off playing side missions, how can the two come together in beautiful harmony? In Saints Row, we decided to take a different approach to how an open-world game is structured, making fun side-missions actually matter, with a real impact on the main storyline. These Activities, best described as mini-games (or side-quests, for all you RPG fans), use core game mechanics in new and interesting ways.
Activities Iterations
There are 13 Activities that range from stealing hos from enemy pimps (Snatch), rag-dolling your character in front of vehicles for cash (Insurance Fraud), tagging over enemy gang graffiti, protecting drug dealers while they make deliveries (Drug Trafficking), Demolition Derby and many more. These Activities are scattered throughout the city, and most of them actually have 3 different activation points (all in all, there are 33 places on the map where Activities can be activated). As I've mentioned before, Activities are very important to Saints Row as they are the fastest way to earn Respect in the city, and open up story-based missions. As you can see, the fun of running around and doing random criminal acts has now been incorporated into the storyline, ultimately completing the game.
Over the course of Saints Row's development, all the Activities have gone through iteration phases to strike the perfect balance of fun and difficulty. Early on we decided to implement review meetings where we would assess the Activities each week to look over their current progress and decide if any changes needed to be made. I thought it would be fun to discuss how a couple of the Activities evolved into their current state.
