Speaking at a panel during Digital Dragons this past weekend, designers and artists from studios discussed their opinion on speedrunners discovering ways to skip past certain parts of their games.
"That might look like it's incidental, but the boss [executive producer Jerk Gustafsson] actually wanted - he likes for people to be able to speedrun the game."
- Senior game designer Andreas Öjerfors on speedrunners playing through Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus.
Speaking at a panel during Digital Dragons (a games industry event that takes place in Poland) this past weekend, designers and artists discussed their opinion on speedrunners discovering various ways to skip past certain portions of their games.
In particular, senior game designer on Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus Andreas Öjerfors initially lamented the moment speedrunners realized they could completely skip an entire boss fight with the Citadel by running right past it. "Me, as the designer of the Citadel, I want people to play my content!"
Öjerfors and the rest of the design team tried to prevent the boss fight from being skipped. "In a very early version of the Citadel design, in the paper version, he had this big shield he could put down and block the places you go past," he explained.
Eventually, the idea was scrapped and thus speedrunners were presented with the option to completely bypass the fight. "We didn't really get that to work very well, it was too slow, so we moved it out," he added, noting executive that producer Jerk Gustafsson actually prefers making games that can be easily speedrun. "So yeah, you're supposed to be able to speedrun the game - you can run past him if you want to.
Be sure to check out the entire piece over at Eurogamer, where developers and artists from studios like Bungie and Blizzard discuss their opinions about speedrunners in relation to their own work.
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