Production of Dead Rising 2

The production of Dead Rising 2 began with the producers at Capcom writing the script for the game, before passing it over to the developer Blue Castle games. An iterative process then began between the two where they would each re – write elements and pass it back until they were both happy with the outcome. Like the Resident Evil 5 game, Capcom outlined their interest in creating a game which really symbolised the American culture and the whole Zombie ethos.

Beginning with general design, each team member would go off, work on a different element, and return to collaborate with the rest of the team. One element of character design which emphasise was heavily placed on was the design of the protagonist, Chuck Green. Given the positive feedback from fans about Dead Rising’s Frank West, Blue castle and Capcom decided that Chuck Green had to be fundamentally different from Frank whilst signifying American culture and being instantly recognisable. The design of Chuck went through several iterations until they were happy that players could instantly recognise the character at a glance.

Beyond character design, the next element was the Zombies, and fortunately Blue Castle could work with several remnants of Zombies from Dead Rising, while adding more animations and characters. The production team visited and studied the whole Las Vegas culture, and created Zombie ‘mug shots’ that typified the stereotypes of Vegas life (Gambling, Exotic dancers, etc). On top of the work with the Zombies, one of the most symbolic aspects of the Dead Rising franchise was the ‘Psychopaths ‘. In Dead Rising 2 this was one of the most important design elements, and for each character a particular focus was chosen. An example of this is the chef Antoine who represented Gluttony.

Much like the way that the production team visited Las Vegas to find inspiration for the Zombie design, several members of the design team were assigned to the construction of tools. With the combo weapon system being a series first, the team spent a lot of time designing possible weapons before physically producing the objects. They would source these objects from anywhere and everywhere to experiment. Of course adding to the weapon roster increased the workflow of the animation and design team, with the final weapon count being a staggering 300 weapons. 50 of these were Combo weapons and amongst these were those which were removed or not chosen.

A unique situation that had arisen from the collaborative work between Capcom was the sheer size of the operation on a global scale, with production taking place across 4 areas: Osaka (Capcom Headquarters), Vancouver (Blue Castle), London (Marketing Europe) and San Francisco (North American Marketing).  

The marketing of Dead Rising 2 was extensive, with 2 different styles used. The first was the Zombrex campaign, which included pens, syringes and posters all following the slogan ‘Prevention is better than the cure’. The other element that Capcom’s marketing team explored was viral marketing, starting with a suggestion by Blue Castle to create an on-going blog which explored the lives of a character in the universe of Dead Rising 2. Capcom loved this, creating Tape it or Die.com, a blog where four characters explore the combo system using suggestions from fans. These four characters also appear in the game as a hidden Easter egg.

The production of Dead Rising 2 was unique for Capcom as they had to build a relationship with an outside publisher. However due to the respect that Blue Castle had for the Dead Rising brand, Capcom trusted them immensely. Of course there was the need for translation, but in some cases a universal understanding was forged. One of the production team stated that: Makin games is a global language; while in Capcom the general consensus was that this method of making games was much better than ‘the old way’. This old way was ‘Created in Japan, Sold in the West’ and it created a gap which the producer at Capcom described as ‘Un natural’

Another interesting late addition to the production process was the inclusion of Co-operative gameplay. This caused a whole host of additional problems late in the post production process, but was an addition that was necessary due to fan demand.