Q&A: IO Interactive’s Kim Krogh, Part #1

X360: Should more developers seek to use Xbox Live more creatively to improve gameplay experiences, rather than providing players with endless ranks and trinkets?
KK: Yeah I would love to see that, because it’s one thing I personally think is a bit outdated. Having just a ranking, that’s a little bit old-school – ‘keep on playing and we’ll reward you for it”. Today, games are more about experiences. The more we can do to tell the players who they are, and how they play the game, there’s definitely room for improvement, there.

X360: Games such as Brink may follow this template. Did you consider prescribing different roles to players in the multiplayer section of Kane & Lynch 2?
KK: Definitely, yes. I think this is something we’ll see more of, especially because we see more and more games working with social features. This is all about showing off, and one way to do this is to tell everyone you know who you are in this game. So, there’s definitely a necessity to work with this, and it’s something you’ll see more coming into different games.

X360: Have you ignored the whole rankings/rewards system?
KK: We do have a criminal rank system that unlocks weapons, but you can unlock all weapons in Arcade mode without ever being online. It was a way of accessing later weapons, some of which are quite effective, while needing to grasp the idea of the game first. The ranking system is more to let people know how long you’ve played the game, really.

X360: Kane & Lynch’s multiplayer is quite a fast-paced affair. Where you ever tempted to alter this?
KK: I definitely wanted it to be very fast-paced. At points, the level designers especially asked me to tone it down – they felt it was really, really fast. So, we did bring the pace down to a point at which it’s suited for this game. Fast paced, and very intense.