In the upcoming MMO shooter Tom Clancy’s The Division , New York will be at the center. In a blog post, one of the developers explains how he researches to capture this feeling.
New York will not only be the backdrop of the MMO shooter The Division, but will play a central role. Therefore, the Ubisoft team is currently spending a lot of time exploring the city and drawing inspiration from the “real” Big Apple for the virtual one they will create. To do justice to the dense verticality of the city alone, one must wander through the streets of the city that never sleeps, look up at its skyscrapers, and breathe in the city. This is what Martin Hultberg, the IP Developer of the team, believes.
In January they were in New York: “In a way, we were lucky. The weather at this time of year is similar to our game, and because of the upcoming Super Bowl, the security measures were strict. At some points, the city felt like it was under siege.”
There are so many service providers and their vehicles in the city. Maintenance work must be carried out constantly. Police officers were managing traffic. Plumbers were taking care of water damage. What if these lifelines, these regulating forces, all disappeared? Most New Yorkers, according to Hultberg, live with an empty refrigerator. They are permanently in cafes, eating in restaurants. What if they all closed?
The first thing that struck him when he crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, he writes, is how small one feels in the face of so many skyscrapers: “I spent many hours thinking about disasters and how to survive them. And I can tell you: I do not want to be in a modern city when everything goes off the rails. So many places from which you can be attacked. So few places to hide.”
