Behavior Interactive has had an interesting life as a studio. Initially a “for hire” development house, the company now has a full game of its own to work with. Dead By Daylight has by all intents been a resounding success, spawning a community and a fan following that continues to grow. Now that it’s coming to consoles, the company is setting its next big phase for the game.
The team within Behavior that has worked on the game is small, preferring to be focused and agile, flexible and quick over deep and layered. This has helped them react quickly to the needs of the players and the now growing community. The team admits that they didn’t necessarily foresee the popularity that the game has come to enjoy, but being smaller has helped them adapt. What set the wheels in motion was how well-suited the game has been for Twitch and streaming, as players have drawn big viewership during live play sessions of the hide-and-seek mechanic of gameplay. The developers made it a point to join those streams, communicating with the players — often on a one-on-one basis — to help them along, give them tips, or just answer any questions and take feedback. Those players would in turn do the same with others, incentivized by how the developers would react to their needs, and a community was quickly cultivated. Many of the players were even invited to help at the developer’s gameplay area inside publisher Starbreeze’s booth at PAX East.
For a small game and a small team, it was amazing to see the growth. This inevitably led to requests from fans and the necessity to keep up with fresh content.
Though patches and tweaks are the norm these days, adding new content is perhaps equally important to maintain player interest. The team has done this through several additions, notably with their stable of killers and survivors.One advantage, I’m told, is that by not adhering to just one license, they can add a variety of content and characters. Back in October, the game added Halloween‘s Michael Myers, who’s attack style was much more like stalking and tactical kills than brute force. March saw the arrival of Bill from Valve’s Left 4 Dead series. Though there are six killers and several survivors already, Behavior haven’t ruled out the possibility for more, even perhaps drawing from local legends from places like Russia, Poland, or Asia.
As the game now moves to consoles, the company notes how strange it is to port their own game for a change. While certain design choices worked well on the PC, updates have to take place for devices that require us to sit 6-8 feet away. It was fun to revisit the UI a year after release, for instance, as they had the understanding of how people played the game at different distances and how they wanted to interact with it. This also meant that the redone UI needed to work with full controller support. Another challenge is in how developers update their games. While patches on PC take place seemingly whenever, it’s much more pressing to do it on consoles once and do it right, meaning that patches will need to be planned ahead and become more rigorous. It will at least give the developers and fans more of a frequency to set expectations.
With a game that’s focused so much on fear and unscripted surprise moments, it has so far translated well in testing, and should find a fitting home on bigger screens. Dead By Daylight launches on PS4 and Xbox One later this North American Summer.
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