Hitman Sniper: The Shadows interview: Simon Doongoor discusses development challenges, the future of the game and more

Hitman Sniper: The Shadows has now arrived on iOS and Android. It's the latest entry in the spin-off mobile series and the first to be a free-to-play game. We recently had a chance to chat with Simon Doongoor - senior producer at Square Enix Montreal - about all things Hitman Sniper: The Shadows. Together we discussed the thought process behind some of the gameplay mechanics and what players can expect in future updates.

My name is Simon. I'm the senior producer on Hitman Sniper: The Shadows. My role is primarily to lead the production and direction of the game. That's pretty much it in a nutshell.

We continue to iterate on user feedback regarding a lot of design decisions. Primarily, we wanted users to get accustomed to not relying completely on their special ability but the opportunity to ensure they were exposed to the richness of the sandbox levels. We worked really hard on making sure there were plenty of opportunities for creative kills to test skills and for the replayability of these levels.

I think the abilities are a good entryway for getting into creative killing that's unique to the Sniper gameplay. Since we're opening up to a broader audience, we think the abilities are a good starting point for a lot of players. But, of course, we'll still be iterating on this moving forward with feedback from our users.

It's about a balance, primarily. That's what we're focusing on. Right now, everything's showing that the balance seems to be good, but you never know what's coming in the future. We have some ideas that are out there that could give more emphasis to the ability usage in certain scenarios, so stay tuned.

It's difficult because I was a fan of the Hitman franchise so having Knight and Stone join our roster was a good opportunity. But having the ability to create our first character, our own character to put into the Hitman universe - which was Agent Kolzak - was always going to be a sentimental attachment. We had an open conversation with IO Interactive, who gave us some pointers to make sure the characters fit the DNA of the Hitman Universe. That was our first character, so that's my sentimental favourite.

If I go in a different direction, Agent Soji is one that I like. The team really pushed the boundaries on the creative process there. They got more comfortable in how to approach it and used different tactics to come up with this character. But if I had to answer your question specifically, it would be Kolzak.

Kiya is another character. He's got lightning rounds that facilitate multi-kills, depending on your precision. Then one of the others has acid rounds. That helps to facilitate hiding the bodies of your targets. So, therefore, you can remain in stealth. Again, back into that ability conversation. It's always a challenge to do the creative killing. It takes a lot of skill. So having an ability that facilitates body disposal allows you to stay stealthy. Then there's the contagion round, which Kolzak uses, which facilitates a multi-kill using gas from the bullet.

Back to the Hitman franchise and Hitman Sniper, the more creative you are with your killing and elimination skills, the more points you get. Hitman is a point-driven game. So what that upgrade does is helps to boost your score stats. The luxury we have with Hitman is that it's a balance between skill and scoring where skill facilitates the scoring. But if you're not as skilled, this is also an opportunity to help you with the upgrade system. That's what those upgrades do. We have a lot more in store for the future on how that will expand, so stay tuned for that.

Absolutely. The pillar of Hitman is replayability and what facilitates the replayability is that you get to learn while you do it. You're only going to get better. So, it kind of links to the other pillar, which is having these rich levels that you can approach in different ways. Especially tied in with our new agents as they give you the means to approach contracts in a different way. There are so many ways and variables to eliminate your target, so yes, replayability was our definite intention.

Right away, it's content. There are a lot of maps that are brought to the table here. I think we have eight sandbox levels that, again, facilitate replayability. So that's one of the major improvements. I think the storyline, and having a storyline, as well is another big improvement. We're looking forward to how we can expand that in the future as the game progresses. Previously, it was driven by one character, and now it's driven by six and another antagonist that's going to be developed soon.

Also, having a free-to-play game, we have more content to come. In the previous ones, the content was limited, and now we're ready to evolve our current version of Hitman Sniper: The Shadows. There are eight maps in there already and we get to build on top of that.

The original Hitman Sniper was a premium game, so it's a limited audience, and here, our intention with a free-to-play was to have a broader audience. What that means is exposing this unique type of gameplay – the creative killing – to a broader audience, and sometimes that can be perceived as being really difficult and core. So, I think the biggest challenge was balancing the core aspect but the accessibility to an audience that's never been exposed to this. Making sure we don't lose that, but making it accessible to new users that would come in.

Absolutely. That's a crucial part of how we got here. A lot of feedback. We tried things that didn't work. We improved it. The feedback was great from the fanbase – both from the original Hitman Sniper and new players. So, we're definitely looking forward to evolving the game with them.

I think the major one was the challenges that we were putting in front of the users. Going back to what I was saying before, making sure we had that unique gameplay that was well praised but making it accessible. Sometimes we iterated on was it too core? Was it too easy? Was the replayability there? Was it satisfying? Sometimes we went too much to the left, and it was too difficult to achieve, and sometimes we went too far to the right where it was just really easy. You didn't need to use creative killing to succeed.

It really was a back and forth with player feedback until we hit that sweet spot. That's probably the one that stands out the most. We also got a lot of feedback about the PvP, and we're continuing to evolve that. We have lots of plans for that, with the feedback we've got so far. It's definitely a long road to travel with that one.

One of the main pillars of Hitman is the ability to plan. Finding the perfect opportunity for the perfect kill whilst still remaining in stealth. Putting players head-to-head on the same map is something that would be detrimental to the planning phases. When you start the game, you have a single-player campaign experience, which gives you the ability to take your time and do the right kind of kills.

We wanted PvP to feel fresh, different, competitive, and a balance between stress and achievement. So that's where the PvP kind of came up. It's a score based game, so naturally, it makes sense to compete. Who can score more?

I think it's a combination of both. We want to make sure users enjoy all of our content, so playing a timed match is a necessity. But when you go in the campaign, there's no pressure at all to play. You can take your time. So we felt that the time, the pressure would really put your skills to the test. And, of course, the more creative you are, the higher your points will be. I think the way you describe it as a “happy accident” is interesting. We tried a lot of variables, engaged with our fanbase and all those things together brewed up the perfect storm.

The iteration with the team is always the best part of developing a game and seeing the feedback from the players come in – whether they liked the intentions and they're having fun with it. That's always the most rewarding experience, knowing that the fans love what you've built.

If we were just going to focus more internally, I think it was just the creative process to get here. When you're designing a map, trying to figure out the type of opportunities you want to have, and there's been a collaboration between designers and the art team. As they add more pieces to the map, you're like, “hey, why don't you use this as an opportunity?”. So it's this happy back and forth between the design team and the art team. So watching that evolve has been a good internal process.

Yes, it definitely is a challenge. The main thought process going into that is making sure they facilitate the creative kills. There are many ways to approach a contract, and that's where the expertise comes in. There's expertise in headshots, body disposals and accidental kills. These influence what the abilities are going to be and how they will work as entry levels in being able to capitalise on that expertise.

I guess what I would say is the free-to-play model facilitates a lot of things. And one of them is content. You run a live game. That means you can add more content, more modes, more events. It can just grow from here on out, whereas a premium game becomes more of a finite box to a certain degree.

What I would tell players coming from premium, is not only that it's free-to-try, which is the first hurdle removed, but I think diving in and being exposed to all the variety of content and knowing it will evolve, especially if they have a say in too, is going to be a great starting point.

Absolutely, it is just the beginning. We have lots of plans to evolve the game. We're definitely going to continue as we started with iterating and getting feedback from the fanbase. But yeah, definitely more maps. That's one of our intentions. It's the bread and butter of Hitman. And, of course, we'll see how much more we can evolve from there. Our main focus moving forward is making sure we can evolve the PvP experience.