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Crisis on the Planet of the Apes


Crisis on the Planet of the Apes was FoxNext VR Studio's first commercial release as a standalone entity and certainly the biggest game I've worked on to date. Produced in partnership with Imaginati Studios in London, England, Crisis puts players into the role of an unnamed ape thrust into a conflict between the military and CDC. Set in the years between Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Crisis tells a wholly new and canonical story instead of that world.

A quick Google will tell you that the game met with mixed reviews. We tried some really new things and while some were successful (I still think we have one of the most comfortable and innovative cover solutions in VR), others were not (The method of locomotion was widely panned). We really tried to create a holistic VR experience, but in the process created features that were too difficult for users to activate. Worse still, we gave them a great experience in other places which only served to highlight how much we had missed the goal in others.

Still, we shipped a ~2 hour single player campaign with over 15 minutes of mo-cap in just under a year with a team that had never made a VR game before. From a production and teamwork perspective I'll always count this as a success. Additionally, the trailer had more than 6 million impressions the Fox social media landscape- That's many, many more times than anything else I've worked on.

Project Responsibilities
Lead Designer & Senior Project Manager (Fox Next)

On Crisis, my work really took shape in two distinct ways. The first was as a designer. Working with the team in London and with access to the Unreal project files, we rapidly iterated on level layouts, enemy placement and number and overall feel of the combat. Additionally, we conducted intense playtests with actual consumers and it became the responsibility of Fox to distill those notes and impressions into actionable feedback that also represented the consensus of the FoxNext studio group. In other words, I played the game a hell of a lot, watched other people play it for hours and made specific recommendations for improvement across the suite of game mechanics and implementation.

The second way my work took shape was as Senior Project Manger. With the assistance of Jody Belliveau, we shepherded the project to a day-and-date release on Oculus Rift Store, Steam and PSN in both Europe (SIEE) and America (SIEA). This included VRC and FQA consultations, trophy & platform integrations and DRM. Additionally, as we approached ship I ran Backlog Grooming and Sprint Planning in conjunction with Imaginati to make sure Fox's priorities were represented and maintained.

After ship I also maintained the health of the repo and built, re-imaged and shipped the final patches for Steam, Oculus & PSN (All regions).

Official Website:
http://apesvr.com

Where to download it:
Steam
Oculus Store
PSN


TEAM

FoxNext VR Studio


General Manager Brendan Handler
Creative Design & Production Benjamin Miller
Creative Development Steve Tzirlin
Business Development Kelly DiGregorio
Senior Designer Scott Stephan
Publishing & Useability Jody Belliveau
Technical Manager George Goldman
Writer Matt Michnovetz
Technical Designer Taylor Morris
Senior Programmer Borut Pfeifer
Script Editor Jeff Juhasz
Coordinator Tim Yang
Coordinator Nate Winslow
Quality Assurance Tester Earvin Ramos

Imaginati Studios

Executive Producer Martin Alltimes
Head of Production Seb Canniff
Senior Producer Ian Tierney
Lead Programmer Stelios Michael
Programmer Alex Nibbs
Lead Artist Colin Wren
Principle VFX Artist Omar Parada
Senior Character Artist Manuel Lopez
Character Artist Panagiotis Giannakopoulos
World Artist NIck Peckham
Senior UI Artist Edwin Bradford
Additional Art James Brace
Lead Animator David Moore
Animator David Campbell
Senior Motion Editor Maciek Sznabel
Senior Motion Editor Arnaud Mavoka-Isana
Animator Alex Marmo
Animator Richie Prado
Animator Moses Awoyemi
Animator Stephen Payne
Lead Designer Jason Mallett
Technical Designer Wayne Jackson
Additional Design Blaise Imiolczyk
Head of Audio Alexander Horowitz
Additional Sound Pablo Valverde‎
Testing David jenkins
Testing John Wright
Testing Matteo Pagni
Testing Jake Bovingdon
Project Manager Christopher Bacchi
Test Lead Romeo Andrei Cana

Sound Designer Chris Sweetman
Sound Designer Samuel Justice
Technical Sound Designer Joe Hudson

VO Director Johnny Gidcomb
VO Director Micah Dahlberg

MEDIA


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