Alpha Protocol - Interviews @ RPS, IGN

Sega Producer Matt Hickman has been interviewed today at both Rock, Paper, Shotgun and IGN.  Here's a snip from the first:

RPS: You’ve said that it’s possible to get through the game without killing anyone. Beyond the technical aspects of creating the game such that this can work, what drove the desire to offer this? Is it simply a choice of style – how you want your spy to work – or is there a philosophy behind creating a game with such options?

MH: How the player decides to deal with opposing characters is really an extension of the role playing experience. Just as there are often not any clear cut good or bad decisions in other aspects of the game, how players should deal with opponents can also be ambiguous. In certain areas of the game, your opponents may be anything from US agents to security guards to terrorists. We set a precedent very early on that you’re never really sure who your enemies are and who are your friends, so it makes sense to be careful who you kill. With this in mind we figured there are going to be players out there that don’t want to kill anyone just in case. It’s also just a fun challenge for players to test themselves with.

...and from IGN AU:

IGN AU: Do you have internal stat collection processes in place to gauge how different players experience the game? Which decisions and directions are being taken, and so on?

Matt Hickman: We were very diligent about tracking play through choices, outcomes and reactions to them. We wanted to make absolutely sure that after all the decisions were made and the cards were down so to speak the outcome was what the player expected.

There is a great in game feature that helps with this. After each mission you receive a summary that lists all of the objectives, optional objectives and choices you made within each mission and the consequence of that action. By tracking all of these results on a given play through we could keep track of how each player's run through was unfolding.