Xavier Agulló

When I finished my first project I was offered a “once in a lifetime opportunity”, consisting in moving to New York City and working for Gameloft studio in Manhattan. I didn’t hesitate to take the offer and I crossed the pond in early 2008. “COPS” was my first assignment there.

Working on police/detective fiction allowed me to use a very unique tone for a video game. The goals involved mundane tasks often with a fun or unexpected twist: a call for “domestic violence” turns to be a bondage session, or a simple supermarket robbery that becomes a hostage situation. As a player you always had a wingman (switching among the four protagonists) which allowed for rich action sequences and dialogue banter.

Each episode was self-contained and had different goals and situations. But there was a greater story arc that culminates with a level in “black & white” (in pure thriller fashion) featuring an event in the past that ties the whole thing together.

The game was full of fresh ideas, but not everything was perfect. Being a young designer I had the will to reinvent everything, and some early systems (controls, shooting) required a lot of back and forth with the headquarters producers to be finally discarded. Then I realized that innovation often bears a cost and sometimes is worth sticking to what’s already working.

My team and I designed the whole game but only developed half of it. An urgent project (“Far Cry 2”) came to our desks and “COPS” was finished a year later by Gameloft Beijing who did a great job of completing the game while sticking to the original vision.