SWAT 4 Update

There is a general suspicion that people who work at game companies sit around playing games all day. Apparently there is at least some truth to that... According to producer Sara Verrilli, "the team has been devoting four or five hours a day to playing SWAT in different modes." Sounds like fun, huh? And you haven't even seen the game yet.

SWAT 4 truly looks amazing. The team has created a dark, dirty, gritty world that fans of the franchise (or of first person shooters, or of Irrational) are going to love. And not to debunk the playing-games-all-day myth, but the team has been working incredibly hard. The whole group is busy perfecting both the single and multiplayer modes, as well as balancing the gameplay so that SWAT teams and suspects are competitive. Programmers have been seen brutally dragging team members away from their computers to help fix bugs.

I know for a fact that SWAT is going to be incredible and I will tell you why. I have spent an unnatural amount of time around game developers. I know that when people work on a game for two or more years, they are usually sick to death of it by the time they hit crunch no matter how amazing it may be. Once they are in crunch, forget them ever wanting to see the game again. And yet here's what crunching Irrational team member Bill Gardner has to say when asked how the game is progressing: "We're having entirely too much fun playing this game. There's a borderline unhealthy amount of trash talking going on and a whole lot of random shouting." I can vouch for the random shouting; it can get very loud in the SWAT room.

We are expecting SWAT to be ready in the first quarter of 2005. If you would like to learn about the game in more detail check out the press release and stay tuned for more updates here.

-- Meredith Levine