like Dustin Ross, who works at Squad
developer Offworld Industries as
director of customer experience.
When Ross first discovered
Project Reality in 2006, he was
stationed at Camp Pendleton in
California. In his time off he’d
make the 12-mile trek to an internet
cafe to play Project Reality. PR’s
mechanics and communication tools
created scenarios that closely
resembled how he interacted with
his real-life squadmates.
“It was really [PR’s] social
interactions, camaraderie,
teamwork, and voice comms that
made it resonate with someone who
was actively in the military versus an
arcade shooter where it’s more
oriented around individual success,”
Ross says.
Squad producer Norbert
Rothermel, who served in the
German Armed Forces, loved Project
Reality because it enabled a measured
playstyle that wasn’t compatible with
traditional shooters. He recalled
playing Counter-Strike with friends in
the barracks, and butting heads with
how the game wanted him to play.
“We would play different from
how a normal Counter-Strike player
would play. They’d play how they’d
most likely win the game, but since
we were all together in the barracks,
we’d focus so much on the teamwork.
Then when I discovered PR, I found
that it rewarded the ways we had
already been playing as military
members,” Rothermel says.
Project Reality grew over the years
into a collaborative super mod with
when developing Squad’s sound effects, particularly the
crackling of a near-miss bullet whizzing by your head. He
recalled to me the day he first tested the sounds and had a
visceral reaction. “That was the first time since I’d been
back [from service] that a videogame made me flinch,”
Ross says.
He let the team know that they definitely gotten the
sound right, but “a little too right, maybe”. He’s bang
on—I’ve never been more afraid of getting shot at than in
Squad. Whereas other shooters simulate suppression by
blurring your vision or reducing accuracy, in Squad it
works simply through overwhelming noise and a tunnel
vision effect. Fighting through the noise and firing back at
enemies is its own skill (one that I’m still bad at).
Ross’ military insights also directly influenced Squad’s
map design. He was able to point out when sightlines
didn’t feel right, or the layouts didn’t feel appropriate for
military operation. Offworld VP of publishing Chris Greig
(who worked on Squad as a designer in its early days),
remembers talking with Ross about small details that
made a big difference, like the width of a map’s roads.BELOW: Most
firefights in Squad
are fought at extreme
ranges, often over
100 meters.over 50 maps, 20 factions, and
hundreds of simulated weapons. It’s
impressive even now, but its technical
ties to Battlefield 2 meant it could
only evolve so far.
In 2014, a small group of
developers from the original mod
began work on Squad as Offworld
Industries. They wanted to take the
clever concepts of Project Reality and
make their own commercial product
using Unreal Engine 4.
In 2015 the team launched a
successful Kickstarter campaign and
raised the impressive sum of
$434,805 CAD, which was over twice
their $184,000 CAD funding goal.BATTLE TESTED
Ross joined early in Squad’s
development as military consultant.
After a few months of consulting he
transitioned to game designer. Ross
had no formal experience in the
game industry, but for a project like
Squad, he was the perfect fit.
“The technical side of military
advising isn’t really useful nowadays.
Most people can go find the max
effective range of an M16 rifle on the
internet. What [Offworld] was
interested in was that I could take the
overarching ideas and philosophies of
the military and soldier interactions
and apply them to gameplay,” he says.
“That’s where I think the military
side really started coming into play to
make Squad what it is today.”
During test sessions Ross would
be brought in to make sure the game
still felt like the simulation they were
going for. His perspective was useful“[Ross] talked about how treacherous
it was to take a vehicle down some
roadways. He described there being a
wall so close on either side [of the
vehicle] that you couldn’t open the
doors. And I was like ‘great, that’s
very important information!’.”
As a result, Squad’s maps are
incredibly true to the locations they
depict. Forests are dense with trees
and shrubbery while cities flank the
sky with explorable buildings and
narrow alleys. Like a real-life
patrolling squad, moving out in the
open is inherently dangerous. This isSquad
FEATURE