Burnout Paradise is an open-world racing game set in the fully explorable Paradise City, built around high-speed driving, spectacular crashes and player freedom. The game redefined the Burnout formula by moving the series into a seamless open world where events, exploration and competition emerge as players speed through the city.

Designers at Criterion Games collaborated closely on the development of all core gameplay systems. The features I developed though to completion were Crash Mode and the dynamic traffic network, helping shape how players interact with the world and how collisions, chaos and spectacle emerge during gameplay.

As a senior member of the design team at Criterion Games, I collaborated on the core design of Burnout Paradise alongside a small, highly iterative design group. The team worked collectively to develop the game’s systems, events and open-world structure, rapidly prototyping ideas and refining them through constant playtesting.

Design was intentionally lightweight and highly visual. Rather than large documents, features were developed using post-it notes and physical boards that allowed the team to rapidly discuss, iterate and prioritise ideas as the game evolved.

Throughout development we regularly played the game together to evaluate features, tune gameplay and “find the fun” through iteration.

• Collaborated on the core design of gameplay systems, events and open-world activities

• Helped design and refine the game’s online features and connected multiplayer systems

• Contributed to the design of race types, challenges and event structures across Paradise City

• Designed and implemented the junction-based event start system triggered by wheel spins

• Iterated gameplay features and the environment through constant team playtesting and tuning

• Assisted in vehicle handling and balancing the roster of vehicles - trusted to give reliable feedback

Each designer on Burnout Paradise had one or more areas of ownership - the main features and modes I owned were:

• Crash Mode (AKA: Showtime)

• Traffic System (dynamic open-world and race mode specific balancing)

Crash Mode (AKA “Showtime” Game Mode)

This feature lets players start a “crash mode” event any time by holding both the left and right shoulder buttons at the same time whilst driving at high speed. The players vehicle explodes and begins to crash - however the player is able to steer the crash, and use the boost meter to trigger additional explosions to launch the car into the air. The roads become flooded with traffic vehicles, and the aim of Showtime is to destroy as much traffic as possible, scoring points and multipliers before coming to a standstill.

• Originated the mode during a Crash Mode brainstorm with the idea that “all crashes should become crash mode”

• Defined the rules and scoring system for the mode

• Balanced traffic system during this (and all other) game mode

• Placed parked vehicles along roadsides to create scoring and multiplier opportunities

• Set vehicle points and balanced the scoring system

• Created studio-wide Showtime competition to help test, iterate and balance the mode

• Recorded the teams best scores on every road to set “highscore” targets for players to beat

Traffic System

Getting the dynamic traffic system right in an open-world racing game can make or break the players enjoyment of speeding through the world. Too high or low density, a badly placed parked car, or traffic on the racing line can make the game feel unfair, unforgiving and un-fun.

While not the most glamourous of features, traffic is a massive feature that touches every part of the game world and required interfacing and balancing against all other game modes. To keep the team up-to-speed on this feature, I created regular Traffic Report presentations that detailed latest traffic set-up, performance optimisation, game mode balancing data and other information.

• Hand-build the entire traffic road network - specifically modelled lanes and junctions used by the traffic system

• Defined all road lanes, junctions and traffic lights

• Balanced traffic density, road speeds and vehicle types across the entire open-world

• Created and balanced traffic variations for all game modes - each mode having different requirements

• Placed hidden “kill zones” on every bend and junction to delete traffic from racing lines and create thrilling near-miss moments

Picture Paradise

A fun feature that I conceived and implemented was the “Picture Paradise” mode - essentially a screensaver mode that I thought up after seeing hundreds of TVs around the Criterion office sat with the game idling on-screen. After 10-20 seconds of idling the game fades out and the camera freely roams the city roads, focussing on key landmarks (which I personally tagged). The feature was considered really cool internally, and a significant budget was given to provide relaxing classical music for the mode.