Panic Button has been developing games for a while now, with their humble beginnings working on titles for the Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360 back in 2009. But the developer has been getting a lot of praise lately thanks to their fantastic job porting
Doom(2016) to the Nintendo Switch.
The developers has even managed to successfully port Bethesda's
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and Digital Extremes'
Warframe. In fact, while working on
Warframe,
Panic Button even decided to optimise all versions of the game across all available platforms. The company is also
currently working on Doom Eternal, sequel to Bethesda's critically praised
Doom released in 2016.
During this year's PAX West in an interview with Games Industry, Panic Button GM Adam Creighton opened up about what it's like porting games to the Nintendo Switch and how challenging it can be. Of course, they really like a challenge and the high quality of what they've delivered is a testament to that.
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We like to make projects that are special for the target hardware, and Nintendo Switch is a cool device because you use it on the go, you use it docked, and you use it in both modes and move back and forth", explained Creighton while also explaining why Nintendo's handheld hybrid console is such a compelling gaming device.
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So we've done things with the control schemes and motion, but also bringing these AAA big titles in their true form to this hybrid hardware has been really challenging. We like a challenge; it's part of why we go after these things. We wanted to both broaden those properties' availability to a whole new group of people, but we also wanted to broaden the Nintendo Switch as a platform. We really feel like core games make so much sense on that hardware that we want to bring those over".
Panic Button's approach to porting games to the Switch seems to be a mix of wanting to take on the challenge and about wanting the console to succeed by bringing those AAA titles to it. Creightong mentions, however, that it can be quite the challenge to port these games as he contrasts porting games to developing them from scratch.
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Ports are tough, because when someone's designing a game for the first time for a platform, we can cut features or mold features or make changes that people don't know about or see because we're able to make those in advance of release. For a port, we have to bring the game faithfully with all its gameplay and features, or people feel like it's a lesser port".
Creighton also reminisces about working on Doom(2016) and how they wanted the game to feature motion controls at launch but not being able to due to some unexpected time constraints.
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When we were working on Doom, we had pitched that we wanted to do motion controls, but as we were getting close to release, they just weren't where they needed to be yet. So we released with melee motion in the shipping version of Doom, then we worked on motion gaming behind the scenes and released a patch in February where we had much more comfortable, much tighter, much more organic feeling motion controls for Doom".
Motion controls for
Doom were eventually released for the game, and Panic Button even implemented motion controls on
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus—which, unlike
Doom, were available for players when the game launched. Panic Button have really done a terrific job with these ports, and this has definitely helped putting them on the spot as other triple AAA devs notice their high quality ports and want them to help them port other games. Needless to say, Panic Button has earned everyone's respect and we hope they continue to do so.