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Image Credit: Respawn Entertainment, Apex Legends
Celebrating Apex Legends' fifth birthday and its upcoming Season 20, Respawn Entertainment's Animation Director Moy Perra has recently reflected on the game's beginnings in 2019, revealing that the main issue the team encountered at launch was something that most other developers would celebrate – the game's success.
In an interview with VG247, Perra explained that Respawn's first hurdle with Apex's release was the game's unexpectedly high level of success, something that the team simply didn't anticipate and wasn't prepared for. At the end of its first week, the game successfully attracted 25 million players, culminating in 50 million registered players within a month since its launch. As a result, the existing infrastructure couldn't adequately accommodate the surge of players, a situation Perra wishes he could rectify.
"When Apex Legends came out, it was too viral," the Director said. "We weren't ready for that kind of success. If we could do it all again, I'd want to have better infrastructure in place, so that we could scale up to manage the success."
"It's a dream problem to have as a developer, of course, and since then, we've been able to pivot in some areas for more sustainable methods, but it was a problem at the time for sure."
In addition, Perra shared a few words about the studio's approach to animation, explaining the reason why, to this day, they never use motion capture for first-person animations:
"We have an extremely specific way that we like to animate weapons that suits the kinetic way [Apex Legends] feel," he noted. "Everything is very punchy and spirited, and motion capture doesn't often capture that – that's why we don't do first-person motion capture, ever. To this day. It's all hand-keyed."
Image Credit: Respawn Entertainment, Apex Legends
You can read the full interview here. Also, don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.