Motiga’s Gigantic, which is currently in closed beta on Xbox One and Windows 10, pits two teams of five heroes against one another in MOBA/hero-shooter arena battles. The key to each battle is to slay the other team’s guardian, an enormous and enormously powerful beast, while protecting your own. But that wasn’t always the case.

Speaking with XBLA Fans, Motiga Player Progression Designer John Hargrove recently stated that Gigantic originally featured just one guardian on the battlefield. All players then competed in what Hargrove described as MMO-style raids to defeat the sole guardian.

“It was a bit more organic, but the original version of the game actually had two different teams that were fighting over one creature, which is hard to know if that makes sense exactly,” said Hargrove. “But it was like competing raid teams. But when James Phinney, our gameplay director, came on, he sort of took that vision and what the team was already working on and sort of broke it apart and gave each team their own giant monster, and it started to make a little bit more sense than just competing against the other team’s monster.

“So I guess that part was pretty organic, but, yeah, I think that was the vision for this current game when development started up around two and a half, three years ago.”

Motiga Guardians

It shouldn’t be surprising that Gigantic’s initial vision for its debut title was essentially a component of MMO games: Hargrove said the team has as many members inspired by MMOs and RPGs as it doe those influenced by shooters. But it’s that love for shooters that seems to be coming in most handy these days, as the studio has had to make regular changes to balance levels and characters for competitive shooter play as new elements have been introduced.

“When Imani, the sniper, was added to our game to the first time all of a sudden I had to account for taking damage from way across the map, which I’d never experienced before in our game,” explained Hargrove. “So it was really interesting figuring out the right amount of health and escapability that she could receive so that melee heros could still get in range of her and do damage. It’s really difficult not for progression design, but we have a lot of game designers here. Watching them balance that’s been really interesting.

“In the case of Imani, if you get one smoke bomb, if you get in position she has one out. Exactly one out that she’s able to use when facing a melee character, and if you’re able to track her through that smoke bomb you catch her, and it’s just kind of done. That’s the level of balance. You have to figure out specific ins and outs to give to characters, specifically to melee.”

Gigantic was always going to be a game with huge creatures for players to fight over, even if the ways they do so have changed significantly. Motiga isn’t through making changes yet, either. The game’s roster currently consists of 16 heroes and two guardians, but Hargrove said the plan is to keep adding things and re-balancing.

“There should always be something knew when players think about the game.”