Retrospective The Club

Lead designer Matt Cavanagh revisits a lesser-known gem from the Xbox 360’s library

- Darran Jones

Some videogames are created with all the developers having a clear idea of what they want to achieve from the very beginning. Others take a more organic approach, slowly evolving as avenues are explored and ideas that didn’t work out are rethought. And then there are some which stem from a single great idea, which is quickly put into action. Bizarre Creations’ third-person shooter The Club is one such example.

“I was working with a small team creating prototypes for new games,” begins Matt Cavanagh, who worked on The Club as its lead designer. “One of these prototypes was a very much story-driven third-person shooter, however because of time constraints, we didn’t want to develop prototype AI. It was pretty much granted that the game would need great AI but we needed to sell what was unique about our game. We also needed to develop our control system, so we decided to make a pop-up target range with a basic scoring system. This turned out to be great fun to play but unfortunately the deal with the prototype fell through and we moved on to the next prototype. A little time later, Martyn [Chudley, Bizarre’s founder] had the idea that we should take the shooting gallery out of the earlier prototype and make it a game in itself. The Club basically evolved from here.”