Making sure-fire hits

If you've ever indulged in a game of Vice City, the excellent third Grand Theft Auto instalment, you may have picked up on many of the film references. Scarface and Carlito's Way are blatant influences on the mob title, just as Lock, Stock and Snatch are given a nod in The Getaway.

And it's no wonder - we have all heard about the painstaking, and sometimes dangerous, research that goes into creating organisedcrime movies. With their explosive glimpses into a secretive and hard-as-nails world, it's natural they should translate well into creating action games.

Mob rules

But what of titles with no celluloid forefathers - or is that godfathers? Where do original gangster games obtain their realism? 'Games are getting huge production values and are becoming more like interactive movies and entertainment,' says David McLachlan, lead designer on Interview With A Made Man, Acclaim's Mafia title for Xbox and PS2, released this winter.

IWAMM's developers used David Fisher, an author who has worked with the FBI's surveillance of the Cosa Nostra, for storyboard input.

Fisher had been in close contact with individuals on the FBI's Most Wanted list. 'David had a wealth of knowledge about the Mafia that only someone who had been in the FBI's crime lab would know,' says McLachlan. 'We went on a visit to New York, where he told us real stories we adapted. One was about a clam bar restaurant in Little Italy where there was a massacre. We can't use precise names but you can draw very direct comparisons.'

IWAMM sees gamers take control of Joey Verola, experiencing his life as he rises through the Mafia ranks until he's 'made'. From the weapons used, to the clothes worn, McLachlan thinks the realism of IWAMM will set new boundaries. 'There's no denying the importance of storyline in gaming any more - you can't just get away with a basic shoot-'em-up,' he says.

This spring's major crime-based release was Eidos's assassin title Hitman: Contracts, developed by IO Interactive. Neil Donnell, senior producer on the game, says movies were a major influence on the lead character: 'Leon was a movie that influenced all the Hitmans - he was an exciting individual.

'The more recent film Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai, starring Forest Whitaker, helped us with the hitman's psychological state, as did Frederick Forsyth's book The Day Of The Jackal. That was exactly what we wanted - someone who was even more refined in his murders than the Mafia.'

The plane truth

Fiction didn't play the only part in Hitman's development. IO, just like Acclaim, invested time and money in researching real-life equivalents of game elements to ensure accurate environments. 'We did colour studies on each of the game's locations and, if needed, stuck one of the development team on a plane to take pictures of potential locations,' says Donnell.

The team also forked out on a visit to a Finnish shooting range, to ensure that Hitman's guns didn't look false. 'We got a feel of the real power and action we needed to replicate in animation,' he adds.

Despite borrowing moments from the silver screen and investigating real-life criminal occurrences with a magnifying glass, Hitman - just like Hollywood - benefited from pure imagination. 'We found that real guns made a loud, ugly sound, and so we made the in-game sound a light, crispy one. It's much more pleasing to the ear,' Donnell says.