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Spider Man 2

  • Writer: aka1819
    aka1819
  • Feb 20, 2024
  • 3 min read

Updated: Apr 24





Crimes

Engine: Proprietary (Insomniac) | Team Size: AAA | Role: Game Design Intern-Crime Missions | Genre: Action Adventure / Open World

Overview

During my internship at Insomniac Games, I worked on open-world crime missions for Marvel's Spider-Man 2. My focus was improving enemy spawn logic, encounter pacing, and difficulty scaling to ensure crimes felt dynamic, readable, and consistent across the city.


Crime missions are a core part of Spider-Man 2's open-world experience. These encounters needed to challenge players at different skill levels while supporting player freedom and encounter variety throughout New York City. I focused on ship-ready quality, ensuring that system gameplay logic functioned seamlessly within the high-density environment of Insomniac's proprietary engine.

CHALLENGES:



Open-world crime systems must balance randomness with structure. Crimes need to feel spontaneous and unpredictable while remaining fair, readable, and scalable across different player skill levels and progression states.


Key challenges included:


  • Enemies spawning illogically or overlapping in clustered groups.

  • Concentrated difficulty spikes in certain areas of the map.

  • Crimes feeling repetitive or too predictable across extended play sessions.

  • Spatial Logic & Technical Debt: Resolving collision and spawn triggers within a high-density environment.

Rhr
Rhr

HOW IT WAS RESOLVED


I focused on improving the consistency and readability of crime encounters across the open world.

  • Designed and tuned enemy spawn logic and encounter flow across multiple crime mission types including Standard, Kraven, Sandman, and Venom encounters contributing to smoother pacing and more consistent encounter readability before ship

  • Resolved spawn placement bugs across the NYC map where enemies were incorrectly spawning inside geometry, on water surfaces, or in clustered groups, directly improving encounter quality and playtest pass rates

  • Balanced enemy encounters by documenting and adjusting difficulty scaling variables, establishing spawn composition and enemy tier guidelines that contributed to balancing player progression during crime missions

  • Coordinated with engineering and animation leads to ensure crime mission triggers and enemy assets functioned correctly within the combat system before ship, reducing integration bugs and supporting a stable combat build

  • Improved open-world encounter variety by implementing and testing interactive triggers for enemies and vehicles to support different crime mission outcomes

A side-by-side comparison. UP: Shows areas that there are unusual clusters of enemies spawned in for someone just starting the game of Spider-Man, which is too many for a brand-new player. Down: A cleaned-up version that introduces the player to different types of crime missions and will slowly increase in difficulty as the player progresses as a way to create immersive encounters .
A side-by-side comparison. UP: Shows areas that there are unusual clusters of enemies spawned in for someone just starting the game of Spider-Man, which is too many for a brand-new player. Down: A cleaned-up version that introduces the player to different types of crime missions and will slowly increase in difficulty as the player progresses as a way to create immersive encounters .

DESIGN APPROACH


I approached crime design with a focus on player readability and systemic consistency. Each encounter needed to clearly communicate threat, escalation, and resolution while remaining flexible across player skill levels and combat styles.


The flowchart below maps my understanding of how crime missions function within Spider-Man 2's open world.

My Understanding: To ensure I understand how the spawn points work in Spider-Man 2 to ensure I know how the enemies were spawning in NYC.
My Understanding: To ensure I understand how the spawn points work in Spider-Man 2 to ensure I know how the enemies were spawning in NYC.

KEY PRINCIPLES


  • Entry-level clarity: Designing so players could immediately understand where threats originated

  • Scalable challenge: Supporting different player progression states without creating frustration

  • Systemic variety: Designing crimes that felt fresh through variation, not randomness


WHAT I WOULD IMPROVE


Given more time, I would have pushed for more varied encounter scripting across crime types rather than relying primarily on spawn logic adjustments. I would also explore difficulty ramping tied to observed player behavior rather than fixed progression thresholds making the system more responsive to how individual players engage with the open world.


CONCLUSION:


Marvel's Spider-Man 2 gave me my first look at AAA-scale open world design from the inside. Working within an established combat and traversal framework taught me how to contribute meaningfully without disrupting systems that were already functioning well.


This project strengthened my ability to:


  • Design systems that must scale across hundreds of hours of play

  • Work within established AAA combat and traversal frameworks

  • Communicate design intent clearly through documentation and cross-discipline collaboration


Developed a deep understanding of AAA technical pipelines and the importance of work like coordinate validation and bug debt in maintaining player immersion.


 
 
 

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