I spoke with Mathieu Cote, the head of partnerships at Behaviour Interactive for Dead by Daylight just hours following the release of Rick and Michonne Grimes from The Walking Dead being added as new survivors to the horror asymmetrical multiplayer game. Our conversation ranged from topics surrounding the future of more potential Walking Dead content and the process of Rick and Michonne entering the fog to the kind of snacks Cote likes to eat while gaming.
I started our interview off by asking Cote why Behaviour sought to add The Walking Dead to Dead by Daylight. He answered our question with another question and elaborated.
The Walking Dead in Dead by Daylight
“I mean, another question would be, why not? Essentially, [The Walking Dead] has been a staple of a cruel world for a long time. It’s been around forever, which is fitting, because it was created to be something that could potentially go on forever. That’s sort of the essence of the show’s story, right? There’s no end in sight. There’s not a cure that’s gonna happen. There’s not a big moment when everything is going to be fine again.”
“People die, people live. It doesn’t really matter. It’s very bleak, which is part of the franchise. For us, it made absolute sense to bring them in.”
“The fact that our last chapter was a killer only with Springtrap and Five Nights at Freddy’s, which was pretty big to be fair, now we’re doing this which is purely survivor-centric as a chapter with two survivors. It felt like the right balance to strike.”
Following this up, I mentioned that that hopelessness in The Walking Dead seemed to kind of fit in with The Entity’s fog realm, which began a discussion of how survivors fit into this game world.
“We often talk about what makes a survivor in Dead by Daylight. They’re not heroes, right? They are people. Terrible things could happen to them and they could disappear tomorrow and you wouldn’t be surprised because they’re just normal people. At the same time, they are people who could do great things, and you wouldn’t be overly surprised because there’s sort of a seed of heroism in everyone to a certain extent.”
Will Other Walking Dead Characters Come to Dead by Daylight?
From here, we asked about the prospects of additional Walking Dead characters being added to the game. While Rick and Michonne are the base playable characters, skins are available to change them into two other popular characters from the series, Daryl Dixon and Maggie Greene. Cote says there is potential for more fan favorites like Glenn and Carol to appear.
“There might be even more coming. [The Walking Dead] is a client that there is a very rich world of characters that they’ve created over the years in the show. There’s a lot of fan favorites and everybody has their characters.”
I also asked if Behaviour had put any consideration into there being a potential Walking Dead killer this chapter. Cote says there were many conversations about that. He says that he thought Negan would fit better as a survivor rather than a killer in Dead by Daylight.
“He’s a real person. Our survivors are not heroes, some of them are bad people. Our killers tend to be supernatural or bigger than life. A presence that is absolute to a certain extent.”
“It felt right to just do two survivors because I felt it fit the essence of The Walking Dead series.”
“I don’t like the guy. I don’t think that we’d be friends. You know what? I don’t want to be his friend. I think he’s a really interesting character, and he’s managed to strike the imagination of so many people and he’s a legend now, but he’s human too, huh? Very much. That’s why I didn’t want to get a killer [this chapter].
Of course, The Walking Dead is more than a show. The graphic novels ran for a very long time and many people, myself included, love the Telltale games. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there is a future where Lee or Clementine from the games or any of the graphic novel versions of the character will come to Dead by Daylight because of all the different people holding those licenses.
“Without getting into the nitty-gritty of the legal things about that, they tend to be different licenses held by different parties. Therefore, it would be very, very difficult for us to be able to provide multiple versions of the same universe or different characters that exist in different versions of that universe. I think our legal team would get nightmares.”
“All of these things become so complex, so convoluted. So yeah, it’s very unlikely that we will see that in any of our licenses. In some cases, people might possess the rights to a whole thing, but it’s really rare.”
Alongside the new survivors, Dead by Daylight has a new map available for players that is a mash-up of elements from the hospital and prison in The Walking Dead show. When asked what drove the idea of this map, Cote says it was the vision of a nightmare you would have in the show.
“You’re right [our maps] are usually a little more focused, but it’s always a reinterpretation to a certain extent. The things that make their way to the world of Dead by Daylight are rarely the things themselves. They are the memories of the things or nightmares of those things. I think it’s why we created this specific bit, this mash-up. If you were to have a nightmare about The Walking Dead, you might dream this.”
“We never recreate exactly. Like, oftentimes, we’ve tried to do it and, without going into specifics, I don’t think that it makes a better Dead by Daylight when we try to recreate something.”
How Behaviour Brings in New Characters
From here, I was wondering what the collaboration process looks like between Behaviour and outside sources when bringing in a new character. Cote says the process changes every time, but most outside companies care more about the look of the characters rather than the perks they have or the abilities they bring.
“It really depends on the partner. Some of them are super interested in the gameplay mechanics and how that’s going to represent the characters. I already might have ideas or inspiration that they might be excited by and want to talk about it. Some partners are hands off and they don’t care. They’re like ‘just do your work and make sure it’s good,’ and we’re fine especially when it comes to the gameplay specifically. All of them will have very strict approvals of the look of things, but the gameplay is a different thing, but we still consider it.”
“It usually starts from ‘we have an idea of the characteristics of a person which we want to highlight. What about this character is unique? What about this character is important?’ and these are the things that we’ll want to highlight and then our designers will go in and come up with fifty different perks that could potentially highlight these characteristics. We’ll whittle them down until we figure out the right ones.
It tends to involve quite a lot of people in the team because we talk about it all the time, and everybody’s got ideas for perks, and we need so many perks all the time.”
“When we create a new character, we have three new perks. There’s usually, like, one or two that will be really, really iconic for that character, and one people don’t care as much about, and that’s fine. There’s so many you can’t expect all of them to be winners anyway. Once in a while, we do have a feeling internally like, oh, this one is awesome, it highlights the character.”
“For [Rick and Michonne], because we were releasing two survivors, we have some teamwork perks. If you use them together, you really, really get a lot of bang for your buck.”
I asked if Cote had any collaborations that he really wished would work out, but hadn’t in the past. Two names he really wishes he could get into Dead by Daylight are Jason and Pennywise, but for reasons he couldn’t divulge, didn’t go further. I brought up how I would love to see a Big Daddy from Bioshock or Cindy and Brenda from Scary Movie show up, and he’s heard those calls from fans before. Cote won’t say anything when it comes to fan requests because Behaviour either tried and it didn’t work, it’s coming in the future, or the team considered it and said no. That said, while Cindy and Brenda are technically comedy characters, Cote wouldn’t rule them out for the fog.
“We did Ashe Williams, we did Chucky. I mean, we brought in Nicolas Cage. I think we have stretched what it means to be a fit for Dead by Daylight.”
Eating Habits While Playing and the Chaos of Dead by Daylight
I promise readers, I tried my best to get the smallest hint from Cote about the next upcoming chapter for the game which features a new killer and survivor in September. Unfortunately, Cote wasn’t moving. He says that he would love to give a hint, but there’s nothing he can say. Instead, we talked about our favorite snacks when gaming. Cote says he loves his sweets.
“I tend to go for sweets. Usually like, I eat a whole box of cookies while I play. These days, it’s watermelon, just because it’s so warm [outside]. I just eat watermelon by the barrel.”
Getting back on topic, I mentioned that a personal favorite killer for me to go up against when I am playing survivor is Vecna because of the chests that spawn in when he plays that feature new elements for players to interact with. Looking to the future, situations like that and Springtrap’s doors will happen more when it feels right for the character.
“It takes a good fit for the killer. It’s something that we absolutely love to do. Usually, when we bring in new killers, we try to find something that is unique about them, and Springtrap was really that. People’s experience of Five Nights at Freddy’s is from the point of view of the protagonist. Therefore, we need to make sure that when you’re playing against Springtrap, it feels like you’re playing Five Nights at Freddy’s. Adding that layer of the security rooms helped us try to bring that experience, and it fits.
I think one of the first times we did that was with the Pig (or Freddy), and we added those little boxes you have to find the key to your head trap in. It really opened the door. We could continue to do something else that changes the survival experience. The Xenomorph gave us quadrupedal movement and teleporting around the map. Every time we bring in a new killer, we also add in a few things in our toolbox for next to use in a different way.”
I asked if Behaviour ever worries about adding too many elements to Dead by Daylight and was met with a very quick and decisive “no.” Behaviour thinks that the uncertainty of what you could see in the next game is what keeps bringing players back every year.
“Every single game you go in there and you’re not exactly sure what the map is going to be. The killer is going to be one of the 27 killers we have. You don’t know which one [will show up], you don’t know how they’re going to play.”
“We sort of embraced that chaos. Like, we’re okay with the fact that sometimes, you’re gonna play a game and it’s gonna be completely imbalanced. It was the wrong map, it was the wrong killer, it was the wrong team, you had the wrong loadout. Everything went to shit, and it’s still a valid Dead by Daylight trial. At the other end, sometimes, you’re gonna have everything go perfectly, right? And it’s gonna be amazing. All of these things are valid, but it’s not perfectly balanced. Thanos would probably hate Dead by Daylight because it’s not perfectly balanced, but it is always unexpected.”
With the latest update, Dead by Daylight has added its first new survivor item to the game in years, the fog vial. Cote says Behaviour has meant to add new items to the game for a while.
“It’s funny because new items were supposed to be something that we bring in as often as new killers, survivors, or maps, and that didn’t really happen. I’m not sure why. It just felt like it was not as important as all the other stuff we were working on.”
“We always have to prioritize something. It’s always if we do this, then we are not doing that because we have limited resources. That’s the truth and we also prioritize the work-life atmosphere at Behaviour.”
“[The fog vial] is not in its final form. We just released it. People are going to play with it, we’re going to watch them play with it, and we’ll definitely tweak it.”
Finishing up the interview, I asked Cote if there was any worry about killers dealing with survivors running flashlights. After joking about waking up from nightmares about purple flashlights, he said it isn’t something Behaviour is thinking about right now.
“It’s not a worry. I think that’s the game. If we look at the kill rate, we’re exactly where we want in terms of how many people survive. It’s true that your mileage may vary. Maybe you never survive, and it’s always your teammates that do. That’s part of the gamble of playing. Whenever we release a new killer, or whatever we do, there’s always a half screaming that the ‘this killer is OP!’ and then the other half screaming that ‘this killer is unplayable and is useless!’
“At its core, [Dead by Daylight] is a chaotic experience.”
