Gears 2: Match-making problems were "growing pains," says Fergusson

Gears of War 2 executive producer Rod Fergusson has told VG247 that match-making issues with the title's multiplayer - which initially saw game-breaking waits to access games on Live - were the result of "growing pains" and treading new ground in terms of scale.

"The match-making problems we had at the beginning of Gears 2 were really just growing pains," he said.

"It was the first time we'd ever done non-server-browser match-making... We could test to a certain scale up to 1,000 players or so, but when [we went] up to a million players, with hundreds of thousands of players match-making all at the same time, certain things didn't work in the way they were expected to."

Fergusson told us that problems with match-making at this level are not unusual.

"Bungie, with Halo 2, had a similar thing," he said. "Going into that kind of match-making system just has inherent problems that you have to go through yourself and experience before you can fix it and get it right."

A first title update became a priority when problems arose. Once the match-making service stabilized, the game's team went on to fix multiplayer exploits.

A third update introduced a new levelling system and new additions for online play, as opposed to fixes.