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There's a certain tension at the heart of every good theme park. As a park owner, you naturally want your punters to have a good time. But as a currency, smiles and laughter only go so far. At some stage, you're going to need them to open their wallets. "It's like a John Lewis advert, right?" says John Laws, art director at Frontier Developments. "I get the exact same feeling when I see the John Lewis advert at the end of each year: 'Oh, that's really nice production design, better than most other ads'. And ultimately they just want me to spend money. But I don't care, because it's nice to watch."Planet Coaster has been under construction for about a year at Frontier, and it's already nice to watch. It's become a cliché for developers to say they're building a game from the ground up, but in this case it's entirely accurate. Though its foundations are not set in stone; rather, they're in constant motion - when they're not queuing, at any rate.
"The people are the beginning of the story, the first piece of the puzzle," says lead technical artist, Sam Denney. "When you open your park, these are the first things that start to move. They're the brains and the lifeblood of the park. They drive everything - you pour them in and off they go."
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