Resident Evil Outbreak/development

Development
According to an interview with producer Noritaka Funamizu, the first concept of Biohazard Outbreak, as it was known originally, was before the release of Resident Evil 2 in 1998. With growing interest in the concept of network gaming over consoles, Shinji Mikami, the director of the first Resident Evil, suggested to Funamizu that he should have a try. Early on in the design, Funamizu made a small multiplayer minigame where the player must survive the longest; the team decided to remove it due to its failure to encourage team work (players would instinctively run away from the horde rather than help one-another), arguing that what made Resident Evil scary was its lack on multiplayer, forcing gamers to play on their own. The team then chose that the game would follow its own story like the other games in the series, but keep the option for multiplayer.

The ad-lib system was chosen over conventional microphone chat because the development team argued that it would ruin the atmosphere. Instead, limited chat options were used for conversation between users - a player would walk up to another and deliver a line from a particular conversational category (eg. "help" and "go" categories).

Capcom released various pieces of media in 2002, including pictures featuring the eight main characters wandering around the Arklay Mountains and a trailer demonstrating the ad-lib system and character communication. Later that year the game was renamed "Biohazard Network". By October, eighteen different scenarios were in-development, with even more in the concept phase.

Not long after this the title was changed again, this time to Biohazard Outbreak (Resident Evil Outbreak outside Japan), and the number of scenarios was reduced to the five scenarios closest to being finished. Another five scenarios that did not make the initial cut, though were complete enough to be featured in the E3 2002 trailer, were developed into the sequel Resident Evil Outbreak File #2.

Shortly before release, Network mode was written out of the European copies; this was because Capcom failed to find a server in the region in time.