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But what you talked about is definitely a process, right? A process for the way you develop games at Epic. Do you try to enforce this process across other studios?
CB: I wouldn't say "enforce". That sounds like we're showing up at gunpoint and saying, "Do it or we'll shoot you." I think "coax kindly". I'm not a parent, but one thing I know about parenting is the best way to get somebody to do something is to convince them it's the right thing instead of just saying "Do it because I said so."
And so by providing examples of our proof of concept process that's been successful in Gears 1 and 2, we've been able to convince PCF that it's the right thing to do, and that keeps them positively motivated.
And they've seen the gold in it. The weapons you're going to see at E3, the kind of modes you're going to wind up seeing out of the game, they all tie into the fruit that's to bear from this process.
This is an EA Partners title. You guys are an independent studio and you have these great relationships.
Obviously, you have a great relationship with Microsoft because of Gears -- or at least a fruitful one. How's it feel to be turning around and working with another publisher, on another big new franchise launch?
CB: It's exciting. It's kind of like dating. You know, each entity is unique. It has its own things that work well, things that upset them, back and forth. It's very much a human relationship. You kind of have to like the people you work with.
And thankfully, I kind of get the best of both worlds because I get to go one minute and be in a Microsoft Gears meeting, and then the next minute, I get to go be at an EAP Bulletstorm meeting, and it's been fascinating for me to watch how each individual publisher works. I'm fairly certain it's going to create some great opportunities in the future.
I'm wondering if popularity of the shooter genre is leading to the evolution of the business in a certain way, at least in terms of the genre. If you look at obviously what happened with Infinity Ward. Those guys break off. Bungie became indie. You guys are still independent. Is that something that's because of the success and the revenues that are being generated, that allows that sort of leverage to stay independent, or become independent?
CB: There are so many things going on with the industry right now that I really can't even drill into too much detail. Those who are smart will recognize where talent is and will aptly take care of the talent, and if they don't, the talent will go and figure out a way to do something.
Tim Sweeney is an incredibly intelligent guy who knows how to take care of the talent at Epic, hence the retention rate at Epic. We have a very low turnover rate. The industry? Who knows what's going to happen. I'm glad that independent developers can stay afloat and 150 development teams can still make great games, right?
You own this IP, I'm assuming, right?
CB: Yes.
You own Gears. But at the time Gears was first announced, it was a bit of a surprise, I think, to people that you guys would be able to retain the IP.
CB: Well, to be frank and to be honest and fair, our business guys are very, very good, and they know that it's really where a lot of the value is. And I, in the foreseeable future, will not be working on any sort of licensed IP or anybody else's IP. I like working on ones that we can control and foster and allow to grow and breathe within our own umbrella.
But do these relationships impact you in terms of the direction you want to take? If you take a game to a publisher.
Tammy Schachter: At least speaking for the Partners side, David DeMartini and Sinjin Bain, who go out and talk the partner program and work with developers who remain independent, they're focus is very clearly around finding the best of breed, and people that we want to encourage to remain independent and allow them to cultivate their own culture and foster their creativity and bring the best out -- like, allow Epic to cultivate the best in PCF.
So, our role as a partner, and I'm sure you guys count on us for this, is to kind of stay out of it, stay out of the creative process so we can focus on the business side and we can do the publishing and distribution while leaving them to focus squarely on the creative.
CB: And that's absolutely correct, but that's not to say that there's not feedback, right?
TS: No, of course.
CB: You know, there's feedback like "Hey, what do you think of this?" But it's not a "This game needs to be about apples!" or whatever would come up.
One thing I've learned in the years that I've been in the business is to know when to give creative people enough rope, right? There will be some that will hang themselves, but ultimately I want the guys at PCF to get out of bed in the morning and feel like it's their game and that they're contributing to it. I don't want them sitting here feeling like they're making "Cliff Bleszinski's Whatever", right? It needs to be PCF's title, and they need to own that. That's crucial.
Real quick, to summarize everything here, the publishers that have been the most successful in acquiring a studio have not messed with the studio and have kept them as their own little bubble, and their own incubation, and their own family. Whereas the ones that acquire a developer and then systematically go, "No, do it this way and do all that," everything just crumbles, and then they wind up with nothing that they paid for, and they lose value.
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While getting prettier over the past ten years of console dominance, I think it’s defensible to observe that games have also gotten simpler in the number and depth of their mechanics. (“Dumbed-down” if you’re a crochety old PC gamer; “made more accessible” if you prefer gaming on consoles.) Adventure games? Dead. RPGs? Dying. Console game developers have made decent money by assuming that most people prefer simple, repetitive, mindless action over content that asks you to exercise higher-order functions like thinking or feeling.
In that sense, customers *are* idiots -- game developers have assumed an ever-lower common denominator and have been rewarded for it. People see only what’s in front of them today; they don’t even realize the gameplay possibilities they’re missing out on because of their willingness to accept games with less and less depth. That some developers with a vested interest try to doublethink that loss into some kind of “progress” doesn’t deny it -- or excuse it. They’re treating customers like idiots and getting away with it.
Where the “less is better” philosophy fails is when you assume that you can give people broken stuff and they won’t notice. MMORPGs that launch with bugs in order to meet some arbitrary but inflexible ship date are a prime example of this form of “assuming the customer is an idiot.” Some suit decides that other things are more important than missing textures, missions that can’t be completed, and unbalanced mechanics. The developer then pays the predictable price for this error of judgment in bad reviews (and even harsher word-of-mouth) that causes people to avoid their game entirely.
The trick, apparently, is that you really can give people less and they’ll be satisfied -- as long as it works.
What happened to our expectations?
Ah, well. This was still a very good interview.
This quote rings true with the state of contention in this interview. "That you cannot assume your audience are idiots."
As Designers and Creatives we are given the roles of creating these worlds and concepts for the audience to grapple with in a game environment. Through gameplay, sound, graphics we are able to achieve a level of immersion surpassed by none. However, that suspension of disbelief that is necessary in order to become full immersed ranges from person to person. Simply put, some have more imagination then others.
As Designers we are given great power to play games with our audience, toy with them, make them feel a certain way. However the threshold to have a hold on our audiences range from genre to genre, but once we have obtained that hold, it is simply what we do with it that will make our games great and unforgettable. I will agree, as the audiences broadens so do our ideas, they become stretched and watered down to fit the lowest common denominator. However, as Cliff soo aptly put, the brain is capable of such amounts of adaptation and integration into a system of thought that who are we to say that these "dumb." people can't learn hardcore gaming concepts? The trick as Designers is to lower that entry level and raised the Mastery level, and continually baiting the player with achievements and points to improve themselves to the upper level of thought.
You say any fumb duck can pick up MW2 and go to town, but how many times have I as a avid gamer have wandered into a lobby with fully ranked gun toaten "red-necks" in MW2 and got my ass handed to me, quite gracefully I might add. Who's to say these guys aren't skilled and critically thinking here? They are doing things with a system of mechanics few designers even thought of. The designers layed down the sand box for the children to build in, but when you first look at it, it is just sand of course. A sentiment Bungie has been taking with the Halo seriese and reach.
This goes to show the popularity of the shooter genre. It isn't that people are dumb, but simply less imaginative. It is harder to imagine looking at the back of someone running with a sword, or being some omniscient being looking down over a battle field barking orders a little men, that YOU are supposed to be that person, or at least think like, them than it is to simply be LOOKING through these people. There is simply less to believe about your perspective in the FPS world and easier to transplant yourself in the game environment. Thus the entry level is much much lower. Yes it is a road MUCH traveled, but if it aint broke don't fix it! Improve it!
So I would append cliffy's statement that "You will only lose money if you Underestimate your audience."
People can change and adapt, if the audience has broadened that the reach of more hardcore games will as well by the sheer fact that they are more accessible. If peoples are gullible. and will buy any shiny piece of crap then the expectations are already low, what better to blow them away with an awesome game and welcome them into the club then shut our doors to the gentlemen's club for the "gaming elite."
Educate the ill informed! They all have to start somewhere....
So, abandon your personal animosity to the FPS and see it for what it is, a dynamic and evolving genre OR let your bitterness shine through, it's whatever...
I think we need a follow-up interview asking CliffyB to clarify exactly what highways he's driving on like this, so that we all know not to ever ever get anywhere near them.
Good interview. :)
You're exactly the kind of elitist snob that gives games a bad name and the kind of moron that shoots his mouth off online calling people hackers or n00bs because they just killed you in whatever game you're hating on at that moment.
I certainly don't like 99.99% of casual games and the kind of shovelware that has proliferated the Wii but I can see why others do, and that is fine for them, just not for me.
While you're crying over the fact that your IQ is too high for Mass Effect I'll be busy having fun playing whatever game I feel like because I actually enjoy gaming. I've been playing for over 30 years and I hope I will still get enjoyment out of games in another 30 years. I'm hoping you'll have moved on to taking your frustrations out on new school knitters who don't know how it used to be back in the days of knit one, pearl one by then or lambasting people for using tupperware when all the cool kids know that you need a retro He-Man lunch box to keep your PB&J sandwiches (with crusts cut off) in.
I think part of the matter is the same thing that happens in any industry. We has designers, as an audience, have simply gotten older/more experience and more so, done so when the language we use (in design, in gameplay) was being formed. We had to learn the language as we defined it (what button is best to have your primary action on? How should camera controls work? When you have two analog sticks, how should control be split between them? The answer is pretty obvious now... but not so much back then) For the younger/newer/less experienced gamer and audience, they just have to learn the language. The conventions are already there for them. They're walking into an established world. It doesn't mean it isn't any less difficulty only that the tools they use have just gotten better, the tutorials more extensive. There's always going to be that audience of the super-hardcore, super-niche purist as in any sort of industry (creative, industrial, or whatever)... but they're not the only audience and it would be silly to think that their way is the only correct answer for everybody. Or that pure tradition makes it correct any more than pure innovation makes it better.
Many pasta sauces for many people, as it were.
1. "Complex" is not an antonym for "easy" any more than "simple" is the opposite of "hard." Just as Tetris is both simple *and* hard, a gameworld can have real depth in its dynamics without necessarily being hard to play for the average gamer. Asking for interesting world-systems that stimulate the brain and a narrative that engages the heart is in no way the same thing as wanting a "hard" game.
2. Mechanics are not the game; they're just the interface. My assertion is that the *dynamic world* of games -- the set of possible interactions a player can have with the gameworld -- has been in decline over the past ten years or so as the primary design environment for games has shifted away from the PC's processor, upgradable GPU, and memory space. I freely acknowledge that there are some exceptions to this... but they are exceptions. Games like Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2 had large world areas, but they still simplified what the player could do compared to where we were starting to go by the late '90s. Even BioWare simplified Mass Effect 2 compared to their own original game.
Deep games aren't for everyone, any more than everybody loves pure action-oriented shooters. But there are audiences for both kinds of game. So the question is, why are we seeing fewer of the former and more of the latter?
If games really are getting deeper rather than simpler, why isn't a sharp designer like Cliff B. making the kind of RPG-driven game with plenty of dynamic options he says he likes, rather than highly-polished but linear shooters where the only "interesting choice" is which gun to use?
I like both action oriented games to play quick 10 minute matches while waiting the time to head work (My beloved FPSs), and deeper games about player style/authoring in which you can play with the game instead of just play the game (yeah... Bioshock in the last years, and virtually any stealth game). And also like games that play with you instead (Alan Wake here I go).
But many of my friends that like games often don't realize what to do in these games, just keep asking "where shall I go now?" and "whats the road?"... I think, if people need guidance to do things, they might need so to know that they can make their own choices and have their own style. High budget titles are market oriented after all, it takes a smart move to put such a game there today.
However, I do have to disagree with you when you say that game play mechanics aren't everything. I feel they are the yin to the game concept's yang, different yet inseparable and complimentary to one another.
Take for example, Batman: Arkham Asylum. In certain scenes, you have to glide clear across a huge room. Yet, your instincts are saying "Don't Do It! You'll Get Hurt!" with all their breath. And you HAVE TO do it in order to move forward in the game. The net result is an adrenaline rush akin to the Leaps of Faith in Assassin's Creed.
But it's more than just an adrenaline rush. It goes deeper for me - it's gaining insight into the life this character lives - this is what it means to be Batman, to be an Assassin, to have to do these seemingly impossible things.
Btw for readers out there, Batman was built in Unreal Engine 3 and is an innovative approach to taking a primarily FPS development platform and making it that much more - thank you Rocksteady!
To everyone complaining that people who don't like FPS's have no idea what they're missing, it's not that we don't like FPS as much as pickles on a peanut butter sandwich. To me it's that companies like EA get to say what the dominant kind of gaming genre is. They have a near monopoly and true there's Activision/Blizzard but it's like living in small town where the mayor is also the sheriff, the hotel owner, the car dealer...net-net, EA is trying to own us through our entire life-cycle of owning the games we shelled out $59.99 for, not including DLC.
EA don't determine the 'dominant gaming genre'. Consumers do.
@ Bart
Mechanics are the sole vehicle of player expression in games, not just the interface.
What I didn't say, but what I feel, is that mechanics certainly do matter. They're "just" the interface between the player and the gameworld, but the nature and elegance of that interface can (as you pointed out) make a big difference. A game where every possible interaction has a different randomly-assigned mechanic will feel very different from a game where similar interactions are designed to share an appropriate mechanic. A good mechanics designer, by making the interface to the gameworld minimal and consistent, can make an enormous difference in the "flow" of the play experience.
I actually agree that designers over the past decade have gotten fairly sophisticated at providing concise gameplay mechanics. What I was trying (badly in this case) to say was that I think mechanics in games these days are mostly OK and don't need help -- it's the lack of depth in gameworlds, in the range of interesting things that we as players can do with those mechanics, that I think we've been losing for years without even realizing it.
I'd love to see someone like Clint Hocking or Cliff Bleszinski or Warren Spector (once he's done with Epic Mickey) put together a game that offers a truly broad but coherent set of gameplay actions that challenge not just the hands and glands but hearts and minds as well. I'd pay good money for a deep game where what I can do isn't limited to various "kill it and take its stuff" setpieces but feels like a living, breathing *world* in which I can solve different kinds of problems in different ways.
I hope some day good designers will get back to making more games like that, whether as shooters or sneakers or group-RPGs or some mix of all those.
You also obviously haven't played any of the various modes that come with an FPS game. Skill building, inventory managing and perfectionist quest completion are things I also like, I usually have to skip the dialog because it is so cheesy or the acting is lame to the point I can't stand it. I also sometimes can't stand the predictability of the stories. I understand it is difficult to make a game that large, because I have also designed games). I would also like to see a mechanic that required some skill as in MW2 for instance, I think that is what ME2 tried to do.
Ideally the perfect game for us would have a great story, FPS controls and RPG level of character development, in which all elements would be perfectly balanced and various mechanics would be implemented to make game-play interesting and fresh throughout the game, but let's be honest: can you do all that in 2 years? Will you get a project like that green-lit? I know that only getting this stuff written down will take more than a year with a team of 3 people.
Then you will have to understand that every new mechanic you introduce will need a mini tutorial to explain, then at least 3 levels of complexity to say you have developed it somewhat. Do you know how many game levels that requires? How complex it makes them - cos you don't have to forget about the initial mechanics of your game (platform, shooter, whatever) ? Do you know how many game-play hours you will end up with in the end?
Well just adding a special ability to 2 main characters will cover your budget, your game-play hours budget and your gamers ability to follow the story while playing the game and having to juggle the new mechanics he has at his disposal. The fact is that a game with all that you ask for will take too long to develop, will be too long to finish and in the end the gamers might not see the game.
It took us more than 5 years and we didn't finish - also due to some poor management decisions and the financial crisis creeping in and that game didn't even have stat development, just interesting new game mechanics and abilities that had to be explored. In the end we should have made it a shooter and told the story we spent so many years developing instead of making sure all those new mechanics were developed with a mini tutorial and difficulty arch....
Finally don't forget about technology, 2-3 years is manageable, more is like shooting blindfolded, you have to adapt to new methods for asset production arising all the time, new tech, new hardware, it's not that it is impossible, but who is going to juggle and why? Why? When you can make a shooter with one new mechanic and explore that one in one game, polish it and deliver a final experience to the player that will only make him ask for a sequel?
I doubt half, ok - that was optimistic, Let me start again. Less than 1/2 of 1% of FPS players know how to fire a real rifle. And by "versed in the real-world counterparts" do you mean i can go to my local pawn shop and pick up a shock rifle from UT3? SWeeet!
Speaking of "gunning avatars down," you were probably n00b-meat in WoW pvp highlands and have finally found a way to gripe about it. On a website discussion board, how original. I guess it takes more than a 5-year-old to do that, eh? :)
The problem here is that it often seems there's only a market for shooters or action games out there and that a lot of other genres are getting an indie-only, niche label from the industry in general. Why on earth shouldn't there be as much enthusiasm for a turnbased sequel to X-Com as for the recently revealed FPS hybrid of 2K Games for example? It wouldn't be illogical to suspect that the upcoming Syndicate remake by EA/Starbreeze will follow the same FPS treatment just because shooters have never before received so much attention as now. Is it even possible for a turnbased strategy game to get a cover from a major written games magazine in these times?
It's a responsibility of sites like this one to get the word out that games can be more than that, regardless of platform, IP, which big publisher supports it or not and definitely regardless of whatever some financial analyst thinks about it. If every game has to turn into a big action game ready to sell at least a million copies then we're doing something very, very wrong. We're already in a time where plenty of multiplatform media outlets can't provide proper coverage for strategy games for example, except of course when it's about big-name anomalies like StarCraft II. Even certain types of games that seem to be making a comeback (like adventure games) don't get the chance to get back up again between the media storms of the same big boys. What a pity.
I think shooters need to grow up.
We need to inject some style, class and sophistication into the action genre. Audiences have grown up, but we're still treating consumers like children and giving them lame stories, 1 dimensional muscle bound protaganists, simple weapons, simple enemies, simple objectives.
I think we can do better. Half life series is a good example, elegant presentation, strong story, cool action.