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What
you mentioned about how only 20% of gamers will see the end of your game, it's
remarkable how true that is despite the outcries from the certain, very
specific, hardcore segment of gamers, which is demanding super-duper long
games.
I
was talking to Valve - this must've been like two or three years ago at this
point - and one of the things that they said is that they can do all of their
tracking through Steam about usage of their games so few people actually get to
the end. And then a few years later they released Portal, which was this completely self-sufficient experience in a
few hours. I'm wondering if you've played that, and what you thought of it.
RG: Yeah, I did play Portal. I think there were a lot of things I really liked about Portal. I think having the short game is
great, although people bitched about how short it was, which is really amusing
to me.
Yeah.
That's true.
RG: But yeah, I think Portal was really neat. I think that whole gameplay mechanism was a
lot of fun. I think the only downside for me, with Portal, was it seems like they had this really neat little kind of
"technology trick", you know, with the portals; and it was really fun
to play with that, and I'm glad that it was a short game, because I don't think
that you could've sustained that for much longer. I was really not grabbed by
the whole "sterile laboratory" environment of it all. I kept, in the
back of my head, I kept saying, "What would Nintendo do with it?"
You know, if this was a technology that
Nintendo had come up with, and they were going to produce a game on the Wii,
where would it take place? What world would it be in? So I think they missed
the boat, creativity-wise, with their whole world and their story and
everything.
But, you know, Valve is a company very focused on the hardcore
gamers; that is a great audience for them, and I think in trying to hit that audience, I think they did the
right thing with the game.
Do
you know if Hothead is going to try to do anything similar to what Telltale is
doing, and build its episodic structure into a complete business model that can
be taken to other developers? Telltale seems to really be trying to make that its
entire focus in the industry.
RG: I think one of Hothead's big focuses is
on episodic stuff. I don't know if it's necessarily "episodic" per
se, but I think one of their big focuses is on, I guess you call them
"lapsed gamers". These people who are really into gaming, they enjoy
hardcore gaming, but they just don't have the time to invest in the stuff.
They're not 35 year old women who are
interested in match-3 games. The whole casual game market, which to me is like,
I don't even know if I consider that games, in a way, you know? So it's not
really those people, but it's the people who have played hardcore games;
they've played Half-Life, they've
played these things, but they just don't have the time anymore. And I think
that's really Hothead's focus, is really trying to get those people. And I
think episodic is a very good first step for that.
On
the topic of audiences that maybe aren't being catered to as much as they could
be - because of your historical importance in the adventure genre, I'm curious
what you think about it.
I
have, honestly, quite a few friends who played a lot of adventure games back in
the '90s, and when that genre started to fade... there are still a lot of
adventure games being made today, but it's not quite the glory days that it was
when it was you, and Tim Schafer, and Sierra, and Revolution, and all those
guys. I feel like a lot of people who I knew, who played those games at the
time, aren't playing games now, because they're less interested in just being
another space marine. And I'm curious if you think that those gamers will ever
be catered to.
One
thing I talk about a lot is games that are easier for those people to get into,
you know? Games that are still what we would call full games. They're not Bejeweled or something; you're still in
a rich world, with a character, and you're controlling it, and you're making
decisions, and you're exploring, and doing those things. But just with that greater
focus on character and story. I'm wondering if you think that there's any
mechanism by which those players will be able to find things that they enjoy
again, or if the industry has moved on.
RG: Well, I definitely agree with you, that
this industry has one too many space marine games. I'm tired of seeing that
stuff, and I think there is no doubt about that. But I think you are absolutely
right; there are just a lot of people out there that are being disserviced by
the types of games that are coming out.
And you see that a little bit in the
success of the Wii, because you don't have a bunch of space marine games on it;
you have some things that are lighter, that are more fun, that are more creative,
that are more visually interesting... Not "visually" from the
"obsessed with technology" kind of interesting, but the "artistically"
visually interesting. And I think the success of that proves that out, that
there really is that audience, there.
And that is one of the things that I want
to do with DeathSpank, and other episodic games I may make, is to do things
that are a little more interesting and a little more varied, and to build some
games for those people that did like those old adventure games. I mean, DeathSpank, even though there is this
kind-of Diablo-esque RPG in it, it is
very much an intricate, complex adventure game, much like Monkey Island was.
LucasArts' The Secret of Monkey Island
So I am hoping that I can build this, and
that those people are going to like it, and come to it, but it also has some
other stuff that people who maybe aren't into adventure games as much, because
they are kind of slow and contemplative, that there's other aspects of it that
they're going to get into. There is a little bit of adrenaline going on.
I
think the key with DeathSpank is
going to be to meld those two things together in the right ways, that they
don't turn those two types of players off, but they'll actually enhance the
whole experience. That's the challenge that I see with the game, getting those
two things done right together.
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You definitely need to give other designers, or level designers, scripters ownership for their part too and the lead designer needs to recognize that. Otherwise team members can get frustrated and you might lose some talent.
Basically I am trying to say its very complicated these days and amazing that situations like I describe ever produce something decent. I think it would be a great idea to have clear definitions of responsibilities and I think the old adventure genre is still ahead of the curve in these respects.
Sergey Eisenstein would not have to re-learn the mechanics of how to shoot a film if he suddenly were reincarnated and put on a brand-new film.
In contrast in games, we're reinventing the platforms and basic tools every 3-5 years, or upgrading them so drastically that the tools themselves wind up re-engineering the way games are made. On top of that, most studios have their own in-house tools and engines, with varying design and user-friendliness.
Sure, there's a bit more standardization happening these days with engines like Unreal and middleware like Bink and Havok, but even with that, there's no "one toolset fits all" solution. Most games require custom programming within the engine, which means the toolset changes, which can mean steep learning curves for the production staff at inconvenient times.
So we can't just go over to Studio Systems and rent 2 Panavisions and 3 Arris, buy 5,000 feet of film stock and "shoot a game" in 3 weeks, then take it over to a post house and cut it together, like filmmakers have been able to do since what, the 1930s? '40s, maybe?
Using their basic standardized toolset, it's still possible for filmmakers to make a *distinctive*, high-quality film. Using a generic game toolset, it's extremely difficult if not impossible for a game studio to make a distinctive game.
We're always going to have a problem to some extent with our constantly-evolving tech and tools.
Take the first-person shooter. Nothing really fundamentally innovative has happened to that genre in years. Why? Too much focus on making it prettier - better graphics. But the fundamental elements - the fact you see out a single-perspective, you move, fire, have a use key, etc - have remained static. Except for minor incremental improvements, the gameplay has remained static.
That's the issue. We can't innovate on the gameplay because everyone thinks it's about tools.
If film people ran the film industry the way game people run games, we wouldn't have Method Acting yet, we wouldn't have New Wave, we wouldn't have Cinema Verite, we wouldn't have Film Noir. We just have a lot of awesome colour 3D cameras, but boring stories and wooden acting.