|
I
do feel that, at least in many cases, games are a medium where you can have
that level of auteurship, if you want to say it in that way, and design
control. I do feel that there's room for that.
RG: I think there is too. I think that it's
actually critically important that we have that. I mean I grew up in an era of
that, with gaming, and it's just the way that I've always thought about them,
but I think it's really important. I think it's really important that a game
has the movie equivalent of a director; the person whose vision it is that the
thing is becoming. I think that's really important.
Someone
recently asked me if I think that the games industry is moving towards having
more very visible representative faces on games - and they pointed to Jade
Raymond, one of the producers on Assassin's
Creed. And I was wondering if we're going to move more toward the direction
where the producer, more than the designer, is the face. Because producers do
seem to have so much influence on games; more so than on film.
RG: Well, I think what their titles are
really isn't that important. I mean, we don't really have a set group of job
titles in this business. I think that's one of the other areas that I think the
unions have helped Hollywood
out, is the title that somebody gets on a movie is really dictated by union
rules. You know, you can't just decide, "Well, I'm going to call my
brother the director, because he's my brother." If the director's union
doesn't think that he's the director, then he's not.
And in the games business, you know, I
don't really know what a producer does. You know, versus a designer. It seems
like some people think of designers like they're a script writer; that they sit
in a room, and they bang out a design, and they slip it through a slot in the
door, and then a game gets made. And so I don't really know what the titles are,
and it seems like a lot of producers - and I look at what they're really doing -
they really are actually acting like the director of a film.
Yeah.
That's true.
RG: Even though they have this weird name,
"producer", which doesn't really seem to fit. I'd love to see titles
just get settled out in this business, so when somebody says, "I'm a producer,"
or, "I'm an art director," or, "I'm a designer," I actually
knew what they did on the project. And I really don't know that today. But it
does seem like some producers are acting like the project lead for the thing.
Yeah,
it does seem to be going that way. But yeah, "project lead", that's
another one. Project lead, designer, director; I notice Japan tends to use "director"
rather than project lead. So, what would you say - this is a silly question,
but - what would you say your title is on DeathSpank?
RG: ...
Have
you even thought about it? Have you even considered that?
RG: Yeah, I really haven't... I mean, I
just always used "project lead", because that's just what we called
them back at LucasArts. But see, to me, that is the director. It is the movie
equivalent of the director; the person who has the vision for the thing, and
sees the thing all the way through the process.
Speaking
of project lead, how much leading have you done on this project? It's been a
while, right, since you've actually been installed at a studio, in charge of a
team, making a game from start to finish.
RG: Yeah. It has been a while. It's
actually really nice to be around people again, as opposed to working alone.
And that's one of the reasons that I called up Tim Schafer, and I said,
"Hey, can you loan me your desk?"
I mean, it's not that I really
needed interaction with the great people at Double Fine, but it was just nice
to be around human beings again. And so that's been a lot of fun for me here.
And I've got a couple of artists working on the project, and we're just having
a great time going through and figuring all this stuff out.
This
is a really goofy, kind-of VH1 type question... What is your relationship at
this point with guys like Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman, who I know you used to
work with so closely at LucasArts? I mean, how frequently do you talk to those
guys? Or, what has that been like since you left?
RG: I'm really good friends
with both Tim and Dave. You know, I see them quite a bit, and Dave has a
monthly poker game that I come to, and Tim I saw a lot when I was working out
of his office, but yeah, we're all good friends.
|
Printer-Friendly Version
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.