Can you speak at all about how you organize your team, in terms of design and development?

CB: Yeah, it depends on what phase of the project we're in. Preproduction is a bit more loose, where you've got all the designers and producers contributing to the ideas. You've got more rapid prototyping in EA than ever before; we've got engineers and animators all putting ideas down.

I think "design" used to be where you would just write a gigantic design document that was huge, and you'd throw it over the wall, and say, "That's our design!" And that's clearly not how a 4D product works; your dynamic is through time. It's not like designing the Sydney Opera House, where it's just a static object.

It's a blueprint.

CB: It's a blueprint, right. I mean, there's no such thing; this is a 4D experience. So for you to even talk about what you are doing, you have to almost have it there, and just go through it, and just get through it.

So we're doing that, we're doing a lot of prototyping as fast as we can, so we can get these experiences out there, and mess with them. And then from there, we just go into full-on standard production. You've got all your artists and designers and modelers and riggers and lighters, and...

On the topic of design documents -- because I've heard that from other developers, in recent years, that they're moving away from that kind of practice as heavily. But you've also mentioned that this game is very much the design you started out with.

CB: Yeah, that's really weird; I don't know how that happened. Normally, the game that you end up shipping is nowhere near the game you started out making. But for us, the mechanics have changed -- the rapidity and responsiveness of the [main character]... is really not what we started out with, and ended up being much different.

Well the big deal for this is that -- and there's a famous quote about this, but it's really applicable -- that the difference between planning and plans is that your plans, as soon as they're made, are fairly worthless, but the planning is invaluable. So that's what we're learning.

Writing down everything is almost useless as soon as you've written it down. But thinking about it enough that you can write it down is the point. Then, when you start building it, and it starts falling apart for various reasons, then you're like, "Well this doesn't work, and that doesn't work." Then you're like, "Oh, okay, from this huge body of research we've done, here's the next step to take to go where we're going."

So what we've learned is that that's what you're after; that big body of understanding of what you're trying to do. This way, when it starts to mess up, you're like, "Okay, we'll try this; we'll try that." So you're not just shooting in the dark forever, wasting your resources.

I'd imagine there's also a certain amount of grounding that comes from making a decision, like, "We're not having any traditional cutscenes." Something like that is something that, if you're going to stick to that, there's not a lot of wiggle room there.

CB: No, and like I said, it's very binary; those decisions, once you make them, that is what you're doing, and it drives everything. A lot of decisions are like that; especially the HUD, and especially all of these other things that are happening. It becomes very fundamental to everything that happens, and it drives all the rest of the design.

Do you have any thoughts on, creatively, as the industry progresses, if developers and teams are getting a better handle on how you start with a vision and then take it to completion without losing it?

CB: Better. It's maturing. It feels like we're so, so far away from Hollywood, you know? They have that shit down. The roles are completely established, the process is established -- like a production schedule is a work of art. Getting a movie made in a year or something is... If you started from scratch, with no process, it would take you years and years and years to make a movie, right? You would have no idea. So they have the great benefit of that.

So we in the game industry are just in the beginning of getting that stuff down. The better part is, just think about: when film got started, all they filmed was musicals and stage shows, because they didn't know that there was a language for cameras.

Or, like, little ten minute things that would be of a dude, like, tripping over a --

CB: Yeah. Right, it was just "Dorkiest of Vaudeville". They were filming vaudeville because that was the only entertainment media there was, up to that point; so they just put up a camera tripod, and just watched it, and that's what they filmed.

And then, suddenly, someone started realizing, "Well, the camera can cut, and it can do all these things..." Then you fast forward like a hundred years, and you've got Robert Altman doing all of his stuff, or David Fincher.

So, essentially, to me, games are at the very beginning. We're just making, almost, Hollywood movies; everyone still keeps wanting to make movies, cinematic experiences, and we don't have our language down yet. I don't have a toolbox where I can just go in -- I feel like, let's put it this way: I want the interactive spaces telling a story in a way that interactive spaces tell stories.

There's an emotional target, and an emotional toolbox that we get to use, and I don't feel like we're anywhere close to being there yet. That's what we're trying to get to, but it's hard to innovate like that, because there are no shoulders to stand on; you've got to think of it all yourself.

And if you look at job titles, a "producer" is a hugely variable role.

CB: At EA, for the longest time, it was vacillated back and forth between "development director" and "producer". They were the same roles in different titles, and depending on the team they'd flip back and forth. So the roles aren't at all clear of what's going on there. And one executive producer can have a style so different from another, that he's in the game totally, or he's hardly in the game at all. It's just really different.

But I think the good thing is, the more -- we've got to find our auteurs, the people who have creative vision, to establish the new language. If you have the pattern, you can get everyone who's mildly talented to use the pattern and make something relatively good.

If you don't have the pattern, everyone with only mild talent is floundering and not really doing anything. As soon as people establish these benchmarks of how interactive entertainment should be used, everybody else will start using that. But we don't have that yet; no one's caught on fire and said, "This is how it's done!"