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The first-party apparatus of every console is an integral
part of its success; looking at the hype and sales generated by games like Halo: ODST, Wii Fit, or Uncharted 2 is testament to that.
Earlier this year, Microsoft named Phil Spencer corporate VP and head of worldwide
studios.
Having recently served as the GM of worldwide studios and
worked in England
with Rare and Lionhead, among others, he moves into the role as the platform is
about to undergo its most drastic upgrade since launch: the Natal
peripheral, which Microsoft is promising will fundamentally change the way
games are played for all 360 gamers.
Here, Spencer speaks about the overall first party strategy
for the company, its specific Natal
strategy, and its experiments with free-to-play, microtransaction-based titles
(Joyride) and ad-supported games (1 vs 100).
How has your transition been?
Phil Spencer: Actually, the transition happened last fall
when I came back. I was in London
for a couple years, working with Lionhead and Rare and similar content work in Europe. I came back as the GM of Worldwide Studios,
and I've been recently promoted, which is what the announcement is -- I've been
promoted to the new title.
But yeah, the new head of Worldwide Studios [role] started
when I came back from London last
October. And it's been a good time for
us. Think about when I came back, Natal
was something that we were in the middle of incubating; trying to make sure
that it was going to be something that really both resonated with our creators
as well as the customer in the end. We
started to put our head down towards E3 and see if that would be the right time
to unveil, and there's been tremendous success with that. It's been great to see.
When does Natal come out, and what titles are going to work
with it?
PS: Our announcement at TGS [was] that, after just three
months, we've got 75% of the publishers on the planet talking about their
support for Natal, which is
great. Obviously we have an ego in first
party, and we think our first party content leads the way; but great support
from third party is going to be important to Natal's
success. For the top five Japanese
publishers, among other Japanese publishers, as well as the great worldwide
publishing support we're seeing, is a great sign for both us and the consumer.
From a first-party perspective, how does it impact you?
PS: Well, because you're Gamasutra, I'll go down more of how I think it really
impacts the creative process. There's this mapping that we almost instinctively
do now when we play or create games between what we want to happen on-screen
and what people will do with the controller to make that happen that, honestly,
is completely unnatural. There's nothing
else you do in your life that has all of these buttons and triggers -- alright,
maybe you fly a 747 or something -- but for the common person, your life is
much more direct.
In the creative process now, when you think about the kind
of games that are going to get created, it's really about that direct
interaction with what's going on on-screen. You can talk to something
on-screen, and it knows where you are in the room; and it will turn, if it's
humanoid, look at you, and respond. That's not a game genre; that's not E-rated
only. This is something that's going to be pervasive across all our games. It's
really going to be entertainment for everybody.
So it's about a fundamental new way of
interactivity, rather than about enhancing or changing current games, in your
view.
PS: Yeah. I was listening to Kojima-san
at the creators' panel, and he talked a little about the Metal Gear Solid fan and not wanting to abandon the fan base that
he has. I think you'll see some franchises look at facial recognition, voice
recognition, and full skeletal mapping and kind of decide what's the right
experience for how they're trying to entertain people.
The word I would use to describe a
traditional controller is abstract.
PS: Yeah, absolutely.
And I think there are
a lot of people who enjoy abstract experiences.
PS: You say enjoy; you mean enjoy or tolerate?
Enjoy! I think there's something enjoyable about
something abstract. Not every interaction
that we have is direct, as humans.
PS: Well, okay. Interaction with the
controller isn't direct. There's nothing
about hitting A that has any real-world consequence; you don't run around
hitting A or yelling "A!"
This has been one of the parts of the creative process that's
been -- I'll say -- a kind of revolution.
At first, when people are handed the technology, they think about what
the abstraction -- to use your term; I might use a more negative term -- how
that should map into physical space: literally something as ridiculous as
somebody going like this [Spencer makes
an X with his arms] for X, like, is that the way we should hit the X
button?
And maybe it works for tens of millions -- hundreds of
millions -- of people on the globe; there's nothing wrong with that. I play games every day. But we also know that, in order to grow the
size of the gaming community, that abstraction is a barrier to some
people. If we can remove that and
actually think about -- maybe it comes across as a marketing term, but it
actually works in the creative process -- the only experience you need is life
experience. If you were going to respond to something on-screen, what would you
do in real life? Then think about that as part of Natal.
It's been a really useful way of thinking about how to build those experiences.
Part of me is
skeptical that that's achievable, actually.
PS: Good! Yeah, the skepticism is something that I actually
want. I see technologies that are out in the market today, or things that
people are talking about -- different kinds of abstractions. For me as somebody
who says, "Well, has this really changed the interaction between me and
what's going on on-screen?" you'd say "no". It's lowered some barriers, and great for
that.
But the skepticism as we push... People should have been
skeptical about first-person shooters on consoles. After GoldenEye,
it was a long time before somebody came out with something like Halo.
Live -- are console players going to want to play with each other? Let's be skeptical. Avatars -- let's be
skeptical of whether Xbox customers want to create avatars. I think skepticism
is a healthy hurdle for us in the creative process.
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Halo is a cool game, but I think it is getting very old. In my opinion, a new IP (FPS) would be more than welcome and Microsoft should stop sitting on that game.
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When we take a deeper look at that game, the gameplay is for sure different from many other FPS. You must break down the energy shield with a grenade or a strike and then try to get a headshot a fast as you can if ever you got the right weapon, but that becomes strongly linear and repetitive after a while, especially when all the weapons are mostly based on their range - not their gameplay. In other terms, it's not really about mastering a weapon, but more about getting the right one for the right situation. The problem is, any FPS game works like that, but rarely have that linear gameplay or range limitation. I always felt that Halo wasn't a real FPS, more something across a Tactical Real-Time Action RTS in a First Person Perspective with a huge amount of auto-aim.
The Halo 3 maps are just not fun and the Halo 2 remakes are completely messed up (everything great from Blackout/ Lockout was removed). To me, it represents a huge lack of respect to any Halo Fan. If you play in Matchmaking and love a specific power weapon, someone else will probably pick it up before you can you will have to wait many minutes or hours to play with the weapon of your dream - a good reason to play the game. If you favorite map is guardian, maybe you won't even be able to play it for 7 hours and maybe you dislike all the other maps; is that supposed to be fun?
The Stats sheet at the end of the match is supposed to represent the best players, but it only represents the best Slayers (players with most kills). If the conditions of victory are mostly based on that, it can't be representative, because it doesn't properly consider Assist, Driving, etc. In other terms, because the gameplay requires you to break down the energy shield of your opponents first with a grenade or a strike (taking out approx. 3/4 of the health) it becomes very easy for a Teammate to steal the kill to finally become the best player of the party by only doing 1/4 of the job. Not every gamer is self-conscious, cares about his behaviors or about others (unfortunately) and stolen kills are rarely part of the fun factors behind a game. That kind of gameplay leads to one of the worst Free for All gametype of all time; players must observe, hide and spot firefights to steal kills (the Gametype should be rename "Hide and Steal".
Because the weapons are mostly based on their range, it pretty much works like Character Classes or Handicaps. If you have a Battle Rifle, later turn a wallcorner and finally get face to face with a Shotgun guy, unless he never touched a controller you are automatically dead - just like an auto-kill. Isn't a fun game supposed to be fair and balanced? Would a fun game requires you to master your weapon to at least get a chance to get the advantage in a duel? Halo doesn't work that way.
Plus, if you bought Halo 3 a few months before Halo: ODST you couldn't play nearly half of the playlist without buying the new DLC. Infinity Ward (with CoD4) did something smart. If you don't have the DLC, then no problem, the matchmaking will still try to match you on other maps that you have (that feels very natural to me). If you go back on Halo 2, the playlist is just destroyed. All the worst gametypes are there with the worst map to suit them, it's mostly all about Dual Weapons. What really is bad about it is that Bungie once said (Halo 3 Interviews or Halo 3 Bonus Disc; I can't remember) that dual wielding didn't work well on Halo 2. In oter terms, the decision was probably made to push the gamers on Halo 3.
Game Developers do not always think about their influence over the Gaming community, but I can tell that Halo 2 was the most popular game on X-Box Live back in the days, but the selfish gameplay (explained earlier in the post) destroyed many friend lists, clans and changed many gamers I knew since day 1. For sure it's just like saying violent games make violent people; we know it ain't the case, but games do have a certain influence - especially on selfishness; something more subtle than violence.
An interesting point is the popularity of Halo 3. Even if the game looks disgusting from the point of view of this post, many new comers (new 360 users) were first introduce to the Shooter genre by Halo 3. In other terms, they have no idea what a real FPS game is, because most of the actual FPS all have auto-aim and very "casual" features. Any actual "old and hardcore" gamer could tell that since Halo 2, all new competitive FPS came out that way with casual features. In fact, Halo 2 was made for a casual audience, but what made Halo 2 so great was the Matchmaking, the great maps (what Halo 3 doesn't have) and amazing Clan + Invite features, great natural controls and thumbstick sensitivity (without considering auto-aim or bullet magnetism), so not the casual features. I know a few very dedicated hardcore players talking about leaving video games, because since 2004 there is nothing so great out there and 5 years is a freaking long amount of time to wait days after days; they are totally depressed by the "make games for everyone" mentality of Game Developers, because it means no more great & real games. Actually, I believe that the video game industry is making the biggest mistake ever by totally misunderstanding their Publics. Nintendo totally won their public, but it is totally different from the 360 and PS3 and seeing casual wii-like Avatars on the 360 totally mostly prove that even Microsoft doesn't even know what they are doing. We do not have to define if Tetris or Marios Bros on NES are casual or hardcore games, that depends exclusively of the gamer playing the game - his dedication. Casual features like auto-aim are even a waste of time for developers. Why would you code the game controls to make them feel natural & intuitive as well as each weapon to finally create another system (auto-aim) to counter your previous code; trying to make the controls easier when the fun comes from the challenge of aiming?
Bungie is a great Developer and has very talented people - ODST also showed us a wonderful side of Bungie as well of the Halo Universe, I'm glad they aren't with Microsoft anymore. For Microsoft, I hope they are really not just looking at their sales, but also better studying and understanding their true Public Targets.
Thx, I appreciate the support and wish you good luck.