With
a long history working for some of gaming's most celebrated developers
like Origin and Ion Storm, designer Harvey Smith has had roles
on a laundry list of notable PC games such as Ultima VIII:
Pagan, System Shock, Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Invisible War, and Thief:
Deadly Shadows.
Most recently, Smith made news with his participation in the
2006 Game Developer Conference's Game Design Challenge, where he
faced off against Gears of War designer Cliffy B and Katamari
Damacy creator Keita Takahashi to create a game
that might win the Nobel Peace Prize. His challenge-winning entry,
Peacebomb!,
was a DS game that
organized players to take part in real-life peace and community
activist flash-mobs by setting them in a fictionalized game-world
underground movement rising up in revolution.
Now a creative director at Midway Austin, we sat down to catch
up with Smith on what the next-gen might bring, life at Midway,
collaborative
versus
competitive
play, avatar psychology, and what gaming can learn from social
community-driven sites like MySpace and Digg.
GS: As we're standing on the cusp of the next-generation,
what are you most excited about in the coming years? What more
can you do with the technology as a designer now that you couldn't
do before?
HS: In the past, I've said "speech synthesis." I've
always been so excited about empowering AI's with a wider range
of verbal
expression, and I still think that'll be meaningful to game designers
and AI programmers in the near future. But right now it's a toss
up between several things. First, it's exciting to me that some
games are moving toward needs-based AI. Especially shooters and
RPG's.
Harvey Smith
Second, seamless online elements in games, so that the game assumes
that the player is online all the time. I still think there are
small roles for all of us to play in one another's games, even
in traditional types of games where one player is the center of
the universe. For a long time, I've been using the examples of
players in a chat lobby being pulled into shooters for micro play
sessions, playing the parts of throw-away enemies or even the player-character's
semi-autonomous rockets. I've also used the "cell phone players
are the butterflies in MMO's" example. Some of that is starting
to happen, which is cool.
Finally, for lack of a better term, I'm continually excited about
participatory culture's influence on game design. One of the coolest,
watershed moments in my career was seeing mod makers create Deus
Ex missions, then hiring one of them, Kent Hudson. We're
still working together and he's the design lead on one of our projects
here at Midway Austin.
And, even as a fan of hardcore PC and console action games, I
still hold the often-maligned view that handhelds are the dominant
platform of the future. Someday I want a handheld device with a
completely realistic screen; something that looks like a little
portal into a strange place.
GS: Without divulging classified info, what kind of overarching
thematic areas are you exploring with the work you're doing now?
HS: As always, I spend a lot of time split between gameplay and
fiction. My role at Midway allows me to bounce around some between
a couple
of games, though I am also super committed to developing an idea
of my own in the background. I've been building up a staff of game
designers here in Austin, mentoring the lead designers, setting
up the culture, and framing our games. I get to dive in at a lower
level from time to time, but my goal is always to make the people
around me as autonomous as possible; to align people to a specific
vision for a given game and to impart what I consider good, player-centric
gameplay values. I've worked on innovative titles like FireTeam,
Technosaur and Deus Ex, but I've never
really executed with a high degree of polish. I really admire teams
that can do that, so my goals right now involve polish and execution.
Thematically, I'm still wrestling with what's going on in the
world, in terms of conflict, intolerance, fear and control. So
our games reflect that. And, as always, I love playing around with
gameplay ecologies; I'm fascinated still by inter-relationships
and rule sets that facilitate improvisational gameplay. Doug Church's
late 90's talk on Intentionality is still one of my favorite "game
designer lessons."
GS: Does your role as creative director even allow you
that kind of freedom to set those themes? Or are you more involved
with
higher-level management?
HS: Management. Ha. I'm a terrible manager. I tell stories. I
develop a shared narrative, whatever that means. I sometimes inspire
people,
sometimes piss people off. And I'm a game designer. Yes, I'm free
to set the tone at a high level or go in at a low level and redraw
a level layout. When I have to do the former, I'm doing what I'm
supposed to do. My goal is to empower people who are in alignment
(and can take me farther, teaching me something along the way);
working side by side with Jim Stiefelmaier, Kent Hudson and Ricardo
Bare (our design leads) is a challenge and the best job I've ever
had. They're amazing, strong personalities. When we're in agreement,
it's electric. When I have to do something like redrawing someone's
level layout on a whiteboard, I go into teacher mode and it generally
implies a process failure. But secretly I have the most fun during
those times.
GS: Are you satisfied with where you're at in your career
right now?
HS: Yeah, totally. We're pushing ourselves hard as part of Midway's
new wave. The first next-gen Midway game is Stranglehold and
it's stunning. Our games will follow that as part of David Zucker's
turn-around. Also, in the background, I have a revolutionary game
idea and a cool fiction that I want to work with that is literally
keeping me awake at night.
I'm a really lucky guy, given my background. The thing that keeps
me most excited about the future is, oddly, the presence of a couple
of production leaders at our studio. Denise Fulton, my boss, and
Brett Close (from the Medal of Honor games)
are, respectively, our Studio Head and Production Director. And
my chemistry with them is very motivating.
I'm learning a lot. A lot of satisfaction is related to how you
see yourself, personally; how happy you are with yourself; and
where you've come from, relatively speaking.