|
~ December 2007 ~
In the month that Reach won
"Sports Game Of The Year", Paul Eres - the winner of
"Strategy Game Of The Year" - makes for a like-minded interviewer, and
confronts me
with some of the deepest questions I've ever had to answer for his
Indy Gamer blog...
One thing that's notable
about you is how fast you complete games, often in
three months; did you ever have problems with
procrastination, or is working so fast natural to you? Do you use any
productivity tools such as to-do lists or schedules, or do you just
work on things as you feel like it?
Well, let's not fly that flag too hard because time is gushing away from
me like water at the moment! I estimated it would only take 3 months to
turn Reach into a wrestling game, but the
project is heading into its 6th month and I'm still
working 12-hour days. Of course, 6 months is still pretty
astonishing for a game of that size and sophistication. My closest
counterpart, Pro Wrestling X, has
clocked up a good 3 YEARS in production - and that's
a team effort! As you say, 3 months is the standard
for me now though - so my fans get restless at anything longer. After all
these years, I guess I just know what I'm doing. I instinctively know
exactly WHAT needs to be done, WHEN it needs to be done, and HOW I
might best achieve that.
It's a lot like a puzzle - I just know how to put all the
pieces together as quickly as possible. One of my best tricks is
dividing the day into art work and programming work.
I create media in the morning and then bring it to
life in the afternoon, so there's a nice flow to what
I'm doing. Other than that, it's a race against the clock that makes me
work so fast. I don't really have a choice! It may
be a cliché, but time is money. The longer I spend
making a game, the more money it has to make. For
instance, if I had spent all year making World War Alpha I'd be out of
business now because it didn't fly. Game over. I'm only here because
Hard Time arrived and picked up the slack. My
scattergun approach makes me failure-proof. If one
concept doesn't work, another one is right around
the corner to take the next shot. And on and on it goes, evolving towards
perfection. The weak concepts die out and the strong concepts live to
fight another day...
You've said on your site that you believe that making
a game as a team is a bad idea because it dilutes
the creativity. But couldn't each team member be
creative in their own part of the game? For example,
the musician with respect to a game's music, or the artist
with respect to a game's graphics. It's not necessarily true that
having a team means that every decision in a game has to be decided by
committee, each person could have full dictatorial control over their
particular part.
Well, let's qualify that by pointing out that it doesn't work for ME.
Other people are free to do what works for them, and they'll no doubt
have more success in certain areas. All I know is
that everything people love about my work is down to
me doing it single-handedly. There's not a soul who can tell me what I can or can't do, or what is or isn't possible - not even
at the level of publishing. That's how I tackle concepts and add
features that would never get past committee. I
simply find it more fulfilling too. When you rely on
somebody else to bring your vision to life then things get
lost in translation. With this new wrestling game, for instance, I can't
countenance how many hours I would have wasted explaining why an
animation needs to follow certain rules or why a
texture needs to have a certain structure. All of
these things I understand instinctively, so not one second
is wasted in error and not one pixel is lost to compromise. That's true
of any profession. People usually rely on others
because they HAVE to - not because they want to. It
used to drive Woody Allen crazy that making a film
was a team effort. He lamented that "every day a truck pulls up full of
fresh compromises"! Likewise, Michelangelo was criticized for working
alone - but he insisted, "How else can I hear God's voice?". Only in
solitude is a man true to himself and his vision. Anything less is a
counterfeit version of creativity, born out of necessity rather than
will. At the end of the day, you have to ask
yourself whether you're Michael Jackson or "that guy
from The Jackson Five"...
The first time I played Hard Time, I walked a
few steps, caught some type of sickness, walked a
bit more trying to figure out how to cure myself or
find a doctor, walked a bit more, started falling down
and coughing and looking like I'm about to die, a police officer came
up to me, I tried to talk to him but accidentally hit the kick button,
and that was when he then killed me. This strikes me as getting the
spirit of exactly what prison is really like (at least according to my
Aunt who spent a few years in it, she tells some pretty crazy stories,
like how they had to work for long hours or get no bathroom paper).
So the question is: how much research did you do on prisons before
making that game? Did you rely mainly on how it's portrayed in media
(like that HBO "Oz" series), did you watch documentaries on it, did
you ever visit one, and in general, how important do you feel it is to
research subjects relevant to your games?
The way you opened that question, I thought you were going to criticize
it for NOT being realistic! I'm not sure what kind of prison your Aunt
ended up at, but the one is Hard Time was
supposed to be fictitious in its barbarity. You
obviously don't live in the UK! We live under a liberal
regime, so our criminals are treated like royalty. Their only concern
is which game they'll load onto their en suite
PS2 or which TV show they'll watch on cable, so
it wasn't exactly a fruitful source of inspiration. I did
suddenly start taking an interest in how prison was portrayed on TV (Oz
was already fresh in my mind and Prison Break
had just gotten big), but I'd be lying if I said
there was anything structured to it. At the end of the day,
a game was always going to be fictitious and exaggerated - so any
realistic details would have only fallen by the wayside anyway. Making a game is a lot
like filming someone's life story - you play
down the things that aren't interesting and dwell on
the things that are. The closest thing I did to
research on this project was to follow a discussion that I had stumbled
across on GameDev.net. By coincidence, they happened to be talking
about how a prison game could possibly work from a
design point of view. All the problems I eventually
had to tackle myself - such as how do you keep it
realistic without it being as dull as a real regimented lifestyle? Some
might say I didn't actually succeed in sidestepping that landmine, but I did
my best! It was a very difficult concept to hold together - as most of
mine are - but I pride myself on being able to turn
anything into a game. Not necessarily a good one,
but a coherent game nonetheless...
Because this is a blog for other independent
developers and I'm one myself, I should ask this
question. Like Introversion, the
self-proclaimed "last of the bedroom programmers", you're a bit
separated from the rest of the independent games community: you don't
post on forums for example, and say things like "If you look around,
I'm the only person in the history of this business that's doing what
I'm doing." (Said in a March 2004 interview.) You've called them (us)
embarrassing, insecure, out-of-touch, bitter, jealous, and so on, and
you've called yourself the most reviled man among independent game
developers. I'm not saying that the current
state of indie development doesn't have flaws, but
do you still feel that *not one* other independent
game developer even comes close to your level (either in talent or
outlook) enough that you could call them a kindred spirit? For
instance, take the finalists at the IGF for this
year, or the winners from previous years, do you truly have nothing
good to say about any of those games or the people who make them?
It's funny you should bring this up, because I just posted a commentary
on my website about this very subject ("The IceMan Thaws", 16th
December 2007) - acknowledging the quality of some
of this year's entries and endorsing the efforts of
my fellow independent developers in general. Even going so far as to say I'm not worthy of being a part of it. I've never
really had a problem with individual creations (I've been playing an
independent pool game for the past 5 years!). My argument has always
been that I simply don't see anybody else doing what
I'm doing - whether that's for better or worse. At the end of the day, there's a difference between
what I do and what the average independent game developer does. I
single-handedly make big, sophisticated 3D games that kids get excited
about - the average independent developer makes quaint 2D games that
appeal to a niche audience. I churn out a rich variety of concepts at the steady
rate of a mainstream corporation - the average independent developer
forces out one title every year or two. I publish my
own boxed products and run a profitable business -
the average independent developer is resigned to it
being a hobby. Now, when you're asked to articulate those differences as
often as I am, the rhetoric is bound to get a little ugly from time to
time. Especially when I constantly have to defend
myself against a loud minority who resent all of the
above and see me as a threat. I know how hard I work
and I know how special what I do is, and anybody who has the audacity to
dispute that is going to be chastened. At the end of the day, there's a
limit to how much I can apologize for stating the truth. I've never
said anything that I can't back up 100%. When
Wrestling MPire 2008 drops next year, you bring me one human being who could even begin to make anything of
that size and sophistication. He doesn't exist - not at the independent
level or even the mainstream level. I don't take any pleasure in saying
that. My fondest wish is to create an army of people who ARE capable of
that. At the moment, that's simply not the case. And until it is, I'll
be bridging the gap between independent creativity
and mainstream success - proving that the impossible
is possible and the unthinkable is thinkable...
You once said something that I've always thought was a very
inspirational quote: "People assume I'm quite courageous for starting
my own business, but there's actually a lot of cowardice involved. I'm
just as scared of NOT achieving something as other people are about
going out and doing it." I wish we had more cowards in that sense.
One of my favorite movies is Ikiru, which is about this old Japanese
guy who worked in a bureaucracy for all of his life and then was
diagnosed with stomach cancer; suddenly realizing that he'd done
nothing with his life he spends his last few months doing one last
worthwhile thing. I think for a lot of people it takes some drastic
event like that to make them realize the importance of their life, and
how short it is. So this may be a difficult question, but what do you
think is the best way to get people to be afraid of wasting their life
(short of being given a few months to live)?
If you want to get deep about it, I had a cousin who grew up alongside
me at practically the same age - only to pass away before he was barely a
teenager. You'd have to be pretty cold not to be haunted by that! One of us
is living the life of his dreams, the other isn't living at all. That'll get
you on a "gotta compensate for the chance they missed" kinda vibe.
Subconsciously, it's probably why I spend every waking hour achieving
something or other. It's practically a sin not to. As for the particulars of
getting into this profession, it's not my place to preach because I got into
it when I had nothing better to do. I had no stable source of income to
sacrifice and no mouths relying on that income, so I would be remiss to
advise a family guy to follow my example. It's like what Jesus said about
rich people, except it's "easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a
needle" than it is for a man with responsibilities to pursue his dreams! The
more baggage you've got, the harder it is to travel. That's why the Buddha
spoke of "detachment". The more nerve
endings you put out into the world, the more painful it is to live the extraordinary life that many of us yearn
for. There are two ways to be happy - to have everything you want or to want
nothing! I'd lean towards the latter if I was to counsel a man of
responsibility to pursue his dreams. The trick is to enjoy the process
rather than the end result. For instance, it's impossible for me NOT to be a
game designer. It's not something I "do" for a purpose, it's something I
"am" instinctively. Banish me to a cave and I'll conjure up some form of
entertainment involving rocks - just as my younger self had made
games out of cardboard. If you're doing something for the right reasons then
you can't fail at it anymore than you can "fail" to play tennis - you can
only fail to WIN! And so it's by divorcing oneself from the result that one
guarantees he'll enjoy the process. Pay attention the next time someone
gives up learning to play the guitar or some such, and you'll realize that's
what's going on. They weren't enjoying the "process" of making music - their
mind was focused only on the end result. Recreating the tunes of their
favourite musician, playing to an appreciative audience, getting a deal,
etc. The sponsoring thought was counterfeit, and their efforts could only
follow suit. As Bart Simpson conceded, "I wasn't good at it right away so I
gave up"...
You've mentioned that even though your games are violent, they
treat violence much more seriously than other games do, they you don't
romanticize it, but instead they show its harmful aftereffects; you've
said that your war game was really a game about peace. I agree with
that viewpoint myself, for instance in one of my games there was a
point in the story where many players told me they felt guilty about
killing so many enemies (which was exactly the intention). But this
type of thing is rare. For instance, last month I played through
Jets 'n' Guns, which is a wonderful indie shoot
'em-up but as anyone who has
played it knows it absolutely romanticizes violence almost every
aspect of the game. Why do you think that type of thing is much more
common in games?
I attribute it to something I've often criticized the industry for,
which is our bizarre fascination with Hollywood. Despite all the success,
we've somehow reached the point in our evolution where we're "ashamed" of
being game designers! We want to make movies instead. The problem is
movies already exist, and they don't need us. And so we have this awkward
dance where a game designer steps outside of his comfort zone and makes a
fool of himself. It's like a mechanic and a chef switching roles for the
day - your car won't work and your kitchen will be a mess! I
cringed when I heard they were making games of The Godfather, The Sopranos,
and Reservoir Dogs - because I knew they'd miss the point and screw it up.
Handling that material isn't where a game developer's strengths lie, so it's
like giving a loaded gun to a child - quite literally! If you've ever been
in the company of a child once they've accidentally been exposed to those
images, you'll notice that they're preoccupied with what doesn't matter.
"Wasn't it cool when Tony Soprano shot that guy? The gun went bang! And
there was blood! And the blood was red!" From what I can gather, game
developers seem to respond in the same way. Out goes everything that does
matter and in comes a fascination with what doesn't. The same is true of
(relatively) original material such as Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt. It's
very much from the childish school of thought that states "anything naughty
is cool". They're the kind of people that listen to rappers and say, "He
just swore! Did you hear him swear?!" - blissfully unaware of all the
sentiments that were articulated in and around the swearing. I can only
attribute that to the industry's infancy, and the fact that we're not used
to having this much creative power. If you give a starving man a meal, he
doesn't eat it with much decorum. Take a socially inept man and give him
power, he'll make just as much of a mess. That said, my games are as violent
as any out there - so who am I to talk?! I'd like to think I'm a bit more
articulate about the whole thing though. If I was embroiled in controversy,
I'd be explaining myself via every media outlet in the country. These guys
tend to run away like kids that have let off a stink bomb. When there's no
method to your madness, you cease to be an artist...
You mention that when you're not working on games, you're working
on self-improvement: exercise, studying philosophy and politics, and
so on. Do you have any strong views on those subjects? You don't often
speak about those types of things on your website, so it'd be
interesting to know who your favorite philosophers or political
thinkers are, and what type of exercises you use and recommend (I
favor complex isometrics for example), and
any other self-improvement tips or practices you've picked up.
I get accused of going "off topic" when I talk about creativity, so
there's no way I could pull off a rant about politics! I do know a lot about
it and have some considered views, but I'm not arrogant enough to believe
that my opinion is more valid than anybody else's. That pretty much sums up
my political views to be honest - the belief that there are no right
answers. People often like to criticize politicians, but I seem to spend a
lot of time defending them. The whole "George Bush is stupid!" and "Tony
Blair is a liar!" angle seems very childish to me. People tend to have such
passionate views to compensate for the fact that they don't know what
they're talking about. The reality of politics is that you spend 18 hours a
day going blind on paperwork, trying to make as few mistakes as possible.
The whole "I hate him for this!" and "She's stupid for doing that!" line of
thought doesn't quite do the balancing act justice.
As for philosophy, for me that tends to be a by-word for religion.
"Religion" is a very loaded word nowadays, so you have to wheel it out
carefully. It conjures up images of a brainwashed zealot who believes in
following rules. The reality is that religion is simply passionate
philosophy. If you think about, these guys are just philosophers who were so
incredibly popular that people built up institutions around
them. They're victims of their own success. That's why militant atheism
bothers me a great deal, because - as with politics - it doesn't get to the
heart of the matter. 90% of atheists are simply annoyed by religious people
and religious practices, and know no better way of articulating that
annoyance than by disregarding the whole thing. They quite literally throw
the baby out with the bathwater! They would do better to acknowledge that
Krishna, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad - and thousands of others like
them - were great human beings first and religious icons second. And so
would religious fanatics. It all boils down to the human ego. The atheist's
ego says, "I'm intelligent and you're gullible!" - whereas the fanatic's ego says,
"I'm close to God and you're not!". If they were detached from ego, they
would each see that they're arguing about the same thing. The scientist has
a profound respect for life and the spiritualist has a profound respect for
God. The thing is the words "life" and "God" are
interchangeable - two ways of viewing the same energy that permeates every atom in the universe.
In that sense, science and spirituality are growing closer and closer
together - until we realize that they were never apart.
And so my interest is in developing an all-encompassing world view - which
understands every religion in the history of mankind and cross-pollinates
that with science, politics, and the arts. The role of exercise is to create
the perfect vehicle within which that world view might travel and be
expressed. People think I'm going off topic with that too, but I can't
stress enough how important it is. Where do you think I get the energy to
work 12 hours a day without going crazy?! It's true what they say about
"strong in body, strong in mind". I shudder to think where I'd be if I
didn't sit a fit and healthy body in front of this laptop. People assume
that fitness is an egotistical pursuit, born out of some deep-rooted
insecurity. "Who are you trying to impress?" was the snide remark of one
woman I recently argued the matter with. "Nobody" is the answer - it's all
about YOU and how you feel when you wake up in the morning. There's no
better metaphor for human achievement than a bar of metal that weighs more
than you, which you'll eventually lift over your head! The mental strength
that's required to confront your notions about what is or isn't possible.
The confidence that comes with setting goals and achieving them. It's all life
in its many permutations - mind, body, and soul...
You've
said once in an interview that you have a retirement
letter already written, and may give up independent game making
because it's not as rewarding and you aren't able to make a good
living at it. Have things improved since then, or are things still on
the down-turn for you? I hope it doesn't happen personally, it'd be
great to see you continue to make your 'seasons' of games for many
decades to come.
The irony is it's the fact that I've got everything going for me that
makes me feel that way! I'm as well-publicized as it's possible for an
underground artist to be, I work with genres that have mainstream appeal, I
have a huge catalogue of products, and I pocket every penny of the proceeds.
And yet here I am barely making a living, so I have to ask myself is this as
good as it gets? Is this what I'm telling kids to aspire to? When you first
get into the entertainment industry, you hear tales of 50 Cent selling one
million albums in a week and figure it must be child's play. With hundreds
of millions of people owning computers and playing games, how hard can it be
to reach just 0.01% of them? The reality is for all those millions playing,
not ONE will part with their money unless you give them a reason to. And I
mean that quite literally! I was once being shown around the premises of a
publishing house and the guy was pointing to each game poster saying, "That
one has sold, that one hasn't, that one has...". He wasn't talking about
whether or not they had sold "many" copies - he meant whether or not they've
sold AT ALL! That's what independent artists are up against. Whether it's
films, music, or games, the little guy is struggling to find ANY one to put
ANY value on what they do. But that's just the mortal in me talking. The
human ego thinks it needs recognition, and the human body thinks it needs
food and shelter. The immortal, on the other hand, seeks only to experience
things. He's the one that can't sleep at night because he's so excited about
what he's going to achieve the next day. The one that enjoys spending every
waking hour doing something creative. The only "paper" that one cares about
is the fan letter from a kid who considers you to have made their favourite
game, or the guy who's been inspired to hold his head a little higher and
chase his dreams a little harder. When you hear me switching from positive
to negative, it's the latest battle in that endless war between yin and
yang. How long it remains balanced in favour of my games is anybody's guess!
My favorite game of yours is
Wrecked - not for its execution, but for its ideas, just for what it meant. I'm an atheist myself, but even
so I still found a lot to like about a game with such
religious/spiritual purpose. I felt that there was a lot of potential
in it, but that it was marred with a few problems which kept it from
reaching it fully. Do you plan on making a sequel to it, or a game
similar in style and tone to it?
Yeah, Wrecked suffered from a lot of novice flaws. But if you think
about it, it's the first time I had ever tackled a game of that nature.
Everything prior to that was industry sims like Popscene, niche concepts
like Sure Shot, and of course fighting in its numerous guises. Hard Time is
practically the only other step in the evolution of that adventure gameplay,
so there's plenty of scope for improvement. The spiritual themes in that
game were very much an afterthought. Throughout its production, it just
became obvious that the way a player chooses to guide a life says a lot
about them. Do you give in to base instincts to get what you want, or do you
make life harder for yourself by showing restraint? What I love about the
end result is that it's entirely ambiguous. God or spirituality never
manifests itself at any point, so you don't know whether the guru was mad or
telling the truth! It's just something you're told, and then you decide what
it means to you - much like in real life. I like the idea of a player being
the "soul" to a game character's "body". That's a theme that I'll being
expanding upon in some future games. Most notably one about a game character
who doesn't know he's a game character! The nature of existence will
obviously be key to that game, as the "created" struggles to come to terms
with "creation" - and indeed the "creator". More controversially, I'd also
like to make a series of RPG's about religious figures. I don't see why a
game need be any more offensive than a movie about those times and places -
of which there are many. In fact, you could argue that a degree of
interaction would make it even more meaningful. It's just such a thorny
issue that I have to hold off until I know what I'm doing and why I'm doing
it...
You've written things like "Programming is a scientific factor
that crushes the spirit, and scares away talented visionaries. The
pivotal moment in the life of any art form is when the 'scientist'
starts losing ground to the 'artist'." This is why I feel that game
engines which allow anyone to make games without much programming or
technical knowledge are the future of game development, but a lot of
people feel that 'real' game designers write their own engines from
scratch and only use C++ or the like, and they look down upon games
made in Blitz Basic, Game Maker, or engines like that. Do you think
this will change as engines and computers get increasingly powerful,
and that we'll see a time when most games don't have a 'programmer',
or do you think the emphasis on the graphical arms race will ensure
that most games will continue to be made using pure programming
indefinitely?
Oh, you'll never see the back of programming. That's what game
development IS! It's inconceivable that there'll ever be a time when making
games doesn't involve telling a computer what to do, when to do it, and how
to do it - and that will always be a technical factor. I'm not calling for
that to be eradicated - I just celebrate when it's made more palatable. Like
the wires hidden behind the plastic face of your favourite gadget, we're
just looking for the unnecessarily complex to be simplified. I mean, playing
the piano isn't "easy" - but it's just easy enough that anybody can sit in
front of one and work at getting their head around it.
I think products like Blitz BASIC and Dark BASIC are already achieving that
for game development, and that's all we need to coax our version of Lennon &
McCartney onto the stage. I resent the implication that it's not "real"
programming though. People talk about them being "game engines" as if
they're readymade games, but all I get out of them is a more logical way of
loading in and manipulating 3D models. There are still 250'000 lines of code
that make my latest project a wrestling game! Like writing music, the talent
is in coming up with those lines and inserting them in the right place. We
never want to make something so easy that there's no struggle involved. I'm
reminded of a story my school headmaster used to tell us about two
caterpillars at the bottom of his garden. One emerged from its shell and
blossomed into a colourful butterfly, whereas the other made no such
progress. In order to make life easier for it, he gently cut its casing and
a butterfly eventually emerged - only it was black & white because, without
the struggle, no blood had gotten to the wings. Long may game development be
hard enough to get the blood pumping!
Copyright © MDickie 2000 - 2008
|