& ple e eo lP a am G Re he Behind t T s en rie pm o St elo ev D

ul/ tured C

zi aga M

ne

Issue 01

contents
This Used To Be For Fun Page 10 Double Fines Next Step Page 23 The Many Seasons of Telltale Page 37 For The Love of Development

/
Scripted Page 45

issue 01

Page 4

Nathan Vella: Personal Profile

Page 18

More Than Business

Page 31

I would first off like to say thank you for reading the very first issue of Cultured Magazine. What you are about to read is the culmination of months of hard work (every page you are about to read was written and designed by myself), made possible thanks to many different people, the first of which is Cristina Azocar and the Center for the Improvement and Integration at San Francisco State University. Without the CIIJ and a program it runs called the Digital Diversity Fund, this magazine never would have happened. What Im trying to accomplish with the magazine is to educate a wider variety of people about video game development and the people behind some of todays most interesting and thought provoking games, as well as those pioneering new concepts in the industry. The first part of the magazine is focused on three different development studios (Capybara Games, Double Fine Productions and Telltale Games). In these sections, youll learn about where the studios came from, their actual development process, some of the games they working on and have made before, as well as what they are doing that is unique. After the studio feature, I have also done a personal profile on one of the creative minds at each studiosomething that I feel brings a much more personal side to the development industry. The final part of the magazine takes a look at the Game Developers Conference, an industry cornerstone, its history and what it does for the industry. Finally, I would like to thank all of the people who have graciously given me their time: Nathan Vella, Zack Karlsson, Alan Patmore, Tim Schafer, Greg Rice, Alan Johnson, Dave Grossman, David Cage, Brenda Brathwaite, Jason Scott, Patrick Klepek, Andrew Pfister, Frank Cifaldi, as well as all of the fine employees of Capybara

Games, Double Fine Productions, and Telltale Games. I commend you all for the work you are doing, and thank you for letting me delve into what makes this industry great! I would also like to extend some personal thank yous to Christian Engelbrecht, Nena Farrell, Penny Smith, Lindsey Best, Richard Best, Justin Haywald, Michelle Phillips, Jonas Olsson, David Hay, Elizabeth Hay, Jade Kraus, Mark Rabo, Morgan LeFevre, my parents, Tony & Sheila Brown, as well as my family, and of course, Christian Nutt, without whom many parts of this magazine wouldnt exist. Thank you all for your support and advice; you have all helped me to realize this goal. Of course, I would also like to thank you, the reader. I hope that you enjoy the magazine, and you might even learn something new.

From the Editor

Michael Brown, Creator
3

This Used To Be For

By
Michael Brown
It didnt start how youd expect. Before co-founding Capybara Games in 2003, Nathan Vella and fellow co-founders Kris Piotrowski, Matt Repetski, Sean Lohrisch and Tony Chan werent even involved in video games. Nathan, Kris and Tony met at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, in the schools prestigious film program. It wasnt until they became a part of the local chapter of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) that they decided to make games. For a year and a half, Capybara Games was a part-time development studio. There was no office space, no payroll, in fact everybody had full time jobs. Vella was working as a film editor for a local Canadian television station, and one of their writers was even working at the Canadian bookstore, Chapters. The team originally met through an online

FUN

forum and, after time, they began to meet in person. What started out as a group of thirtyfive eventually whittled down to twelve. All of Capys employees at the time would spend their day at work, and then come home and try to make cell phone games in the evening. It wasnt until a year and a half later that Capy was finally noticed, and those who paid attention had real power. Through their agent, Capy got a meeting in front of some Disney executives who asked them to put a pitch together for a cell phone video game based on their latest movie at the time, Cars. As Nathan Vella, current President of Capybara Games, recalls: We put together a pitch, we budgeted and tried to pretend like we were a real professional company. And in the end, they gave it to us. The afternoon they found out that they got the contract, it suddenly dawned on them: Holy fuck, Vella exclaimed, we need a real office. For a small, part-time developer, their first contract was substantially bigger than they ever could have hoped. In the same day, Vella and the other co-founders went out and got an office space and computers. Things had quickly gone from a pastime to the big time.

Capy began with six employees, and four weeks later, when they got another contract, things began to snowball. I think I lied to Disney a fair amount, Vella light heartedly explained. But well just pretend that didnt happen. We knew that we could make something cool, and even though it took us a year and three quarters to make a couple games, we still thought: Holy shit! This turned out well. The art was good, the gameplay for a cell phone game was great, and it was fun. Capy finally had a chance to prove themselves, and they were going to make sure that they stood out from the rest.

forms such as the Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii or Xbox 360. From the start, all of Capys employees had no previous experience developing games. Most of their programmers only had experience with database software or business solutions programs. Their artists were all people who did it for fun, and their audio director was actually a biochemical engineer. After working on some of the studios initial projects, the team was experienced enough to create Disneys game that was by-and-large a success. After a couple of years of doing contracted games for other publishers, Capy finally decided to take matters back into their own hands and start making the games they wanted to.

Compared to todays SmartPhones and Apples iPhone, the cell phones that Capy was developing on in 2003 were subI mean, sales are cool, but stantially differtaking a game that you put a ent. The reason that they deyear into, and then selling it cided to develop on cell phones for 99 is a little tough to do. was purely budNathan Vella getary. At the time, all it took was a computer and an $80 In 2007, Apple Inc released phone. As Vella explains, You the iPhone, and a year later didnt have to ask to be licensed they launched the uber-sucdeveloper; you could literally cessful App Store. When word just start creating a game of the App Store got out, Capy and go from there. Thats not went to work on what has been to say that developing a game one of their most creative and on a cell phone is easy, but the ingenious games to date: Critter barrier for entry is significantly Crunch. In the game, you play less compared to other platas Biggs, a hungry little animal

who lines up columns of critters to score points, feed himself, and most importantly avoid being overcome by a swarm of insects. The concept is simple enough, but the game is hopelessly addictive. Featuring Adventure and Puzzle modes, Critter Crunch still remains a fantastic iPhone game to this day. Originally being released for $9.99 on the App Store on launch day, Critter Crunch stuck out among other games in the crowd. Yet over time, as the App Stores pricing model quickly became a race to the bottom, Critter Crunch too, had to succumb to a price cut. When asked about the state of the App Store and the typical price point of its games, Vella had this to say: I mean, sales are cool, but taking a game that you put a year into, and then selling it for 99 is a little tough to do. In the end, Critter Crunch proved to be a commercial success. And thanks to Nate Bosia, who fought hard for them, Capy was given a meeting with Sony. The game got the green light to be ported to Sonys Playstation 3, via their digital Playstation Store. However, Capy decided that they werent going to just move the exact version of the game over; they were going to re-release it entirely. In Capys eyes it was put up or shut up. So, they re-

drew all of the art assets, added extra game modes, characters and even a story to their game. Once again, they were in a position to prove themselves, and as with Disney, the employees at Capy delivered nothing less than a spectacular re-release of their most popular game at the time.

multi-million dollar contract, but we can offer the opportunity to make something.
Nathan Vella
As Nathan Vella told me: At Capy, they would prefer to hire someone who is passionate, but doesnt have any experience making games; rather than someone who has done previous work, but is only interested in being a cog in the wheel. He also stated: We cant offer a multi-million dollar contract, but we can offer the opportunity to make something. These principles, and the passion from each of their employees are clearly visible in every one of their projects. Capys development process begins by having all of their employees pitch their ideas, plenty of which come from Kris

We cant offer a

Piotrowski, the studios Creative Director. Once the team has decided on a pitch they like, and one they think has promise, they begin to work on a pitch document. This can include anything from target renders, possible demographics, and even mock screenshots of what they think they game could look like. The idea of creating a pitch document is to allow the studio to see whether or not the game is actually conceivable; its Capys way of figuring the basic elements out. If a concept creates a strong pitch document, the team moves on to the next phase: Prototyping. On average, the studio can take anywhere between 2 to 8 months to do this. During this phase of the development process, employees are constantly playing the gamechecking to see whether or not its fun, as well as finding any major issues that need to be addressed. After prototyping, Capy begins producing the game. Here, everyone is working to compile all of the elements of the game. Programmers are continuing with the code and making sure that it is playable; artists are creating assets and character models; the writer is creating a concrete script; the audio director is working on the games soundtrack. Next, a demo level is created. The game is finally reaching a

point where all of the components are coming together and an initial level is created to assess what still needs work. Keep in mind that this demo level is not released to the public, as it is still too early in the development cycle. Following the demo level, a game goes into what is known as Alpha. This simply means that the game has most or all of its features, but there can still be glitches or bugs that need to be worked out. After being in Alpha a game moves into Beta phase where all elements of the game are included; at this point only last minute wrinkles are being worked on. It is also during Beta that a game might have a publicly available demo to gauge the audiences reaction of the game. Betas of this sort can be both open and closed; one is available to all, whereas the other requires an invitation or code. Finally, when a game is ready for release it goes Gold. This is a term used to describe final retail code or product. Sometimes video game journalists will even receive copies of this

code for review. Typically there is no difference between this code and a retail copy, unless a last minute issue was discovered. Upon going Gold the video game finally sees its release. At Capybara Games, their particular development process (as was outlined here) typically takes a year, to a year and a half. However, one of their most recent games, Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes took almost two years to develop the original Nintendo DS version. In early 2009, Nathan Vella became president when Tom Frencel decided to leave the studio. Since that time, his role in the company has significantly shifted (see Nathan Vella: Personal Profile), yet even though

he does miss working on art, Capy is thriving now more than ever before. With regard to Vellas business decisions and the demographics Capy typically tries to target, Vella has found its best to foster creativity and unique ideas first, and only then see what demographics the game has the ability of reaching. This goes back to the studios roots; it all began in 2003 when a group of passionate people who wanted to make games decided to get together and see if it was possible. Vella himself has noticed this difference between independently run studios and larger companies: Smaller studios are good at passion, and then analysis but

[demographics] dont decide what is going to be made. Following Vellas promotion to President of Capybara Games, the studio created their first game to be released in physical copy, Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes. The game combines puzzle, adventure and role-playing game (RPG) elements into one title. According to reviews aggregator, Metacritic, it was ranked as the 4th best game on the Nintendo DS in 2009. Originally released for Nintendos portable hardware via publishing giant Ubisoft, Might & Magic represented one of the biggest moments in Capys history. After all of their years of hard work, the studio had an actual physical copy of one of their games that they could hold and touch, and distribute. Holding Clash of Heroes in a cellophane wrapped box was a pretty amazing experience, Vella described looking back on the release. Whats next for Capybara remains to be seen. Currently, Capy has nine artists, nine programmers, two producers, one audio director, two creative designers, one writer and one quality assurance lead on their payroll. They recently released their latest game, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP on the iPad, with an upcoming release on iPhone. When asked about a possible expansion for Capy, Vella said that there were

no plans, and in fact he hopes that they can just continue what theyre doing. With the passion and innovation found at Capybara Games, one can only look forward to whats in store from one of Canadas most interesting development studios.

roes in a cellophane wrapped box was a pretty amazing experience

Nathan Vella

Holding Clash of He-

Nathan Vella
Personal Profile
What were you doing before you founded Capybara? I did film school at Ryerson in Toronto, and I was really interested in editing. My film class was amazing. The people were fantastic, in fact two of people I founded the studio with. A lot of the other people ended up being extremely successful artists and so on. Once I finished school I managed to get some jobs editing television but it was a lot of Canadian television. I had this vision that I was going to edit music videos or documentaries but I ended up doing fitness shows and kids shows. Although it was cool, it just wasnt creatively rewarding.

A one-on-one conversation with the man behind Capybara Games

However, I did get to edit a skateboarding show which was super rewardingI used to be a skateboarder for 10 yearsso having a summer where all I did was edit skateboarding footage was awesome, but then the station didnt pick up the next season so I never had that job again. It was this weird thing where I thought, I should be loving my job. I thought I should be happy to be where I am, but I wasnt because it wasnt creatively rewarding at all. Anyway, I ended up working with some really amazing people. I worked for this company called Marble Media that was founded by a bunch of young guys, so most of my bosses were 30

10

Im turning 32
and I feel like Ive done a lot.

11

at the time, maybe even under 30. Then, some of the people I worked with at Marble Media ended up starting their own TV company as well, but these were guys my agepeople I played volleyball with in university. So there was this kind of avenue of entrepreneurialism and self-starting and get your own shit out there fed into me because that was where I worked. And when I told the guys I worked with I was leaving to start my own company there was this sort of High Five-Handshake-Good Luck farewell. They werent pissed at all about me bailing on them at all. And thats where Capy started. I was an artist; I did art for all of our cell phone games (while we still did them). We got a bit bigger, and we decided we needed someone to start managing the artists. I ended up being called Art Director, but I wasnt really doing art direction, I was more so doing art production. I just had to make sure that all of our artists knew what they should be doing and were getting stuff done on time. Then about two and a half years ago, Tom, one of the founders, who was also President at the time, decided he

was going to go out and do his own thing. So I ended up running the studio in air quotes I dont really run it myself, all of the other owners contribute too. Mostly, Im the guy who does the business development. I work with Ubisoft and Sony, and those relationships I own and manage and foster. Thats become a significant portion of my job. Its been really interesting; Im turning 32 and I feel like Ive done a lot more. It sounds like it! Yeah, and thats why doing stuff independently, or self-starting, is so awesome because I ended up skipping over a lot of bullshit and wasted timewell, not wasted time, but I paid my dues in a different way and I liked doing it this way better. Doing it this way, it sounds like paying your dues was a lot more rewarding for you. Oh hell yeah! Its really rewarding to have a goal, and to have that goal be bigger than just a raise or a promotion. Even though when we started the company we all put whatever we had down as our seed capital without knowing if we would ever get it back. Its an investment, but the return on that investment is so massive that you dont even worry about it any more. What do you see in store for Capys future?

If we can keep doing what were doing, then thats the best-case scenario. A studio that we talk a lot about is Treasure, and how theyve managed to keep making creative titles for themselves over this insanely long period of time. Theyre still making unique shit, even though theyre doing a lot of license-y type stuff too. Theyre still making basically unique games. Anyway, what were doing right now, which is like four projects, all of our own concepts, all of our own designs; in a lot of ways, we own where those games will go. It doesnt get much better than that. What have been some of the biggest challenges that youve had to face during your time at Capy? Running a business is really hard. Were you expecting it to be tough? You just dont know. You cant be taught; its school of hard knocks; its learn-as-you-go. If you cant learn on your feet you will fail. For sure! And a lot of its shit and piss, a lot of its not fun and its really stressful

12

being accountable for paying peoples salaries. They have families and all that kind of stuff. Its a very stressful thing and its something thats very challenging, but at the same time its super rewarding as well. When you can help somebody out, for instance, our writer just had a kid and now he works from home part time. Just being able to help, thats kind of the flip side to running a business. I think one of things that a lot of small independent studios struggle with is that theres a lot of stuff that takes up your time and takes you away from making games. Its something where Ive had to learn how to multi-task because for the first four years of Capy, I came to work, I put on my headphones, I picked up my tablet and I drew. Now, Im emailing and Im on the phone, and Im pitching and Im doing this or that, and producing a project. Youre wearing quite a few different hats. Yeah, its not easy. Its not the hardest thing ever, Im sure theres probably a billion people who work way harder jobs, and Im not complaining at all, but it was something, personally, that took a while to get my head around

for sure. I think its something that every independent studio struggles with, and something every independent studio has to figure out how to do. You cant just say, Oh Im not going to do it. You either hire someone to do it for you, or you do it yourself. Those are the only two options you have. What game are you most proud of? I dont know. Thats a really good question. I really dont think that I could pick one to tell you the honest truth. Clash of Heroes and Critter Crunch have been two very important parts in us achieving that goal of bigger and better, and more creative and more freedom, so I love those two probably the most. But even going back to cell phone stuff, we did this crazy Sonic-meets-Mario platformer for the movie Happy Feetthat was really cool and we did a lot of stuff, even in shitty little cell phone games that were kind of super awesome. Im really proud of what the team on Sword & Sworcery has been able to do. Youre just proud of everything youve done? I know its easy for that to come off the

wrong way, but a big part of how we make games is that

in a different way and I liked doing it this way better.

we really want to be proud of it when its done, and if were not, then well just keep working on it if we can find a way to convince the publisher. If the games not done to our liking, well find a way to make it to our liking. Whats your favorite part about the video game development industry? People, for sure. I mean, I love making games, I love playing games, but over the past couple of years weve managed to meet a lot of people outside of Toronto that have been super inspiring; everything from iPhone developers to one of my close friends who works on the Call of Duty series. So it really is like opposite ends of the spectrum. You know, people give a shit. Ive met a bunch of people at Treyarch, and they make Call of Duty, the biggest game in the entire universe and those guys give a shit! They work their asses off to make something cool. I feel bad because

I paid my dues

13

this year, and hes a quote unquote big guy in the industrygo to these small events. Most go because theyre interested, and thats really special. Thats easily the best part of the industry. Theyre the most helpful, caring, creative, and passionate group of people Ive ever met. And Ive worked in TV, and Ive done some other stuff creatively so its a very interesting contrast. Again, its not just limited to developers, some of my closest friends are journalists, or people at QA studios (people who just test games), or people who work at localization houses, but theyre all the same as me. They actually give a crap about what they do. Its easy to take for granted; most people dont give a crap.

I read stuff, and even though the game is really well done, they still catch flack every once in a while, as with any popular thing. So I feel bad because I know these guys work their asses offguys of course being guys and girlsand care about their projects as much as I do about mine. And thats really the reason why I think this industry is better than any other industry, and I have no problem saying that I think its better than other industries. Its made up of people that have a vested interest in seeing it get better. I couldnt agree with you more.

Sure, theres the moneyhats and CEOs and stuff, but I dont Who is one person you greatreally give a fuck about them, ly admire in the development thats not what Im interested industry? in. They are in a whole different realm and I dont really see Hmmwho am I going to them as a part of the commupick? There are a ton of people. nity. No can list offense to Theyre the most You names ifoff a few you them, but helpful, caring, cre- want to. kind of offense to ative, and passion- Ive been rethem. But ate group of people ally lucky. Ive the combeen doing this munity of Ive ever met. Indie Fund thing developers, with Ron Carthe people mel from 2D Boy, that you see going into sessions Jonathan Blow, Kellee Santiago at GDC, or coming out to from thatgamecompany, Matt IndieCadefor instance, Tim Wagner who runs Independent Schafer came out to IndieCade Games Summit, and Aaron

14

Isaksen. All of them are amazing people, absolutely amazing people. Theyre super inspiring, super helpful, I just kind of put most of the indie games community in there. Meeting these people has changed so much for us. Its helped our studio so much and inspired our studio so much. For me, personally, even as someone who is more on the business end, knowing somebody like Kellee Santiago who is President of thatgamecompany, Ive learned so much from her just by hanging out and shooting the shit. Its not one of those things where Im shadowing her and trying to figure out what theyre doing right. Its more like learning about their stuff and their process and figuring the way theyve worked. I dont know, its kind of nuts. I guess thats another thing thats cool about the games industry, I genuinely cant pick one person that has played a big role in getting me where I am, or us where we are. It goes from a single person all the

way up to this giant; there are so many amazing independent game developers and inspirational people. I mean, XBLA is what XBLA is because of independent developers; theres ton of cool stuff on there like Castle Crashers and Braid and N+. It would be nothing if it wasnt for those guys, and to me thats a huge inspiration personally as well. If you could collaborate with one other studio or creative mind on a game, who would it be and what would you be interested in creating?

Thats a great idea; thats a great question. There are a lot of people Id like to work with. I mean, Id like to work with Adam Saltzman who did Cannibalt and Gravity Hook on iPhone. Hes a good friend and Ive always wanted to do something with him. Id love to work with Mare & Reagan Sheppard, or DrinkBoxactually we got to work with DrinkBox on Clash of Heroes. Id love to work with thatgamecompany, Behemoth, 2D Boy fuck, theres a million of them! Id love to just collaborate again and again and again I loved Super Meat Boy! Id love to do something with those guys. I mean Tommy and Edmund are geniuses. Theres like this giant unending list of people, and it goes all the way

just collaborate again and again and again

down to people who just make stuff for fun. Theres this designer, artist, programmer, Ted Martins, whos a good friend of mine whos made some really cool stuff. The latest thing he did was an interactive fireplace, Pixel Fireplace. Hes super rad, Id love to make something with him too. Im a huge fan of Zach Gage; hes made some really awesome iPhone games such as Bit Pilot. I could probably go on for 24 hours straight and Id probably end up listing 900 people. So lets say, of any of these studios, if you could just pick one of them and then create something with them, what would you be interested in creating with that specific studio? I love what Jon Mak does with visuals and music and how important those are in his games, so Id love to eventually do something with John. I have no idea what it would be, but Id love to be able to do something where we take collaboration in a different direction. Then again, Id work with Superbrothers again in a millisecond. Overall, its really tough to say

Id love to

just because weve worked with so many brilliant and inspiring people; weve gotten to see their process and then you cant help but want to work with them. If you werent working in game development, what would you be doing? I know you said you started in film, would you go back to that or would you do something totally different? I dont know. I probably wouldnt go back to film, I think. Id probably want to go in a bit of a different direction. Ive always been really interested in graphic design and motion graphics and that kind of stuff.

So lets say that you could take all of the experience youve had with Capy, but for some reason you cant do this any more; youve got to pick something else. Thats a good question. Ive always wanted to design furniture, although Ive never done it and I have no idea if Id be good at it. I think that industrial design is super cool. I love the idea of making stuff that human beings have to use functionally. I really do dig motion graphics, too. Id also like to help independent studios figure stuff out. Not that I would be employed by them, but Id like to figure out a way to help them out. Sort of give them this giant

16

compendium of lessons weve learned. [Laughs] Publish a book? Yeah, it would be called Dont Do This. Seriously! Dont Do This! [Laughs] But in a way its kind of good for studios to make those kinds of mistakes. Its what makes them better. Anyway, I think I would go back to doing something visual, but it probably wouldnt be film. Actually, I dont know, Id love to cut music videos or something like that but theres not much music video stuff any more. Definitely something visual though, but not necessarily screen based. If there was one thing you could say to people who dont know very much about video games or the development process, what would it be? Man, thats a good question again. I think the most important thing for me is that people understand that the people who make projects care about them. Its the same way that when you see a painting, you make this emotional assumption that the person painting that put a lot into it. We do that with photography, we do a lot of that with film now and I dont know if people necessarily do that with video games. I think a lot of people just look at them as entertainment, rather than as a form of culture. Video games as culture are very important for

our studio, and I think for this city. Theres this big Are Video Games Art? argument thats going to go on forever, and I think its really interesting, but for me, Im more interested in culture. I think culture is much more important. There is a culture around it and that culture is so important to games, but also to The Arts as a whole, not just art under the classical definition thing that Ebert talks about. So thats the big thing, theyre made by people who put a lot of themselves into it. Maybe not as much on the big studio front, it still exists, but especially on the small studio front. The games are being made by people who are willing to do anything, and who put a ton of their vision and creative juices into it. In the end they craft it in a way that really ends up reflecting themselves in a lot of ways. Some people less than others, but everyone for sure.

Nathans 5 Independently Developed Reccomendations

Flower thatgamecompany Braid Jonathan Blow Nidhogg Messhof Deep/Wing/Break Cactus Everyday Shooter Jonathan Mak
Listed as: Game Developer

thing for me is that people understand that the people who make projects care about them.

The most important

17

Double Fines Next Step

By

Michael Brown

18

a
19

A picture hangs on the wall, right when you come through the door of Double Fine Productions. Last July, to celebrate their 10th anniversary, the entire staff pitched in to buy a photograph of the road sign that had become the studios namesake. As you come off of the Golden Gate Bridge entering San Francisco, there is a large sign proclaiming: This is a Double Fine Zone. When Tim Schafer, the studios founder, first saw this sign he thought it would make for a great band nametheyd get free advertising but as Zack Karlsson, Vice President of Business Development at Double Fine, lightheartedly said, Unfortunately Tims not a very good musician so he made it a game studio name instead. Still, it was a clever idea, and something you would expect from Schafer, one of the creators of The Secret of Monkey Island, a classic text adventure game created by LucasArts in October 1990. Double Fine Productions began in 2000 when Tim Schafer left LucasArts and wanted to create his own development studio. The studio just has this culture of wit and sharp intellectI

dont really know how else to put it, Karlsson explains. [The employees] hone themselves, against and with one another. As a person who doesnt get to sit in the creative seat, its really fun to watch because I really appreciate it and value it. What started out as a relatively small, but passionate studio has grown over time to become one of the most critically acclaimed mid-size studios in the industry: Its a very different scope and scale. We like it that way. Weve had the opportunity to expand the business quite substantially, and weve declined that opportunity because part of what makes it interesting to work here is how creative people can be in a smaller environment. Double Fine isnt simply a studio thats in it to make money; theyre in it to make games and share their creativity with the world. With that said, some of their goals when they start a new game, merge principles between two different schools of thought; creativity and success. We dont start game projects with the goal of be-

ing tortured artists, Karlsson explains. We want to make money and we want to make success for the company, but we want to do it in a way that is consistent intellectually, creatively, and emotionally with who we are as people and as creatives in the industry. The studios first game was Psychonauts, a platforming game that puts you in control of Raz, a young boy with psychic powers who leaves the circus in order to become a Psychonaut. The game received plenty of critical acclaim, and as Karlsson says, [Its] one of those ones where you can feel the people who made that game, in that game! Unfortunately the game experienced a long and drawn out development cycle.

not sell well initially, but did receive a bump in sales when it was re-released digitally via the Xbox Live Marketplace as an Xbox Original. While it wasnt as successful as everyone had hoped, the game had struck a chord with a dedicated audience; those who played Psychonauts loved it. Double Fine, unlike a majority of start-ups, also had Tim Schafer, one of the most respected writers in the industry at the helm of the studio. Thats how comedian and actor Jack Black ended up agreeing to do the voice acting for Eddie Riggs, the main character in Double Fines second game, Brtal Legend. Like Psychonauts, Brtal Legend also had quite a long development cycle. Production began in 2005 as Psychonauts was just wrapping up. The game was originally going to be published by Vivendi Games. However, their merger with Activision led to the game being dropped from their portfolio. Later, Electronic Arts (EA) picked up the publishing rights to the game and became Brtal Legends actual publisher. As Karlsson asserts, It would take a lot less time [to develop games] if things went right the first time. Although Brtal Legend was well received by reviewers, the game still didnt sell as well as Double Fine had hoped.

ing to sell out, just to sell out.

Zack Karlsson
Of course, this was the studios first game and road bumps were to be expected. However, Psychonauts had two publishers, a factor that greatly affects production time and in the end, the game took five years to make. On April 19th 2005, Psychonauts was finally released for Microsoft Xbox, and was released on Playstation 2 a couple of months later. The game did

Were not go-

Every so often the entire studio takes part in what they call Amnesia Fortnight, a twoweek period where everyone forgets what they are currently working on, and the studio works on prototyping small games. As Alan Patmore, Vice President of Product Development, notes, The cool part about the Amnesia Fortnight process is that during that two week prototyping, it accomplishes a lot of the goals of the concept phase, and even the pre-production phase of development. The goal of the pre-production phase is to get something playablewhat we call Vertical Slice. Typically, it is a playable level of the gameabout fifteen minutesat a pretty high quality bar, demonstrating all of the games core pillars and verbs. Thats why we call it Vertical Slice, because it goes deep through the game. For instance, if you were going to be doing a third person shooter, you would have all of the players core movement controls, maybe one or two dif-

20

ferent weapons that the player could use to demonstrate the inventory system and the shooting system. There would also probably be one or two enemies that youre fighting against, but basically youre going really deep so you can figure out how youre going to build the game. Youre kind of accomplishing two goals, which are to figure out how youre going to build the game and how long it takes to build each part of the game. Thats why going deep is really important, but also, the real thing is to find the fun. If you cant find the fun, and you cant demonstrate the fun early in pre-production, then you are going to have a very long, painful development cycle. While the studio still kept working on Brtal Legend during its time without a publisher, Double Fine conducted an Amnesia Fortnight, and it was here that some of their latest projects were born.

Costume Quest and Stacking (results of the aforementioned Amnesia Fortnight) are two of the studios most recent releases, both of which have had exceptional critical acclaim, as well as decent sales figures. Both titles were released via digital distribution (through the Xbox Live Marketplace, and Sonys Playstation Store) through Double Fines current publisher, THQ. And both games clearly demonstrate what Double Fine does best: innovation. When asked what he thought Double Fine did better than other studios, Karlsson noted: I think its how the studio marries creativity and humor and character and story, in an interesting way, and says, Were gonna make it interesting. Were gonna make something that other people havent seen. The studio strives to create new experiences that they think players will want, even if they dont know it yet: We believe

that the industry wants innovation. It wants it. It needs it. There is a place for Generic Space Marine #12. There is a place for that. Its not here, and we hope that eventually the customers will want it as much as we want to produce it. With regard to the beginning of their development process, Double Fine doesnt remain tied down to a certain genre, or type of game. What the studio does take into consideration is something called horizontal focus. Zack Karlsson elaborates: Rather than vertically, we focus horizontally, which means we focus on character, humor, writing, etc. Those things can really be brought to any genre or any theme, its just that the focus [for the game] is on character, story or whatever else. From the very beginning, Double Fine is different from almost every other studio out there, even the way they actu-

21

industry wants innovation. It wants it. It needs it.

Zack Karlsson

We believe the

ally make games is a drastic move away from how other studios make their games too. Were one of the only studios in the business (of which Im aware) that does not currently employ designers (other than one), explains Karlsson. We split our programmers into two pieces: Gameplay programmers and core/engine programmers. Gameplay programmers focus more around the individualized experience, whereas core guys focus on the underlying tech and whatever else. The designer work is largely done by gameplay programmerswe find that it gives us some efficienciesThey design either within the scope of the technology or with a mind to accommodate the time and how long it will take to do whatever design or directional change they want to make. Besides their unique breed of programmer-designers, Double Fine also employs character and 3D artists; 2D and con-

cept artists; user interface and visual effects programmers. The studio also has an extensive production team, going all the way from senior level producers to assistant producers. They even have a localization producerwho works off siteas well as a small set of contractors and vendors, such as Pete McConnell, the same composer that Tim Schafer has been using since he began work at LucasArts back in the 1990s. All in all, Double Fine is comprised of 67 people. This place is a really funny place to work, Karlsson explains. Have you ever had that conversation, you know when youre sitting around with your friends and somebody makes a joke that has a double-entendre? Youre just kind of looking at each other and everybody knows theres the joke there and your minds race to try to put the joke together and whoever gets there first gets the polite chuckle from everyone else

because you all knew it was thereyoure all chasing it. Well, Tim does that faster than anyone else and its a different jokeits not the one you thought! Its not hugely better, its just slightly better, but its slightly better because its not the one that was obvious. And youre just there saying, Oh shit, that was really funny! His brain just works differently than everybody else and as a result it keepsparticularly with the creative folksthem engaged in humor and creative solutions. It truly is a genesis from the top of the studio, down. Its incredible to see just how Double Fines endless flow of creative energy works to their advantage. Sure, theyre taking some big risks, but you can bet that when the studio finally has its big take-off, itll be greater than anyone ever expected.

22

More Than Business

Getting to know Zack Karlsson, Double Fines Vice President of Business Development
What were you doing before you came to Double Fine? Wars: Galaxies, and all those games at Sony Online. And that was about twelve years ago, I guess. Why did you choose/want to work at Double Fine? Im a business guy, not a creative guy so when I look at an opportunity, what I look for is potentialunder valued potential. So what I was looking for after Namco was a company that was ready to breakout, but just hadnt yet. It needed mehopefully to help them break out of wher-

>>
23

Before I came to Double Fine I was at Namco Bandai, where I was the head of Business Development. It was a great job; I loved it; theyre a great organization. And before that I was at a company called Sigil, and we were making a game called Vanguard for Microsoft, which eventually left Microsoft and came to Sony Online, who bought Sigil and launched Vanguard. Before that I worked at Sony Online, and worked on EverQuest, Star

ever they had been. When you look at studios like Blizzard, that started out really making games that soldmehno offense intended to the guys over there. Then they just broke out. They had one game were everything clicked and its like, BOOM! Off they go! If you look at Ken Levine who made a couple of games that soldmeh, then all of a suddentheres BioShock. The same thing happens when you look at the BioWare guys. They started off with a little bit of a

rocky start, they were good critically acclaimedbut they just werent getting sales and thenBOOM! Taking off! So I thought to myself, What are the studios that are out there that are not already owned by a publisher, where all they need is that one game that takes them off? And where can I apply my knowledge of the industry, and business and finance and whatever else and really help them do that? It ended up being a really short

list, and thats how I ended up here. I interviewed and they miraculously liked me and it worked out really well. Ive been here for about a year now. Do you feel like youre still on the way to that take off game? Yeah, I think so. Costume Quest was an excellent game, its reviewed well; its won a bunch of awards. Sales-wise it did pretty okay, I mean it didnt do fantasticit didnt sell as many games as Castle

24

Crashers, for instancebut it did well; its not an embarrassment, thank God! The units have done okay, but its not like everyone is hailing the second coming of Castle Crashers. Thats not what we made unfortunately. So well keep going. What have been some of the biggest challenges you have faced during your time at Double Fine? Thats a long list. Its really hard being a developer right now. Like I said, publishers have really gotten squeezed in the last couple of years; margins are way down. The bets are getting bigger and the risks, well, some bets are getting bigger and most are getting smaller. We peaked, I think, a couple of years ago in terms of development spend size. Now the spends are starting to come back down, which I think Thank God! because I was getting a little worried therethe development spends

were just getting crazy. The problem is that a majority of the big bets are being made internally at publishers. For an independent developer like us, were left with people who want to do smaller things, but they dont want to take a lot of risk. So for us, we had to think, How do we still remain innovative and manage risk? Its ended up being this sort of tightrope walk, and weve been luckyweve had some good partners who have had enough success in the rest of their portfolio that theyre willing to be adventurous, and are willing to find unique and interesting ways to get out there. THQ was the first, and they are experienced with the Kids & Family Group at THQ. They were fantastic. Just so fantastic! The way its supposed to work when you get to the end of the project is that the publisher hates the developer, and the developer hates the publisher. You

swear youll never speak to each other again. And then, if the game hits, and the first royalty check comes, then all sins are forgiven and everybodys friendly again. Thats how it normally works. We love themand I hope they love usbut we really do love them! They were easy to work with, they did exactly what they needed to do; they supported us. They were stern with us when we needed it, and lighthanded when we didnt. They handled us expertly. It was really a pleasure and you so rarely get to say thatwith a straight face. [Laughs] It was nice because we got to work with a group that said, No, we believe in this! We believe in this studio. We believe in the uniqueness of these properties. The challenge is that not everyone does; not everyone is willing to take that kind of risk, or has the experience on the platformdigital, I mean specifically. And that was for Costume Quest? And Stacking. They signed both of those up at the same time.

to think, How do we still remain innovative and manage risk?

Zack Karlsson

For us, we had

25

Do you find it to be more challenging to create a game with a strong story as opposed to a game that purely focuses on mechanics? This is a question thats not for me, but I will answer it because I find that purely through observationIm not an authority on this subject by any meansDouble Fine, in a way that is fairly unique in my experience, always starts with a story. Well, we almost always start with a story. Theres been an occasion when we havent Im not going to tell you which one. [Laughs] But we almost always start with a story, and then the rest begins to flow around that. Tim is really the guy behind it; his brain just works differently. Its been very cool to watch because his creative process is uniquely arcane. Hell come into work one day and say, So I was sitting on the sidewalk last night with my daughter, and a feather flew by and it made me think of this. Youre thinking, Wait, how did you get that? Then he starts to explain it, and it all just comes tumbling out, all in a row. Its driven around this whole narrative of what he would find

interesting, or this story that he finds interesting. It almost comes birthed fully formed, in terms of the core of whatever this idea is and then we hang other things off of it. I know, it makes it sound gross, but its a really cool process to watch. I have absolutely no comprehension of how he does it. He just comes into the office one day and says, I was thinking He makes this leap so quickly, and that I cant even make. I can follow it, but I cant make it myself. If there were one aspect of the video game industry youd like to see changed, what would it be?

Wow, thats a really big question. I have a long list. I could do a whole interview about this question. In terms of the products, Id like to see consumers appreciate creativity more than they currently door appear tobecause I think the medium itself is worth more. For instance, its easy to throw criticism and say, Oh, another space marine game! Its easy to say that. But the reality is, space marine games selllots of units. And lots of people have logged many, many hours playing space marine games. So, you cant really throw stones at that.

26

At the same time, you look at movies and you say, Oh, there are action movies that people love, and those are space marine games effectively (on the big screen). Isnt there an opportunity for games as a medium to evolve where were also doing romantic comedies, thrillers or whatever else? Its not just space marines. Its a place where a variety of different kinds of moviesgames can make money. Can make good money; can have big success. And historically, I think the games medium has been viewed as something only a particular subset of humanity, or at least this culture, will engage in actively. For instance, when I started out in this business we used to say, Oh, the demographic is 18-24. Now the demo is 18-35. Its getting broader and Id like to see the interest space broader, such that creative products can really have a leg to stand on. Where its not just an Indie

Film Festival, where they get their recognition and no sales. We can go out to the real theatres and get broad recognition and sales. As a medium, its evolved to a point where it can support that. As for the industry, I think that there is a normal push-pull tension that occurs between publishers and developers at the end of a project, as things are trying to get out the door. I dont think Id change that; I think its necessary. I think that that tension helps drive quality and I still get a finished product out the door. In fact, I can say thisnot as a representative of Double Fineas someone who has observed the industry for a while: In a vacuum, if developers had their way theyd take forever; theyd never ship. And if publishers had their way theyd ship a year early. The thing that Id like to change about the industry, at its core, is probably the flow of information. I think that as an industry we view proprietary information in kind of a nave way. You know, look at NPD. In order for NPD to get data, they comb leaderboards, and extrapolate and run data through an algorithm to acquire sales data. I mean, you want to know how a movie did? Just look it up on the Hollywood Reporter on Monday. The competitive advantage isnt what sales you

have. Competitive advantage is what your ideas are or how good you are. Holding on to data of that nature only inhibits the growth of the entire industry, in my opinion. Id like to see more transparency, not just about sales, but about where the industry is going. If you go to GDC, they put on a good program, but on the business side, you get talks about things that were happening three years ago. No one wants to reveal their competitive advantage. Its not really a competitive advantage; its trying to make the whole medium a better place for creativity and business to happen. Id like to see it a little more open than it is. Im not saying it needs to be an open book, I just think it would be nice to be more open. What game are you most proud of? Im actually going to have to go all the way back to the beginning and say EverQuest. I know that makes me a big nerd, I dont care. That game changed the way we think about gaming. It opened the door, I mean there were games before, certainly, such as Ultima Online and you can keep going back. But EverQuest was one of the first commercial successes that opened up the door to online gaming.

What is NPD?

NPD Group is a market research company that has reported on video game sales for the past several years. Reports are only released monthly and include sales information regarding hardware sales (such as Playstation 3, Nintendo DS) and the Top 10 software sales, with no differentiation between platforms. As the market for digital distribution increases, it is interesting to note NPD does not report digital sales data. Although sales are reported, it is very difficult to get an accurate representation of how many other games in the industry are doing.

27

If I can be specific, it was the vision of two or three individuals who saw that as an opportunity. I dont think that Facebook games, or social gaming or World of Warcraft or EVE: Online, or any of the stuff like Playstation Network would exist in the same form. I mean, they might exist in some form, but I think that games like EverQuest and things that naturally flowed out from it at later timesincluding World of Warcraftare things which allowed us to think about connected

ency, not just about sales, but about where the industry is going.
Zack Karlsson
gaming in a new way. They opened the door for a variety of services, such as the Playstation Network, to come forward and connect people in new and unique ways. I would argue that people were more willing then to talk about Facebook games and a variety of other things, like social interaction. I think its driven a lot of innovation in the industry as a knock-on effect. I am deeply proud to have been associated with it. My role,

Id like to see more transpar-

Double Fines Stacking

ing to little kids, so once again, no real frame of reference. Really all I know is this industry. I can say that I personally would not have been able to get to this point in my career if I was in another industry. Im high school educated; I have no formal education. When I got into the video game industry, it was something that guys did in their garage. And you had to explain to your parents that werent just sitting around wasting money or wasting your life. People thought it wasnt really a valid career. So, as a result, you got people who believed. And belief was really the determinant in being able to figure out if you can get a job somewhere or not, in the video game industry. It was, Do you have the cojones to move to San Diego with nothing but the clothes on your back? and if you do, you can have a job. Thats how it started. One of our guys was a clerk at the 7/11 near our office, and we hired him because he was good at customer service. One of

the executives hired a guy who waited on him in a restaurant because he was really attentive, so he thought, We need more people like that. If youre willing to take the risk, you can come have a job working in video games. That was the determinate back then. Now its different. In my last job, I had two guys who had MBAs that worked for meIm high school educated. You need education and bonafides to be taken seriously now because its a real business with real money. I would say that my opportunity has been different because of the nature of the business. Although, if I tried to get a job in the industry nowwith no experience nobody would hire me. I think thats unique to this industry, or other industries with individuals who try to get into them at their genesis. Thats really what was happening. I was getting in early enough, before the money got big. What is your favorite part about your job?

to be clear, was quite limited. It isnt like what I do now, but my name is still in the credits and Im really proud of that. Do you find that working on the business side of the video game industry is very different from that of other industries? I dont know. I had a very brief stintI wont say other careersworking in a bookstore. That was my first gig out of high school. I dont think that bookseller really gives you any sort of perspective on any industry at all. It was just a retail job at the mall. I worked as a temp, primarily, at Boeing, mostly in the IT field. I would say that that in no uncertain terms gave me no qualifications to judge the aerospace industry at all [Laughs] I also taught ski-

not have been able to get to this point in my career if I was in another industry. Im high school educated; I have no formal education.
Zack Karlsson

I can say that I personally would

29

Thats interestingclosing a deal. Because, its not just that I did a good job and it was successful, its that the sixty-seven people who rely on me to make their mortgage payments, pay their student loans, send their kids to school and make their car payment, have another job. They continue to make and do good things that they love, and be creative and brilliant. Its my role as an enabler of creative genius, and I love that! I love that moment! On the other side of the table it was exactly the same, but in the other direction. You were enabling the studios to make their next game. Yeah, if you ask any of the people who have dealt with me from my historyin the game industry there are people called agents. I dont know if youre familiar with them, probably from the movie side, and in games it works the same. I had built relationships with all of the major agents in the business and they knew one thing about me that was different from most of the other business development people they worked with. When we greenlit a project, protocol says you call the business people first, which in this case is the agent. I would call the agent first and say, Ok, weve greenlit. Youre good to go. Then I would say, Please dont call your client.

I would like to call them and tell your client myself. It was one of the most wonderful feelings that you could have. Youre saying, Im going to enable you to build your dream. Its an amazing thing. With that comes the requirement that you also be the individual who bears bad news. So when we cancelled projects or had bad news to deliver, or whatever it was, I was also the one who called the client rather than getting the agent to do it. I feel like doing it any other way would have been hypocritical. I still felt like that was a fair trade off. If Im going to do good news, I have to do bad news. I dont struggle with telling people that their project is cancelled when theyve really screwed it up. Like, Youve really screwed it up. I get that there was no intentno one goes into a project intending to screw it upbut youve really screwed it up! That kind of stuff doesnt bother me. But when you have to cancel a project because your goals have changed as a publisher, thats tough. Its like laying people off. I dont mind firing people. You fucked up; youre out. Laying people off though, that sucks.

If there was one thing you could say to people who dont know very much about video games or the development process, what would it be? I would say that it is more of a craft than you think. And excellence at it is even harder. The gap between good and great is astronomical. Theres not a very big gap between crappy games and mediocre games. The curve is exponential from that point up. Not just in terms of effort, but in terms of excellence. Also, in terms of craft; the skill involved, the heart involved. When I play a game where I can feel the creator and the joy that they adhered to the game and the process, thats an amazing thing. If by transference, I can get that joy of creation and that imagination, thats an incredible experience. Play Psychonauts. I dont mean to pimp my own game, I had nothing to do with Psychonauts personally, but thats one of those ones where you can feel the people who made that game, in that game!

30

The Many Seasons Of

elltale

n March 2004, Sam & Max: Freelance Police, a game being developed by LucasArtsexperimenting with episodic storytelling and digital distributionwas cancelled. Dan Connors and Kevin Bruner, as well as many other artists and programmers working on the project decided that they didnt want to start over and do something else. These guys decided they wanted to pursue this idea of episodic gaming and really try and leverage the emerging digital distribution space, recalls Dave Grossman, Director of Design at Telltale Games. So, in pretty short order, they went out and got some seed money and founded Telltaleit was a tiny office. And theyve been focused on those two things episodic and digital distributionever since. A week after this years Game Developer Conference (held yearly in San Francisco) I visited Telltale Games at their offices in San Rafael, Californiaalthough they arent so tiny any more. Recently Telltale has been expanding; they have nearly ninety people under their employ; and theyre working on games based on some of the biggest properties in pop culture. Getting to Telltale was no easy task. After I arrived, I was unable to find which offices were Telltales in the build-

ing lot. I walked around for a few minutes and after no luck finding the place, I began to panic: Is this the right place? I thought to myself. Luckily, I got in touch with Alan Johnson, Telltales Community Manager and my liaison for arranging the interview, who came outside and found me. It turns out Id been walking around the building for the last few minutes. As Alan brought me inside, I was introduced to Dave Grossman, the Director of Design at Telltale and one of the video game industrys most prolific writers. Grossmans credits include The Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, and even the hit game for kids and parents alike, Pajama Sam. During my tour of the studio, I saw concept art and renderings for some of their recent and upcoming games, the likes of which include Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, Fables and The Walking Dead. The studio has a nice sense of community; cubicles exist but barriers between people and departments are relatively low. Were expanding pretty quickly, Johnson told me. We just started to take over part of the lower floor. He takes me back to Dave Grossmans desk. After a couple of minutes we move to a small room at the back of the studio, tucked away between

32

two offices. As the three of us get situated, the interview begins. Grossman briefly describes how the studio began and the core pillars that make up Telltales foundationdigital distribution and episodic content. Telltale was entering the market just as the digital space was becoming a viable market for distributing properties. As Grossman explains, What happened is that the music industry changed all that, what with iTunes and so forth. By 2004 or so, there was a big enough portion of the model of people who were willing to entertain the idea of getting games that wayin a more serious fashion. When Valve Corporation launched their digital distribution platform, called Steam, in September 2003, the captive market for downloadable games increased and truly became one that publishers could rely on.

Currently, it is estimated that Steam accounts for 70% of all digitally distributed video games. It was the success of Steam (which was only available on PC at the time) that led to digital games becoming available on many other video game consoles. Microsofts Xbox Live Marketplace and Sonys Playstation Store would probably not exist in the same capacity as they do now, if it hadnt been for Steam.

model early on; it worked well while we were getting our feet. I mean, there was a little bit of a hump to get over with the audience in regards to the episodic contentthey were a little suspicious. In order to get over this hump Telltale turned to online forums for adventure games, asking people how they felt about having their games released in episodic chunks on a monthly basis. At first many people did not like the idea, with responses ranging from Youre trying to charge us more money for the same game to Youll never finish the project and well be left hanging. As Grossman notes, to combat this, Telltale had to incorporate a sort of stand-alone design into some of their first seasons: We had to do a little work with the audience to try and reassure them. We actually design many of the games differently at the beginning to account for that. If you look at the first season of Sam & Max, each case is designed to stand on its own, so by the time you get to the end of it, you feel like youve experienced a complete story and you want to play the next one, but youre still happy with it.

the greatest thing to have sixty hours of entertainment just plopped down suddenly in front of you.
Of course, even though a digital-only release was possible, Telltale was also taking a risk by trying to provide episodic content. We do this thing where we run a season like a season of television; we release the episodes one at a time and the space in between them is really dramatically important, states Grossman. Then when were finished the season we will bundle them up all together on a disc and put that out to retailThat was a more important part of the business

Its not always

33

When asked about why Telltale chooses to produce episodic content, Grossman replied: Well, its a different kind of story-telling. From an artistic standpoint it lets us get into the characters from more different anglessince were following them over time you just get to round them out a bit more through different situations. Whereas, if youre doing one larger title, its kind of like a feature film, where you are focusing on a few very specific aspects. From a company-business philosophy, its about maintaining relationships with your audience over a longer period of time. Another aspect is that gamers are older now: theyve got less time than they used to, theyve got more responsibilities, jobs, that sort of thing. So, its not always the greatest thing to have sixty hours of entertainment just plopped down suddenly in front of you. You have to kind of make space for that. Whereas, if its, Here is a thing youre going to play for a couple hours, maybe over a couple of days, or spend a little nightly time with and then think about it for a while, and then get some more. That tends to fit peoples lives a little better. Many of their games have significant brand loyalty. In fact, quite a few of their games are only available in a Season-

only package, a testament to how well consumers trust Telltale. However, when all is said and done, Telltale will usually pick one episode and release it for free to try and bring in new audiences to their unique brand of games. In 2008, Telltale got the rights to produce a canonical sequel in the Monkey Island series, to coincide with LucasArts release of The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. Grossman had worked on the original Monkey Island during his days at LucasArts, and at first he was worried that people wouldnt like the game because they had been building up their expectations for a sequel for so long. These fears proved to be unfounded and Tales of Monkey Island was both a critical and commercial success. In fact, until their most recent game, Back to the Future, Tales of Monkey Island was their most successful series availableno doubt because so many of the creative minds at Telltale had worked on the original game itself.

Staying true to the original source material is super important to us, Grossman explains. Thats one of the things we think makes us desirable as a studio, as a provider. There are various ways that we try to make it right. One is that we find a property that already has fans in the studioThey are the kinds of people that are going to be pitched everything and give us a lot of feedback. A second thing that we do is lots and lots of research. If were going to work on some series, we make sure that lots of people have watched the entire series. Then in meetings we talk about, What are the pillars of this thing? What is it about it that really makes it sing as a license? What are the features of the different characters that are important? There is a lot of analysis at that point. Then the third thing we do is to try and involve the original creators if we can. Ron Gilbert, we brought in for Monkey Islandactually we had quite a few people who worked on that, including meEvery little thing we can do helps us stay in the narrative zone of the original. It all comes back to Telltales focus on story over gameplay and how the studio really lets the personality of their employees come out through their games: All of the people who

Art from The Walking Dead started the studio were interested ingames as an artistic medium and as a narrative form, as opposed to a possibly more mechanical approach. We come at it from the other direction than most studios. If we werent making games, we would probably be working in movies or at television studios, but we like games! I think that there are a lot of things about video games that you dont get in other mediumsspecific things that happen because youre involving the player directly in the action. You can do a lot of neat stuff. Philosophically, were all about that. We like to find strong,

the original source material is super important to us.

Staying true to

35

good licenses that already have strong characters and good themesstuff like thatand really use those to express ourselves. As Grossman mentioned, Telltale likes to use properties with a strong narrative and strong characters. However, they also wanted to be able to give lesser known series a chance. It was because of this, that Telltale launched their Pilot Program, an initiative that allows the studio to take smaller, measured risks on more dicey properties. Well make a small game, we wont commit to a full season, well just do one, describes Grossman. Then, in the same way a TV studio would make a pilot and shop it around to networks, we make a pilot and we shop it around directly to the audience so they can basically vote for it with their pocketbooks. If enough people are interested and actually play the game and post on our

forums that theyd like to see another one, then we get what happens with Puzzle Agentour first Pilot Program and our first successwhich is we make another one. There is no doubt that Telltale has certainly found their niche. Just the past year alone has marked quite a few major milestones for the studio. In 2010, Telltale had revenues of $10 million, an increase of 90% over the year before. A big point of expansion for us now is into more serious titles, which is what Jurassic Park was about and what The Walking Dead is about, Grossman elaborates. We were having trouble getting people to take us seriously, outside the realm of funny animal games. Everybody knows we can do comedy well, but we wanted to show that we can do other kinds of storytelling just as well.

Scripted
Meet Dave Grossman: Telltales Director of Design

What was your experience like working at LucasArts, and then later, why did you decide to come to Telltale? My experience at LucasArts well, that was my first real job job. I was a young guy; I was just out of graduate school. Unlike a lot of people these days, who come to the games industry on purpose, I didnt I got into it by accident. I was interested in computers and was looking for something fun to do with them that did not involve designing missile systems or did not have an AI background, or that sort of thing. It was easy for me to fall into that, but it just didnt sit well with me.

You know, I just answered an ad for LucasArts. They were just looking for people to help; it was almost like an apprentice program. Each game had a designer, who was basically the head of the projectfrom a creative and a production standpointand that guy needed a couple of assistants to help him work out story and puzzles, and then implement everything. It was sort of a 1-part programmer, 1-part theatre designer, 1-part writer kind of a role. That was a great jobit was really fun. They gave us some cool tools, such as the SCUMM systemwhich is what they used to build their graphic adventures on. It also

took care of a lot of the little fiddly bits like, I want this character to walk across the screen to a point that I specify and it would just happen! The system would take over from there. Basically youd write one line of code and the guy walks over there. Ok, now I want this character to say a line of dialogue, and it would take care of it and show it on screen. It was a little bit like screenplay writing with coding features in it, so if you needed to do anything complicated you could figure something out. Like I said, I was a kid without much going on, aside from the job. So I stayed late and worked

38

on those Monkey Island games like crazy and they were good. Eventually they promoted me and Tim Schafer and they let us do a game called Day of the Tentacle, which was also a super fun thing to do. It was sort of like, Hey, here are the keys to the castle! I mean, there was a little bit of oversight. Oversight was strange at that company at that time. The head of the games group could tell us what to do, but there was a group of the project leadersand this was everybody who had a projectand we reviewed each other. So if you wanted to make a game, you pitched it to that group at the weekly meeting and they would say, Cut three rooms and five characters and youre good to go. [Laughs] That was usually the response. That was about as hard as it was to get Day of the Tentacle going. There was of course some pre-approval, which was Lets make another game in the Maniac Mansion series. Dont worry too much about sticking to the art style or the paradigms of the first one because it was five years ago and its a really old game now. Just do something fun that

capitalizes on all of the good stuff, and then go for it. What about your time between LucasArts and Telltale? Well, I left LucasArts in 1994 and then freelanced for about eleven years. It was kind of a fun way to run my life. As it turns out, I liked the freedom of getting to work from home. Over that period of time I worked with Ron Gilbert a lot actually. Over the years he had a couple of different childrens game companies, and we designed some stuff togetherHumongous Entertainment for example, and a few projects that we did there. The Telltale thing was really about two things coming together. One was that I was at a point where I was feeling that a little extra stability would be a good thing. And the other was that people I was already friends with were starting a company to make the kind of games that I was interested in

making. I thought, Ok, that sounds cool! I never really liked the part where you had to go around and find the next piece youre going to work onso that was all kind of taken care of. I could just come here and it was, Ok, were just going to make cool games all of the time and thatll be neat. I was in at that point. I mean, I had the opportunity to get in a little earlierlike I said they were talking to me from the beginningbut I was doing something else for free and the company was just starting up, so I thought, Eh, its a little too risky. But a year later I thought, This looks solid! What is your exact position at Telltale and does that vary from game to game? It doesnt anymore. Im the what you call Director of Design, which means that Im

come to the games industry on purpose, I didntI got into it by accident.

Dave Grossman
39

Unlike a lot of people these days, who

like the editor. Im responsible for all of the design and all of the writing that happens at this company and my tools for doing that are designers and writers, mostly. Although, occasionally I get to do a little bit of writing on one of the episodeslike Jurassic Park for example, that was really fun and really soon Ill be able to direct one of the episodes of one of our other series. However, now its unusual for me to do that. At the very beginning, the company was smaller and we didnt actually have a Director of Design. And at that point I actually was just in charge of a series at a time; I did The Great Cow Race and then the first series of Sam & Max was kind of my baby, and then we

expanded to the point where I thought, Ok, were going to be doing more than one series at once [Laughs] And that changed the way things worked. Why did you choose to write video game scripts? Well, like I said, it was a little bit accidental due to the LucasArts thing. I think they hired me because I wasnt your typical programmer; I had a little bit more breadth and I did actually do some writing on the side, I was interested in these sorts of things. And basically I said, You know, I seem to be good at this and the part that was the most fun was doing the writing, so I focused on that a little bit. When I was freelancing that was sort of the main focus, I mean I was offered to do some design and so forth, but mainly I pitched myself as a writer because I enjoyed doing the work. What are your personal goals/ambitions every time you start a new script? Wow. Hmm, well that I think changes over the years. If its something where there is a license involved then I want it to feel right. Thats a significant goal; Ive done Winnie the Pooh for example, something I did when I was freelancing and I got complimented on my A.A. Milne-ness for that one

and that was a huge deal for me. The older I get, the more I want the scripts to be about something. It used to be ok to just want to do something funny, but now I find that when I think upfront, I think about themes and broader scale narrative goalsthings like that and then put the funny on later. In retrospect, there is a lot of that, even in The Secret of Monkey Island. Ive got to give Ron [Gilbert] credit for that that it works on multiple levels. Its funny minute to minute, but if you sit back and think about it, the story is about this young man who has these career goals and he discovers love and figures out that this is more important to him than they are; thats not a funny story at

40

all. Its actually a pretty serious one about people and how they live their lives. What was it like to write and create video games for children, such as Pajama Sam or Freddi Fish? That was super fun! Although, it was another thing that I didnt intend to do. Ron had gone off to form this company to make childrens gamesand I almost went with him actuallybut I had some other things going on at the time that kept me local, he decided to move to Washington. But then when I was in the midst of my freelancing days, Ron called me and said, Were working on this kids game, Pajama Sam, and we want it to feel a little strange and we think youd be a good writer for it. I didnt have anything else going on at the time, so I said Sure. And you know what? It turned out to be super fun to write this game for kids who were going to

That was kind of the big trick to

Pajama Sam: Keep the parents entertained so that they will stay there and play with the kids.
Dave Grossman
be playing with their parents that was kind of the goal. Youve got to do fun stuff for the kids (a little bit of slapstick and some silly jokes that theyre going to enjoy), and then some other things that the parents are going to appreciate that hopefully the kids will either appreciate as nonsense, which can work, or will not notice going by over their heads. I just didnt want them to feel like they were missing something, because thats not a good experience for anybody. That was kind of the big trick to Pajama Sam: Keep the parents entertained so that they will stay there and play with the kids. And you know, I still hear from parents who say I played with my kids during the day, and then after they went to bed Id stay up and play by myself. [Laughs] Its good stuff! The success of that made me a guy that people called to do childrens games. So I wound up doing that and little interactive toys, or stuff like that, for quite a while. Now, which experience do you like more: writing childrens games or games for adults? I enjoy both, but I will say that doing only the kids games began to feel restrictive. I wanted to do some stuff for adults. Whereas, only doing adult games I dont feel the same way. I think theres something about the range of experiences that can be provided by a grown-up game that I like a little better. Overall, how do you feel the quality of writing is in the video game industry? Overall, not so great. I think that there are a couple of different reasons for that; one is money. If youre a good writer you can make a lot more money working in a different industry. And the other is that there are a lot of different restrictions about what you can and cant do when youre writing a game, which throw a lot of people off and they do kind of limit the extent to which you can use the

41

what kind of content you can put in. Do you feel that you need to have cutscenes in your game in order to tell a stronger story? Ive been curious about whether or not you think that cutscenes are a help or a hindrance to storytelling in games. I think that they help if theyre properly used. What you want to avoid is a structure that goes: Gameplay to Cutscene. Gameplay to Cutscene and then wobbles back and forth. That unfortunately is something that you see a lot. Frequently youll see a really long cutscene where you put the controller downyou dont pay attentionand then you pick it up and you play for a while and the story doesnt advance, and then you put it down and you get a little more. Something like a graphic adventure is a little better because you tend to get lots and lots of little cutscenes, some of which only last five seconds, and you never put the controller down. I think that the goal for the designer and the writer should be that you never put the controller down; you never take your hand off the mouse. Any sceneand we are guilty of having plenty of scenes that are longer than they should bewhere you drop your hand off of the controller means that

traditional tools of movies or TV. So if youre not in direct control, all the time, of the pacing or the sequence of events because you have allowed the user control over some of these thingsthen that can kind of screw up your narrative flow, if youre not paying attention. There are also often other business realities; very frequently writers will get called in later in the process, and its not the focus of a lot of studios. Theyll be focused on, We need to get our game mechanics working, and we need to do sneaking and shooting and since that is what you do in the story, the story has to be about those thingsany extent to which it feels not about those things it feels awkward or forced. Youre also very limited in terms of

you have become disengaged in a way thats probably not best for how you should tell stories in games. Were always trying to make them shorter, but it doesnt always work. For example, in The Secret of Monkey Island, theres a lot of conversations in that game where you make some choices that are ultimately kind of pointless. Theyre entertaining to make, but they dont ultimately affect the flow of scene. Its typically just, Pick which of these four things youre going to say now and then it responds differently for one line and then immediately goes back into the main narrative flow. Because we gave you that choice, youre still involved in the scene. Its not a super meaningful choice, but it keeps you doing something.

42

What have been some of the biggest challenges that you have faced during your time at Telltale? It seems like here, the things I thought were going to be the biggest challenges, were things such as license fidelity. When we got Tales of Monkey Island in here I thought, Oh no! People have had all of these years to build up their expectations about what were going to do. It doesnt matter what we do, theyre not going to be happy. And those fears usually turn out to be unfounded because people go, Oh yeah, we like this. What tends to really be challenging is keeping to the episodic schedule and being flexible enough to respond to the usual little things that come up, that are going to put a hitch in your schedule. For example,

the actor who plays this role is sick and is going to be out for a month. Well, we cant slip things for a month, what do we do? We have to re-cast that guy with somebody who sounds like him and weve got to do it in two days. Even two days isnt good when you work on such a strict schedule like we do. Weve got to figure out all of the things that people were going to do that was dependent on that guys lines and give those people other things to work on, to keep them useful for those two days, and then backtrack as soon as we do get some lines in. I think its the producers here who really take the brunt of all of that stuffnow that we have them. We didnt really have them in the early days and that was hard. [Laughs]

for the game industry. I think if youd asked me that question five years ago I would have said, Everything is terrible.
Dave Grossman
If there was one aspect of the game industry youd like to see changed, what would it be? Well, I think it would just be more breadth of experience and I think Im seeing that change. This is a good time for the game industry. I think if youd asked me that question five years ago I would have said, Everything is terrible and Were all making clones of the same game. Now, I just feel like there are all of these

This is a good time

interesting platforms for games, and people are doing the whole two-or-three-guys-in-theirgarage thing. There are lots and lots of little, tiny games. Im on Kongregate constantly playing all of these Flash games. Thats what excites me. People are empowered to do new stuff and the tools to make games are cheap and availablealmost anybody can do it. What game are you most proud of? You know, there are different ones for different reasons. I think Day of the Tentacle sticks out for me, but it may be colored by the luster of nostalgiaI have not gone back and played that game for about fifteen years. The thing that I liked about it is that it felt like a complete package, more than a

lot of other things. The writing, and the visual design and the design of the interactivity (of the things you had to do), were all pointing you towards: I am now inhabiting a cartoon. Im in an old Chuck Jones/Warner Brothers cartoon. So you go out and you paint the stripe on the cat to turn it into a skunk, and thats like a thing that reenforces that experience for you and wouldnt work in any other kind of a game atmosphere. If there was one property you could write a script for, what would it be and why? Can I just say I would do an original one? [Laughs] That particularly makes me the happiest. If you werent working in game development, what would you be doing? You

mentioned that you accidentally got started, so if you hadnt gotten started through LucasArts, what might you be doing? I would be that guy on the street corner, probably shouting obscenities and handing out poetry on little scraps of paper. Yeah, I dont know what I would do if people were not strangely interested in the products of my imagination. If there was one thing you could say to people who dont know very much about video games or the development process, what would it be? I would say that making games is art, and not science. And its hard work and it doesnt pay as well as other things, so if youre going to do it, you should love it!

44

For The Love of Development

Its Thursday February 24th, almost midnight, Im sitting at my computer trying to decide on what sessions I want to go to at GDC 25, the 2011 edition of the Game Developers Conference. There is an almost endless list of options. Talks ranging from GDC Microtalks 2011: One Hour, Ten Speakers, Hundreds of Fun New Ideas, a conference-goer favorite, with some of the industrys highest profile designers, writers and more, to The Development Process of the Nintendo 3DS, a look into how the company made their latest handheld system that boasts glasses-free 3D; even to Seven Ways A Video Game Can Be Moral, an in-depth speech that looks at how design-

45

Photos by Mark Rabo

ers can create moral choices in games that resonate with their audience. After spending well over an hour deciding my schedule, I glance through the list and eagerly anticipate the following Monday. When GDC first began in 1988, it wasnt nearly what it is now. As Jason Scott, GDC Historian explains, the conference actually began with extremely humble roots: GDC, originally the Computer Game Developers Conference (CGDC) was an attempt by game designer Chris Crawford to encourage game developers, at the time a solitary and hard-toiling bunch, to share ideas and discussions about forwarding the art. He invited folks to come to his home to hang out and discuss things. The second CGDC was held later that same year, and was more of what one would consider a real conference, being held in a hotel and all. Over the years, as GDC gained popularity and established a

name for itself, the proceedings moved around from San Jose to Santa Clara to Long Beach and finally to San Francisco in 2005. The conference returned to San Jose in 2006, however, all subsequent GDCs have been held in San Francisco, with this years event taking place from February 28th to March 4th.

and contributor to GDC, who is also the founder of the IGDA (International Game Developers Association); Brian Moriarty, who gave a speech at this years GDC in defense of Roger Eberts declaration that games are not art, attended the first CGDC and has since also been a frequent contributor. The conferences advisory board

The first group of GDC goers. Even as the conference has grown since its inception in 1988, throughout twentyfive iterations, the goals have remained the same. Chris Crawford and other developers founded CGDC to help encourage discussion and cross-pollination within game design, Jason Scott explains. Some of the other developers Scott mentions include Ernest Adams, a frequent attendee is also comprised of many of the industrys most prominent and trusted names. Even though games were a big industry [in 1988, when CGDC began], says Scott, game developers didnt have the same sort of structures that, say, writers might have at their disposal. This years conference, GDC 25, attracted an audience of

47

over 19,000, showing just how much of an industry cornerstone it has become. Currently, the conferences motto is Learn Network Inspire, something that I feel captures the essence of GDC. A few days after the conference, Patrick Klepek, a well-known video game journalist, wrote a blog post, that I found particularly striking about his experience at this years GDC. Ive had the pleasure of attending the Game Developers Conference for several years now, free of charge. Almost everyone else forks over hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars for the sameprivilege. And its exactly that: a privilege, one that Ive come to realize Ive been misusing, to my own detriment, because of the wrong prioritiesalbeit ones that have been largely out of my control (which Ill get to in just a minute). GDC 2011 was the first GDC where I embraced what I should be: a student. For five days, I sat, listened, took notes, and tried to let everything sink in. You shouldnt have to be a respected game designer to talk or criticize videogames, but you should understand how they work and the processes behind their creation. The tension between games writers and developers has more to do with a fundamental misunderstanding of each sides

job, one that each could stand to I dont know if there will learn more about. be another GDC where Many (most) developers are not Im able to indulge neargiven much acly as much this year. cess to the press, but GDC proPatrick Klepek vides an excellent venue for the opsome of the brightest minds in posite. For reasons I think are video games, remarks Alan entirely reasonable, that doesnt Johnson, former writer at 1UP. much happen. com and Community Manager of Telltale Games. Theres no [] I dont know if there will better place to go than GDC be another GDC where Im for someone just getting their able to indulge nearly as much start in games, as many of the this year, but I hope so, I truly finest companies in the indushope so, because I absorbed try do their recruiting there! more over those five days, Network! knowledge that is directly applicable to my understanding, For those working on the writing and reporting about media side, GDC is of utmost videogames, than Ill ever get importance for forecasting from the next year of publisher- where the industry is headed driven press events. creatively, says Andrew Pfister, Executive Editor of Electronic In preparation for writing this Gaming Monthlys digital magfeature, I also asked other writ- azine, EGM[i]. Its a window ers in the industry what they looking in at the development felt made GDC unique. process on a nuts-and-bolts level, as well as the higher level Its the family reunion I actuconceptual trends. ally want to attend, Frank Cifaldi, former News Editor of David Cage, the President 1UP.com, explains. There are and CEO of French developa lot of friends and former colment studio, Quantic Dream, leagues I only see once a year, believes that the industry and its all because of GDC. needs to start trending towards creating experiences that adults GDC is great not only as a fun will find engaging. His game, time to see all of my industry Heavy Rain, does just that. friends in one place but as a Playing as four different charfantastic learning experience actersEthan Mars, Madison as I get to sit in on talks by Page, Norman Jaden and Scott

48

Shelbyyou are shown the story of the Origami Killer and how far a father will go to save his son. The game shows its characters in everyday situations, and even the gameplay is a departure from that in most other games. In fact, David Cage calls this Interactive Dramaits one of the things he discussed this year at his GDC talk, Creating an Emotional Roller Coaster in Heavy Rain. I had a chance to interview Cage about why he decided to create such a unique game, and why he feels that the industry needs to start trending toward creating content for adult players.

ine and there is a good chance that no matter how hard I try, my script wont sound right. I need to have a starting point that is familiar to me, a feeling or a situation that I know, to start writing. Then the story can go in any direction, as long as I have a connection with my characters. In Heavy Rain, I have never been confronted by a serial killer, but I am a father loving his son, which certainly helped me to imagine how my character would react if he was confronted with this situation. Having ordinary people confronted with extraordinary situations is something appealing to me. I also believe it is important to create experiences that are appealing to a wider audience. I often hear gamers telling me that Heavy Rain is the only game they played with their wives or girlfriends. This is something I am definitely proud of. Why did you choose to make the interactions in the game untraditional? I had no choice, there was no possibility to tell a story using the traditional game paradigms. Most games are based on violent interactions, mechanics and loops, inventories and puzzles, telling a complex story using this language would have

meant using a lot of cutscenes, which is something I absolutely wanted to avoid. My goal was to let the player tell his story through his actions through gameplay. So we tried to stay away from the standard rules to invent new words for our narrative grammar. What mattered to me was the journey rather than the challenge. I did not want to create a game that would be a series of obstacles requiring skills, I wanted to create a journey that would change based on the players decisions, a story that the player could own, that would reflect what he thinks and who he is, that would maybe leave him different. I also wanted to work on role play. I learnt from Indigo Prophecy that the simplest actions could become interesting

Why did you choose to make a game about ordinary people? It is difficult for most people to connect with superheroes or people with extraordinary powers or skills. Adults especially need characters that resonate with them in order to feel emotionally involved. It helps to create identification with the characters, which makes the audience care for them. As a writer, I also think that it is difficult to write characters that have no link whatsoever with me. I dont know what it feels like to be a rookie during World War II, I can only imag-

49

to play and meaningful if they could tell the player something about his character, or if they can contribute to put him in the characters shoes. Role Play allows the developer to create an emotional connection with the character, identification or empathy, whatever we call it. Once this connection is established, the player will share what the character feels. Creating this emotional connection was my main goal in designing the game. I always considered Heavy Rain like an emotional rollercoaster, an experience where the player would go through very different emotions, from very intense to very subtle or complex ones, sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant.

All the vocabulary to create this emotional journey had to be invented. Many codes could be borrowed from literature or films, but many things had to be invented regarding interface and non-linearity, especially and that was certainly the main challenge of the game. For me, working on these new ideas was something that was very exciting. Please briefly summarize what your goals were for your talk at this years GDC. It is always a big challenge for me to explain 5 years of work on a project in one hour. It takes me a lot of time to prepare everything because I need to decide what the key themes I absolutely need to talk about

are amongst zillions of things I would like to share Now that many people have had a chance to play the game, I thought it would be interesting for the audience to hear the key concepts behind the unusual game design of the game. I also wanted to give concrete examples of how these concepts were used to write a scene. Last but not least, I wanted to reiterate that storytelling is something that can improve any game experience. If you have a great first person shooter, it will only become better if you

that storytelling is something that can improve any game experience.

David Cage

I wanted to reiterate

add solid characterization and a good storyline. Any creators goal is to trigger emotions. The more intense, complex and varied the emotions are, the better the experience is. There are many ways of triggering complex emotions beyond just adrenaline and fear. Storytelling can bring a new level of emotion in any game and make the experience interesting to a wider audience. Some creators still think today that the more bullets and special effects they have, the better. It may be true for a certain audience, but if we want to expand our market and convince other people to play, we must explore other directions. Storytelling is one possible way to achieve this. There are many others, but this is the one that felt the most logical and natural to me. In your speech you frequently mentioned a focus on adult themes, and reaching out to an adult audience. Why do you think its important to make such a strong distinction? Can a similar effect be accomplished using different themes or gameplay methods? One of the most successful hardcore games in our industry sold 20 million units (Call of Duty). This is great, but it is much less than Wii Sports for example (60 million units).

Which is great again, but it is still far less than Farmville for example (more than 80 million units), which is great too, but still much less than a blockbuster movie like Avatar for example.

definitive answers, but plenty of intriguing questions.

Andrew Pfister
The question this industry needs to ask itself is whether having one game selling 20 million units is a valid business model for all, knowing that most games sell less than 1 million units worldwide. We are not a mainstream media, we are a niche market targeting mainly young teenagers with violent games and teenage themes. I know this is not a very popular thing to say in our industry, but this is the truth If we want to expand, we will need to reconsider what we do and how we do it, and try to imagine ways to convince the vast majority of non-gamers in the world to join us, instead of focusing on our traditional ultra hardcore audience. Our parents dont play, our grandparents dont play, our wives

There were no

dont play, we all have friends who have no interest in video games, but all these people love cinema or watch TV series. How can we get them interested in interactivity? You can give them Wii Fit or Farmville, or you can conceive experiences that will be appealing to this larger audience. I believe that one way to make them want to play is to give them experiences based on storytelling and offer some level of sophistication and depth. If our industry continues to create exclusively violent games where the main activity is to kill as many enemies as possible to get to the boss and go to the next level, we will remain a niche market limited to teenagers. This is not my vision for the future of our industry. David Cage, thank you for your time.

Looking forward at the future of the industry, another industry trend and frequently discussed hot topic at GDC 25 was the social games debate. As Andrew Pfister puts it: There were no definitive answers, but plenty of intriguing questions. Undoubtedly, one of the most interesting places to hear a variety of different voices and opinions about the social games debate was at the GDC roundtable No Freaking Respect!

51

Social Game Developers Rant Back. Brenda Brathwaite, one of the industrys most respected game designerswho entered the industry in 1981, at the age of 15delivered an incredibly powerful speech during the Social Game Developers Rant. She touches on something that I believe has been a critical point throughout this magazine: a love of games. Everyone in the video game development industry has a strong passion for what they do. They love to make games; they love to create. Working on this magazine, and getting to meet so many of these passionate developers (and writers) throughout this process has been a truly amazing experience. Many of these people have stories that I believe are worth telling, what you have just read is what I hope to be the first of many more to come. Below you will find Brenda Brathwaites speech in all of its unedited glory. Hopefully, it or this magazine will change how you think about video games and the people who develop them. These are the real people and stories behind game development.

to fight. I will not turn against my fellow developers who have supported me through 30 years of my career. We have been through this before. For me, it begins in 1981. Youre ruining games, you know. My Dungeons & Dragons DM said this to me when I started working at Sir-tech Software on the Wizardry series of games. Games arent meant to be played like that, not this game. He had heard about Wizardry, how I could create 6 characters and take them on an Apple II adventure, without interacting with any other human beings. It wasnt social like D&D was; it wasnt even particularly intellectually challenging. The entire game had maybe three puzzles in it, and an absolutely endless series of button mashes Fight, Fight, Fight, Parry, Parry, Parry. It would have been a clickfest, but we didnt have mice on our machines back then.

I remember people writing letter after letter after letter when they found the Lesser Demons and Greater Demons that haunted the lower levels of the maze. They called us evil and said our games promoted Satanism. They didnt, and we didnt, but it was a reflection of the time we were in. It was a challenging time. We stood together, you and me, because we loved games. I remember when graphics started to replace text, and we worried that the games deeper meaning would be lost, and that soon, games would be nothing more than meaningless images incapable of transmitting any deep type of play, never mind the feared complete loss of story. I remember lamenting the loss of the text parser and absolutely railing against keyword conversations because, to me, they dumbed down the whole game to the level of toast. I remember when cutscenes first appeared in

I resist this rant. I resist its leading title, and I resist the will

52

games and we committed the cardinal sin, taking the game out of the hands of the player, because we wanted to show something cool and wow them, even if they just sat there waiting for it to pass. I remember these things, you remember these things, because we loved games. I remember when we really started having fun and players were slapping each other silly in arcades and at home in Mortal Kombat. It seems so quaint now, the ripping out of your opponents heart. Thanks to a bunch of concerned legislators, Mortal Kombat and Night Trap were dragged to the floor of Congress in 1993, and that same year in front of the same Congress, Sega and Nintendo fought each other like two

lators, sex simulators, rape simulators, insensitive and horrible.

Brenda Brathwaite
foolish characters in front of the world. Then DOOM was released and blamed for Columbine and every police officer stopped asking, Did he listen to Ozzy Osbourne, and instead wondered, Did he play GTA [Grand Theft Auto]?. We stood together, most of us, because we knew that games were games, and that games didnt shoot people. Real guns and real bullets did. Weve been called murder simulators, sex simulators, rape simulators, insensitive and horrible. In this very state, legislators have tried to class games with drugs as harmful substances in order to prohibit their sale. I remember these things, you remember these things, because we loved games. I remember when a cut feature was found and hacked, and the term Hot Coffee no longer referred to a steaming hot beverage but a steaming pile of shit as the game industry was once again threatened, re-rated, and subjected to over 100 new pieces of legislation in response. Some game developers made really bad games about sex and explored its frontiers. And I remember Elder Scrolls getting re-rated, because they revealed that underneath a womans bra, God forbid, there are nipples, even if you cant actually ever see them through normal gameplay. More recently, Fox News called Mass Effect a virtual sex simulator. We stood together, you and me, because we love games. When the powers that be asked us to work a little bit more, then a lot more and then seven days a week, we supported one another. When seven days a

Weve been called murder simu-

week turned to months and sometimes months turned to years, we stood behind a lone courageous voice, EA Spouse, and forwarded her call to everyone we knew. When they came for our products, our creativity, for our companies, for our hours, and for our families, we did everything we could in public and behind the scenes to fight against the people in suits and for our games. We stood together, you and me, because we love games. I remember when on the floor of this very conference, we fought against allowing console game developers admission and vigorously debated letting our beloved CGDC become merely the GDC. I remember when I first heard games called addictive. Id returned from a morning spent volunteering at an alcohol detox center. I wondered what their definition of addictive was. I remember the horrible month of September 2001 when flight simulators were blamed for the horror that

was 9/11. Racism, hate crimes, violence against women, children, and animals: all of these have been our burdens to bear. We stood together, you and me, because we love games. And then we moved to Facebook. I know the things that are upsetting to you, and I can assure you they are also upsetting to me. I have seen the strip miners and their entry into games. I have seen them exploit technology and new platforms not for the purpose of crafting beautiful creative works but rather taking the audience for all they can get. They are not one of us or from us, but rather from another space, and they do not understand this contract that weve had with our players since 1978, because we are our players. These people do not care about gameplay. They do not care about games. They do not care about players. They do not care about fun. And you know what? I dislike them just as

much as you. I have witnessed decisions made not for fun but for fortune. I have seen games gutted, and players churned and burned. I have seen things I never want to see again. And these game developers here on the stage? We are not like them, and we do not come from that world. Like you, we want good gameplay, we want compelling experiences, we want casual, and we want hardcore. We want to make a great game for the 43-year-old Facebook Mom, because damn itshe deserves a great game, too. We are not the ones making what some of you call evil games but rather the first fucking wave, the Marines storming the beach to take our medium, our culture, and our potential back. And as you look upon these games and curse them, know that we look upon the very same horizon and see a great space of possibility. I hope you will someday be the occupying force.

54

WE STAND TOGETHER, YOU AND ME, BECAUSE WE LOVE GAMES. THANK YOU.
Brenda Brathwaite