Video Games: The Movie Page #10

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something related to the story,

we kind of depend upon this trust

that there will be inspiration,

that there will be revelation.

Then you gotta get in

and start prototyping stuff,

so you build a bunch of prototypes

and you start trying to understand,

hey, are the ideas we had

really fun

once you put them into

an interactive environment?

You know, I think

at the alpha stage,

hopefully we'll see the fun.

It's pins and needles time

because it's that awkward

teenage years

that, you know, you've got...

could be an awesome experience,

it could really come together nicely,

everyone's really enthusiastic

because there's something there to play

from beginning to end, but, you know,

there are some weird

elements to it,

and, you know, you just had

a bunch of people come through

and point out all your,

you know, awkwardness,

your buck teeth and your, you know,

crazy-lookin' eyebrow

and all that stuff,

and you're sort of hoping that,

okay, I see that, I understand it,

now I need to kind of go back

and fix those things

a little bit,

make myself a little prettier,

get back out on the street,

and show myself off again.

You start layering on

all the really rich assets,

things like a great story,

the high fidelity art,

the fully detailed characters,

and once you start marrying the

super high production quality

with those original bare bones

prototypes of your design ideas,

you can start really bringing

the product together.

And then the work to go

from alpha to beta

is generally speaking

a laundry list of things

that we have to check off

and make sure are working properly.

We don't touch those as much

at alpha,

but they certainly are

on our minds at that point

as we start to kind of

polish up the game,

make those adjustments

to the gameplay,

really try to hone down

on what's working well

and maybe give it some more

resources and time to develop

and sort of put aside those things

that aren't working as well.

One of the big revolutions

we had in the 1990s

was we started bringing in

people to play our games

and watched them play. That's it.

But it transformed the way

that we make games.

I mean, up until that point,

we'd pretty much been

making the games for ourselves,

and so if we thought it was fun,

we were done.

You sort of had to make a game

and then do, you know,

kind of one of these.

Did it feel right?

You know, you'd have

your QA department,

but, you know,

they were paid employees,

so you never know if you're

getting the best feedback.

But now we have this beta testing

and ability to talk with the fans,

and if you're utilizing that

correctly,

it's really powerful.

So you hand this, what you think

is the gold master

off to the first party,

in the console world, anyway.

The PC side's definitely still

more of a wild west,

but there's a lot of backlash

certainly

if you can't deliver quality

or you have lots of bugs

in a PC product.

So you hand it off to Microsoft,

Sony, Nintendo,

and you wait and you wait

and you wait.

And usually it's, you know,

a ten-day waiting game,

and, you know, it's always

the most nerve-racking time

is that, okay, is this gonna

make it through?

And so, you know, we get that

call maybe or email, you know,

maybe ten days later or so,

and you know, it's,

"Hey, looks good."

Celebration ensues.

Or, "You've got

these critical issues

and these minor issues,

and you need to fix,

you know, the critical issues

and as many minor issues

as you can and resubmit."

And, yeah,

and then it hits the streets.

People either love it or hate it,

most of the time both.

You get... you know,

you get both ends

no matter how good your game is.

And you sort of have to...

you roll with the punches,

you let people say their piece.

I look out today, things

have changed beyond belief.

Titles we saw, 1,000 man years

of programming art work

and design work went into them.

It's astonishing.

It's making a movie

times a thousand.

It is daunting.

I don't know why I do it.

The evolution of great

storytelling in video games

couldn't have come

at a better time.

It seems as if the technology

rose to the occasion

at precisely the right moment.

From the turn of the century

to now,

games have never looked better,

felt better or played better.

Enter the next-next generation.

I'm feeling so good,

so incredible

Some sort of chemical

is spreading thick

around my brain

I've got the sun and

I won't let it go

It burns a fire in my veins

Let's get out tonight

You've got the fire,

I've got the fight

Whoa

In my young blood

Let's light up the dark

You've got the fuel,

I've got the spark

Whoa

In my young blood

Our RPMs are in the red

Driving closer to the edge

Up on Flagstaff Road

I still remember what you said

"Are you living?"

"Are you dead?"

You better let me know

Put on display

just like a cinema

Standing naked on the stage

And I'm unashamed

It's so easy to be cynical

Let's turn around

and start again

Let's get out tonight

You've got the fire,

I've got the fight

Whoa

In my young blood

Let's light up the dark

You've got the fuel,

I've got the spark

Whoa

In my young blood

Oh

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

In my young blood

It's funny because every few years,

the industry really kind

of reinvents itself,

whether that's we

figure out a new way

to give that experience to players,

or there's a new piece

of hardware out there,

or some new technology,

some new interface.

There's always that new challenge.

Right now is a really difficult

time for the industry.

We are in transition of consoles,

and we are seeing... a lot

of the economic score cards

have come in about what games

do and do not make money

and which are the best to be doing.

Honestly, it's so hard to predict.

I mean, no one would

predict that the platforms

that are most popular right now...

five years ago or ten years ago,

no one would have predicted

that that's what would be

the norm now.

Every new console generation

we get more and more horsepower,

and every console generation

there are people who say,

"Is this enough?"

"Okay, oh, this is really awesome."

And then five minutes later, "Eh,

guess it wasn't that awesome.

I need a new awesome thing,"

you know,

because we're just so spoiled

with it.

The medium has grown up

a lot from the early days.

I think part of it is that

we finally have the technology

to render characters

in a believable way.

As we look as a studio how

we're gonna evolve our new IP,

and moving into this next phase,

the next generation of consoles,

we're having to think

outside the box.

We're having to look at how we set

the foundation of a structure

for the next ten years.

I think at this point, we're in

a pretty interesting crossroads

in the history of games.

Publishers, especially in companies,

are fairly risk averse right now

because everybody foresees a big change

happening and nobody knows what it is.

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