Check it out:
http://clutch.mtv.com/2010/12/06/epic-mickeys-warren-spector-responds-to-the-internets/
'Epic Mickey' Creator Responds To The Angry Internets
Posted 12/6/10 4:31 pm ET by Quibian Salazar-Moreno in Games
Warren Spector, the legendary game developer behind classic games like "Deus Ex" and "System Shock," and his team at Junction Point Studios are the masterminds behind "Epic Mickey," the first Disney game to get both grown men and their toddlers psyched. The game's a bit darker than most Disney games and that's something people are happy about. There's something people aren't so happy about though: a pesky in-game camera issue that's driving some folks, including Spector, absolutely crazy.
We spoke to the man himself to get his take on the issue. Check it out below.
"There are a couple of responses to the camera question. First, there has never been a game that I couldn't break if you give it to me for 30 seconds. I mean, I will break a camera in any game ever made. And if I learned one thing on this project, it's an immense amount of respect for people who have been making third person action and platforming games. Third person camera is way harder than I even imagined it could be. It is the hardest problem in video game development. Everybody gets it wrong. It's just a question of how close to right do you get it.
"Second, cameras are different in different game styles. So in a platform game you want the camera up higher in a steeper angle because the important thing for the platform player is to be able to see the next jump clearly. In an action adventure game, like 'Zelda' for example, you want the camera down lower so you have more tactical awareness because there are enemies out there. There are traversal problems that require a tactical awareness that a high camera does not provide. So platformers and action adventure games have different camera requirements.
"But here's the deal, what I try to be completely clear about is that this is not a platforming game. This is a game that takes platforming elements and adventure game elements and role-playing elements and merges them. So we couldn't tune the camera perfectly for platforming or for action adventure. It’s a very different camera style. What we did is try to find the best compromise in the moment and give the player as much manual control as we could. So we took the hardest problem in third-person gaming and made it harder by trying to accommodate two different playing styles.
"The bottom line is that we did the best we could given that we were not trying to make a platform game or an action adventure game, but a game where you get to decide what the game felt like moment to moment.
"And I will go to my grave, imperfect as it is, proud as hell of my camera team. If reviewers want to give us a hard time about it because they're misunderstanding the game we made, it's not for me to tell them that they're wrong, absolutely not. But I wish people would get it out of their head that we made a 'Mario' competitor, because we didn't."
Q: How did the idea for this story come about?
A: The basic idea came from Disney itself. They actually approached me but they also had the idea for the world of Wasteland which is a world of forgotten and rejected Disney created efforts. They even had the idea of the phantom blot kidnapping and bringing Mickey to the Wasteland. That foundation was such a compelling story. It's funny though, all these Disney execs were saying "You don't have to use any of this, make the game you want to make!" But Disney is full of creative people and those are genius ideas! I'm not shy about crediting people when they have great ideas and using them as a foundation for something bigger and grander perhaps, but that core idea came from them. The thematic stuff t like the older brother resenting the younger brother for stealing the fame and fortune that should have been his and asking the question of how important family and friends are along with the game mechanics came from Junction Point. It's a process of brainstorming and seeing what fits and what doesn't in a world of forgotten and rejected Disney creative efforts.
Q: So did you have quite a bit of access to Disney's vaults?
Yeah, the amazing thing is how open Disney was about everything. There was nothing, literally nothing, where we were told that something couldn't be included in the game or couldn't go into an archive and pull those materials. We had full access to anything we needed or wanted. It was fantastic.
Q: Did you ever run into REAL rejected Disney creatives in your research for the game?
Oh, all the time! On the sort of small scale, one of the most intriguing things that didn't actually make the game -- there were lots and lots of rejected concepts for Tinkerbell. She's obviously an incredible character but there were dozens and dozens of other sketches. Some of them were really sexy Nymphs, some of them were Goth chicks that would have looked great in a Goth club in 2010. There was always amazing stuff with all these Tinkerbells floating around. Who knows, maybe we'll do something with that someday. But yeah, that really surprised me. In terms of a larger scale, the gremlins were the real surprise to me. I knew about the gremlins with Disney and Roald Dahl, the writer behind 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.' They collaborated on a film about gremlins during World War II and that film was never made. But in the archives I found the story boards from that film that never got made. So that was pretty magical. Now the gremlins are a big part of the game and they're straight out of the Disney archives.
Q: Were there any of your ideas for the game that didn't get Disney approval?
Well, there were plenty of things that you don't do with Mickey. I knew that was going to be the case. When you're dealing with one of the most recognizable icons on the planet you're not going to be able to just do whatever you want. Early on I sort of realized that I had to engage Disney in a negotiation or a dialogue at least. So early on there were a lot of times when I tested the boundaries. But the way you define a line is by crossing it and if you don't ever cross the line, you never know where the line really is, so there were plenty of things that got "rejected." But it was by design. It was part of a process I knew we would have to go through to determine what were the boundaries. But we pushed pretty hard and Disney was way more open than we expected them to be. I wouldn't say there"s anything like, "Aww man, they didn't let me do this!" There's none of that at all.
Q: The game is built exclusively for Nintendo Wii. Is there a possibility the game will come to Xbox 360 or PS3?
Well, now with Kinect and Move, there's no reason why we couldn't do it but that's a decision Disney makes. If they tell me to do it, there's nothing that would stop us from doing it.
Q: We read that you were thinking of "Epic Mickey" as a trilogy. Is there any truth to that?
A: Well, that's a little misleading. I know a lot of people are saying that but before I start on any project there are a bunch of questions I ask myself about every project. It's literally a check list. It's a form I fill out for every game. One of the things in that form is, is this a strong enough idea to support an ongoing series and become a franchise. So I always in my head plan out a trilogy, but that doesn't mean it always gets made or gets made the way I expect it to. I had a three-story arc for 'Deus Ex' and the second game we shipped had nothing to do with what I thought we were going to do originally and we never made the third game. It's the same thing here. I have a plan in my head for what could happen and where we would go in a sequel and a third game and frankly even beyond that but that doesn't necessarily mean that's going to happen. That's a decision that, again, Disney has to want to support at this level. We'll see what happens. Of course a lot of it depends on how well this game does.
Q: This game appears to be getting the biggest response you've ever had for a game you worked on. You find that to be true?
A: I've never worked on a game that's polarized people like this. Literally, we've got a half dozen perfect scores and I've also gotten the lowest scores I've ever gotten on any game I've ever worked on. In a weird sort of way, I think that's kind of cool. The fact that you're making something that people feel that strongly about either way is way better to me in a weird sort of way, of course you want everybody to think you made the best game ever, but if we were trending at something like an 8 out of 10? I'd probably have to kill myself. It's kind of cool to polarize people in that way and have people feeling really passionate about it and talking a lot about it, I'm kind of jazzed about that.
http://clutch.mtv.com/2010/12/06/epic-mickeys-warren-spector-responds-to-the-internets/
'Epic Mickey' Creator Responds To The Angry Internets
Posted 12/6/10 4:31 pm ET by Quibian Salazar-Moreno in Games
Warren Spector, the legendary game developer behind classic games like "Deus Ex" and "System Shock," and his team at Junction Point Studios are the masterminds behind "Epic Mickey," the first Disney game to get both grown men and their toddlers psyched. The game's a bit darker than most Disney games and that's something people are happy about. There's something people aren't so happy about though: a pesky in-game camera issue that's driving some folks, including Spector, absolutely crazy.
We spoke to the man himself to get his take on the issue. Check it out below.
"There are a couple of responses to the camera question. First, there has never been a game that I couldn't break if you give it to me for 30 seconds. I mean, I will break a camera in any game ever made. And if I learned one thing on this project, it's an immense amount of respect for people who have been making third person action and platforming games. Third person camera is way harder than I even imagined it could be. It is the hardest problem in video game development. Everybody gets it wrong. It's just a question of how close to right do you get it."Second, cameras are different in different game styles. So in a platform game you want the camera up higher in a steeper angle because the important thing for the platform player is to be able to see the next jump clearly. In an action adventure game, like 'Zelda' for example, you want the camera down lower so you have more tactical awareness because there are enemies out there. There are traversal problems that require a tactical awareness that a high camera does not provide. So platformers and action adventure games have different camera requirements.
"But here's the deal, what I try to be completely clear about is that this is not a platforming game. This is a game that takes platforming elements and adventure game elements and role-playing elements and merges them. So we couldn't tune the camera perfectly for platforming or for action adventure. It’s a very different camera style. What we did is try to find the best compromise in the moment and give the player as much manual control as we could. So we took the hardest problem in third-person gaming and made it harder by trying to accommodate two different playing styles.
"The bottom line is that we did the best we could given that we were not trying to make a platform game or an action adventure game, but a game where you get to decide what the game felt like moment to moment.
"And I will go to my grave, imperfect as it is, proud as hell of my camera team. If reviewers want to give us a hard time about it because they're misunderstanding the game we made, it's not for me to tell them that they're wrong, absolutely not. But I wish people would get it out of their head that we made a 'Mario' competitor, because we didn't."
Q: How did the idea for this story come about?
A: The basic idea came from Disney itself. They actually approached me but they also had the idea for the world of Wasteland which is a world of forgotten and rejected Disney created efforts. They even had the idea of the phantom blot kidnapping and bringing Mickey to the Wasteland. That foundation was such a compelling story. It's funny though, all these Disney execs were saying "You don't have to use any of this, make the game you want to make!" But Disney is full of creative people and those are genius ideas! I'm not shy about crediting people when they have great ideas and using them as a foundation for something bigger and grander perhaps, but that core idea came from them. The thematic stuff t like the older brother resenting the younger brother for stealing the fame and fortune that should have been his and asking the question of how important family and friends are along with the game mechanics came from Junction Point. It's a process of brainstorming and seeing what fits and what doesn't in a world of forgotten and rejected Disney creative efforts.
Q: So did you have quite a bit of access to Disney's vaults?
Yeah, the amazing thing is how open Disney was about everything. There was nothing, literally nothing, where we were told that something couldn't be included in the game or couldn't go into an archive and pull those materials. We had full access to anything we needed or wanted. It was fantastic.
Q: Did you ever run into REAL rejected Disney creatives in your research for the game?
Oh, all the time! On the sort of small scale, one of the most intriguing things that didn't actually make the game -- there were lots and lots of rejected concepts for Tinkerbell. She's obviously an incredible character but there were dozens and dozens of other sketches. Some of them were really sexy Nymphs, some of them were Goth chicks that would have looked great in a Goth club in 2010. There was always amazing stuff with all these Tinkerbells floating around. Who knows, maybe we'll do something with that someday. But yeah, that really surprised me. In terms of a larger scale, the gremlins were the real surprise to me. I knew about the gremlins with Disney and Roald Dahl, the writer behind 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.' They collaborated on a film about gremlins during World War II and that film was never made. But in the archives I found the story boards from that film that never got made. So that was pretty magical. Now the gremlins are a big part of the game and they're straight out of the Disney archives.
Q: Were there any of your ideas for the game that didn't get Disney approval?
Well, there were plenty of things that you don't do with Mickey. I knew that was going to be the case. When you're dealing with one of the most recognizable icons on the planet you're not going to be able to just do whatever you want. Early on I sort of realized that I had to engage Disney in a negotiation or a dialogue at least. So early on there were a lot of times when I tested the boundaries. But the way you define a line is by crossing it and if you don't ever cross the line, you never know where the line really is, so there were plenty of things that got "rejected." But it was by design. It was part of a process I knew we would have to go through to determine what were the boundaries. But we pushed pretty hard and Disney was way more open than we expected them to be. I wouldn't say there"s anything like, "Aww man, they didn't let me do this!" There's none of that at all.
Q: The game is built exclusively for Nintendo Wii. Is there a possibility the game will come to Xbox 360 or PS3?
Well, now with Kinect and Move, there's no reason why we couldn't do it but that's a decision Disney makes. If they tell me to do it, there's nothing that would stop us from doing it.
Q: We read that you were thinking of "Epic Mickey" as a trilogy. Is there any truth to that?
A: Well, that's a little misleading. I know a lot of people are saying that but before I start on any project there are a bunch of questions I ask myself about every project. It's literally a check list. It's a form I fill out for every game. One of the things in that form is, is this a strong enough idea to support an ongoing series and become a franchise. So I always in my head plan out a trilogy, but that doesn't mean it always gets made or gets made the way I expect it to. I had a three-story arc for 'Deus Ex' and the second game we shipped had nothing to do with what I thought we were going to do originally and we never made the third game. It's the same thing here. I have a plan in my head for what could happen and where we would go in a sequel and a third game and frankly even beyond that but that doesn't necessarily mean that's going to happen. That's a decision that, again, Disney has to want to support at this level. We'll see what happens. Of course a lot of it depends on how well this game does.
Q: This game appears to be getting the biggest response you've ever had for a game you worked on. You find that to be true?
A: I've never worked on a game that's polarized people like this. Literally, we've got a half dozen perfect scores and I've also gotten the lowest scores I've ever gotten on any game I've ever worked on. In a weird sort of way, I think that's kind of cool. The fact that you're making something that people feel that strongly about either way is way better to me in a weird sort of way, of course you want everybody to think you made the best game ever, but if we were trending at something like an 8 out of 10? I'd probably have to kill myself. It's kind of cool to polarize people in that way and have people feeling really passionate about it and talking a lot about it, I'm kind of jazzed about that.
