1 00:00:00,050 --> 00:00:02,470 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,470 --> 00:00:03,880 Commons license. 3 00:00:03,880 --> 00:00:06,920 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare continue to 4 00:00:06,920 --> 00:00:10,570 offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,570 --> 00:00:13,470 To make a donation or view additional materials from 6 00:00:13,470 --> 00:00:17,400 hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare at 7 00:00:17,400 --> 00:00:18,650 ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:20,932 --> 00:00:22,850 GUEST SPEAKER: OK, so I'm actually to keep the 9 00:00:22,850 --> 00:00:25,170 discussion today pretty short because the games that we've 10 00:00:25,170 --> 00:00:26,580 got lined up are pretty long. 11 00:00:30,572 --> 00:00:32,070 Two of them I know are really good. 12 00:00:32,070 --> 00:00:36,100 One of them was good last year so we'll see again this year. 13 00:00:36,100 --> 00:00:38,600 [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE]. 14 00:00:38,600 --> 00:00:41,790 So we'll see. 15 00:00:41,790 --> 00:00:43,978 Are there 4 games at least. 16 00:00:43,978 --> 00:00:44,936 AUDIENCE: I'm [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 17 00:00:44,936 --> 00:00:47,331 Mexico and Puerto Rico which will be five. 18 00:00:47,331 --> 00:00:48,290 I just haven't pulled it out yet. 19 00:00:48,290 --> 00:00:49,535 AUDIENCE: I call Thebes. 20 00:00:49,535 --> 00:00:50,720 GUEST SPEAKER: Cool. 21 00:00:50,720 --> 00:00:51,140 For people-- 22 00:00:51,140 --> 00:00:52,260 have you played Thebes before. 23 00:00:52,260 --> 00:00:52,600 AUDIENCE: No. 24 00:00:52,600 --> 00:00:52,930 GUEST SPEAKER: Good. 25 00:00:52,930 --> 00:00:53,300 OK. 26 00:00:53,300 --> 00:01:00,650 So for people who played San Juan last time, I think Puerto 27 00:01:00,650 --> 00:01:03,070 Rico's an interesting comparison. 28 00:01:03,070 --> 00:01:05,150 Because, San Juan actually, it's a sequel to Puerto Rico. 29 00:01:05,150 --> 00:01:06,050 So you kind of-- 30 00:01:06,050 --> 00:01:06,340 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 31 00:01:06,340 --> 00:01:08,150 AUDIENCE: Which one was San Juan? 32 00:01:08,150 --> 00:01:12,520 GUEST SPEAKER: That was the one where, how 33 00:01:12,520 --> 00:01:13,190 would describe it? 34 00:01:13,190 --> 00:01:14,735 AUDIENCE: Is it related to Race for the Galaxy as well? 35 00:01:14,735 --> 00:01:15,120 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 36 00:01:15,120 --> 00:01:16,470 AUDIENCE: You choose the action. 37 00:01:16,470 --> 00:01:17,830 GUEST SPEAKER: Ah, Race? 38 00:01:17,830 --> 00:01:22,820 So that takes us right into today's game. 39 00:01:22,820 --> 00:01:25,400 So Puerto Rico is kind of what was [INAUDIBLE]. 40 00:01:34,860 --> 00:01:40,190 Puerto Rico is the, I guess it was actually the first 41 00:01:40,190 --> 00:01:41,474 [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] 42 00:01:41,474 --> 00:01:43,260 we needed previous [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 43 00:01:43,260 --> 00:01:43,870 inspirations. 44 00:01:43,870 --> 00:01:48,610 And San Juan's kind of the card game of this, which is 45 00:01:48,610 --> 00:01:49,820 why we introduced it earlier. 46 00:01:49,820 --> 00:01:52,510 Because you guys were working on card games. 47 00:01:52,510 --> 00:02:00,140 Race to the Galaxy is more of a spiritual succession as 48 00:02:00,140 --> 00:02:02,850 described in the reading. 49 00:02:02,850 --> 00:02:04,410 But you could also think of it as a 50 00:02:04,410 --> 00:02:05,500 clone with a few upgrades. 51 00:02:05,500 --> 00:02:06,890 Because it wasn't the same people. 52 00:02:06,890 --> 00:02:08,298 It wasn't the same people who made-- 53 00:02:08,298 --> 00:02:10,210 AUDIENCE: It was [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 54 00:02:10,210 --> 00:02:13,032 AUDIENCE: To clarify, the guy who did San Juan and the guy 55 00:02:13,032 --> 00:02:16,880 who did Race to the Galaxy were kind of collaborating. 56 00:02:16,880 --> 00:02:18,410 So the games are really similar because they 57 00:02:18,410 --> 00:02:19,470 influenced each other. 58 00:02:19,470 --> 00:02:21,620 But they were not strictly the same project. 59 00:02:21,620 --> 00:02:24,350 GUEST SPEAKER: So you can think of it as multiple people 60 00:02:24,350 --> 00:02:27,685 from the same artist community turning out similar games at 61 00:02:27,685 --> 00:02:28,300 the same time. 62 00:02:28,300 --> 00:02:29,620 AUDIENCE: Nice. 63 00:02:29,620 --> 00:02:32,790 GUEST SPEAKER: But, yeah, informed by each other, and 64 00:02:32,790 --> 00:02:37,910 when Race came out it was very much seen as this is Puerto 65 00:02:37,910 --> 00:02:42,454 Rico with problems fixed, or the game has expanded my bad-- 66 00:02:42,454 --> 00:02:43,430 AUDIENCE: And problems added, too. 67 00:02:43,430 --> 00:02:46,040 GUEST SPEAKER: --and problems added, too, and, of course, 68 00:02:46,040 --> 00:02:48,020 completely different scenes. 69 00:02:48,020 --> 00:02:51,630 But at least in terms of game mechanics, that's a nice 70 00:02:51,630 --> 00:02:54,080 connection that you can actually see among the games 71 00:02:54,080 --> 00:02:55,661 that you played before and you're going 72 00:02:55,661 --> 00:02:57,670 to be playing today. 73 00:02:57,670 --> 00:03:03,059 Not every single game that we've got here has got that 74 00:03:03,059 --> 00:03:03,970 kind of heritage factor. 75 00:03:03,970 --> 00:03:06,390 These games aren't specifically picked, to me, to 76 00:03:06,390 --> 00:03:09,400 match up with previous games or sequels. 77 00:03:09,400 --> 00:03:11,640 The only reason why I'm talking about sequels because 78 00:03:11,640 --> 00:03:14,480 we had to talk about them sooner or later. 79 00:03:14,480 --> 00:03:17,200 Of course, Battlestar Galactica is really a 80 00:03:17,200 --> 00:03:18,440 [? rotation ?] 81 00:03:18,440 --> 00:03:20,280 of the TV series. 82 00:03:20,280 --> 00:03:24,720 And I wouldn't quite call this a sequel, in a sense, because 83 00:03:24,720 --> 00:03:26,704 simply, this is not based on a previous 84 00:03:26,704 --> 00:03:27,532 Battlestar Galactica game. 85 00:03:27,532 --> 00:03:30,561 I'm sure there were previous Battlestar Galactica games 86 00:03:30,561 --> 00:03:33,440 that were based on the old '70s TV series that have 87 00:03:33,440 --> 00:03:34,760 nothing to do with this one. 88 00:03:34,760 --> 00:03:37,120 This is more of the adaptation. 89 00:03:37,120 --> 00:03:40,120 And the reason why I'm using that upgrade is so that we can 90 00:03:40,120 --> 00:03:42,500 be very clear in our vocabulary. 91 00:03:42,500 --> 00:03:46,810 This is taking elements of something that's in a 92 00:03:46,810 --> 00:03:50,430 different medium, like the film or the TV series, and 93 00:03:50,430 --> 00:03:54,780 trying to figure out what in that TV series, in that world, 94 00:03:54,780 --> 00:03:58,940 that has been created, that fictional world, might yield 95 00:03:58,940 --> 00:04:00,120 interesting game playing. 96 00:04:00,120 --> 00:04:03,070 And this game is pretty much about figuring out who is the 97 00:04:03,070 --> 00:04:05,630 Cylon in and among all the players. 98 00:04:05,630 --> 00:04:08,104 Among all the players, there's going to be traitors. 99 00:04:08,104 --> 00:04:12,700 And you try to hide your activities, and you try to 100 00:04:12,700 --> 00:04:16,720 help people, help the human race survive, if you happen 101 00:04:16,720 --> 00:04:17,839 not to be a traitor. 102 00:04:17,839 --> 00:04:19,930 But some of the things that you end up doing in order to 103 00:04:19,930 --> 00:04:21,940 help the human race, not just surviving and not looking 104 00:04:21,940 --> 00:04:23,630 suspicious. 105 00:04:23,630 --> 00:04:25,940 If you played Mafia it kind of has a little bit of that feel. 106 00:04:25,940 --> 00:04:28,200 Only this is way more heavy [? weighing ?] 107 00:04:28,200 --> 00:04:30,680 of a game mechanics because they really, really wanted to 108 00:04:30,680 --> 00:04:33,840 make you think like the characters, that you have the 109 00:04:33,840 --> 00:04:34,904 same dilemmas that the characters 110 00:04:34,904 --> 00:04:38,780 in the TV show have. 111 00:04:38,780 --> 00:04:41,350 AUDIENCE: Does the Cylon know that he or she is a Cylon? 112 00:04:41,350 --> 00:04:44,660 GUEST SPEAKER: I believe that, I believe you 113 00:04:44,660 --> 00:04:46,080 can find out halfway. 114 00:04:46,080 --> 00:04:46,960 AUDIENCE: OK. 115 00:04:46,960 --> 00:04:51,260 GUEST SPEAKER: Yeah, if I recall the rules correctly. 116 00:04:51,260 --> 00:04:54,760 And then there are players who will know 117 00:04:54,760 --> 00:04:55,700 right from the beginning. 118 00:04:55,700 --> 00:04:57,930 So there may be more than one. 119 00:04:57,930 --> 00:05:00,994 In fact, there is really more than one. 120 00:05:00,994 --> 00:05:01,860 AUDIENCE: I'm psyched. 121 00:05:01,860 --> 00:05:06,540 GUEST SPEAKER: OK, so there were a bunch of different 122 00:05:06,540 --> 00:05:08,895 things that were listed in-- 123 00:05:08,895 --> 00:05:11,770 they were given as reasons why people want to do sequels. 124 00:05:11,770 --> 00:05:15,920 But for the most part the big one is just you're building 125 00:05:15,920 --> 00:05:16,900 off an established base. 126 00:05:16,900 --> 00:05:20,630 You're not having to rebuild everything from scratch. 127 00:05:20,630 --> 00:05:24,640 In many cases, a sequel doesn't actually cost less or 128 00:05:24,640 --> 00:05:27,540 take less time than making your original game. 129 00:05:27,540 --> 00:05:30,535 You just end up spending, hopefully, spending that 130 00:05:30,535 --> 00:05:33,780 development time a little bit more wisely. 131 00:05:33,780 --> 00:05:36,220 You avoid a lot of pitfalls because you're pretty much 132 00:05:36,220 --> 00:05:37,370 making a very similar game. 133 00:05:37,370 --> 00:05:42,630 The game industry's been one of those fields where, oddly 134 00:05:42,630 --> 00:05:46,790 enough, part two, the follow up, tends to be better then 135 00:05:46,790 --> 00:05:47,360 the original. 136 00:05:47,360 --> 00:05:51,730 As opposed to how many movie sequels are generally better 137 00:05:51,730 --> 00:05:52,370 than the original? 138 00:05:52,370 --> 00:05:53,900 Godfather, that's one of them. 139 00:05:53,900 --> 00:05:56,010 AUDIENCE: Back to the Future. 140 00:05:56,010 --> 00:05:57,560 AUDIENCE: It's rare. 141 00:05:57,560 --> 00:05:58,460 GUEST SPEAKER: It's really rare. 142 00:05:58,460 --> 00:06:01,180 I'm thinking the Clint Eastwood man with no name 143 00:06:01,180 --> 00:06:02,870 series, Godfather. 144 00:06:02,870 --> 00:06:03,824 Any other? 145 00:06:03,824 --> 00:06:04,780 AUDIENCE: Back to the Future. 146 00:06:04,780 --> 00:06:06,270 GUEST SPEAKER: Back to the Future? 147 00:06:06,270 --> 00:06:06,650 AUDIENCE: I don't know. 148 00:06:06,650 --> 00:06:07,280 I could go either way. 149 00:06:07,280 --> 00:06:08,280 AUDIENCE: I don't agree. 150 00:06:08,280 --> 00:06:08,980 GUEST SPEAKER: It could go either way. 151 00:06:08,980 --> 00:06:10,130 AUDIENCE: It's arguable. 152 00:06:10,130 --> 00:06:10,500 It's arguable. 153 00:06:10,500 --> 00:06:11,970 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 154 00:06:11,970 --> 00:06:14,200 AUDIENCE: You mean like Empire Strikes Back. 155 00:06:14,200 --> 00:06:15,571 GUEST SPEAKER: OK, The Empire Strikes Back. 156 00:06:15,571 --> 00:06:16,942 AUDIENCE: Spider-Man, perhaps? 157 00:06:16,942 --> 00:06:17,870 AUDIENCE: Spider-Man 2. 158 00:06:17,870 --> 00:06:18,316 AUDIENCE: I don't know. 159 00:06:18,316 --> 00:06:18,762 I felt like they were all bad. 160 00:06:18,762 --> 00:06:19,208 AUDIENCE: They were all bad. 161 00:06:19,208 --> 00:06:20,100 AUDIENCE: That's true. 162 00:06:20,100 --> 00:06:21,350 AUDIENCE: It was better. 163 00:06:23,350 --> 00:06:24,290 GUEST SPEAKER: But, yeah, as we-- 164 00:06:24,290 --> 00:06:25,486 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 165 00:06:25,486 --> 00:06:27,730 AUDIENCE: Dark Knight? 166 00:06:27,730 --> 00:06:31,694 GUEST SPEAKER: Yeah, I will, yeah, I'll give you that. 167 00:06:31,694 --> 00:06:33,810 But it's still kind of tough. 168 00:06:33,810 --> 00:06:36,440 Whereas how many good games sequels-- 169 00:06:36,440 --> 00:06:39,990 How many games can you think of where you played both the 170 00:06:39,990 --> 00:06:42,470 first, the original, and then the sequel to it? 171 00:06:42,470 --> 00:06:45,160 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 172 00:06:45,160 --> 00:06:47,550 AUDIENCE: Just the sequel. 173 00:06:47,550 --> 00:06:50,510 GUEST SPEAKER: OK, well, some of them are spaced apart so 174 00:06:50,510 --> 00:06:52,620 far that you actually only ended up playing-- 175 00:06:52,620 --> 00:06:53,370 AUDIENCE: Well, I mean like Half-Life. 176 00:06:53,370 --> 00:06:55,620 GUEST SPEAKER: Half-Life, Half-Life 2, for instance. 177 00:06:55,620 --> 00:06:56,738 AUDIENCE: Star Trek. 178 00:06:56,738 --> 00:06:58,172 GUEST SPEAKER: Star Trek, Star Trek 2. 179 00:06:58,172 --> 00:06:59,415 AUDIENCE: Age of Empires. 180 00:06:59,415 --> 00:07:02,132 GUEST SPEAKER: Age of Empires I, II, and then III. 181 00:07:02,132 --> 00:07:03,070 AUDIENCE: Shogun - Total War. 182 00:07:03,070 --> 00:07:03,720 GUEST SPEAKER: Shogun. 183 00:07:03,720 --> 00:07:05,150 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 184 00:07:05,150 --> 00:07:06,080 AUDIENCE: The Total War series. 185 00:07:06,080 --> 00:07:08,230 GUEST SPEAKER: Yeah, Total War is kind of an interesting 186 00:07:08,230 --> 00:07:11,920 thing because they don't pitch them as sequels. 187 00:07:11,920 --> 00:07:14,240 But they very much pitch them as a series. 188 00:07:14,240 --> 00:07:17,040 And the whole idea is that if you liked one game, you 189 00:07:17,040 --> 00:07:19,310 actually know a lot about what any of the other games 190 00:07:19,310 --> 00:07:20,280 in that series do. 191 00:07:20,280 --> 00:07:22,880 Sure, graphically they're upgrading. 192 00:07:22,880 --> 00:07:24,490 Game mechanics wise they're trying to 193 00:07:24,490 --> 00:07:25,870 portal a lot of things. 194 00:07:25,870 --> 00:07:26,900 Some of them are medieval. 195 00:07:26,900 --> 00:07:28,600 Some of them are Japanese. 196 00:07:28,600 --> 00:07:30,480 AUDIENCE: In the readings, they mentioned that Final 197 00:07:30,480 --> 00:07:32,120 Fantastic VII was the sequel to VI. 198 00:07:32,120 --> 00:07:33,670 Is that correct? 199 00:07:33,670 --> 00:07:36,752 Is that correct nomenclature? 200 00:07:36,752 --> 00:07:39,940 GUEST SPEAKER: And I will disagree with that, actually. 201 00:07:39,940 --> 00:07:42,795 Final Fantasy VII actually has a sequel, for instance. 202 00:07:42,795 --> 00:07:43,500 AUDIENCE: Right. 203 00:07:43,500 --> 00:07:44,650 GUEST SPEAKER: What was it, Crisis Core? 204 00:07:44,650 --> 00:07:45,720 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 205 00:07:45,720 --> 00:07:46,980 AUDIENCE: There's a couple, actually. 206 00:07:46,980 --> 00:07:47,400 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 207 00:07:47,400 --> 00:07:47,970 AUDIENCE: More than one-- 208 00:07:47,970 --> 00:07:49,300 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 209 00:07:49,300 --> 00:07:50,940 GUEST SPEAKER: First of all, there's the movie. 210 00:07:50,940 --> 00:07:52,266 That sequel was the movie. 211 00:07:52,266 --> 00:07:53,260 And then they did a bunch of things. 212 00:07:53,260 --> 00:07:54,030 AUDIENCE: Oh God, there were-- 213 00:07:54,030 --> 00:07:54,970 GUEST SPEAKER: Final Fantasy [UNINTELLIGIBLE]-- 214 00:07:54,970 --> 00:07:55,280 AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 215 00:07:55,280 --> 00:07:55,940 Final Fantasy-- 216 00:07:55,940 --> 00:07:57,950 GUEST SPEAKER: --an entry in a series but-- 217 00:07:57,950 --> 00:08:00,010 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 218 00:08:00,010 --> 00:08:02,366 GUEST SPEAKER: But I think when it comes to, this is what 219 00:08:02,366 --> 00:08:04,980 we're going to be pitching to a publisher-- 220 00:08:04,980 --> 00:08:08,318 I'm not sure that Square Enix needs to pitch Final Fantasy 221 00:08:08,318 --> 00:08:10,778 themselves-- 222 00:08:10,778 --> 00:08:13,840 Think of another game that has an [? all ?] series, if anyone 223 00:08:13,840 --> 00:08:14,660 can come up with one. 224 00:08:14,660 --> 00:08:16,030 AUDIENCE: Baldur's Gate. 225 00:08:16,030 --> 00:08:17,360 GUEST SPEAKER: Baldur's Gate might be actually a good one 226 00:08:17,360 --> 00:08:20,630 because different companies end up working on different 227 00:08:20,630 --> 00:08:21,990 types of revisions. 228 00:08:21,990 --> 00:08:25,080 Actually, most of these-- 229 00:08:25,080 --> 00:08:27,820 well, actually, Fallout and Baldur's Gate both come from 230 00:08:27,820 --> 00:08:32,010 Interplay, I believe, originally. 231 00:08:32,010 --> 00:08:33,900 AUDIENCE: They went out of business after Bloodlands. 232 00:08:33,900 --> 00:08:35,429 We were talking about this yesterday. 233 00:08:35,429 --> 00:08:37,289 GUEST SPEAKER: I suspect that was before that-- 234 00:08:37,289 --> 00:08:37,940 AUDIENCE: That was Vampires Bloodlines. 235 00:08:37,940 --> 00:08:38,764 AUDIENCE: Yes, this came up yesterday. 236 00:08:38,764 --> 00:08:39,590 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 237 00:08:39,590 --> 00:08:41,440 GUEST SPEAKER: But basically-- 238 00:08:41,440 --> 00:08:45,890 leaving aside what makes a company go out of business-- 239 00:08:45,890 --> 00:08:51,010 the issue of when you have a series and then you have 240 00:08:51,010 --> 00:08:53,550 different companies making different versions, Guitar 241 00:08:53,550 --> 00:08:54,490 Hero III, for instance-- 242 00:08:54,490 --> 00:08:55,565 AUDIENCE: Knights of Republic. 243 00:08:55,565 --> 00:08:56,580 GUEST SPEAKER: Knights of the Old-- 244 00:08:56,580 --> 00:08:58,160 AUDIENCE: The second one was [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE]. 245 00:08:58,160 --> 00:09:01,340 GUEST SPEAKER: So BioWare was the first one and Obsidian did 246 00:09:01,340 --> 00:09:03,200 the second one. 247 00:09:03,200 --> 00:09:06,310 Fallout was Bethesda, Obsidian, I believe. 248 00:09:06,310 --> 00:09:10,840 Obsidian's really built a whole business model around 249 00:09:10,840 --> 00:09:13,100 making part two of something. 250 00:09:13,100 --> 00:09:14,510 AUDIENCE: Or expansion packs and stuff. 251 00:09:14,510 --> 00:09:15,435 GUEST SPEAKER: Expansion packs, no. 252 00:09:15,435 --> 00:09:19,590 You have closely related to that. 253 00:09:19,590 --> 00:09:24,300 And in those cases, sometimes, like in the case of BioWare, 254 00:09:24,300 --> 00:09:27,020 Obsidian connections, they have a good relationship, 255 00:09:27,020 --> 00:09:29,400 they've all written a lot of technology, and they are 256 00:09:29,400 --> 00:09:33,250 getting an advantage of we've kind of ironed out the kinks, 257 00:09:33,250 --> 00:09:35,330 we're just sort of continuing the story, especially the 258 00:09:35,330 --> 00:09:36,150 story based game. 259 00:09:36,150 --> 00:09:38,960 Knights of the Old Republic, clearly you've got to fit it 260 00:09:38,960 --> 00:09:41,140 within the Star Wars story. 261 00:09:41,140 --> 00:09:44,690 And they had the interest to basically keep the tale of 262 00:09:44,690 --> 00:09:48,470 these characters going, even more so for-- 263 00:09:48,470 --> 00:09:51,210 well, Mass Effect was by Bioware, but 264 00:09:51,210 --> 00:09:53,150 that sort of thing. 265 00:09:53,150 --> 00:10:00,630 But then you have the other angle where you just want to 266 00:10:00,630 --> 00:10:03,070 get the same success but you want to tell a different 267 00:10:03,070 --> 00:10:06,465 story, or in the case of Guitar Hero III have a 268 00:10:06,465 --> 00:10:09,650 completely different set of music. 269 00:10:09,650 --> 00:10:13,535 And in Final Fantasy VII, you had certain game mechanics and 270 00:10:13,535 --> 00:10:15,720 certain things that carry on from game to game. 271 00:10:15,720 --> 00:10:17,520 And definitely you want to carry the fans 272 00:10:17,520 --> 00:10:18,490 from game to game. 273 00:10:18,490 --> 00:10:21,330 But part of the appeal of the Final Fantasy series is that 274 00:10:21,330 --> 00:10:24,260 every single one is going to be a different story, not 275 00:10:24,260 --> 00:10:26,118 dramatically different but it's going to be a different 276 00:10:26,118 --> 00:10:27,980 story with different characters 277 00:10:27,980 --> 00:10:29,620 and a different world. 278 00:10:29,620 --> 00:10:33,800 So but this is pitched very similarly when you go to a 279 00:10:33,800 --> 00:10:36,120 game company and your whole idea is how do we get the fans 280 00:10:36,120 --> 00:10:39,355 to buy even more, or even more fans, to buy version two. 281 00:10:42,753 --> 00:10:45,840 There are two edges to that sword, though, because what 282 00:10:45,840 --> 00:10:48,555 typically happens in a lot of sequel development is, they 283 00:10:48,555 --> 00:10:51,970 are trying so hard to please the original fans often by 284 00:10:51,970 --> 00:10:54,880 adding complexity, by adding things that build on things 285 00:10:54,880 --> 00:10:57,980 that players of the first game already know, that you 286 00:10:57,980 --> 00:11:00,290 actually start alienating new players. 287 00:11:00,290 --> 00:11:03,510 The game becomes just so complex or just complex enough 288 00:11:03,510 --> 00:11:06,684 that people start getting turned off. 289 00:11:06,684 --> 00:11:11,780 A couple of weeks ago over here we played Guitar Freaks 290 00:11:11,780 --> 00:11:13,650 on Friday Games for Gambit. 291 00:11:13,650 --> 00:11:16,680 And the first version is actually extremely accessible. 292 00:11:16,680 --> 00:11:18,730 Once again, from the second version all the way up to, I 293 00:11:18,730 --> 00:11:21,600 think, the version 4 that we were playing, it is almost 294 00:11:21,600 --> 00:11:25,150 impossible for a new player to jump in because they've got 295 00:11:25,150 --> 00:11:27,505 one beginning friendly song and everything else is based 296 00:11:27,505 --> 00:11:28,920 for fans of the game. 297 00:11:28,920 --> 00:11:33,490 So you imagine a Guitar Hero game that's built entirely for 298 00:11:33,490 --> 00:11:36,430 people who've already mastered expert on the previous game. 299 00:11:36,430 --> 00:11:38,830 That's kind of what happened with Guitar Freaks. 300 00:11:38,830 --> 00:11:43,100 And in many cases, that might be enough if the game was 301 00:11:43,100 --> 00:11:44,520 particularly successful the first time around, and you 302 00:11:44,520 --> 00:11:47,320 only get 80% of the fan base to buy the second version, 303 00:11:47,320 --> 00:11:48,760 that's still a lot of money. 304 00:11:48,760 --> 00:11:51,880 And it's a way lower risk compared to coming up with new 305 00:11:51,880 --> 00:11:53,130 IP from scratch. 306 00:11:56,880 --> 00:11:58,950 And a lot of companies, when they're creating IP, they're 307 00:11:58,950 --> 00:12:01,740 very much specifically thinking, right off the bat, 308 00:12:01,740 --> 00:12:03,430 what are the sequel opportunities. 309 00:12:03,430 --> 00:12:06,510 Even now, because you've got downloadable content, so it's 310 00:12:06,510 --> 00:12:10,110 even narrower than that, is what are downloadable content 311 00:12:10,110 --> 00:12:10,630 opportunities? 312 00:12:10,630 --> 00:12:13,790 How do we release extension packs really, really quickly? 313 00:12:13,790 --> 00:12:16,940 And how do we create stories, worlds, technology that's just 314 00:12:16,940 --> 00:12:20,040 going to be able to anticipate all that. 315 00:12:20,040 --> 00:12:22,830 There's a game up there now on Xbox Live Arcade called Monday 316 00:12:22,830 --> 00:12:25,950 Night Combat. 317 00:12:25,950 --> 00:12:29,810 And they did some of the old clever hacks to basically 318 00:12:29,810 --> 00:12:33,980 allow them to update the game on a week to week basis. 319 00:12:33,980 --> 00:12:37,300 Whereas typically that kind of a certification that's 320 00:12:37,300 --> 00:12:39,630 required from Microsoft is really expensive. 321 00:12:39,630 --> 00:12:42,880 Every time you want to release a new version, you have to put 322 00:12:42,880 --> 00:12:45,780 it through an entire rigorous QA testing schedule, again. 323 00:12:45,780 --> 00:12:48,360 But they came up with some technology that let them make 324 00:12:48,360 --> 00:12:51,190 at least game tuning changes on the fly without having to 325 00:12:51,190 --> 00:12:54,410 go through the Microsoft testing series. 326 00:12:54,410 --> 00:12:57,170 So it's not technically releasing the sequel but they 327 00:12:57,170 --> 00:12:58,730 were very much thinking about how do we keep 328 00:12:58,730 --> 00:13:01,290 updating this game. 329 00:13:01,290 --> 00:13:05,550 I wouldn't be surprised if Steam started off as that. 330 00:13:05,550 --> 00:13:08,970 There's a battle net kind of started off as just an easy 331 00:13:08,970 --> 00:13:11,725 way for them to get up patches and to keep tuning this game, 332 00:13:11,725 --> 00:13:14,505 and eventually someone involved decides, hey, we can 333 00:13:14,505 --> 00:13:15,780 sell games this way. 334 00:13:15,780 --> 00:13:18,314 And launch was kind of bumpy. 335 00:13:18,314 --> 00:13:20,090 But it's fine now. 336 00:13:23,710 --> 00:13:27,960 There is one thing which the book didn't mention which is 337 00:13:27,960 --> 00:13:31,150 the reboot, the sort of franchise reboot. 338 00:13:31,150 --> 00:13:36,400 This can sometimes happen when you have a publisher who's got 339 00:13:36,400 --> 00:13:40,060 control of an RP that kind of floundered halfway. 340 00:13:40,060 --> 00:13:44,070 Maybe there was a bad execution on creation and 341 00:13:44,070 --> 00:13:45,510 possible circumstance. 342 00:13:45,510 --> 00:13:47,750 Or they just play out the formula to death. 343 00:13:47,750 --> 00:13:51,000 And then they want to try to get a new batch of fans, a few 344 00:13:51,000 --> 00:13:53,630 people who liked the original one. 345 00:13:53,630 --> 00:13:58,840 And I was talking with the Tomb Raider game where they're 346 00:13:58,840 --> 00:14:00,180 just trying to-- 347 00:14:00,180 --> 00:14:02,970 they've rebooted the Tomb Raider franchise several 348 00:14:02,970 --> 00:14:07,120 times, at this point, each time trying to say, OK, you've 349 00:14:07,120 --> 00:14:09,290 probably heard from Tomb Raider from the huge amount of 350 00:14:09,290 --> 00:14:11,140 advertising that we've done when you may not have actually 351 00:14:11,140 --> 00:14:12,830 liked the previous versions of the games. 352 00:14:12,830 --> 00:14:14,410 And we're doing to reboot this franchise by making a 353 00:14:14,410 --> 00:14:17,800 different game in that same world. 354 00:14:17,800 --> 00:14:21,010 In Tomb Raider we'll use characters and we'll use the 355 00:14:21,010 --> 00:14:24,690 fiction, but we'll change the game play significantly. 356 00:14:24,690 --> 00:14:27,180 Because we're not going after the old fans anymore. 357 00:14:27,180 --> 00:14:30,320 We're going after a new batch. 358 00:14:30,320 --> 00:14:36,080 It's probably about the same technical challenge as 359 00:14:36,080 --> 00:14:38,020 updating, as trying to make a sequel for a 360 00:14:38,020 --> 00:14:40,800 completely new platform. 361 00:14:40,800 --> 00:14:42,310 Because they're basically having to write everything 362 00:14:42,310 --> 00:14:43,900 from scratch. 363 00:14:43,900 --> 00:14:46,360 But the good news, of course, is that all that previous 364 00:14:46,360 --> 00:14:52,254 advertising that you did a decade ago still works. 365 00:14:52,254 --> 00:14:53,760 Let me think of-- 366 00:14:53,760 --> 00:14:56,840 Can anyone think of a good example of a good reboot? 367 00:14:56,840 --> 00:15:00,420 AUDIENCE: Is Mario 64 a reboot? 368 00:15:00,420 --> 00:15:00,895 AUDIENCE: No. 369 00:15:00,895 --> 00:15:04,300 GUEST SPEAKER: I think it was seen to a lot of people that 370 00:15:04,300 --> 00:15:09,440 it was because it wasn't clearly a sequel to any of the 371 00:15:09,440 --> 00:15:10,890 previous Mario games. 372 00:15:10,890 --> 00:15:12,820 And it was kind of Nintendo kind of 373 00:15:12,820 --> 00:15:13,370 saying, hey, it's not-- 374 00:15:13,370 --> 00:15:14,540 AUDIENCE: It's not really a clone of anything. 375 00:15:14,540 --> 00:15:15,555 GUEST SPEAKER: It's not really-- 376 00:15:15,555 --> 00:15:19,460 It invented a lot of things for the first time, in fact. 377 00:15:19,460 --> 00:15:23,740 I would say that Mario 64 and, of course, the way how they 378 00:15:23,740 --> 00:15:27,710 branded it, they didn't brand it Super Mario World, what 5 379 00:15:27,710 --> 00:15:31,220 or Super Mario 4 or anything, they called it Mario 64 to 380 00:15:31,220 --> 00:15:32,915 sort of distinguish it from some of the-- 381 00:15:32,915 --> 00:15:35,382 AUDIENCE: I would almost call IT an upgrade more than a 382 00:15:35,382 --> 00:15:36,120 reboot, though. 383 00:15:36,120 --> 00:15:40,600 Because it was mostly just a move from 2D to 3D. 384 00:15:40,600 --> 00:15:42,070 AUDIENCE: It was more than that, I think. 385 00:15:42,070 --> 00:15:43,465 GUEST SPEAKER: It's a good challenge because to the 386 00:15:43,465 --> 00:15:47,260 player it may seem like it's not that but for a technical 387 00:15:47,260 --> 00:15:50,220 point of view they had to continue to reinvent how Mario 388 00:15:50,220 --> 00:15:55,110 moves, the way how Mario jumps frankly, the way how the 389 00:15:55,110 --> 00:15:58,520 camera moves, it never used to be a huge problem in the 2D 390 00:15:58,520 --> 00:16:02,860 games, but was the primary thing that they've managed to 391 00:16:02,860 --> 00:16:09,070 figure out how to get working in 3D was the camera. 392 00:16:09,070 --> 00:16:11,780 I wouldn't be surprised if their marketing pitched it a 393 00:16:11,780 --> 00:16:13,480 little bit like a sequel. 394 00:16:13,480 --> 00:16:15,700 But it was also very, very clear of this is going to be a 395 00:16:15,700 --> 00:16:17,660 whole new generation, you've never played Mario on anything 396 00:16:17,660 --> 00:16:21,110 like this, so don't expect your previous Mario experience 397 00:16:21,110 --> 00:16:23,935 to carry over necessarily. 398 00:16:23,935 --> 00:16:26,290 AUDIENCE: I was going to say Metroid, as well. 399 00:16:26,290 --> 00:16:26,885 GUEST SPEAKER: Metroid Prime? 400 00:16:26,885 --> 00:16:27,510 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 401 00:16:27,510 --> 00:16:30,250 GUEST SPEAKER: Yeah, that's a really good example. 402 00:16:30,250 --> 00:16:33,360 In fact, Metroid Prime was an instance where they gave the 403 00:16:33,360 --> 00:16:35,630 franchise to a completely different developer. 404 00:16:35,630 --> 00:16:38,550 Previously, it's all internal Nintendo. 405 00:16:38,550 --> 00:16:42,530 And then Nintendo went to a western developer, Retro 406 00:16:42,530 --> 00:16:46,540 Studios over in Texas and basically had them make the 407 00:16:46,540 --> 00:16:49,150 first western version of Metroid. 408 00:16:49,150 --> 00:16:52,090 But they had a very heavy hand in controlling that. 409 00:16:52,090 --> 00:16:53,780 Whereas-- 410 00:16:53,780 --> 00:16:55,610 I'm not sure we're going to be playing this later-- 411 00:16:55,610 --> 00:16:59,520 Castlevania: Lords of Shadow which just came out, kind of 412 00:16:59,520 --> 00:17:01,550 went the other way around. 413 00:17:01,550 --> 00:17:04,650 Western developers, a Spanish developer, decided to make a 414 00:17:04,650 --> 00:17:06,780 Castlevania clone. 415 00:17:06,780 --> 00:17:07,839 They loved Castlevania. 416 00:17:07,839 --> 00:17:09,710 And they were going to make a game that was just like 417 00:17:09,710 --> 00:17:12,050 Castlevania but they don't call it Castlevania because 418 00:17:12,050 --> 00:17:13,510 they didn't have the rights for it. 419 00:17:13,510 --> 00:17:16,599 And they showed it off at E3 or something, and Konami 420 00:17:16,599 --> 00:17:18,710 basically said, why don't we just turn this into a 421 00:17:18,710 --> 00:17:23,999 Castlevania game, Hideo Kojima to [INAUDIBLE] 422 00:17:23,999 --> 00:17:26,260 making it work. 423 00:17:26,260 --> 00:17:27,253 AUDIENCE: It must have been their dream come true. 424 00:17:27,253 --> 00:17:28,255 GUEST SPEAKER: That was probably 425 00:17:28,255 --> 00:17:29,530 their dream come true. 426 00:17:29,530 --> 00:17:30,700 That was probably what they wanted. 427 00:17:30,700 --> 00:17:34,040 And you had the advantage of the all the Castlevania fans 428 00:17:34,040 --> 00:17:37,210 now saying OK, this is going to be in canon, if we liked 429 00:17:37,210 --> 00:17:38,810 Castlevania, we'll probably like this one, which is 430 00:17:38,810 --> 00:17:40,590 exactly what they were trying to get across. 431 00:17:40,590 --> 00:17:44,020 It's like imagine the people who made Torchlight being 432 00:17:44,020 --> 00:17:45,555 approached from Blizzard saying why don't we just turn 433 00:17:45,555 --> 00:17:47,350 this into Diablo 3. 434 00:17:47,350 --> 00:17:49,120 AUDIENCE:A bunch of people who made Torchlight were from 435 00:17:49,120 --> 00:17:50,560 Blizzard, right? 436 00:17:50,560 --> 00:17:51,340 GUEST SPEAKER: I wouldn't be surprised. 437 00:17:51,340 --> 00:17:52,160 AUDIENCE: Were they from the Diablo team? 438 00:17:52,160 --> 00:17:52,980 GUEST SPEAKER: I wouldn't be surprised. 439 00:17:52,980 --> 00:17:55,110 In the same sense that a lot of people who built GuildWars 440 00:17:55,110 --> 00:17:57,300 were from the World of Warcraft team. 441 00:17:57,300 --> 00:18:03,640 So that's less an issue of sequels and more an issue of 442 00:18:03,640 --> 00:18:04,910 that's just how the game industry works. 443 00:18:04,910 --> 00:18:06,925 People move from project to project and carry 444 00:18:06,925 --> 00:18:07,590 knowledge with them. 445 00:18:07,590 --> 00:18:09,850 AUDIENCE: Like Call of Duty was [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE]. 446 00:18:09,850 --> 00:18:11,906 GUEST SPEAKER: Yes, Call of Duty, yes and-- 447 00:18:11,906 --> 00:18:12,800 AUDIENCE: They got tired of it and were 448 00:18:12,800 --> 00:18:14,660 like we can do better. 449 00:18:14,660 --> 00:18:17,050 GUEST SPEAKER: That's an interesting discussion of 450 00:18:17,050 --> 00:18:20,700 instead of sequels you have companies making effectively 451 00:18:20,700 --> 00:18:23,480 clones competing against the original franchise. 452 00:18:23,480 --> 00:18:25,920 And in this product case they're trying-- 453 00:18:25,920 --> 00:18:31,235 there's people who left EA on 2015, I believe, and then they 454 00:18:31,235 --> 00:18:32,400 started Infinity Ward. 455 00:18:32,400 --> 00:18:34,010 And they made a game that basically 456 00:18:34,010 --> 00:18:35,080 competed with the original. 457 00:18:35,080 --> 00:18:39,190 AUDIENCE: The first Call of Duty was so ridiculously good, 458 00:18:39,190 --> 00:18:42,670 at least, it marked me when I played it the first time. 459 00:18:42,670 --> 00:18:45,040 GUEST SPEAKER: But it's very clearly trying to be Medal of 460 00:18:45,040 --> 00:18:46,150 Honor the next version. 461 00:18:46,150 --> 00:18:49,970 AUDIENCE: Yeah, clearly, yeah, no, of course, of course. 462 00:18:49,970 --> 00:18:53,380 GUEST SPEAKER: So that's an interesting situation where 463 00:18:53,380 --> 00:18:54,960 it's hard to be a spiritual successor when you're 464 00:18:54,960 --> 00:18:57,420 competing against the original product. 465 00:18:57,420 --> 00:18:58,960 But you can think of them-- 466 00:18:58,960 --> 00:19:00,040 AUDIENCE: BioWare did that with Dragon-- 467 00:19:00,040 --> 00:19:02,322 I mean not competing against [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] 468 00:19:02,322 --> 00:19:03,768 Dragon Age because they don't have the rights to 469 00:19:03,768 --> 00:19:05,470 [UNINTELLIGIBLE] game anymore. 470 00:19:05,470 --> 00:19:08,780 GUEST SPEAKER: Well, Dragon Age is more of a DND clone, I 471 00:19:08,780 --> 00:19:10,150 would say, which-- 472 00:19:10,150 --> 00:19:12,590 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 473 00:19:12,590 --> 00:19:16,382 AUDIENCE: Empire Earth reinvented itself with-- 474 00:19:16,382 --> 00:19:16,860 GUEST SPEAKER: Which one? 475 00:19:16,860 --> 00:19:17,370 AUDIENCE: --with Empire Earth-- 476 00:19:17,370 --> 00:19:17,897 GUEST SPEAKER: Empire Earth. 477 00:19:17,897 --> 00:19:19,120 AUDIENCE: --with zero success. 478 00:19:19,120 --> 00:19:21,220 It didn't do [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 479 00:19:21,220 --> 00:19:23,090 GUEST SPEAKER: I kind of lost track of that series. 480 00:19:23,090 --> 00:19:25,100 AUDIENCE: In the whole game, the first game was like, you 481 00:19:25,100 --> 00:19:27,120 can go through 15 ages. 482 00:19:27,120 --> 00:19:29,430 You can literally play a game against someone and go from 483 00:19:29,430 --> 00:19:32,940 prehistoric units to nukes in the same game with everything 484 00:19:32,940 --> 00:19:33,620 in between. 485 00:19:33,620 --> 00:19:35,916 And then they released the sequel which, I think, 486 00:19:35,916 --> 00:19:37,690 overseas and then it's like they [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 487 00:19:37,690 --> 00:19:39,510 themselves and go, we're going to simplify everything, 488 00:19:39,510 --> 00:19:41,819 there's just going to be four ages, kind of like in Ancient 489 00:19:41,819 --> 00:19:44,720 Empires, and we're not going to have this massive 490 00:19:44,720 --> 00:19:45,210 progression. 491 00:19:45,210 --> 00:19:46,525 And they tried to simplify everything. 492 00:19:46,525 --> 00:19:47,295 And it totally bombed. 493 00:19:47,295 --> 00:19:48,545 GUEST SPEAKER: I think that's a rebooting. 494 00:19:51,340 --> 00:19:55,020 But I think that's a reboot gone wrong. 495 00:19:55,020 --> 00:19:59,730 That's a, our original game is not selling well enough among 496 00:19:59,730 --> 00:20:03,620 new players, maybe, and it's not entirely satisfying our 497 00:20:03,620 --> 00:20:05,720 old fans, so we're going to take this franchise that we 498 00:20:05,720 --> 00:20:08,930 advertised really, really well, and we're going to make 499 00:20:08,930 --> 00:20:11,700 it completely, effectively a new game, maybe with the same 500 00:20:11,700 --> 00:20:14,540 theme but a new game that targeted at 501 00:20:14,540 --> 00:20:15,740 a new set of players. 502 00:20:15,740 --> 00:20:16,430 Sometimes it works. 503 00:20:16,430 --> 00:20:18,240 Sometimes it bombs. 504 00:20:18,240 --> 00:20:21,600 Might and Magic released a game called Clash of Heroes, 505 00:20:21,600 --> 00:20:25,590 Might and Magic Clash of Heroes for the Nintendo DS. 506 00:20:25,590 --> 00:20:26,960 Who's played any of the original 507 00:20:26,960 --> 00:20:27,745 Might and Magic games? 508 00:20:27,745 --> 00:20:31,622 AUDIENCE: Different from Heroes of Might and Magic? 509 00:20:31,622 --> 00:20:33,500 GUEST SPEAKER: Either of them, actually. 510 00:20:33,500 --> 00:20:35,370 So who's played Heroes of Might and Magic? 511 00:20:35,370 --> 00:20:36,944 Can you describe the game? 512 00:20:36,944 --> 00:20:38,186 What's it like? 513 00:20:38,186 --> 00:20:39,430 AUDIENCE: Want to go, [? Fred? ?] 514 00:20:39,430 --> 00:20:43,080 AUDIENCE: Well, it's like essentially just a turn based 515 00:20:43,080 --> 00:20:46,710 strategy game where you have cities and you have heroes. 516 00:20:46,710 --> 00:20:49,350 And these heroes lead armies. 517 00:20:49,350 --> 00:20:53,310 And you encounter other smaller armies and try to 518 00:20:53,310 --> 00:20:54,340 defeat them and stuff. 519 00:20:54,340 --> 00:20:56,430 And you have-- 520 00:20:56,430 --> 00:20:58,040 AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] city, you start with-- 521 00:20:58,040 --> 00:20:59,020 you have an economy. 522 00:20:59,020 --> 00:21:02,110 AUDIENCE: Yeah, you have an economy and you build things 523 00:21:02,110 --> 00:21:06,020 in your city that can then produce better units for your 524 00:21:06,020 --> 00:21:07,075 armies and stuff. 525 00:21:07,075 --> 00:21:09,350 You can take over other cities and-- 526 00:21:09,350 --> 00:21:11,150 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 527 00:21:11,150 --> 00:21:12,770 GUEST SPEAKER: Like Civilization, I would say. 528 00:21:12,770 --> 00:21:18,100 AUDIENCE: Yeah, it's like Civilization but if you took 529 00:21:18,100 --> 00:21:19,000 Civilization and removed 530 00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:20,990 everything that wasn't military. 531 00:21:20,990 --> 00:21:21,882 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 532 00:21:21,882 --> 00:21:23,980 AUDIENCE: And that was what played out and gave it its 533 00:21:23,980 --> 00:21:26,970 distinctive arena-- 534 00:21:26,970 --> 00:21:27,530 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 535 00:21:27,530 --> 00:21:27,960 AUDIENCE: --turn based-- 536 00:21:27,960 --> 00:21:29,470 AUDIENCE: You're trying to do stuff like battlefields where 537 00:21:29,470 --> 00:21:32,680 the turn based, you have your units on one side and the 538 00:21:32,680 --> 00:21:34,520 opponent's units on the other side. 539 00:21:34,520 --> 00:21:36,800 And you move units together. 540 00:21:36,800 --> 00:21:41,712 So if you have pikemen and bowmen, you have the clump of 541 00:21:41,712 --> 00:21:45,380 all bowmen who then move together as a unit. 542 00:21:45,380 --> 00:21:49,044 GUEST SPEAKER: So Clash of Heroes, a Nintendo DS game in 543 00:21:49,044 --> 00:21:52,410 the Might and Magic series, and what they did was, they 544 00:21:52,410 --> 00:21:53,690 made a match three game. 545 00:21:53,690 --> 00:21:55,580 They made a game where you-- 546 00:21:55,580 --> 00:21:56,650 it's like Bejeweled. 547 00:21:56,650 --> 00:22:00,550 You take three bowmen, put them in a row, and then they 548 00:22:00,550 --> 00:22:03,490 become a bunch of bowmen who are going to attack. 549 00:22:03,490 --> 00:22:06,605 So they get the same idea of let's take-- 550 00:22:06,605 --> 00:22:08,990 and because the Nintendo DS has two screens, so the 551 00:22:08,990 --> 00:22:12,160 enemy's armies are on one and yours are on the other. 552 00:22:12,160 --> 00:22:14,405 It's kind of like sending troops up and down. 553 00:22:14,405 --> 00:22:16,700 But the game play's dramatically different. 554 00:22:16,700 --> 00:22:20,080 It's effectively a franchise reboot. 555 00:22:20,080 --> 00:22:24,740 They want to get the same idea of leading massive armies 556 00:22:24,740 --> 00:22:25,560 against each other. 557 00:22:25,560 --> 00:22:28,122 I think they take some of the characters, at least some of 558 00:22:28,122 --> 00:22:30,277 the technologies that came with the original Heroes of 559 00:22:30,277 --> 00:22:32,120 Might and Magic. 560 00:22:32,120 --> 00:22:34,260 But that's as far as it got. 561 00:22:34,260 --> 00:22:36,090 Everything else they changed. 562 00:22:36,090 --> 00:22:38,730 Because they were going for a completely different audience, 563 00:22:38,730 --> 00:22:41,580 the assumption being Nintendo DS players liked match three 564 00:22:41,580 --> 00:22:46,474 games like Bejeweled, actually really good. 565 00:22:46,474 --> 00:22:48,784 I'd encourage it if you like match three games. 566 00:22:51,805 --> 00:22:57,520 I was going to put Sarah on the spot for having worked on 567 00:22:57,520 --> 00:23:01,380 Thief II, and Thief Gold, and Thief 2 Gold, 568 00:23:01,380 --> 00:23:04,596 and a number of releases. 569 00:23:04,596 --> 00:23:07,548 But maybe we can start telling us a little bit about your 570 00:23:07,548 --> 00:23:09,024 original involvement on Thief. 571 00:23:09,024 --> 00:23:09,516 SARAH: Sure. 572 00:23:09,516 --> 00:23:11,976 Do you want me to stand up to actually hear me? 573 00:23:11,976 --> 00:23:14,928 GUEST SPEAKER: I can bring the mike closer. 574 00:23:14,928 --> 00:23:19,848 SARAH: So Thief: The Dark Project, I came on as actually 575 00:23:19,848 --> 00:23:21,324 as team tester. 576 00:23:21,324 --> 00:23:24,276 Part way through it I became community manager, 577 00:23:24,276 --> 00:23:25,260 essentially. 578 00:23:25,260 --> 00:23:30,485 And then I actually stepped into a design role for about 579 00:23:30,485 --> 00:23:33,722 the second half of the project. 580 00:23:33,722 --> 00:23:37,374 And I continued to work as a designer and project manager 581 00:23:37,374 --> 00:23:40,053 on Thief II and Thief Gold. 582 00:23:40,053 --> 00:23:42,020 GUEST SPEAKER: What were you designing in Thief? 583 00:23:42,020 --> 00:23:44,332 SARAH: In Thief I, I was pretty specifically designing 584 00:23:44,332 --> 00:23:46,492 game play for a level that someone 585 00:23:46,492 --> 00:23:47,573 else had already built. 586 00:23:47,573 --> 00:23:50,360 Building levels took a lot longer than putting in game 587 00:23:50,360 --> 00:23:52,812 play, at least from my point of view. 588 00:23:52,812 --> 00:23:54,176 I believe the person who built it thought that building 589 00:23:54,176 --> 00:23:56,780 levels was a lot faster than laying game play. 590 00:23:56,780 --> 00:23:58,080 So it was a good combination. 591 00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:00,630 But it was built by an artist who didn't have the scripting 592 00:24:00,630 --> 00:24:04,226 experience or the testing visions to go through and make 593 00:24:04,226 --> 00:24:05,736 sure that all the [UNINTELLIGIBLE] for the game 594 00:24:05,736 --> 00:24:06,840 play experience is working. 595 00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:08,880 So I was basically handed a level and 596 00:24:08,880 --> 00:24:11,105 said, OK, make it fun. 597 00:24:11,105 --> 00:24:13,620 GUEST SPEAKER: Now Thief is a first person stealth game. 598 00:24:13,620 --> 00:24:16,312 Basically you're looking through the eyes of a thief 599 00:24:16,312 --> 00:24:18,850 who is not physically all that robust. 600 00:24:18,850 --> 00:24:20,806 But he can sneak. 601 00:24:20,806 --> 00:24:23,061 And he can shoot arrows, usually at 602 00:24:23,061 --> 00:24:26,790 your back, and hide. 603 00:24:26,790 --> 00:24:30,905 SARAH: And the AI is, unlike in most games where the AI is 604 00:24:30,905 --> 00:24:34,750 tuned sort of aha, we noticed you, we charge you, the AI is 605 00:24:34,750 --> 00:24:39,090 carefully tuned to both tell the player if the AI sort of 606 00:24:39,090 --> 00:24:42,530 notices you, if the AI thinks he's looking for you and is 607 00:24:42,530 --> 00:24:45,900 looking for, and if he's actually coming after you. 608 00:24:45,900 --> 00:24:48,574 So that a player who makes a noise while sneaking up on 609 00:24:48,574 --> 00:24:50,860 them will realize that, oh, he noticed that, I should go be 610 00:24:50,860 --> 00:24:52,820 more quiet. 611 00:24:52,820 --> 00:24:56,254 So the AI feedback and [UNINTELLIGIBLE] was actually 612 00:24:56,254 --> 00:24:58,170 really pretty important to playing experience. 613 00:24:58,170 --> 00:25:01,935 If you didn't give the player an avenue to approach a guard 614 00:25:01,935 --> 00:25:05,460 from behind or to sneak up on them in some way, you'll 615 00:25:05,460 --> 00:25:08,150 pretty much guarantee the player will get killed. 616 00:25:08,150 --> 00:25:12,300 Because the player could not, in fact, take one guard on one 617 00:25:12,300 --> 00:25:14,950 to one many times. 618 00:25:14,950 --> 00:25:17,170 You could probably kill one guard face to face, but then 619 00:25:17,170 --> 00:25:19,368 he'd be sufficiently wounded that the second fight would 620 00:25:19,368 --> 00:25:20,470 finish him off. 621 00:25:20,470 --> 00:25:24,033 So you had to be giving the player channels and ways to 622 00:25:24,033 --> 00:25:26,911 sneak up and places to hide and things like that if you 623 00:25:26,911 --> 00:25:27,964 wanted to have an interesting game and a challenging game. 624 00:25:27,964 --> 00:25:29,587 GUEST SPEAKER: And that's the game play we say you're 625 00:25:29,587 --> 00:25:29,770 talking about. 626 00:25:29,770 --> 00:25:31,276 SARAH: Those are the game plays we've been talking 627 00:25:31,276 --> 00:25:34,850 about, yeah, placing AIs determining their path, 628 00:25:34,850 --> 00:25:36,920 putting-- this actually particularly had a lot of 629 00:25:36,920 --> 00:25:38,180 traps in it-- 630 00:25:38,180 --> 00:25:42,470 so creating the traps and giving clues to the player in 631 00:25:42,470 --> 00:25:45,350 games so that they could, A, either notice the trap was 632 00:25:45,350 --> 00:25:49,600 there before getting hit by it and finding some other way to 633 00:25:49,600 --> 00:25:55,092 trigger it, or notice that it was there or notice it was 634 00:25:55,092 --> 00:25:57,690 there and then discover how to get out of it. 635 00:25:57,690 --> 00:26:00,423 GUEST SPEAKER: Thief is a 199-- 636 00:26:00,423 --> 00:26:03,900 SARAH: Oh God, 19-- ancient at this point. 637 00:26:03,900 --> 00:26:04,820 GUEST SPEAKER: 199-- 638 00:26:04,820 --> 00:26:07,690 SARAH: 199--, 1996, it was released around the 639 00:26:07,690 --> 00:26:09,186 same time Doom was. 640 00:26:09,186 --> 00:26:13,010 GUEST SPEAKER: And it's pretty impressive because in Doom you 641 00:26:13,010 --> 00:26:14,444 can't look up, I believe. 642 00:26:14,444 --> 00:26:15,410 You can shoot up but you can't-- 643 00:26:15,410 --> 00:26:16,630 SARAH: Yeah. 644 00:26:16,630 --> 00:26:18,440 I think you can crouch. 645 00:26:18,440 --> 00:26:22,160 You can lean around corners. 646 00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:23,467 You can, in fact, shoot your bow while 647 00:26:23,467 --> 00:26:24,702 leaning around corners. 648 00:26:24,702 --> 00:26:28,670 And, yeah, you can look up and down and all around. 649 00:26:28,670 --> 00:26:32,768 GUEST SPEAKER: So that's Thief I. What happens when Thief II 650 00:26:32,768 --> 00:26:35,160 gets approved? 651 00:26:35,160 --> 00:26:36,820 SARAH: Well, the first thing I had to do was convince people 652 00:26:36,820 --> 00:26:38,500 they wanted to do Thief II. 653 00:26:38,500 --> 00:26:40,750 Because while Thief was a great game and it's actually 654 00:26:40,750 --> 00:26:44,705 sold fairly well over time, its initial sales were not 655 00:26:44,705 --> 00:26:45,550 what publishers want to see. 656 00:26:45,550 --> 00:26:47,600 Because the initial sales a publisher wants to see is, oh 657 00:26:47,600 --> 00:26:50,570 my God, it sold 10 million copies, awesome. 658 00:26:50,570 --> 00:26:52,870 Instead what we did was we sold a fairly good first 659 00:26:52,870 --> 00:26:56,110 initial sell through and then it just kind of kept going. 660 00:26:56,110 --> 00:26:57,830 So the first thing we had to do was convince them that, 661 00:26:57,830 --> 00:26:59,580 yes, Thief II would be a good idea, enough people are 662 00:26:59,580 --> 00:27:02,040 continuing to buy Thief I. Those same people will all run 663 00:27:02,040 --> 00:27:06,310 out and buy Thief II on the very first day. 664 00:27:06,310 --> 00:27:08,884 And the way we did that was, first of all, taking a look at 665 00:27:08,884 --> 00:27:10,970 forums and saying, hey look, people are pretty excited 666 00:27:10,970 --> 00:27:11,590 about this. 667 00:27:11,590 --> 00:27:12,460 They're enjoying it. 668 00:27:12,460 --> 00:27:13,380 It's got good lasting power. 669 00:27:13,380 --> 00:27:14,770 Our fans are going to stick around to play with it a 670 00:27:14,770 --> 00:27:15,890 second time. 671 00:27:15,890 --> 00:27:19,080 And that was sort of a marketing end analysis that 672 00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:20,560 led into a publisher. 673 00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:22,930 And the other part was saying, OK, what are the improvements 674 00:27:22,930 --> 00:27:23,970 we're going to make to this game? 675 00:27:23,970 --> 00:27:26,550 How are we going to change this game to make it better 676 00:27:26,550 --> 00:27:29,127 than Thief I while still taking advantage of 677 00:27:29,127 --> 00:27:29,690 everything we did? 678 00:27:29,690 --> 00:27:31,890 So we created basically a big design doc with, here are the 679 00:27:31,890 --> 00:27:34,020 areas that we thought we could have done better in Thief I. 680 00:27:34,020 --> 00:27:34,720 Here's what we're going to improve. 681 00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:36,810 And here are the changes we're going to make. 682 00:27:36,810 --> 00:27:38,770 So we're not going to make Thief I, again. 683 00:27:38,770 --> 00:27:41,850 We're going to take what Thief I was, add some improvements 684 00:27:41,850 --> 00:27:45,840 to it, make a deeper story, and hopefully get a more 685 00:27:45,840 --> 00:27:48,340 variety of game play was what we actually ended up aiming 686 00:27:48,340 --> 00:27:51,270 for in our initial docs. 687 00:27:51,270 --> 00:27:55,720 We wanted to give Garrett additional abilities, 688 00:27:55,720 --> 00:27:56,060 vary the game play. 689 00:27:56,060 --> 00:27:59,400 The game play in Thief I was all speed. 690 00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:02,200 We tried to have some additional types of missions 691 00:28:02,200 --> 00:28:04,210 in Thief II. 692 00:28:04,210 --> 00:28:07,070 But there was a little more face to face fighting. 693 00:28:07,070 --> 00:28:09,790 There was a little more subterfuge. 694 00:28:09,790 --> 00:28:13,187 Instead of just sneaking around, we also had, OK, so 695 00:28:13,187 --> 00:28:15,410 now you need to disguise yourself as someone and sneak 696 00:28:15,410 --> 00:28:17,720 in, sneak out again. 697 00:28:17,720 --> 00:28:20,520 You need to pass for them while getting a goal done and 698 00:28:20,520 --> 00:28:21,150 things like that. 699 00:28:21,150 --> 00:28:23,800 So we tried to find, what are additional stealth and 700 00:28:23,800 --> 00:28:26,580 subterfuge issues and game play we can have? 701 00:28:26,580 --> 00:28:29,446 GUEST SPEAKER: How many of those features in Thief II 702 00:28:29,446 --> 00:28:32,804 were inherited from dropped features from Thief I? 703 00:28:35,870 --> 00:28:37,920 SARAH: A lot of them inherited from dropped ideas from Thief 704 00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:40,450 I. But when they first started designing Thief-- and I was 705 00:28:40,450 --> 00:28:44,007 not on the initial Thief design team so now I'm making 706 00:28:44,007 --> 00:28:47,230 up what they were talking about. 707 00:28:47,230 --> 00:28:48,430 It wasn't clear that it was going to be-- 708 00:28:48,430 --> 00:28:50,930 It was sort of like, it's going to be a stealthy game, 709 00:28:50,930 --> 00:28:52,810 but we hadn't actually defined what stealthy 710 00:28:52,810 --> 00:28:54,630 game play was yet. 711 00:28:54,630 --> 00:28:58,570 So it was Thief I that kind of told us what, this is what 712 00:28:58,570 --> 00:28:59,900 stealth game play that works. 713 00:28:59,900 --> 00:29:02,087 And once we found the one or two things that worked, we 714 00:29:02,087 --> 00:29:03,710 kind of went with that and put in that. 715 00:29:03,710 --> 00:29:05,750 It was in Thief II, we got to play around what are some 716 00:29:05,750 --> 00:29:07,260 other ideas of stealthy game play? 717 00:29:07,260 --> 00:29:10,290 What are some other ways to trick people into [INAUDIBLE]? 718 00:29:10,290 --> 00:29:13,120 GUEST SPEAKER: And people that played Metal Gear Solid or any 719 00:29:13,120 --> 00:29:15,950 of the games in Metal Gear Solid series, it owes a lot to 720 00:29:15,950 --> 00:29:19,200 Thief, especially the really, really noisy end you see. 721 00:29:19,200 --> 00:29:21,853 It wasn't, I heard something, I wonder what's over there. 722 00:29:21,853 --> 00:29:23,970 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 723 00:29:23,970 --> 00:29:25,200 SARAH: DS-X also. 724 00:29:25,200 --> 00:29:27,920 GUEST SPEAKER: But DS-X is also [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE]. 725 00:29:27,920 --> 00:29:29,450 SARAH: But that's what I'm saying is that DS-X also 726 00:29:29,450 --> 00:29:32,250 actually took a lot of Thief's lessons and went on with them 727 00:29:32,250 --> 00:29:32,708 from there. 728 00:29:32,708 --> 00:29:34,824 GUEST SPEAKER: Again, a lot of people working on 729 00:29:34,824 --> 00:29:36,020 [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE]. 730 00:29:36,020 --> 00:29:39,100 SARAH: DS-X2, more DS-X2, but yeah. 731 00:29:39,100 --> 00:29:42,110 Looking Glass folded and went out of business. 732 00:29:42,110 --> 00:29:46,060 And a lot of people moved to Austin to then work on Thief 733 00:29:46,060 --> 00:29:50,200 III and DS-X2 and those projects there. 734 00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:51,174 GUEST SPEAKER: I have a question 735 00:29:51,174 --> 00:29:55,070 about the Gold version. 736 00:29:55,070 --> 00:29:56,287 SARAH: The Gold version? 737 00:29:56,287 --> 00:30:00,340 The Gold versions of the games are really a way to try to 738 00:30:00,340 --> 00:30:02,910 convince, from the marketing point of view, is a way to 739 00:30:02,910 --> 00:30:04,540 convince players to buy the same material again. 740 00:30:08,300 --> 00:30:11,180 I'm being a little cynical here, and I admit that. 741 00:30:11,180 --> 00:30:14,570 But we added new, we did, in fact, add, what we did was, we 742 00:30:14,570 --> 00:30:16,800 added several new missions. 743 00:30:16,800 --> 00:30:18,090 So it was expanded play. 744 00:30:18,090 --> 00:30:21,216 And then we went back and problems that we knew were in 745 00:30:21,216 --> 00:30:22,730 the missions, we fixed them. 746 00:30:22,730 --> 00:30:25,783 And we actually added some richer game play to several of 747 00:30:25,783 --> 00:30:27,790 the missions that, oh God, we have to get this out the door, 748 00:30:27,790 --> 00:30:29,430 we have to get this out the door, this would be so cool if 749 00:30:29,430 --> 00:30:30,810 we could set this up but we don't have time 750 00:30:30,810 --> 00:30:32,290 to, and out it goes. 751 00:30:32,290 --> 00:30:35,100 And so we went back and we touched up 752 00:30:35,100 --> 00:30:36,310 over half of the missions. 753 00:30:36,310 --> 00:30:37,670 We added some additional game play. 754 00:30:37,670 --> 00:30:39,715 We added extra goals. 755 00:30:39,715 --> 00:30:42,060 We took areas where we thought the game play was particularly 756 00:30:42,060 --> 00:30:45,660 weak because we'd gotten rushed on finishing it and we 757 00:30:45,660 --> 00:30:48,870 made the levels a bit longer and a little more interesting 758 00:30:48,870 --> 00:30:50,080 in our opinion. 759 00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:51,910 And then we also added three new levels. 760 00:30:51,910 --> 00:30:54,900 And it was kind of a chance, it was a do over. 761 00:30:54,900 --> 00:30:57,050 We had very limited programming resources so we 762 00:30:57,050 --> 00:31:00,120 didn't really get to add much in the way of new features. 763 00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:03,250 But we were able to go back and tune it and make 764 00:31:03,250 --> 00:31:05,680 significant changes to the levels, to the way that the 765 00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:08,690 guards worked, to the scripting behind the levels. 766 00:31:08,690 --> 00:31:11,030 Vin was working on a 3D mod. 767 00:31:11,030 --> 00:31:14,210 There's usually a fair bit the designer can do behind the 768 00:31:14,210 --> 00:31:18,530 walls of telling the AIs what to do and how to think and how 769 00:31:18,530 --> 00:31:19,460 the game play flows. 770 00:31:19,460 --> 00:31:23,430 And Thief, especially, had an extremely rich editor that-- 771 00:31:23,430 --> 00:31:25,755 more powerful, I think, than any other editor I ever worked 772 00:31:25,755 --> 00:31:29,159 with, even though it is now 15 years old, 15 773 00:31:29,159 --> 00:31:31,370 years old, I think. 774 00:31:31,370 --> 00:31:33,426 It's still the most powerful editor for a 775 00:31:33,426 --> 00:31:36,420 designer I have ever seen. 776 00:31:36,420 --> 00:31:38,930 GUEST SPEAKER: So did you feel-- 777 00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:43,736 You mentioned you looked at forums and 778 00:31:43,736 --> 00:31:44,510 you look at fan input. 779 00:31:44,510 --> 00:31:49,172 And how much of that, of what went into making the sequel, 780 00:31:49,172 --> 00:31:51,160 actually came from fan input? 781 00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:53,880 Or was it just like verifying what you already wanted to do. 782 00:31:53,880 --> 00:31:55,870 SARAH: Part of it was to verify what we wanted to do. 783 00:31:55,870 --> 00:31:57,667 Part of it was to verify there was enough interest that 784 00:31:57,667 --> 00:31:58,540 people would want to do it. 785 00:31:58,540 --> 00:32:00,930 Part of it was to see, what did people like most? 786 00:32:00,930 --> 00:32:03,560 Which of the missions did people like most? 787 00:32:03,560 --> 00:32:06,970 Are there any good ideas out there for how to play a game 788 00:32:06,970 --> 00:32:08,910 that we think, yes, they're right, we 789 00:32:08,910 --> 00:32:09,580 never thought of that. 790 00:32:09,580 --> 00:32:11,780 I think that one of the things people talked about a lot was 791 00:32:11,780 --> 00:32:13,285 actually disguise missions. 792 00:32:13,285 --> 00:32:15,540 And I think we had two disguise missions in Thief II 793 00:32:15,540 --> 00:32:18,393 where you're kind of disguising yourself as, no, 794 00:32:18,393 --> 00:32:21,240 no, no, no one looked at me, I'm just another guard walking 795 00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:24,890 around, don't worry about me. 796 00:32:24,890 --> 00:32:28,040 And that was something that we said, oh, yeah, that would be 797 00:32:28,040 --> 00:32:28,760 really cool. 798 00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:30,990 And that's something we had no time to implement for Thief 799 00:32:30,990 --> 00:32:35,090 but, if we're choosing new features to implement in Thief 800 00:32:35,090 --> 00:32:37,850 II, that was actually not an amazingly difficult one. 801 00:32:37,850 --> 00:32:40,000 Because you just, if you've got a way to put a tag on the 802 00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:42,155 play that says, oh, guards don't get upset 803 00:32:42,155 --> 00:32:43,176 when they see you. 804 00:32:43,176 --> 00:32:46,770 GUEST SPEAKER: Did you have a situations where players came 805 00:32:46,770 --> 00:32:48,490 out with exploits that you tried to 806 00:32:48,490 --> 00:32:50,375 address in the Gold version? 807 00:32:50,375 --> 00:32:52,390 SARAH: There were not, no, actually. 808 00:32:52,390 --> 00:32:54,710 There were a couple of places where people found bugs that 809 00:32:54,710 --> 00:32:58,420 were level enders that got people stuck that 810 00:32:58,420 --> 00:32:59,610 we went in and fixed. 811 00:32:59,610 --> 00:33:03,204 There were not a whole lot of exploits that I recall us 812 00:33:03,204 --> 00:33:04,660 trying to go in and fix. 813 00:33:04,660 --> 00:33:06,755 AUDIENCE: So if somebody deliberately found something 814 00:33:06,755 --> 00:33:08,892 that put them on the roof of the castle or something like 815 00:33:08,892 --> 00:33:11,740 that, then you didn't want them trying to [INAUDIBLE]? 816 00:33:11,740 --> 00:33:12,940 SARAH: If it allowed the player to get to a place when 817 00:33:12,940 --> 00:33:14,760 he broke the game, we did try to fix it. 818 00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:16,400 Because we tried to fix anything that was game breaker 819 00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:18,390 where you could get up on the wall and then leap 820 00:33:18,390 --> 00:33:20,340 off into the void. 821 00:33:20,340 --> 00:33:23,700 But sometimes what we'd do is, rather than stop you from 822 00:33:23,700 --> 00:33:26,490 getting up on the castle and proving how cool you were, 823 00:33:26,490 --> 00:33:28,990 we'd let you get up on the castle but we'd put in 824 00:33:28,990 --> 00:33:31,456 invisible barriers so you couldn't hurl yourself into 825 00:33:31,456 --> 00:33:36,280 the darkness and then crash the game. 826 00:33:36,280 --> 00:33:40,190 If players enjoyed finding those things so taking them 827 00:33:40,190 --> 00:33:41,830 out doesn't enhance the game play. 828 00:33:41,830 --> 00:33:44,750 And the point of the Gold project was to try to make 829 00:33:44,750 --> 00:33:47,630 something the game play was sufficiently enhanced that it 830 00:33:47,630 --> 00:33:49,668 was worthwhile to go out and buy again. 831 00:33:49,668 --> 00:33:53,300 GUEST SPEAKER: So now we're in an environment where patches 832 00:33:53,300 --> 00:33:54,815 pretty much is downloaded, right? 833 00:33:54,815 --> 00:33:55,310 SARAH: Yeah. 834 00:33:55,310 --> 00:33:56,795 GUEST SPEAKER: We don't necessarily have that 835 00:33:56,795 --> 00:33:58,920 situation in the year 1996. 836 00:33:58,920 --> 00:34:03,115 Is there still a role of [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASES] 837 00:34:03,115 --> 00:34:03,920 new releases? 838 00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:07,000 SARAH: I think now again that would be an expansion pack. 839 00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:08,830 I don't think that you would do a Gold version. 840 00:34:08,830 --> 00:34:10,219 You'd do an expansion pack. 841 00:34:10,219 --> 00:34:13,290 And with an expansion pack patch you could fix old 842 00:34:13,290 --> 00:34:15,970 problems and you might introduce new games and of 843 00:34:15,970 --> 00:34:17,046 levels, but I don't think you do it with the 844 00:34:17,046 --> 00:34:17,876 hassle of doing a Gold. 845 00:34:17,876 --> 00:34:21,355 I think you just do an expansion pack. 846 00:34:21,355 --> 00:34:24,337 [APPLAUSE] 847 00:34:24,337 --> 00:34:27,567 GUEST SPEAKER: Questions for Sarah and her 848 00:34:27,567 --> 00:34:31,295 experience on it? 849 00:34:31,295 --> 00:34:33,655 AUDIENCE: Pretty much all of your data points just came 850 00:34:33,655 --> 00:34:34,790 from forums where you-- 851 00:34:34,790 --> 00:34:36,690 SARAH: Oh yeah, oh yeah, that was just one of the places 852 00:34:36,690 --> 00:34:37,124 where we looked. 853 00:34:37,124 --> 00:34:39,949 We also looked at sales and continuing sales 854 00:34:39,949 --> 00:34:40,719 and things like that. 855 00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:42,770 Like I said, that was actually more of a marketing sales to 856 00:34:42,770 --> 00:34:46,730 sort of do, here's why we think players will like it. 857 00:34:46,730 --> 00:34:48,420 Here's some experiences we got. 858 00:34:48,420 --> 00:34:50,877 Here's the hard data on our sales, how our sales are 859 00:34:50,877 --> 00:34:55,830 continuing, and the fact that while it did not come out and 860 00:34:55,830 --> 00:35:00,000 sell 100,000 copies the first month, it's continuing to sell 861 00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:02,527 20,000 or 30,000 copies a month, which means that word 862 00:35:02,527 --> 00:35:05,733 of mouth is pretty strong, and people are continuing to go 863 00:35:05,733 --> 00:35:07,195 out and buy it and go out and play it. 864 00:35:07,195 --> 00:35:10,140 And here's the forum where a whole bunch of people are 865 00:35:10,140 --> 00:35:11,760 using the editor released. 866 00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:15,570 And the activity in that forum is going up over time not down 867 00:35:15,570 --> 00:35:18,260 over time which indicates you've got more people coming 868 00:35:18,260 --> 00:35:20,950 into it, people are coming in, they're staying at and using 869 00:35:20,950 --> 00:35:23,826 it, and you've got more people continuing to come in, the 870 00:35:23,826 --> 00:35:25,300 community's growing, which means that there's interest 871 00:35:25,300 --> 00:35:27,270 there and there's people who are paying attention to 872 00:35:27,270 --> 00:35:29,393 project and are going to continue to pay attention to 873 00:35:29,393 --> 00:35:29,720 your product. 874 00:35:29,720 --> 00:35:31,843 AUDIENCE: But also it gave for finding 875 00:35:31,843 --> 00:35:33,150 dead ends, for finding-- 876 00:35:33,150 --> 00:35:36,580 You said you fixed some of the dead games [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 877 00:35:36,580 --> 00:35:38,445 SARAH: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. 878 00:35:38,445 --> 00:35:40,580 Well, the difference between a-- 879 00:35:40,580 --> 00:35:41,990 let me think-- 880 00:35:41,990 --> 00:35:46,060 At our height, we had a 12 person QA department. 881 00:35:46,060 --> 00:35:51,454 And 50,000 users is pretty big. 882 00:35:51,454 --> 00:35:53,510 And we did our best on testing it. 883 00:35:53,510 --> 00:35:58,340 And we had another 10 or 15 helpers through our publisher. 884 00:35:58,340 --> 00:36:03,330 But we had comparatively speaking a ridiculously small 885 00:36:03,330 --> 00:36:05,270 QA department for the game. 886 00:36:05,270 --> 00:36:06,425 GUEST SPEAKER: But then you have the situation where 887 00:36:06,425 --> 00:36:08,756 someone notes something on the forum and then you can verify 888 00:36:08,756 --> 00:36:09,752 it with your QA team. 889 00:36:09,752 --> 00:36:10,750 SARAH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 890 00:36:10,750 --> 00:36:12,070 GUEST SPEAKER: And you can actually figure out whether 891 00:36:12,070 --> 00:36:15,017 what they were seeing was exactly the problem they were 892 00:36:15,017 --> 00:36:15,180 describing. 893 00:36:15,180 --> 00:36:17,060 SARAH: And it being a solely single player game-- 894 00:36:17,060 --> 00:36:22,040 I know a lot of games do large beta tests where they ask 500, 895 00:36:22,040 --> 00:36:24,800 or 200, or 1,000 people to play the game. 896 00:36:24,800 --> 00:36:28,418 We did not do any external testing like that at all. 897 00:36:28,418 --> 00:36:28,870 Yeah. 898 00:36:28,870 --> 00:36:30,080 GUEST SPEAKER: And this was also back in the '90s that 899 00:36:30,080 --> 00:36:30,450 wasn't being done. 900 00:36:30,450 --> 00:36:31,776 SARAH: Oh, yeah, it was not the sort of thing that was 901 00:36:31,776 --> 00:36:35,110 really done in the '90s as well. 902 00:36:35,110 --> 00:36:39,780 It's very much a developmental shift. 903 00:36:39,780 --> 00:36:42,180 AUDIENCE: Did you ever explicitly ask on the forums 904 00:36:42,180 --> 00:36:45,378 if there were another sequel, would you buy it? 905 00:36:45,378 --> 00:36:46,860 SARAH: I don't know. 906 00:36:46,860 --> 00:36:48,840 I did not do that. 907 00:36:48,840 --> 00:36:49,890 I was not on the forums. 908 00:36:49,890 --> 00:36:51,924 I helped with some of the forum data in [? reforms ?] 909 00:36:51,924 --> 00:36:54,960 but I didn't really post on the forums a lot. 910 00:36:54,960 --> 00:36:56,323 AUDIENCE: Do you think that would be viable tactic, or 911 00:36:56,323 --> 00:36:58,480 would you just say, people would probably just say yes. 912 00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:00,590 SARAH: I think that your data wouldn't be very good. 913 00:37:00,590 --> 00:37:00,900 AUDIENCE: OK. 914 00:37:00,900 --> 00:37:02,370 SARAH: The most you're probably going to get is the 915 00:37:02,370 --> 00:37:05,620 1,000 people who read the forum say, yes. 916 00:37:05,620 --> 00:37:07,830 And that's 1,000 people. 917 00:37:07,830 --> 00:37:11,750 And that's not enough sales to justify doing anything. 918 00:37:11,750 --> 00:37:12,530 AUDIENCE: Gotcha. 919 00:37:12,530 --> 00:37:14,490 SARAH: It's more interesting, I think it's more useful to 920 00:37:14,490 --> 00:37:16,370 look at trends, if you've got a survey out 921 00:37:16,370 --> 00:37:18,630 maybe, I don't know. 922 00:37:18,630 --> 00:37:20,890 GUEST SPEAKER: I've seen companies bring in focus 923 00:37:20,890 --> 00:37:24,910 groups, people who played the first game to come in and 924 00:37:24,910 --> 00:37:29,480 bouncing off either prototypes or features that they're 925 00:37:29,480 --> 00:37:31,700 planning for the second version to see how they will 926 00:37:31,700 --> 00:37:32,575 respond to them. 927 00:37:32,575 --> 00:37:35,250 I would say that the information you back from that 928 00:37:35,250 --> 00:37:36,900 is also not very good. 929 00:37:36,900 --> 00:37:41,810 But it might be something that is done to gain traction in 930 00:37:41,810 --> 00:37:45,750 internal studio politics, and it was like, well, we did this 931 00:37:45,750 --> 00:37:47,840 exercise where we brought these people in and they said 932 00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:50,263 these features are OK, so we can take the risk of 933 00:37:50,263 --> 00:37:50,756 [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE]. 934 00:37:50,756 --> 00:37:55,530 As opposed to driving the entire process [INAUDIBLE]. 935 00:37:58,130 --> 00:38:00,740 SARAH: Games don't respond really well to focus test 936 00:38:00,740 --> 00:38:02,820 based development. 937 00:38:02,820 --> 00:38:03,937 GUEST SPEAKER: Or focus group-- 938 00:38:03,937 --> 00:38:06,820 SARAH: Or focus group based development. 939 00:38:06,820 --> 00:38:09,640 Getting feedback on your games is great. 940 00:38:09,640 --> 00:38:11,820 Finding out how many people are likely to like your game 941 00:38:11,820 --> 00:38:13,098 is a lot harder. 942 00:38:13,098 --> 00:38:15,090 GUEST SPEAKER: Especially if they can't actually see it 943 00:38:15,090 --> 00:38:18,576 when you're asking them the question then they have no 944 00:38:18,576 --> 00:38:20,960 idea what they're commenting on. 945 00:38:20,960 --> 00:38:24,610 They'll make something up that they think you want to hear, 946 00:38:24,610 --> 00:38:26,641 is, yes, of course, we'll buy a copy of the game. 947 00:38:26,641 --> 00:38:27,410 We loved the first one. 948 00:38:27,410 --> 00:38:28,344 Sure. 949 00:38:28,344 --> 00:38:30,117 But if they haven't actually seen the second version of the 950 00:38:30,117 --> 00:38:31,923 game [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE], so you don't actually know if 951 00:38:31,923 --> 00:38:33,490 that is the case. 952 00:38:33,490 --> 00:38:35,520 For those of you who do missed [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 953 00:38:35,520 --> 00:38:41,180 talk last week, he was talking about how Inamplitude which 954 00:38:41,180 --> 00:38:42,080 was a sequel-- 955 00:38:42,080 --> 00:38:42,870 Was Amplitude-- 956 00:38:42,870 --> 00:38:44,120 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 957 00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:46,350 AUDIENCE: Oh yeah. 958 00:38:46,350 --> 00:38:48,130 GUEST SPEAKER: I think it was in the very first one. 959 00:38:48,130 --> 00:38:49,710 So that was Frequency. 960 00:38:49,710 --> 00:38:54,360 He was talking about how the folks from Sony were helping 961 00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:56,230 them run their focus groups. 962 00:38:56,230 --> 00:39:00,963 And they did two tests and one of the tests was, after they 963 00:39:00,963 --> 00:39:04,476 played the game, they did a survey of how many people were 964 00:39:04,476 --> 00:39:06,695 planning on buying this when it came out. 965 00:39:06,695 --> 00:39:08,913 And they had a particularly high score, like 80% or 966 00:39:08,913 --> 00:39:11,630 something like that, like the highest survey I've ever seen. 967 00:39:11,630 --> 00:39:14,295 But they also did a survey of how many people were planning 968 00:39:14,295 --> 00:39:17,410 on buying the game just by looking at the box before they 969 00:39:17,410 --> 00:39:18,072 had played the game. 970 00:39:18,072 --> 00:39:20,280 And that was a particularly low number. 971 00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:22,584 And the Sony people called it, said this is 972 00:39:22,584 --> 00:39:23,240 not going to sell. 973 00:39:23,240 --> 00:39:26,230 Because, sure, the people who played their game are going to 974 00:39:26,230 --> 00:39:26,800 enjoy the game. 975 00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:28,624 But no one's going to play the game in the first place 976 00:39:28,624 --> 00:39:31,306 because people can't figure out what your game's about. 977 00:39:31,306 --> 00:39:32,270 And they tried to address those 978 00:39:32,270 --> 00:39:33,560 problems with the sequel. 979 00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:36,830 That's one thing which [? Brenda ?] talks about, your 980 00:39:36,830 --> 00:39:39,480 chance to do a do over, a chance for you to go back and 981 00:39:39,480 --> 00:39:41,470 fix the problems that you found in the first one, 982 00:39:41,470 --> 00:39:44,110 especially when you find those problems really 983 00:39:44,110 --> 00:39:45,060 close to ship date. 984 00:39:45,060 --> 00:39:48,070 There's nothing you can do about the first time around. 985 00:39:48,070 --> 00:39:51,990 But if you're lucky, you get a second chance to do it. 986 00:39:51,990 --> 00:39:55,420 SARAH: I also noticed that Frequency was not called in, 987 00:39:55,420 --> 00:39:59,850 or rather, it wasn't Frequency II. 988 00:39:59,850 --> 00:40:01,250 GUEST SPEAKER: There was a Frequency II. 989 00:40:01,250 --> 00:40:01,930 They called it Amplitude. 990 00:40:01,930 --> 00:40:04,650 So it was actually kind of a reboot as well because they 991 00:40:04,650 --> 00:40:07,194 kind of just wanted people, OK, let's pretend Frequency 992 00:40:07,194 --> 00:40:08,628 didn't happen and [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 993 00:40:08,628 --> 00:40:10,858 And we'll make sure that our Frequency people who loved the 994 00:40:10,858 --> 00:40:11,496 game know what it is. 995 00:40:11,496 --> 00:40:12,460 SARAH: Ahead of time. 996 00:40:12,460 --> 00:40:16,750 It's much easier to tell the small base who liked you, oh 997 00:40:16,750 --> 00:40:20,127 yeah, and buy this game, than it is to tell a large group of 998 00:40:20,127 --> 00:40:22,265 people who weren't interested the first time, no, no, you 999 00:40:22,265 --> 00:40:24,170 didn't like it the first time, but trust us, you'll 1000 00:40:24,170 --> 00:40:26,810 like it this time. 1001 00:40:26,810 --> 00:40:31,460 GUEST SPEAKER: I've seen a couple of companies do 1002 00:40:31,460 --> 00:40:36,166 effectively Gold versions every time they move to a new 1003 00:40:36,166 --> 00:40:38,500 platform, like the latest platform which they release it 1004 00:40:38,500 --> 00:40:41,440 on tends to become the definitive version that, if 1005 00:40:41,440 --> 00:40:43,820 you're a big fan of the franchise and you're willing 1006 00:40:43,820 --> 00:40:45,930 to buy this game multiple times, you want to get that 1007 00:40:45,930 --> 00:40:47,810 because of the few extra features that they've put in. 1008 00:40:47,810 --> 00:40:48,840 Maybe it's different endings. 1009 00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:51,114 Maybe it's upgraded cutscenes. 1010 00:40:51,114 --> 00:40:54,560 If it's a role playing game I see that a lot. 1011 00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:57,250 Maybe they redid the cutscenes from scratch or redid the 1012 00:40:57,250 --> 00:40:58,340 audio from scratch. 1013 00:40:58,340 --> 00:41:03,810 So it's the same assets but they're higher resolution. 1014 00:41:03,810 --> 00:41:06,370 And, of course, you have games that started out there like 1015 00:41:06,370 --> 00:41:08,740 this online flash games and stuff like that and then 1016 00:41:08,740 --> 00:41:09,850 you've got to move them to other 1017 00:41:09,850 --> 00:41:12,106 platforms like DS or PSP. 1018 00:41:12,106 --> 00:41:15,800 And those games tend to have not only completely reworked 1019 00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:19,470 controls because the controls are different but also a lot 1020 00:41:19,470 --> 00:41:22,280 more features because you have to now justify to people who 1021 00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:25,480 may have loved the game but didn't pay any money for the 1022 00:41:25,480 --> 00:41:28,420 first version to actually put down money for it now. 1023 00:41:28,420 --> 00:41:30,480 So [? N ?] is a good example of that. 1024 00:41:30,480 --> 00:41:33,870 There's a game that came out by [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 1025 00:41:33,870 --> 00:41:36,863 and the DS and PSP what started life as 1026 00:41:36,863 --> 00:41:37,880 a free flash game. 1027 00:41:37,880 --> 00:41:39,570 And lots of people loved it. 1028 00:41:39,570 --> 00:41:41,530 But lots of people didn't have to pay any money for their 1029 00:41:41,530 --> 00:41:41,910 first version. 1030 00:41:41,910 --> 00:41:45,822 So how much do you love it is kind of a weird factor. 1031 00:41:52,370 --> 00:41:54,020 I guess we should start with the games.