IndustryGamers - Informing the Games Industry

Warren Spector Feels 'Strong Sense of Responsibility' with Mickey

Posted August 9, 2010 by James Brightman

IG: Have you looked at the 3DS? There’s a lot of buzz around the 3DS.

WS: You know, if I talk about that, someone’s going to kill me, so we should move on (Laughter). I will say that we were backstage, and we were just so privileged to be part of the Nintendo press conference. That was absolutely one of the most fun things and coolest things I’ve ever done in my life. But anyway, we were backstage afterwards listening to the 3DS discussion and it’s like, we were just like getting more excited, cheering back there. Who knew it has a 3D camera? And you can watch 3D movies without glasses? I really expected him to say, “…and it tucks you into bed at night.” It’s like, “holy cow, sign me up, I want the first one off the assembly line.” It’s amazing, and I’m not getting paid to say that. As a gamer, I just want it bad.

IG: How do you feel about 3D, apart from the 3DS, but just the 3D push from Sony and these other companies where you’ve obviously got to wear the glasses? Do you see that becoming a trend, or is it perhaps a fad? Do you have any opinion on it?

WS: It’s clear that it’s a trend and lots of people are interested in it and lots of people see value in it. Disney is working on 3D stuff now – Tron and Toy Story – so certainly there are a lot of people trying a lot of things. I haven’t had a chance to do that yet. We’ll see what happens.

IG: I’m curious from a development perspective... back at GDC, Sid Meier gave a really amazing keynote talking about the psychology of the player. Do you tend to agree with Sid on a lot of what he said? When you build your games, do you sort of think about how to get into the mind of the player and sort of feed into that psychology?

WS: I certainly believe that one of the most valuable things a game developer can study is behavioral psychology. What we do is very much about reward schedules and keeping players engaged with what we do, and getting them past barriers to belief in our virtual world and stuff, so psychology is very important. For me, I really focus a lot on, “What can I do to empower players to be creative as they play?” How can I let them express themselves? How can I let them do the things that they think are important, and not what I think is important? I really just never want to say, “This is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong.” You know, “Are you skilled enough to solve this puzzle?” I hate that stuff. What I want to do is say, “Here’s a problem, how do you want to solve it? I’ll show you what happens if you solve it that way as opposed to this other way.” Is that psychology? Maybe. For me, it’s more myth building and making everybody a storyteller.

IG: Assuming Epic Mickey is going to be a success for you, and you’re given the green light to maybe do some other things, are there other Disney characters that you would love to work with to bring to the games medium?

WS: Oh, heck yeah.

(Laughter)

IG: Care to elaborate?

WS: Oh yeah... Don’t draw any conclusions. A day does not go by where I don’t tell somebody at Disney: “Gimme the ducks. Gimme the ducks! Uncle Scrooge, come on! Donald! Huey, Dewey, and Louie! Come on, let me do a duck game!” So yeah, I would love to do a duck game. Uncle Scrooge is the coolest character, you know? He was Indiana Jones before Steven Spielberg was a gleam in his mother’s eye, you know? I mean, come on. He’s a great character.

IG: The Ducktales cartoon, I remember I used to watch that a lot.

WS: Well, those Ducktales cartoons were based on comic books and about half of them were based on comic books by a guy named Carl Barks who… I mean I love the Ducktales TV show; the comic books were even better. Carl Barks was the best comic books artist and storyteller ever, and I would love to bring some of his work to life in games.

IG: So, what’s left for you in terms of finishing this game?

WS: We’re at the point where we’re in full-on polish mode, and we’ll be polishing things like camera, and lighting tweaks, things like that, graphical tweaks... you’re going to be doing that balancing, you’re going to do that until they make you stop. That’s kind of where we’re at.

IG: Ok, thanks very much Warren. Looking forward to seeing the finished game.

James Brightman has been covering the games industry since 2003 and has been an avid gamer ever since the days of Atari and Intellivision. He was previously the EIC of GameDaily Biz.