Early this year, foreign media Polygon invited Amy Hennig, the 1-3 generation game director and script author of Uncharted Seas to have a conversation with Sean Vanaman, the writer of the scriptwriter of "Fire Man" and its developer Campo Santo.
is Amy on the left and Sean
The Uncharted Season series and "Fire Man" are the two peaks in the game industry, and their attributes are completely different. As Amy said, they are the "two worlds" of the gaming industry.
According to data from the developer Naughty Dog at the end of 2017, the total sales volume of the "Underworld" series was 41.7 million, which is the most popular 3A series. " Uncharted 4" even won eight nominations on TGA 2016 (but lost to Overwatch). Of course, the developers have also paid a lot of money for this. For example, Amy once worked 50 hours in a row. She claimed that she had to work at Naughty Dog at least 80 hours a week regardless of her position.
and "Watching Fire Man" is a dark horse in the independent gaming field: Campo Santo's team size is about 10 people, and Sean said that team members "reduced their salary by at least 50% compared to before starting a business." But later, the game's first month revenue exceeded US$10 million (about RMB 63 million). After success, the team seemed to have found a work-life balance, and Sean had three more travels around the world.
In addition, Amy and Sean also showed the commonalities of many gamers in the conversation, such as praising Nintendo , questioning their career choices, thinking that the game industry is a sweatshop, but full of hope for this creative industry.
In this conversation, you can feel the working status and mentality of top producers and overseas developers. You might as well ask yourself, when we have been playing games for 28 years and are over fifty years old, how will we keep up with the development of the times, and how will we view this cruel and wonderful industry?
The following is an excerpt of the conversation after sorting:
Shawn: Hello, I am Sean Wanaman.
Amy: I am Amy Hennich.
Shawn: We have never met in real life.
Amy: doesn’t have one, we just saw it downstairs.
Shawn: OK, I did meet once 5 minutes ago. Obviously I knew about your product a long time ago. Next, we will talk about the game research and development industry in 2017.
Amy: don’t talk about 2018?
Shawn: Then I can also talk about the previous 6 hours of R&D process, which is all the work I did in 2018.
Amy: So happy you are like me, and you are always confused after the holiday. Oh my God, it's really easy to not do your job properly.
Shawn: My computer hasn't been powered on for 2 weeks, and after I turned on, I don't know what to do.
Amy: Have you watched the trailer for your new work "The Valley of the Gods" again to figure out what you are going to develop? Not that it's fake, but most early trailers are just an animation draft that expresses ideas... but your trailers are really great.
"The Valley of the Gods" trailer
Sean: Thank you, if you make a game, you can only sell the trailer: "It's only $19.99."
Amy: "The Fire Watcher" also made a similar trailer before?
Shawn: has it...but all the elements in the trailer did not appear in the game in the end.
Amy: is always like this... Have you figured out the core design ideas of the new work now?
Shawn: The core mechanism of is already very clear.In the early stages of development, we only thought about a few things: How to use a camera? How will it guide action? How to use a camera to explore the world and uncover its superficial exploration essence?
" Uncharted Seas 2"
Talk about the decline of linear 3A games: cost competition and in-app purchases that begin to rise
Amy: How many people do you have in your team?
Shawn: There are 13 people in the entire company, 11 of whom are playing games.
Amy: feels really incredible, it looks like two worlds like me.
Shawn: When developing the unnamed " Star Wars " game, how many people did your team have? (Translator's note: After resigning from Naughty Dog, Amy joined EA's Visceral Studio and served as the creative director of a Star Wars game)
Amy: There are about 80 people in . We were doing DLC for Battlefield: Hard Battles before, and now we are going to do our best, and the final number may be twice that.
Shawn: The team size is similar to that of Naughty Dog.
Amy: It takes so many people to make a highly realistic masterpiece.
Shawn: is quite scary. I have never done such a work, and I don’t know how this feels. When we were doing "The Walking Dead", we had only 75 people at most.
Amy: I think big IPs often affect the size of your team, or the realistic art style requires more people than non-realistic styles? Is it the realism of the picture and the complexity of the details that cause this difference?
Shawn: may be because it is a game like Star Wars. When I was launching the project "North of the Gods", I tried to decide the number of characters - there will definitely be more than 2. As long as it is coordinated enough with the story, theme and gameplay, a few characters can create a great game. But it's hard to say if you want to do Star Wars (an IP with many characters).
Amy: I thought so when I was playing "Hell Blade". "This game is really exquisite and beautiful... Alas, they only need to do 1 character? We have to do 20 such characters, and we also have to ensure that 10 characters can be on the same screen with stable frame rate."
"Hell Blade"
So we spent so much time and technology struggle, but not to solve the core design problem: figure out what we are developing.
Shawn: For more than half a year in 2017, we are all fighting against scale issues. I felt like I had hit my head on the table for 6 months just to set the number of characters. But later we suddenly had a new idea: "If you want to do the game, just do it as big as you want. Just use other methods to control the scale." After
, we became much more excited. We determined some new core design guidelines so that the game can still tell a vast adventure story, and the team size does not need to be doubled.
Amy: I think we are facing a turning point now. What happened to the Star Wars project (EA announced in October 2017 that it would close Viscreal Studios) did not come out of thin air. Many articles advocate the argument that "linear narrative game is dead." Linear games have existed for too long, and their development costs are getting higher and higher. Players really hope that the game can provide longer game time, more realistic pictures, higher value and more MOD... This kind of pressure is very realistic.
If the development cost of a game reaches US$100 million, but a game is still only sold for US$60, then what do you need to rely on to ensure that you make a profit or even make a profit? We are under too much pressure on commercialization: supply boxes, additional services... As development costs are increasing day by day, these design points have become the trend of industrial development, especially for large publishers. The budget is increasing and the threshold is getting higher and higher, and it seems that it is becoming less and less meaningless to make such a game.
Of course, many people protested: "Why don't you make this linear narrative game? We really want this kind of game." This extends another problem: people don't need to spend money on this kind of game, they can watch other people's videos online to pass the level.
"Watching the Fire Man"
Sean: "Watching the Fire Man" still sold 2 million to 3 million sets, but I don't think it's important. But if a Tomb Raider sold so much, would people think that the result is too much?
Amy: How could be? They will feel that this is a failure.
Shawn: It is a failure to sell 2 million copies of , which is a bad feeling.
Amy: In my experience, the game has to be sold at least 5 million copies as soon as it was released, and the total sales volume will reach 8 million to 9 million copies. Even so, you have only made a small contribution.
Shawn: I'm going crazy... Uh, it should be said that it's amazing, sorry, the sales volume is really too high.
Amy: development costs are not in vain. And you can't be affected by it, you must all-in every game. If the game doesn't stand out, if the player doesn't like it, if its ending isn't great enough, then you're done. Even Naughty Dog is so famous and has a studio with Sony's unconditional support, if you lose the last time, the entire team may be ruined.
Shawn: is right. They will inevitably mutter to their hearts: "Uh, do we really want to make such games?"
Amy: Unless they do some less realistic works, or...
Sean: But in this field, Nintendo can slap everyone in the face, right?
Amy: Yes.
Shawn: But the game developed for traditional consoles will definitely not run on Switch. There are also several realistic games that have been ported to the Switch, but the experience is very bad, like "NBA 2K18", which has been a patch as big as that. However, the Switch is the fastest-selling host in the United States ever, and the sales of Mario and Zelda are simply crazy and outrageous.
Amy: The only things about Zelda and Mario in the year are definitely the ones that are involved in.
" Super Mario : Odyssey"
Talk about the game in 2017: "PUBG" is like going out for a ride with your buddy
Sean: What games do you like to play in 2017?
Amy: If I were to say which one I like the most, I might choose one from "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" and "Memories of Eddie Fenci". Of course I like them completely differently, but I prefer the latter. If I count down further, I like "West of Hatred" very much, and even to the point where I can't let go, it is as addictive as Zelda. I was deeply attracted by it as soon as I opened the game. How to say it is a smooth, cartoon-style stickman horizontal version of " Elder Scrolls ".
Shawn: An RPG-style adventure.
Amy: pair, it is a turn-based RPG game that players only need to click and click, a stickman western story, and it is particularly funny.
Shawn: I recently played "Super Mario RPG: Legend of Seven Stars" because I have SNES Classic (an honest Nintendo console). But compared to this, I prefer "The West of Abomination". If you also like RPG games that are full of adventurousness and are matched with very harmonious elements, you should spend $11... or buy this game at any price.
Amy: It is the most exciting stickman western game.
Shawn: the best on the market. I dare say you definitely can't find a more exciting Stickman West adventure game, it's really great.
"The West of Abomination"
Amy: What else is there for ? "The World in the Painting" (Gorogoa).
Shawn: is great. Very, very, very good. I played on the Switch.
Amy: I play on iPad. I don't know what it is expressing, but I really like it. It was a bit like brushing a stack of tarot cards with your fingers, like a dream. I've never played a puzzle game like this before.
"World in Painting"
Shawn: There is also a game called "Factual Framework", but they are very different.
Amy: Yeah, "The Fatal Frame" is great, but "The World in the Painting" is more attractive to me. What else have you played?
"Deadly Framework 2"
Sean: I especially like "Resident Evil 7". I just played the part of escaping the house and haven't passed the level yet, but I love it so much. I don’t play a lot of games and I don’t have a wide range of things. In fact, I love watching movies and reading. But at the same time, I am still playing "DOTA2".
I have also played "PUBG" for a long time. Eating chicken feels like spending a few hours at night on an exciting road trip with a group of people - we gathered in the same place, found a car, drove together, and did some erratic things.
It reminded me of my high school time, "Come out for a walk?", "Let's go." In most cases, nothing will happen, everyone will go home alone. But sometimes something wonderful will unfold in unexpected ways. Very interesting, really very interesting.
I have also played Breath of the Wild and will not open it again until the next long flight, or similar scenes, because I need a proper time to connect with this game. It feels like dating a very attractive, especially cool person, and you always feel like you are not ready.
Amy: People say the same is true for "The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim", I don't know how people spend so much time in that game.
Shawn: If a buddy suddenly breaks into the studio and shouts, "Force Zelda or Mario? Tell me quickly! Otherwise, I will burst out your brain with just one shot!" Then I might choose Mario.
Amy: Mario is great. It's so fun that you can even play Zelda and Mario over and over again, and their tastes are really different.
"The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild"
Shawn: is really different. If you change to another publisher, maybe these two games will gradually become more and more similar. I can now name several publishers who make the two series more and more similar.
Amy: What's more, these two games still have a lot of feelings, which is particularly lethal to people of my age. I should be 20 years older than you, right?
Talk about career choices: The game industry will torture you to the point of being strong and strong
Sean: I checked you on Wikipedia, and it is indeed the case... Hey, it seems like we are very old in the game industry.
Amy: is like this, gradually getting older in the game industry. But it's not your turn to say such things, you're still a young man.
Shawn: I am 33.
Amy: I am 53, so I am qualified. Your professional life has just begun.
Shawn: You are 53? I really don't think so.
Amy: I am still a woman. This sentence may not be very good, but in the gaming industry, it is really hard to meet a 53-year-old female director.
Shawn: may be the only one, right?
Amy: is hard to say, I don’t want to miss anyone, but there are definitely not many. Whether men or women, as long as they reach this age, it is not easy to do in the game industry. You will be tortured in it so hard that your bones are strong... Hey, it seems like someone wants me to pity, but it's not bad.
Shawn: But you may also be ground to pieces alive and can never come out again.
Amy: is right. Fortunately, games are a creative industry and you can do what you like. The problem with
is still due to the workload. I have been working for publishers or large R&D teams for most of my life, and have been working between different jobs. In other creative industries, if you are outsourcing yourself, you may still have a rest for a while after completing a project.In the gaming industry, you don’t get so much rest, it’s impossible to travel, or do something else, forget about work.
I have seen too many examples of suddenly quitting at my age. Many people will set up smaller studios and then never do 3A again. We've talked about it before, and I think we're facing a turning point: the types of games we're familiar with are changing, and their foothold is getting smaller and smaller.
My favorite game may be the kind of Ueda Miku: "ICO", " Wonder and Colossus ", "The Last Guardian"... like "The Wind Journey" and "The Fire Watching Man". I'm really looking forward to your "North of the Gods". I want to feel the author's perspective and experience a story in a complete way. I want to hide the game and regard this experience as a treasure, just like collecting a great movie and book. I want to absorb nutrients from a complete work and understand its significance and value.
To be honest, many people who do 3A draw inspiration from independent works because you are much freer than us.
"The Wind Journey Man"
Sean: Speaking of torture, I think there is another benefit to the small team: it is convenient to travel. We can move to a new office, colleagues can go on their honeymoon after getting married, and I have traveled the world three times myself. It’s really lucky to be indie games. If we can succeed, we can have our own life.
Amy: If you have a team of 100-200 people, then letting them work is the best choice. If you take a month off, you will burn more money. Long live DLC, only it can fill in the gaps in personnel leave.
We talked about age before. The advantage of your age is that you will realize that "I have a longer road in the future than before." You may not think it is, but...
Sean: does not, I feel more like "How many roads are there in this direction? What if I chose the other direction?" I have been playing games since 2005.
Amy: But how much of your life do you want to keep? Alas, I will talk about this to you like a repeater.
Shawn: "Let's go back!"
Amy: "Stop doing it! Go back! Don't waste your next 20 years!" I can always mumble in your ear.
Shawn: Haha Yes.
"Underworld 4"
Amy: I have made about 15 games in the past 28 years, but not all games have been successfully released. Now I'll look at this again, "Well, a game will take 3 years, 4 years or even 5 years to do it. I'm 53 years old this year. How many chances do I have to hit the ball?" If you are me, you won't want to waste any opportunity.
I haven't released a single game since 2011, which is so tormenting. It took me 2 and a half years to do Uncharted 4 (translator's note: Later, Amy left Naughty Dog, and it is said that the development progress of Uncharted 4 has been backed by 6 months), and now it has spent another 3 and a half years to do this Star Wars game. It’s gratifying that a lot of my work comes in handy in Uncharted 4, and I can see results in Star Wars later.
But you still feel: "Wait, 6 years have passed, but you didn't do anything? In your gun chamber - I changed the metaphor again - how many bullets are there?" I don't know if I made the right choice.
Shawn: When we were doing "The Fire Watcher", we really wanted to prove something. If this game is smashed, we will slap in the face: "Hey, you can't do anything without the "The Walking Dead" IP. It's so embarrassing, nothing can be achieved." I just want to prove that I can do it.
Amy: If you really make a fuss, you should imagine that you returned to the moment when you first decided to start a business, and then ask yourself: "Now do you know what will happen? How do you choose if you give you another chance?" If you don't regret it because you don't want to miss those wonderful things, the people you meet and the things you learned, you will feel much better.
But I have also talked to some young colleagues, and I think they are more afraid of setbacks than I did back then. But they would say to me, "It doesn't matter you, you have made "Underworld"."
But the problem is that this was not the case back then. 10 years ago, "Underworld" was not easy to sell, and it was difficult to develop that game. In that era, people didn't pay much attention to the subtle emotional changes in games.
Finally, talk about live streaming and the future of the game industry
Shawn: What do you think of your next destination? What will you be excited about and what will you fear?
Amy: I have been doing the same type of games almost all these years, which is my comfort zone. Although 3A is not as easy to sell as before, it does not mean that it cannot be sold.
I'm curious about how it feels to do things in a studio with 15-20 people, not more than 200 people. This difference is too big. What does this feeling look like? How will you adjust your requirements for the level of art realism? Will you make smaller and more focused works like Hell Blade?
I am also curious about what will happen next in the game industry. In the past, there were only Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo in this industry. Now, giants with strong capital such as Netflix and Amazon have also joined in. The competition in this industry will become increasingly fierce.
There is also a kind of collision that is very interesting: the collision between linear traditional media and interactive media. Now many products no longer need gamepads with more than 15 buttons. We have talked about this issue for many years.
We are facing many casual players, even some users who have never played the game. Can we create an interactive experience with a lower threshold for them? This is a very commercially valuable question.
Shawn: Some people don’t play games, but they will watch relatives and friends play "Watching Fire Man" - this feeling is good. We will also think now: "How does users feel when watching others play this game?", "How does it feel to watch live broadcasts on Twitch?" This kind of thinking has even affected our UI design.
There are some unnecessary dialogue options in "Watching Fire Man" that will be highlighted. We originally wanted to use the A, B, X, and Y keys on the controller to directly select them. But if you do this, the bystanders will not see the player's thinking process: "Which should I choose?"
Amy: I have never thought about it.
Shawn: All our designs have considered this element.
Amy: Sometimes I feel that I am outdated, and now I have to consider so many things that did not exist before. There was no Twitch or YouTube anchor before. We just made a game on our own and then took it to a physical store to sell it. Finally, we knew if it could be sold.
Until now, I have not fully understood the "game live broadcast". I always have a feeling: many people don’t want to play the games we make at all, but they like to watch others play. But if we just do a TV show "Watching Fire Man" and remove all the interactions, the game still cannot be sold - because everyone will not see the performance of the players. Maybe everyone is watching sports events and reality shows for this kind of experience? I don't know what this trend will look like in the future.
Shawn: The same thing is: What will happen when a group discovers something new? For example, in a live broadcast room of 100 people, the anchor found an interesting detail in "Watching the Fire Man", and the audience would be excited together, as if everyone had discovered something together. People like this feeling.
Amy: But we originally hoped these people would buy the game. This "stories-driven linear experience" was originally worth $60, but now many people only watch others play and don't buy them at all.
Shawn: I don't agree. The user base of live broadcasts is very large, so it will not affect the sales of the game. We previously gave 3,500-4,500 copies of "The Fire Watcher" to the anchor for free. Games are always live streaming, 10 people here and 10 people there, and together they mean millions of potential consumers.We need to let more people discover the fun of our game.
In the entire business process, "let others know your game" is more difficult than developing games, transporting games and modifying bugs. If there is no live broadcast, I can only post one Twitter word by word: "Hello friends, I spent 2 years making a game called "Watching Fire Man". You can buy one to try it." My Twitter only has 25,000 followers, and people will never take the initiative to respond: "What kind of game is it? Why is it so great!"... We are still optimistic about live broadcast.
"The Fire Watcher"
Amy: On this issue, there may be some differences between mainstream 3A works and independent games. If you spend millions of dollars to make a narrative-based game, and players buy it mainly to pass the level and watch the plot, then if everyone can experience the plot by watching the live broadcast, who is willing to buy the game?
Shawn: is right, but if that is the case, everyone can clearly steal things, why do they still have to buy things? Besides, our arguments are not supported by data. If the publisher really thinks that live streaming is not good and the game cannot be sold, then they can also make games like Overwatch. Go quickly, go quickly, this is a very promising market. We are happy if you go, because there is one less competitor in "Watching the Fire Man".
Amy: Let’s talk about another hot topic. Should the game become the medium for players to create their own stories? Should we develop a narrative simulation system instead of telling a fixed story? There have been similar discussions in the industry recently.
Shawn: This is why I don't want to do distribution. For publishers, I think you're very right, because publishers definitely want every game to be a big hit. But I am still optimistic about the overall industry. Just look at IGF’s award-winning works this year.
For most players - maybe you would call them PlayStation VIPs? They will buy 8-14 $60 games a year, and buy at least 3 DLCs for each game, and play 1-2 "Tututu" online games at the same time. For them, "World in the Painting" is definitely not their dish, and "World in the Painting" does not need to win their love.
How did I spend a long period of my life? When I got home from get off work in the evening, I turned on Xbox 360, played "Gears of War" with my friends, went to bed when I was tired, and got up the next day and went to do that shit-like job. This is a very beautiful memory in my life.
But I was also in pain at the time because after a boring day it was the only happy time full of temptation. When I came home during that time, I was definitely not thinking about "Which creative independent new work should I play?"
"Gears of War: Judgment"
My focus is that the game market is now particularly healthy. Many people don’t care whether the things they play are a game or what they play themselves. Bennet Fordy also made a game where the protagonist lives in the pot and holds an axe.
Amy: I am crazy about that game and don’t know what disease I have...
Sean: And Bennett Fordy might even say, “Hey, I’ve made a lot of money!”
Amy: That’s right.
Amy: This is the weirdest thing I have ever played.
Shawn: After all the time, I think the current situation in the game industry is very good. I can’t make my game in 2018, so you can come to talk to me again in 2019.
This article is compiled from Polygon's article "The minds behind Uncharted and Firewatch talk candidly about surviving in the games industry"
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