All Points Bulletin Preview

VideoGamer.com: You say technically not in terms of hardware limitations but in terms of budget and manpower?

DJ: Manpower and skills. We talk about APB – technology wise there's a hell of a lot we're having to do that people don't see. People love APB a), for its great character customisation system. I look at that and think, yeah we've pushed the envelope with that. We've pushed the envelope with that in terms of character customisation in a single-player game, but what people don't realise, not only do we have to deliver this amazing character customisation system, we also have to make it so that we can transmit it over the web in real time with 100 players. That introduces a whole new technical risk to the project. Instead it's a problem you've got to overcome, than if you were just doing it locally on your PC and you don't care about how much memory it takes to store that customisation. There are always a hundred strong technical challenges you have to overcome in any game design, in any forward thinking game design, that people tend to forget about. That's where your project can really fall down – great idea, poor execution. You've heard it before, you know?

VideoGamer.com: So there are a lot of great ideas out there?

DJ: To be honest, everybody has great ideas. That's actually not the hardest part.

VideoGamer.com: You'd think it would be, wouldn't you?

DJ: Well you'd think it would be. I don't think it is, actually. Every developer, they always have a great idea for games, that's what you have to do. But at the end of the day you still have to deliver upon those, and that's still a tough tough challenge in our industry.

VideoGamer.com: What developer do you most admire not in terms of ideas, but the execution you're talking about?

DJ: Guys like Epic. When you look at everything that's in Gears of War you think, yeah okay, you could see somebody coming up with that design, but you then have to execute upon it perfectly. I study games - it's a great way to learn - but just the movement in Gears of War is actually very very slow. Now, what would have happened with most developers is, that's probably what the game would have been criticised for, because they would not have managed to make the game setting and the controls and the animation and the cover system, they probably would have not managed to work with that issue and make it an integral part of the game so it feels like that's the way the game is designed. Slow character movement, a lot of the time, you think about first-person games like Quake, characters move really really fast because people want it to feel responsive and intuitive. In Gears of War I was quite amazed how slow their characters are, but nobody ever picked up on it. I think that's the sign of a great developer versus somebody else who can't decide what to do with the speed, they probably would have made a poor game.

VideoGamer.com: Transporting that to APB then, how have you decided how fast characters move in the game?

DJ: It impacts on things like, we have this great visual customisation system and the characters look great. When you're walking through the world, you want to look at a player and think, damn that guy looks cool. But you want to walk at a normal pace because you could be walking with your friends down the street in symmetry. Whereas if you're walking at what gamers want in terms of speed, which is probably more like 15 miles an hour, it breaks the illusion of real people and therefore these cool customised characters that are meant to be walking down the street in this cool way, that's a different speed from if you want to play combat. You let your combat feel like you're moving through treacle... and actually at true walking speeds combat is really really slow. So then it's like, well what do you do? Do you give game players what they want in terms of action, or do you want people saying, when I look at this world it's not a real world because everybody's walking around at these crazy speeds. That's the kind of thing you have to balance really really well. What's more important? Really they're both as important as each other.

VideoGamer.com: In your role now, do you have much opportunity to impact directly on game design, or are you more caught up in the business side of things?

DJ: No it's definitely not business. We've just hired a CEO as the company got to the stage where it's getting bigger and we're getting closer to launch. I retained the creative director title. To me that's still the most important part of the company – creatively delivering great great titles. My job really is to set a creative vision for the product, to give the team as much freedom – it's a huge team these days. APB's over a hundred people. Everybody needs ownership in what they're doing, but at the same time I have what we call the pillars of the game. I don't mind trying things out underneath the pillars, but the game has to have pillars and absolutely everybody understands what they are, and that's exactly what we're working to. How underneath we have some movement in how those pillars are achieved, that's where we get some creative freedom for the teams and the individuals involved.

VideoGamer.com: Do you find that you have to put your foot down when people stray off beyond those pillars often?

DJ: Yes, but not very often, because if we have to do that we've failed and not everybody's marching in the same direction. Most of the time that's not really an issue. That's more of an issue in the early days of the project, when everybody's discussing about which direction we want to take this one particular part of the game in. And then of course there are always parts of the game you design and think are going to work, but when you try them out it's like well... It's very hard to design on paper. It’s very hard to design in your head – a lot of the stuff is very, very tactile – let's try it out and see how it feels.