Spyborgs Preview

VideoGamer.com: There's a feeling that Japanese development is lagging behind Western development. Is Spyborgs part of Capcom's overarching strategy of creating games that are more likely to appeal to Westerners?

DA: We hear that around the office all the time. Make games that will go global. That is Capcom Japan, I'm not sure if they're making a statement on Japanese development as much as they're recognising the fact that to grow the company bigger hits need to appeal to everyone, not just one culture. I believe that really is why you saw Dead Rising and Lost Planet come out of Japan. I can't speak for them, but something like Onimusha, we haven't seen that lately, probably because that isn't as easily made global as a Lost Planet or a Dead Rising. I'm guessing that because it makes sense, they put their energy towards those brands. Not that they've given up on Onimusha, or anything like that, because actually Devil May Cry is probably a little less global than Lost Planet is, and we still came out with one recently. That is very much part of the strategy.

As far as working with Western developers, our group in San Francisco, we are Western developers. We are a publishing, production team that is almost exclusively ex-internal developers. I used to run internal projects, my boss used to run internal projects. Morgan (W. Gray), who's on Dark Void, he was last on running the Tomb Raider projects internally, so we all have actual development experience. While Capcom Japan has the internal development teams, and they get to use MT Framework and hopefully one day we do to, we are exclusively an external development team. So I work with Bionic Games in LA. Morgan works with Airtight up in Seattle. Our goal is to try and build a family of Western developers that we oversee that can help grow Capcom. Capcom Japan, they are obviously making games themselves to go global, but they do look to us to try and bring in more of that Western development style and mentality and talent to produce additional games that can meet those goals. You've seen Super Street Fighter 2 HD Remix, now you've seen Marvel VS Capcom 2, they're leaning on us a little bit to revive some of their older brands. But also where we do a new IP it's to meet that same goal.

I guess to us it would be natural, right? Because we are Western, we have a better sense of how to make games for Americans and Europeans than they might. Whereas we don't know how to make games for the Japanese market. I can say Spyborgs seems to be appealing from what I'm hearing, a little bit more to the Japanese. I hope that's true, I heard a rumour about that! It doesn't surprise me because Ratchet & Clank appealed to them and worked in that market. I can say that we've done nothing specifically for the Japanese market to make it appealing to them, I just think that naturally what these guys do with their art style and gameplay style, it has that Pixar quality. Everyone enjoys it. That would be my guess.

VideoGamer.com: The Wii is an interesting platform. Whenever a hardcore third-party game comes out for it it seems to struggle in terms of sales. How much of a risk is Spyborgs? How do you appeal to both hardcore gamers and typical Wii owners?

DA: To answer your first question about the risk, you guys wouldn't be asking me if it wasn't an obvious risk. The numbers say it's a little more challenging to, as a third-party, break out and have a hit on the Wii. That's a given. I guess you could say I'm not surprised that recent mature-rated games on the Nintendo platforms, of which I can think of two, I'm not going to name them because I don't want to be offensive to anyone... it's disappointing that they didn't succeed, but I don't think anyone expected them to. At least for the Wii, based on the market data, you can look on the games that sell for the Wii, there's nothing anywhere close to mature-rated content that sells well. You could sit back and hope a hardcore game would release for the Wii and succeed and blaze that trail...

VideoGamer.com: Hardcore doesn't necessarily mean mature, right?

DA: Correct. There is a difference between core game and mature content. That to me is the biggest distinction for where we're headed with the Wii. Nintendo, not every one of their game games, I'm not talking about Wii Sports, that's really a mini-game compilation, those succeed on the Wii so let's push those aside. Mario, Zelda, those are games. Wario wasn't the huge success that maybe they hoped. Not everything Nintendo first-party puts out, like Wii Music wasn't a huge success. So just because the Nintendo first-party label's on it does not guarantee millions of units sold. A quality game that's appealing to that audience - so at its core, getting back to the Pixar quality - Mario and Zelda have that. They have that Disney feel to them, which is there's an art style that is not offensive to anyone. It may feel a little younger but it most definitely doesn't alienate anyone. Taking those same elements is where our art style is coming from. It's a little younger. It's not the for kids thing it was a year ago. The original Spyborgs was designed to be for the younger gamer. The latest version is designed to be appealing to all audiences. And then there's the accessibility of the gameplay. Something like Zack & Wiki was younger and appealing but was a little too challenging, almost from the get-go. That is, for us, another reason why the development team we have is perfect, because their success with Ratchet & Clank, everyone of all styles can get into them. It's fun to just go around the level bashing crates. Anyone can do that. There's no challenge, the crate's not jumping up and attacking you, you're not threatened. It's fun to use the Wii Motion pointer and explore, find stuff and pull it into the word or trigger something. The game interacts with a very simple motion. Frankly you can button mash and enough things happen. You're not going to get high end combos, you're not going to get a bunch of experience, you're not going to be able to upgrade your character as fast, but you could just go around button mashing and have some fun and success.

In addition to that these guys also have experience with successfully building systems that tune themselves while you're playing. Spyborgs already has under the hood a system that will recognise that you're a skilled gamer and make it a little harder, a little more challenging. Not just to slow you down but to make sure it doesn't feel too easy, so you don't get bored, you're challenged. Similarly it'll track if you're having a difficult time, it can tell you're a button masher, you're not making combos, you're not blocking, you're not using finishing moves, OK, we still want you to have fun so let's tone it down a little bit and allow you to get through that experience. Kind of like if say a movie popped up and it was speaking in French and it could tell that you don't understand that language, it might switch to English. So that appealing art style doesn't alienate anyone, everyone can enjoy looking at it, the accessibility of the game so you can get into it, immediately have fun and it tunes itself so that regardless of the play style you have fun.

Take a fighting game, the super moves and the combos are extremely skilled, multiple input type moves. For ours it's a simple motion. As you gain experience you can recognise combo of heroes versus enemy is going to be this attack style, it's going to be this sequence of movements, but the idea of all you need to do is thrust, all you do is slam, that's much simpler and much more accessible than, I need to press down, down forward, these three buttons, hold back, charge, we don't need that. So even our special attacks are a little more accessible for anyone to come in to play. It's really important that our HUD prompts for motion are very easily readable, that you know what you're supposed to do by watching that icon on the screen. I'm confident that we've achieved that, pretty much within the last week really because we were iterating on it so many times to get ready for this event. So now we need to get all the various motions in. We need to get it presented better so it's a little more stylish, but now at least the language of it communicating with you is clear.

So hitting all of those goals means we absolutely believe that this is the kind of game, not just because it's a good game but because it's a good game that meets that criteria, that can actually work on the Wii. There are real gamers on the Wii, they just need a game built for them. Like anyone, you spend money on that hardware and that hardware has specific features, you want the software for it to validate your purchase. The Wii gamer, especially a gamer, has expectations of, I want motion controls and I want it to be cool. That's why I bought this system. I didn't buy this system just so I could hold something that looks like a TV remote. I bought this system to have a different style of gameplay. We're making sure to deliver that as well.