X-Men Origins: Wolverine Interview

We tend to take games for granted. We enjoy and care only for the end result – the game itself. Rarely do we consider the blood, sweat and tears that go into making a disc packed full of of electronic entertainment. Here, in the second part of our interview with X-Men Origins: Wolverine senior producer Jeff Poffenbarger (first part is here), he dishes the dirt on life at developer Raven Software, and what it takes to make the Wolverine game we’ve always wanted.

VideoGamer.com: Gamers love God of War. Do you think that when they play Wolverine they will be surprised because they will compare it to what they’re used to with movie games, or will it be compared with God of War 1 and 2?

JP: I certainly think that people’s expectations, and I’m confident even your expectations before you walked in here, are like, oh this is crap, it’s a movie game, I know, I’ve been burned by this before. So it’s really going to take people playing it and people downloading the demo, word of mouth kind of stuff, getting the word out there that the game is not complete crap, and it’s not like your normal movie based game. That’s certainly a hurdle. I’d love if reviewers give comparisons to God of War. That’s how we want to be compared to games. Not just God of War but Ninja Gaiden, to all these great action adventure games. That’s the kind of conversation we want to be in. We don’t want to be in this movie suck, movie good conversation because personally I think the game transcends that. It can stand on its own. Obviously a partnership with Fox and using the likeness of Hugh Jackman and his voice, that’s a huge win for us because that opens the door to a lot of people that maybe would not have bought the game. But the important thing for us is making a really really good game. As far as how that’s packaged and wrapped, probably not so much important to us.

VideoGamer.com: Is Wolverine as good as God of War?

JP: It’s hard to even make the comparison because it’s been a long time since I’ve played a God of War. It’s like saying is WoW better than EverQuest, or is EverQuest better than WoW? One of my first gaming experiences ever was playing EverQuest, and we got on a boat and went to an island, it was one of the most nerve racking experiences I’ve ever had in a video game. Now, after a while I started to get over it and I played WoW and I was like, wow this is great. But I never duplicated the experience I had when I played EverQuest, because EverQuest was the first one. So I’m not going to compare these two, but I know an experience like God of War 1, that’s going to be a hard thing to ever duplicate, because it’s just the first time you see something, and that’s just innovation. The first time you see and play something and it creates these emotions in you. The next time you see that same thing it’s not going to have the same emotional impact.

VideoGamer.com: Are you planning to do a demo?

JP: Yeah, right when we release. Demo’s coming out of that level that you played (check out the hands-on preview here). It’s going to come out at the same time as the game’s released.

VideoGamer.com: It’s a single-player only game. Was there any pressure to do any multiplayer?

JP: For us it was concentrating on the single-player experience. Once you start adding things into multiplayer and you’re on a two years and four months schedule, that’s not enough time to get both right. That’s the way we felt about it. Now we feel like we have the single-player experience right, if we were privileged enough to work on a sequel for this that would be on the top of our list of the things that we need to add to the game.

VideoGamer.com: Part of what makes playing as Wolverine great is the knowledge that you are Wolverine, and there is only one Wolverine.

JP: Totally. Well you wouldn’t be two Wolverines. It would be you and Deadpool or something like that. I’m not giving away any features, this is not happening right now, but it would be Sabretooth or Deadpool or something.

VideoGamer.com: Are you looking at doing DLC?

JP: I’m not at liberty to discuss what the plans are but there will be something.

VideoGamer.com: What’s the current set up at Raven Software?

JP: We’re a three team studio right now. Only one of the teams does Marvel related content. Singularity is one of the teams. Wolfenstein is the other one.

VideoGamer.com: Wolverine is wrapping up fairly soon…

JP: Oh yeah, we have two weeks and it’s done.

VideoGamer.com: After launch what are you looking forward to doing?

JP: Taking some time off! Not working 14-hour days every day of the week…

VideoGamer.com: Really?

JP: Yeah, for the last two months maybe.

VideoGamer.com: Wow. You must be tired.

JP: I am tired. No but I love it! If you work in any other studio it’s like that every day of the week, all year round. We’re really behind people not doing it so much. It just so happens that a lot of people in the Madison, Wisconsin area, a lot of the people I work with, are married. And when they’re married and with kids, they gotta leave work at 5.30pm. I’m not married and I don’t have kids, so I’m usually the guy stuck holding the door. I feel guilty if I just went out and had fun, so I just stick around.

VideoGamer.com: What’s a typical day like for you at work?

JP: My title is senior producer. A typical day right now is coming into work, seeing what issues the QA team has entered into the dev track, making sure that those issues are out on the floor, making sure everyone’s aware of what our time lines are for our next build, in some cases making decisions on what is going to be in the next build and what’s not going to be, or what’s going to be fixed, what’s not going to be fixed. Working with other departments within Raven itself, talking to Activision, marketing, brand and PR departments and making sure they’re getting everything they need. Whether it’s asset requests they’ve made or blogs they need for a website, or screenshots they need, getting all that stuff. Then working with the Activision PMG (Production Management Team) to make sure that our goals are in line with what Activision’s are and we’re all on the same page of when the game is going to be done and when it’s releasing. So you wear a lot of different hats. That’s at the end of production. At the beginning of production it’s to do with scheduling. It’s, here’s where we are going to be in six months. There’s a little bit of creative decisions, sitting in initial meetings talking about the character and saying I want to see this, I don’t want to see that. It’s all over the place. It’s a jack of all trades kind of job. I don’t actually produce anything! I don’t produce artwork for that move in the game.

VideoGamer.com: But the game as a whole though…

JP: Yeah. I’m the only producer there on the game. I feel like I feel a lot of good roles! I don’t question my role on the team! But it’s the one position in video game development where everyone’s like, producers are usually the hated, oh that guy’s coming from corporate, he’s going to come here and tell me how to make my game, but I know better! We just totally don’t have that attitude. Activision isn’t like our adversary. Activision is our partner. They have as much of a hand in this game as we do. The producers there are some of the best friends that I have. It’s awesome to get to work with them on this game. I know how it feels for them because I worked there for 10 years, to be working on a game that doesn’t suck and be able to show it to people and be like, yes it’s my game! Check it out! And people get stoked about it. It’s a good feeling.

VideoGamer.com: Despite the long hours, making games still must be a brilliant thing to be doing.

JP: You kind of fall into it. I was very fortunate to meet a couple of people that got me started. I remember my first day at Activision, October 1 1998, I walked in the door and it’s me, this girl and two other dudes. So it’s just the four of us, and they’re like, you two go work on Heretic 2, which was a Raven game at the time, and they point to me and they say, you’re working on Teen Digital Diva. This was a PC game where you got to put make-up on girls and you got to see music videos before they were out anywhere. I remember booting it up for the first time and I’m sitting there and I’m looking around, this is a crazy job, I’m getting paid X amount of dollars, which was nothing, to play this game. I’d left my job as an accountant. So I’m sitting there and I click on this video and there’s this girl in a schoolgirl outfit. I turn to the guy next to me and I’m like, dude, who is this girl? He’s like, that’s Britney Spears, man. I had no idea who this is. A month later she was removed from the game and she became huge. They didn’t want her associated with this game, her PR people took over and said, no, Britney’s going to be really big so we’re going to put her aside. So I was listening to that One More Time song way before anyone else, sitting there staring at this, you know… jail bait.

Anyway, I think on the fourth day at work I was seeing people rolling BMWs, there’s this whole upstairs part of Activision, I’m like man, you can really make a job of this. You can actually make a living. I’ve only ever worked at Activision. Due to a lot of fortunate circumstances I was able to hold on. I got to work with a lot of really great people. I moved upstairs from QA in 2000, right when the Console department started, right when Tony Hawk got released. Now the Console department is absolutely huge and responsible for most of the revenue at Activision. But I got to be there right when it started. That was great, and a lot of great people who helped me along the way, picked me up when I fell, took care of me and said nice things about me. It’s been a great ride. At the end of the day, I can go to a store, I can go to a website, the important thing for me is going to a store, because when I was a kid I used to buy games at EB, and seeing a game I worked on, and be like, I worked on that. There are a lot of hours, and certainly a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of waking up in the middle of the night and thinking you forgot something, because once a game is done it’s done. I can’t go take them off the store shelf and redo a certain part that I messed up, spell someone’s name right. It’s games, man, at the end of the day, and when you have something like this you can show to people, and they’re like, man I didn’t expect anything from this game. People aren’t sitting here going this is the next Sims or something, but just a lot of really great feedback from people, and that makes it all worth it. You can point to that and be like there is actual physical representation of how I spent the last two years of my life, it’s on the store shelf, and there’s somebody in Dallas who wrote something really cool about it. That’s cool.

VideoGamer.com: You worked for Activision but you now work for Raven, right?

JP: I worked for Activision till November 2006 then I transferred to Raven. Raven’s owned by Activision. I work for Raven.

VideoGamer.com: To wrap up, what message have you got for gamers who are debating whether to pick up the game?

JP: To me on the gaming side of it, it’s like, finally. Finally a Wolverine game done right. You can make as many promises as you want, gamers, especially hardcore gamers are a very cynical bunch, I can tell people that this game is awesome, but you know what? Just look at the track record that Raven has. Look at this team, the last three games they’ve worked on are all at least critically acclaimed and I know consumers loved them, as far as the numbers came back. This team knows how to make a good game, they don’t know how to make a bad game. I dare anyone to go look at Raven’s website and look at every game that came out of Raven, go through each one and go look at Gamerankings.com or Metacritic, those games are all in the 80s. Every one of them. Maybe one is a 79 or something. Raven doesn’t make bad games. So you have a developer that you trust and they have a game coming out and they’re saying that it’s good… I would personally be like, all right I think that I believe you.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is due out on Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii, Nintendo DS, PS2 and PSP on May 1 2009 in the US. A UK release date is expected some time in May.