Despite the rough economic times, we should not stop innovating, says Lars Gustavsson, creative director at EA-owned Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment (DICE). You need to work with it wisely.
But innovation, says Gustavsson, isn't an answer in itself. "We look to innovation as the savior of everything, but we should be looking for fun," he says. The two approaches are not contradictions. It is possible to have both good execution and innovation. DICE, he says, is not quite there yet.
After chatting briefly about DICE's history--pointing out that the only reason Battlefield 1942 shipped was that the studio was too naive to know that they shouldn't be able to make a game crammed with so many features--he turned to Mirror's Edge. The game arose under the need for the company to develop new intellectual property. As Gustavsson says, "We didn't want to put all our eggs int he Battlefield basket." DICE challenged the team to develop new ideas.
The first three prototypes the teams built were scrapped, he says. But in the end something sparked the idea of a first-person experience. The team noted that with first-person shooters, you never felt like you had control of your limbs. So the team embarked upon uncharted territory, inspired by parkour, to find out what it was possible to create a first person adventure game. Inspiration, he says, was drawn from the opening sequence of Casino Royale, Prince of Persia and Crackdown.
In order to ensure their vision was possible, the team started with pen and paper in order to storyboard all the problems with the first-person perspective. From storyboards, DICE built a technical demo. Once they realized the mechanics worked, the could hang the world around them. They decided on an athletic woman that was bound by reasonable physical limitations. Since Faith's limbs were not always visible, they relied on audio to connect players to the world--players hear the difference between running on concrete and metal, and the difference between a run and a sprint.
Mirror's Edge was a new intellectual property starring a new heroine. It was a new take on the platforming genre. And it offered a fresh art direction. While DICE actively worked to mitigate risk, Gustavsson says that in the grand scheme of Mirror's Edge, innovation trumped risk management.
Gustavsson left the audience with the message that the games industry has come to a crossroads. On the one hand there is the financial crisis that is influencing all decisions. On the other hand the videogame market is changing. People have less money and are more reluctant to buy loads of games. This, he says, is going to drive a lot of developers to seriously question whether they should take risks or play it safe: Do you dare to try something new?
The big innovations he sees in the future are more customization offerings, new business models, and data-driven development and the active tuning of the games. Battlefield Heroes allows players to create their own heroes. "It's totally different from anything we've done," he says. There are also new gameplay innovations, and it presents an interesting way of reaching a new market as a free-to-play downloadable game. The other project DICE is working on is the PC, PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade title Battlefield 1943, which offers up a smaller multiplayer experience to gamers. It's delivering a slice of a full blown multiplayer for not a lot of money. It's about finding new ways to reach the consumer and sell directly to them since they are just as important to the growth of the company and the betterment of games, he says.
"We have a lot to learn," says Gustavsson. "There are still things out there that you can't fix, but shipping a game is about making a leap of faith."