But, as we learned when we sat down with Spector to discuss Epic Mickey, his 'playstyle matters’ ethos - a two-word summary of the choice and consequence theme that runs through his games - is genre, and branding, agnostic. Despite outward appearances, this game shares many of its ambitions with the more mature titles with which he made his name.
We cover how offering choice is the most mainstream way to design a game and why a developer previously focused on the hardcore PC market is more than comfortable handling Mickey Mouse, and the shrinking ambitions of modern game design.
Do you think you could have created this game without Mickey Mouse and Disney?
Sure, but I wouldn’t have, because so much of what this game is came out of the Disney inspiration. A game that involves adding and removing geometry to the world is something I’ve been thinking about a for a while and one of my senior programmers and producers and I have been talking about a game that has a more dynamic environment for years - this was a great opportunity.
One of the great challenges for videogames is that we have to stop building movie sets and start building worlds. Back in the old days, Origin’s motto was ‘We create worlds’. Somewhere along the line we lost that, and started building movie sets. And so for years I’ve been looking for an excuse to build a world that’s more dynamic. But it would have been a radically different game without Mickey as its beating creative heart.
How did you find working on something for a much broader audience?
I’ve always had this theory – no publisher has ever bought this theory by the way – that the whole ‘playstyle matters’ idea is the most mainstream approach to game design on the planet. How can it be more mainstream to insist that players have the skill to solve the puzzle the way the designer intended, or have the skill to defeat the thing by shooting it 10,000 times while its back is turned and its right foot is up, rather than just saying, "Hey, solve this problem the way you want, player!"
Everybody thinks that’s a gamer's idea but I think that’s a mass-market idea. That core philosophy that people expect and appreciate in the work I’ve done translates directly to something like Epic Mickey. I could make a playstyle matters game about lampreys latching on to sharks, I could do it about anything!
One challenge is that I’ve had to find a skill level that gamers of all ages can deal with, and also, I’ve never worked on a platform game before, though I’ve worked on one optionally third person game, Thief: Deadly Shadows which was fundamentally a first person game. So, "How do I do the camera, how do I balance our animation and player control?" That’s hard. But if Deus Ex fans don’t give this a chance, shame on them. Because it’s Mickey Mouse? Give me a break. The gameplay they know they love will be there. And I hope the gameplay and this character will make the game equally appealing to people who’ve never heard of JC Denton.
Can you describe the mechanics of the game?
There are three types of locations - quest maps, travel maps, and action maps. I started this project wanting to merge the best of adventure games, such as Zelda, platform games, such as Mario, and my own games, such as Deus Ex.
The quest map is where you talk to people, learn about quests and get clues about how to solve them. You also learn about optional quests that can be carried out in the action segments. The action map is a place where you go and actually use what you have learned - its all action all the time, and you expect to encounter enemies, and maybe even some friends.
In addition to paint and thinners, we have a secondary mechanic. I think every game needs at least two mechanics, a core and a secondary, to provide enough variety for players - especially an RPG. You can find these sketches which you can make real in the world, and they all have multiple uses. They’re like the tools in the Zelda games – in a Zelda game you basically use the tools for one purpose in the places the designers tell you to use them. You can use our tools anywhere.
The game is tracking when you erase stuff, and over time that’s going to change Mickey and the way characters react to you. There are also these little blue guys – we call them guardians. How you play determines what kind of guardian you attract.
So that relates to whether you do good things or bad things?
There’s no good or bad in the game. There’s solving problems in the most direct manner - which is often erasing things, using thinner, erasing characters because it’s quick and easy, concentrating on the main quest and not always helping people out. If you play that efficient way, then you attract a certain kind of guardian, who actually makes you better at erasing things. The guardians support your playstyle, and they’re an on screen representation of the kind of hero that Mickey is.
For instance, at one point you come across a machine which is turning pirates into robots. You can wreck the machine with thinner, or repair it with paint, and that affects the outcome in the quest map, Adventureland. It affects who’s there, how they feel about you, the prices of items in shops, and so on.