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Darkwatch interview with Rory Mcguire January 21, 2004 |
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Summary: You've doubtless heard of Darkwatch: Curse of the West, the recently announced first-person shooter from Guilty Gear XX makers Sammy Studios. Well, it so happens that former FiringSquad staffer Rory McGuire is working on the game as a designer and has decided to grant us an interview. We talk about how Rory became a designer, tips on getting into the industry, and of course most of the questions are about Darkwatch! Don't forget to check out our exclusive screenshots and concept art!
 About Rory | Page:: ( 1 / 6 ) |
FiringSquad: Hey Rory, a few of the newer readers might not know who you are - care to introduce yourself to them, tell us about what you did here and your new job at Sammy Studios?
Rory McGuire: I was a Contributing Editor to Firingsquad’s Games section. I covered a wide variety of games while I was there from Homeworld: Cataclysm to Hitman 2. I started writing for Firingsquad back when Dennis “Thresh” Fong still had his Red Annihillation Ferrari parked in the Gamers.com lobby. At Sammy Studios I’m an associate game designer on Darkwatch: Curse of the West working under Paul O’Connor and Chris Ulm.
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FiringSquad: You seem to have been the FS staffer most in touch with the hardcore, niche communities. What drives you to search out mods like Natural Selection or updates like Tribes 2 Classic (and Team Rabbit 2), when most people assume that CS will always rule or that Tribes 2 blew its chance at greatness?
Rory McGuire: Most people forget that CS began as a niche community as well. The concept of a military shooter at the time was limited to a small handful of games, now its almost industry standard bordering on old hat. From a general design perspective if I’d read CS on paper I would have never been interested. “When I die I sit out for five minutes and watch some guy camp the bomb, no thanks hoss.” In application its not only fun, millions of people a month think its fun. Mod makers and small developers can take gameplay risks that larger companies cannot justify to their stock holders. After CS popularized the round based system it’s now appeared in a dozen or more flagship products such as Soldier of Fortune 2 and Call of Duty. Team Rabbit 2, Natural Selection, Shattered Galaxy and a few other titles I covered really went the distance in extending their respective genres. Sammy hasn’t been risk averse compared to some of the big movers and shakers in the industry, from what I've seen. Our benefactors across the Pacific have also been very supporting of the talent behind the titles and the decisions that are made. The very fact that we are doing a vampire western, of which most players have never even heard of such a genre, implies we’re willing to take a few risks.
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FiringSquad: What were some of your other hobbies, besides playing games and writing those excellent articles here on FiringSquad?
Rory McGuire: I was always writing: fiction, non-fiction, editorials and essays; a large portion of which sat on my hard-drive and gathered digital dust. I’ve also always been big on music, doing a bit of hobbyist mixing and collecting. Since I’ve moved down to San Diego I’ve taken up surfing. I’ve consumed more than a pound of sand and several gallons of water in the process.
Discuss the interview in our console games forum!
SIDEBAR: Rory was one of our most popular contributing editors.
| How Rory got in the industry | Page:: ( 2 / 6 ) |
Rory McGuire: I found myself being overly critical of multiplayer level design and decided to put my money where my mouth was. I began just producing maps on my own, testing them with my roommates. I found I really enjoyed it and before I knew it I had picked up level building and scripting skills on most of the Q3 based games (Jedi Knight 2, Soldier of Fortune 2) as well as the Tribes games, Warcraft 3, and more. I then branched out to 3d Studio Max and a few other flagship 3d packages. It was a decent amount of work, but once you learn one 3d package its pretty easy to move into the next. All 3d packages are about building something grand from a blank space with a grid on it; once you wrap your head around that, you can move from toolset to toolset easily.
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FiringSquad: What recommendations do you have for people looking to get into the game industry like you did?
Rory McGuire: The first thing is: it’s not impossible. More and more companies are looking at their fan bases and realizing that a vast crop of talent is at their fingertips. Blizzard picked up Zileas, Valve picked up Gooseman, Irrational picked up KineticPoet to work on Tribes: Vengeance. The list goes on and on. One of the biggest technological innovators in the industry, iD, has over the years gone through a few dozen employees which began as amateur modelers, coders and level designers. For the game and level design disciplines in particular, the positions are really about expertise and knowledge of what’s fun in video games. This isn’t something that can be taught, it comes exclusively from playing a few thousand hours worth of games. Fans are perfect for such a position.
In the actual nuts and bolts of it all, I’d recommend pursuing amateur samples that you can provide companies with and learn the industry flagship toolsets for your chosen craft. Whether it is the appropriate coding language, rendering engine, 3d package or texturing tools, keep learning. When you feel you’re getting diminishing returns move on to another piece of knowledge related to your discipline. Be passionate about the craft. This really can’t be said enough. Passion is contagious and the more your eyes light up about a feature, a string of code or a model the more it rubs off on people. Finally, if you're in school, stay there. The video game industry will be here when you're done and they'll be offering you a better position as a result of your education. When you're tired of looking at polygons and textures you'll have a career elsewhere, as well.
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Discuss the interview in our console games forum!
SIDEBAR: Rory was always on the lookout for the latest mods and developments in the online community.
| Life as a developer | Page:: ( 3 / 6 ) |
Rory McGuire: I’m having a blast here, Sammy Studios has treated me extremely well. Things were pretty laid back through the holidays, but it's getting busy with the recent announcement and E3 looming in the distance. My job duties are pretty broad, I’ve designed single and multiplayer levels, mechanics, weapons, enemies, interfaces and more. Currently I’m juggling a few levels and the enemies those levels will contain.
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FiringSquad: Has working at a development house changed your perspective on games?
Rory McGuire: Absolutely. Being outside the industry and looking in is entirely different from being there. At the risk of being cliché, one of the most important elements is the aspect of the team. This is something that is mentioned all the time and applied very little. A game which has isolated art, programming and design departments shows it. When a designer has an intimate relationship with an artist working on a level, the two of them can take the map to higher levels than either one of them could individually. Both, however, must make concessions and requests along the way to get it to where the visuals match the gameplay and vice versa.
To some degree there's a myth perpetuated by game journalism that it's aloof, legendary auteurs crafting video games. This is and isn’t the case. The Sims wouldn't have been one of the best selling games of all time without Will Wright, but without the team that Will Wright was leading the game wouldn't have been a tenth as polished as it is. In this day and age there are no auteurs in the video game industry, projects are too large and too long for one man armies. In the game industry today there is very much so a case of the weakest link holding everyone back. One bug, one little annoying nuance is all it takes for a player to say "To hell with this game!" I've known players who have stopped playing games because they couldn't stand to look at the way the hero ran. Every discipline and every department has to be on point and working together to pull off a grand game.
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FiringSquad: Who are some industry veterans and leaders on Sammy's Darkwatch development team?
Rory McGuire: Sammy Studios has been very deliberate and precise in our acquisition of talent and it really shows in the caliber of our team members. We have a number of Oddworld alumni in the development of Darkwatch: Paul O’Connor, Chris Ulm, Eric Yiskis, Sean Miller, Mauricio Hoffman, Ivan Power and Farzad Varahramyan. Between the Oddworld bunch alone they’ve got a few walls worth of awards for gameplay, programming and visual design. The proof is in the pudding, as well, the wisdom, insight and skill I have seen those guys display is nothing short of extraordinary. We also have team members from EA, Rockstar, Stormfront, Origin and more.
Sammy Studios itself is led by a number of industry veterans including Emmanuel Valdez, Brian Johnson and Dave Wagner, all of whom held various leadership positions at Midway in its heyday. The company president, John Rowe, was a co-founder of Tradewest, which gamers from the old school will remember publishing Double Dragon, Ikari Warriors and Iron Man Stewart’s Super Off-Road.
Discuss the interview in our console games forum!
SIDEBAR: I thought Sammy was supposed to focus on pachinko machines?
| Darkwatch | Page:: ( 4 / 6 ) |
Rory McGuire: The leadership of Sammy Studios is big on their FPSes, spending a lot of time playing Medal of Honor and Halo. They had their heart set on making an FPS but didn't want to follow in the standard sci-fi or military footsteps. The concept of the western leapt to mind, which is a staple of American culture but has very little representation in video games. A twist was to toss in the undead, a secret order and the technology they used. Thus far we've been pretty detailed in crafting our world fiction. As a result the game has a tremendous coating of depth and personality both visually and in the story elements.
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FiringSquad: Since there is so little information available about the game right now, perhaps you'd care to fill us in on some features?
Rory McGuire: One feature which separates us from the FPS pack is the Vampire Jump. The player has both a standard jump and a Vampire Jump. The Vampire Jump sends the player flying up into the air and gives him hang-time before he gracefully touches back down again. The player can use this to quickly leap to rooftops, the tops of vehicles, or soar over the cover an enemy is using to land behind him. While the Vampire Jump sounds like a simple mechanic on paper, it really empowers the player to make use of the third dimension: imagine a rocket jump always available at your fingertips. With designers who are conscious of all the implications of the jump, we’ve made some levels that really showcase the three dimensional gameplay.
We are also still breathing the last bit of life into our horse. Already the horse has a tremendous amount of depth and style that FPS players haven't seen before. We have spent a lot of time on the horse to make it feel and look right, which is probably one of the hardest things we’ve tried on the project yet. A lot of man hours have gone into the slightest details to make sure the experience on horseback comes off seamless. Players will be able to move, shoot, jump and more from horseback, all at the same time. There is no automation, players are free to scream across the landscape, trampling down enemies on one side while shooting them on another.
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Discuss the interview in our console games forum!
SIDEBAR: Rory’s also a big Dark Age of Camelot player, about the only MMO with some really fascinating PvP tactics that I know of.
| Darkwatch features | Page:: ( 5 / 6 ) |
Rory McGuire: The days of FPSes being a PC specific genre are coming to a close. FPSes are certainly different on consoles, but games like Halo, Goldeneye and others have proven that console FPSes are close to handling all the intricacies of an FPS on the PC. It’s certainly different, the controller and system resources are two of the biggest speed bumps console FPSes hit.
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If the dev team can hit the character controls there is very little which can hold a console FPS back. No matter how impressive the game, no matter how intelligent the AI, if the character doesn’t control well a console FPS is a failure. Unfortunately, the formula for developing a great character control system on a console FPS isn’t as obvious as it is on the PC (WASD and mouse for the win.) As a result there’s far more poor console FPSes than there are great ones. The one thing that the PC has on console FPSes is technological innovation, but even those days are drawing to a close. The latest Unreal engine incarnation, Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 will all be visiting the Xbox in the next year.
In Darkwatch we've already produced a pretty slick character control system which is intuitive and functional. We will continue to revise and analyze our controls, but we're confident we can pull it off. Pushing the edges of technology is always an issue, but our programming and engine departments have a spearhead of talent leading the way and we've already made several leaps in technology that most FPSes on the PC cannot claim.
I don't feel the FPS is doomed on the PC by any means, but in a few years I'm sure the FPS genre will look closer to the RPG genre with each platform cultivating its own styles and franchises.
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FiringSquad: According to the news post on GameSpot, Darkwatch will feature non-linear missions. Could you elaborate how this will work, and how the player will progress through the game?
Rory McGuire: On Darkwatch we've controlled the open ended variables a bit by having the opening be more controlled. We realized that at the beginning of a game is when players are most likely to be overwhelmed by open ended elements, it also allows us to expound on story elements in ways that non-linear gameplay wouldn’t allow us to do. In the mid-part of the game, when the player is familiar with mechanics like the horse, weapons and systems of the game: then we open things up and offer non-linear gameplay. In the last act of the game, we rein it all in again for a rollercoaster ride of a climactic close.
Discuss the interview in our console games forum!
SIDEBAR: Sammy Studios is also responsible for Guilty Gear XX… sweet, sweet 2D fighting game. It’s like the VF4: Evo of 2D fighters.
| Darkwatch story and multiplayer | Page:: ( 6 / 6 ) |
Rory McGuire: Jericho Cross is a train robber turned vengeful anti-hero after attempting to a train being used by the Darkwatch, an ancient order protecting humanity. The Darkwatch agents are slaughtered en masse when Jericho sets the cargo of the train free: the vampire lord of the dead. After being bitten, Jericho narrowly escapes the vampire and re-unites with the Darkwatch to hunt the powerful monster down. It's through the Darkwatch that Jericho acquires the powerful weapons he needs to hunt down and kill the creature that made him a vampire. With fangs in his mouth and the advanced weapons of the Darkwatch at his side, Jericho will weave his way through an undead smothered Wild West on the trail of the vampire lord.
A lot of the details of the storyline are being kept under wraps, but storyline is tremendously important to us and our audience. We have a number of twists and turns planned which will be executed by team members with literary, comic and cinematic backgrounds. We have premised the story with a caveat, however: gameplay is king. If a designer conceives a mechanic or game dynamic which is tremendously fun but interferes with our fiction, we revise the fiction. Players are playing a game, they are not readers reading a book. Story serves the purpose of accentuating and elevating gameplay, not putting it in a strangle hold.
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FiringSquad: What kind of gameplay can we expect from Darkwatch - run and gun, or more stealth-oriented?
Rory McGuire: Darkwatch: Curse of the West is big on action. A number of our mechanics are designed around the player dodging and moving through intelligent enemies. Our vampire abilities and Darkwatch weapons empower the player to wade hip deep into the undead and emerge covered in gore and howling in victory.
It's certainly not mindless action, already our enemies are running for cover when shot, ducking behind boxes when they have to reload and more. All this and we still have several months to go. In the coming months our AI is specced out and on track to do some pretty impressive things.
We have also mixed up the gameplay significantly, the player will move and fight on horseback, control vehicles and utilize extreme distance weapons like sniper rifles.
FiringSquad: I hear we can expect multiplayer. Will it be co-operative or competitive? What kind of modes can we expect?
Rory McGuire: Multiplayer is exclusively competitive. Though I can't discuss the details of our gameplay types: we will offer several team based and free for all styles. Due to a number of our mechanics (our vampire jump, particularly) we are able to design maps which simply haven't been done before or play entirely differently than in other FPSes. A simple western town becomes a furball as players soar from rooftop to rooftop exchanging gunfire with those below.
Multiplayer means a lot to the staff, just about everyone indulges in the latest FPS du jour. The staff members regularly play Halo, Call of Duty, Quake, Enemy Territory, Battlefield 1942, Unreal Tournament 2003/Championship, Rainbow Six, Counter-Strike and a number of different multiplayer FPSes. Development of Darkwatch actually began with multiplayer: we had players lanned up fragging each other long before we had any AI to speak of.
Discuss the interview in our console games forum!
SIDEBAR: Rory also introduced me to Shattered Galaxy, one of the funnest MMOs ever.