Can a game make you cry?

Up next: Neil Young, EA, heads up the LA studio (500 people, looking for more good programmers, he says!). As usual, just my notes. Neil had a lot of video to support his talk, funny clips and in-game clips, so there are gaps where it may make less immediate sense..

Can a computer game make you cry?
Why is this question important? We’re on the verge of enabling the next generation of entertainment. Broadening the appeal of the medium. If we can move people emotionally we can broaden our medium. What’s a next gen hit?

1.    It needs to be critically acclaimed
2.    It needs to be commercially successful

The measure of great art is how many people it moves. So: the anatomy of a hit: you need three things. High quality execution. 1-3 meaningful innovations. Broad audience appeal.
If you have all three, you’ve got a shot at creating a hit.

High quality execution:
This gives you a baseline of an 80 rating. Take a look at the top 60 games of the last 3 years; there are only 11 products that have ratings under 80. If you took at the top 30, there are only 4 (and three were based on big movies). Hi quality execution has become a requirement of a hit.

1-3 innovations.
Meaningful innovations that strike at the heart of gameplay. Focused innovations are the inflection point from going from an 80-rated game to a 90+. Not all imagination manifests itself as entirely new games. What about new features? Here’re some top innovative feature IP:

•    GameFace, Tiger Woods 2004. Being able to customize your character changed that product.
•    Gravity Gun, HL2
•    3D open world, GTA
•    Dual-wielding, Halo 2
•    Aspirations, Sims 2
•    …

All of these were able to change what were previously stale products.
Where’s the next gen of innovation? Today we take 80% of a ps2 or an Xbox and deploy that against rendering. 20% goes to gameplay. Customers will get bored if we give them the same games only prettier. Next gen, we think the balance is likely to be more 50-50. I’m going to show you something from PS3 in a bit. A PS3 is 20x more powerful than a PS2, so the 50% of PS3 rendering is still a ten-times improvement on the PS2. So the 50% on systems: we’re going to need SO MANY more engineers! Specialist AI! All those idling CPUs!

Audience appeal:
So hi-quality gets you to 80, and 1-3 innovations to 90. But if you want a critical and commercial hit, you need audience appeal. If all things are equal and all games were the same, a game based on starwars would be bigger than startrek would be bigger than babylon5. The bigger the audience appeal, the bigger the commercial impact. If we want to grow as an industry we need to grow audience appeal. So what’s the next generation of audience appeal?

I have three ideas that I want to share with you today.

1.    Games are bigger than movies.
2.    Decoding the narrative of the medium
3.    Hi-def performances

Games are bigger than movies: that’s ... bullshit! Maybe the combined software and hardware business is bigger than the theatrical movie business, but our products are not touching as many people as movies are. They’re not impacting culture as movies are. We’re not there yet. So how could we broaden the number of people that we touch with our IP? What can we do? We’re essentially a derivative medium today; we have to stop thinking like that! What’s the derivative media for OUR ip? Here’s the good news: stories, characters and universes are portable. You’re immersed in the universe of a film when you got to McDonalds, the toy store, when you buy the video game. So the question that we’re asking ourselves at EA is, what if?

<image of an idea being turned into a game, a movie, a book, a toy, a hat, etc. OK not literally a hat.>

Decoding the narrative of the medium. What do I mean by that. I’m not even sure I know. Here’s where we are – we are pre-Citizen Kane in our industry. We’re before the moment where we understand it all. Before the moment where we can effectively tell a story. CK was the first where the camera was an actor, where there were sfx, where relationships were complete. It’s the first example of a great film. In a film we have places. In a game we have spaces. In a film we have the protagonist and in a game we have player character. Film – antagonists. Games – NPCs. Film: story comprehension, game: mental model. Film: empathy, Game: activity.

Rather than thinking empathy VS activity, we need to think of empathy THROUGH activity.

So can a computer game make you cry? We can recognize the difference between story comprehension and narrative. The narrative is unique to each medium. Comprehension is the understanding. It’s unique to the human. How you recall a film is very similar to the way you recall events in your life. Think about great books you’ve read, and the memories you have, the pictures you’ve drawn in your head. We need to use the unique facets of our medium to deliver unique and superior story comprehension. We have images, sounds – but we ALSO have interactivity. Ico did a great job of this. GTA makes you understand that world.

Make the player a character actor! If you want a 90m movie, the audience spends about 45m with the protagonist. That actor spent MONTHS preparing to be that character. To be a compelling performance. To empathise with the plight of that character. The protagonist in TV – Jerry Seinfeld – 200 episodes, 30m each. You see Jerry for 10m per ep. That’s 2000 mins of Jerry. 33 HOURS OF JERRY. He put in a lifetime of prep to be that character. Here’s our head of publishing for EA. Frank LOVES World of Warcraft. He’s spent over 250 hours playing WoW. What is the POINT of Frank playing WoW? Because he feels like a character actor! He’s projecting himself into that environment. If we can help people understand who they are, why they are... we need to help them build empathy with the world in which they’re playing.

My last idea is to gain deep comprehension.... see 21 Grams. It's the closest I've seen a movie be to interactive narrative. It tells its entire story through non-linear narrative. Pulp Fiction too. Many characters, interacting. Seeing the world thru others helps you understand yourself.

The third idea I wanted to talk about is hi-def. Images and expectations. Does hi-def actually matter? Does sound matter to movies? But HD opens a whole can of worms. HD imagery requires HD models, which require HD performances. Have a look at this: GoldenEye Rogue Agent. Dame Judi Dench delivers a particularly wooden cgi performance in our game. You don’t need hi-fi models for hi-fi performances! I’m going to show you a bit from our Madden teaser. [old sprites with voiceovers talking]. The challenge in next gen is to deliver hi-def performances. 

1.    How they look – modeling, rendering
2.    How they move & act – correct, smooth and quality animation
3.    How they are presented – camera, tone

In Madden next gen we’re trying to capture the atmosphere of football. Now I’m going to show you two pieces, involving universal capture… and Playstation 3 capture. This is medal of honour [video, actor face-captured, then rendered in PS3. Pretty impressive.].

Next gen is about creating next gen hits. We believe that broad appeal concepts that leverage multiple media to touch millions, populated with HD chars, in HD settings with HD performances will enable us to ultimately deliver on the promise of the medium, and move you emotionally.

Thank you!

Comments

[Guy Fox]

This guy is why the Revolution will succeed.

The quotes should be self-parodying enough: "Focused innovations are the inflection point from going from an 80-rated game to a 90+."

"So how could we broaden the number of people that we touch with our IP?"

etc...

This is hilarious stuff...Exactly how I imagine EA being run, I admit my bias. The funny thing is, that last quote is almost exactly the same concept as Iwata ("We have to get the whole family to pick up the controller..."), except just by how it's used--talking about "our IP," etc--you can see that this is a guy selling a plastic disc that contains 'entertainment,' whereas Iwata has a novel vision about entertainment will naturally, spontaneously occur when people play their games.

The proof is in the products: Neil Young practically wants video games to be movies, and is speaking the guillotine-cold language of formula, whereas Iwata is trying to break through and really make them do something new. Can games make you cry? Young seems to be interested in machinations, and can only speak the dull language of passive entertainment. Though he desperately tries to hide it, and even if he truly cares about games as an art form (after reading this, let's say I'm skeptical), he just makes a huge mistake framing video game success in terms of film mechanics.

As for Iwata, he seems to say, why pursue imperfect ways of reproducing a feeling when you can just give a player the tools to actually create it in reality? Get people off of their asses, get them physically invested in the game. The emotion will follow as naturally as one feels excitement at a nibble at the fishing line, the creak of a door in a zombie-infested mansion as you push it open, or the crack of a baseball bat that you're swinging.

This guy's speech sums up pretty well why, whether you like their controller or not, Nintendo 'gets it,' and EA doesn't.

[Les]

What I find interesting is his opening question: Can a computer game make you cry? Back when EA first arrived on the scene that question was the headline used in most of their print ads (yes, I'm old enough to remember it). I like the fact that EA hasn't stopped asking the question as at times it does seem like they've gotten so big that their roots are long forgotten.

Whether Nintendo "gets it" and EA doesn't is open to debate. Iwata and Nintendo are certainly willing to try new things with both the DS and the Revolution controller, but having a better machine/philosophy doesn't necessarily guarantee you'll come out on top. One only need look at the respective market shares for Windows and Macintosh to see that. EA didn't get to be the size it is by being clueless. EA has taken some risks of their own and brought plenty of newcomers into gaming with titles such as The Sims. Give them some credit for not being completely out of touch.

[cragga]

EA havent brought newcomers into gaming with The Sims, Maxis have, the only thing EA does in house is crank out licensed sports game on a yearly basis, anything good they _publish_ is done by their slightly more creatively independent arms.

maxis IS ea. Bought a long time ago.

[Seb Potter]

The question that EA are asking about games making you cry, these days feels more like a marketing slogan rather than genuine interest in advancing the form of games.

Sure, some of their studios are doing interesting things with advancing technology, but their approach to innovation is pure formula. EA is looking at Hollywood with jealousy and that's reflected in their approach to games.

[Pag]

What's with the bloody facination with making people cry? I've never cried when looking at the Mona Lisa, looking at Rodin's Thinker, watching Hamlet, or watching Star Wars (a lot of people's favorite movie of all time). If people cry when playing a game, what have we achieved exactly? Most of IMDB's top movies of all time don't make people cry -- I suspect that the movies that make people cry are more sappy than artsy. So what is our goal here? To make sappy games?

The whole issue of making players cry is usually about how, supposedly, games don't make players feel emotions. That's ridiculous: players feel the joy of victory, the sorrow of defeat, the thrill of the hunt, the excitement of the race driver and the frustration of the defeated football player. Games make players feel a lot of emotions, they just aren't the same emotions movies make you feel. Let's stop worrying about copying the types of emotions movies create and let's focus on the types of emotions games are great at.

[Guy Fox]

"One only need look at the respective market shares for Windows and Macintosh to see that."

Not my argument. Market size is an 'is,' my argument was about rival conceptions of 'ought.'

Is/ought distinction, Philosophy 101: An 'is' or pure combinations of 'is' statements cannot logically lead directly to an 'ought.'

EA is an empire because of Madden, because of their license stable, and because of their yearly, clockwork-like release schedule. They make games for people who want to know exactly what they are getting before they even read a review.

EA's entire 'design philosophy' has always appeared outwardly like exactly what this guy has said, and that's just depressing. Why? Because it's just a succession of "is"...There is no "ought," and even when he tries to define it, it is really just a cynical-sounding calculus of how to best maximize market share.

EA doesn't have a design philosophy insofar as one must contain real, thoughtful 'ought' statements, they just have a business plan.

[Les]

'Oughts' are nice, but they don't pay the bills unless you can turn them into an 'is.' That's the point I was trying to make that you seem to have missed. The Revolution and its controller can be the best things since sliced bread, but if no one wants to play the games then the 'oughts' they represent won't make a damned bit of difference in how well the system sells regardless of how good Nintendo's design philosophy happens to be.

There's no good reason why the Gamecube shouldn't have been a bigger success than it has been. It was cheaper, arguably as or more powerful than the PS2 and Xbox. Had a large number of popular first party titles and managed to steal Resident Evil from the Playstation, which was on of the series that helped make the PS1 king of the hill. So, what happened? Too many 'oughts' and not enough 'is' it would seem.

[Jonathan]

Pfft, 21 Grams 'interactive narrative'? Tosh. It was melodramatic nonsense (with some good performances, granted) which tried to make itself 'interesting' by fragmenting the narrative haphazardly, with the result that by 2/3rds of the film you knew the entire story and just had to wait for some holes to be filled in which was really very dull. Or maybe that was just me.

[Wheltesse]

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