Deus Ex: Human Revolution Interview with Senior Game Designer Frank Lapikas

Author’s Note: This interview was published September 22, 2011 and originally appeared on Examiner.com. Clicking on this link will take you to its original location.

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Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the successful prequel to the classic PC franchise, Deus Ex, that impressed gamers and made an impact as a possible Game Of The Year contender. Frank Lapikas, Senior Game Designer at Eidos Montreal, was kind enough to take the time to answer some questions I had about Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I would like to thank Frank very much not only for answering my questions, but answering them so quickly! The interview follows below.

1.    The writing in Human Revolution is great conspiracy-driven fiction. Where did you draw inspiration for the story — any books, films, etc. you can mention?

Frank Lapikas: As with any other creative endeavor, it’s difficult for us to pinpoint where ideas come from. We’ve read so many books, watched so many movies and played so many games, that it all coalesced into our minds.

The biggest source of inspiration was most probably the timeline for the original game. Once we hit upon the 2020 decade and the introduction of the first mechanical augmentations to the general public, it kinda took off. We had this idea of exploring social unrest, class-warfare and this notion of a deterministic evolution.

2.    How did you balance the FPS and stealth elements of gameplay — enabling the player to switch from stealth to guns-blazing FPS nearly instantly?

FL: We didn’t balance it really. We just created rules for both systems that would allow them to exist side-by-side. Giving them a common game mechanic (the cover system) helped bridge the gap.

Interview: SCE San Diego Studio on ModNation Racers

Author’s Note: This interview article was published January 21, 2011 and originally appeared on Examiner.com. Clicking on this link will take you to its original location.

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In May of last year, SCE San Diego Studio released perhaps the first ever “Play, Create, Share” kart racer in the form of ModNation Racers, where gamers could create, download, and play tracks created by other users. Sony and SCE San Diego Studio were kind enough to grant me an interview with Kyle Zundel, a producer at SCE San Diego Studio who worked on the title. I would like to thank Sony, SCE San Diego Studio, and Kyle Zundel for this opportunity and for their time.

1. Was ModNation Racers always designed with the “Play, Create, Share” philosophy in mind or did that come at a later point?

Kyle Zundel: When we started out we wanted to build a modern kart racer in the Play, Create, Share space. One of the things we wanted to do was make the creation side of things fun and accessible. That was really important to us. We definitely had our fair share of hurdles to overcome early on, but in the end we feel it was a great pairing. Being able to create a track simply by driving is very intuitive and fun.

2. The depth and variety of the MNR community’s creations — especially some of the highest-rated tracks — are quite impressive. How did you set out to build tools that anyone can make these detailed tracks with? Also, did you follow Media Molecule’s “rule” of only building levels with the same tools available to the player?

Zundel: Pretty early on, we decided that we needed to drink our own kool-aid; so yeah, we followed the same rule. It was a lot of work, because we were trying to build tracks at the same time we were building the Track Studio tool set. It would have been a lot easier to cheat but we knew it was going to be the right thing to do for the game in the long run. As the track designers and artists built the early tracks they were constantly pushing the Track Studio tool set to be able to do all of the things they wanted and needed as track designers. The Track Studio evolved way beyond the initial design in order to accommodate everything the designers needed to be able to do. In the end, we were really pleased with the level of accessibility, power and control in the Track Studio and we owe a lot of that to the decision we made to follow “the rule.”

Heavy Rain Interview with David Cage

Author’s Note: This interview article was published July 12, 2010 and originally appeared on Examiner.com. Clicking on this link, this link, and this link will take you to its original location.

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David Cage and his studio, Quantic Dream, gave PlayStation3 owners a thriller like no other in Heavy Rain. David was kind enough to respond to my interview request about Heavy Rain and his thoughts about various issues concerning the game.

1. Are the scenes in Heavy Rain all of the scenes you initially came up with for the game? If not, how did you decide what scenes made it into the final game?

David Cage: Actually, about four scenes were written but not included in the final game. When the game was assembled, these scenes seemed to slow down the pacing, felt redundant or did not bring anything to the storyline. There was for example another scene between Ethan and his son before he disappears. I really wanted to create this strong feeling of love between a father and his son, I wanted the player to feel responsible for Shaun so when he is kidnapped, the player feels emotionally involved. But I decided to cut this scene because the previous scenes were enough to establish this feeling.

In general, very few scenes I write don’t make it to the final game. With interactive drama, given the volume of data that you have to produce, you have limited possibilities to make changes “on the fly” without significantly affecting production.

Also, the game tells a story, which means that you cannot get rid of a “level” the way you would in an action game otherwise the story does not make sense anymore. So the focus on the script is extremely important. If something does not work at this stage, once production has started, there is nothing you can do about it anymore.

But there are always some areas on which you can freely iterate until quite late in the development without affecting production too much. The 3D icons for example were implemented after different iterations, the thought system and other interfaces can usually be tweaked until quite late in the development process.