Izvor: Playsomnia.com, 03.Maj.2011, 21:10 (ažurirano 02.Apr.2020.)
Supergiant Games interview
Supergiant Games may be fairly unknown to most gamers, but their team consists of people with sizable experience at other studios such as EA, among others. They're busy working on their first game Bastion, which will be an action RPG. Greg Kasavin, one of the company's founders, answered a few of our questions about the game, and about themselves as well.
Could you introduce yourself to our readers?
Hi, I'm Greg Kasavin and I'm creative director at Supergiant Games. We're based out of a house in San Jose, California so we're a pretty small operation, but the team I'm working with is the most talented group of people I've ever been around. We have a core team of seven people working on Bastion, and my role on the project primarily involves writing the story and narration, and creating a variety of areas you'll explore in the game. Before I started working at an independent studio, I worked at 2K Games as a producer for about a year, and at Electronic Arts as a producer/designer for close to three years on the Command & Conquer series. Prior to that, I worked in the gaming press for a long time, mostly at GameSpot, where I was editor-in-chief. I've been playing games almost all my life and wanted to make them since I was eight years old, so Bastion is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream of mine. Everyone else on the team has an equally high stake in the project.
What's the history behind Supergiant Games? How was the team formed?
I met Amir Rao and Gavin Simon, the cofounders of Supergiant Games, while we were working on the Command & Conquer series at EA LA. The three of us left EA in close succession in August of 2009, and Amir and Gavin formed Supergiant Games the following month. They moved into a house in San Jose and stared making Bastion. There was no grand design document, just a few essential ideas to start with, and two very talented guys to do the heavy lifting. When we were talking about forming a studio, we knew we wanted to make original downloadable games our own way, and we were inspired by some of the successes we'd seen on Xbox LIVE Arcade and PlayStation Network. We realized we were interested in making the kinds of games that spark players' imaginations like the games they played as kids.
Amir and Gavin made some pretty significant personal sacrifices to get started, and I was finally able to join them about a year later after I managed to convince my family that it was a good idea. On the surface it seemed insane to abandon a good job in the game industry to go work for a tiny start-up with an insignificant chance of survival, but then, having worked together with these guys before, I think we had a good amount of faith in what we could accomplish if we really pushed ourselves.
Describe Bastion to us. What is the game about? What are the key features?
Bastion is an action role-playing game with lush hand-painted 2D artwork and a reactive narrator who responds to players' actions all throughout the game. There are thousands of lines of narration throughout the experience, and our narrative style allows us to deliver story in a way that reinforces the play experience without ever interrupting it. The gameplay focus is on rewarding finesse and experimentation, by providing the player with a growing number of interesting choices around character customization and unique play mechanics with each of the different weapons. Our world design also allows for surprising and varied combat encounters, since this is a world where the terrain can literally form up or fall away at a moment's notice.
The premise of the game is that a surreal catastrophe has torn the land apart, so your character makes his way to his people's safe haven in order to seek shelter. But the only person he finds there is a mysterious old man, who says he has a plan that will set everything right. You end up working with him to seek out the materials you need to fulfill that plan. Reading about it us much different from playing it, of course, given the way we use our narration technique.
Bastion is the first game to be developed by your studio, but so far it has generated almost unanimously positive feedback. Do you think the expectations are realistic?
We're very happy with the response the game has received so far, and that the game has created a strong first impression in many people. We've worked very hard to deliver on the expectations we've created, not just for the sake of players out there but because of our own standards. I appreciate that people have such high hopes for how the game turns out. And now that we're just about finished with the game, I can say with confidence that I don't think they'll be disappointed.
The content we've shown thus far is some of the first content we made, and I think our grasp on level design and narrative design only improved as we kept working on later content. In that respect, we've received feedback from our playtesters that the game just gets better and better. All throughout development, one of our mantras was to make Bastion a "complete" experience, to fully deliver on every aspect of the game, from the very beginning to the very end, so I hope that's how people end up feeling about it. I'll be very interested to see the response to the full game.
Where did you find inspiration for the game?
We took inspiration from a lot of different sources on this project, including games and other media. But there aren't one or two things that inspired it directly – it was its own idea that grew out naturally. Initially we knew we wanted to make an action role-playing game, and were drawn to the positive feelings of returning to town – finding a safe haven – in games like Diablo. At the same time, the core moment-to-moment play experience quickly took on a very different flavor, taking influence not just from action RPGs but also from arcade classics and Japanese action adventure games from the Zelda series to Ninja Gaiden. What everyone at Supergiant Games has in common is that we've all been playing games from a young age, so we have a lifetime's worth of gaming influences to tap into as well as a certain feeling that we want to achieve in the end result.
The story and narrative has its own set of influences. We knew early on that we wanted the game to have some emotional weight to it and to kindle feelings beyond just moment-to-moment pleasure. Amir and I are fans of the author Cormac McCarthy, who paints these bleak but beautiful American landscapes in his novels, so we thought about creating sort of a fantasy version of his kind of tone – but with a more hopeful outlook instead of the bleakness that tends to characterize his novels. There are enough bleak games out there, so we wanted to make something more nuanced and emotionally rich. By presenting that type of tone in a game that's beautiful to look at and easy to pick up and play, we felt we could make a relatively complex set of emotions more accessible and palatable to people. I also feel strongly that a well-crafted narrative can enhance just about any type of game.
Can you tell us something about the dynamic voice-over component of the game?
Bastion's reactive narrator is an integral part of the experience, as his narration constantly serves to reinforce and deepen your actions. Through him you will learn the story of what's happening and why it matters, and gain deeper insight into the gameworld. We recorded somewhere around 3,000 lines of narration for the game, none of which are repeated unless you repeat certain content such as replay a level, and even then we have quite a bit of variance from one play to the next. The narrator's voice is provided by Logan Cunningham, a friend of ours who we all think is an amazing actor – if not for him we never would have pursued this technique to begin with.
The other part of the reason we decided to pursue the idea of a fully narrated game was because we wanted to have a game with some emotional depth to it, but we wanted to avoid situations in which the story interrupted gameplay. In most role-playing games, the gameplay itself comes screeching to a halt whenever the designers decide it's time for the story to continue. We wanted to come up with a way for people to go through the game seamlessly while the story kept pace. One day Amir asked Logan to record a few lines in an attempt to do this, and we liked the effect immediately and never looked back. We developed a deep and fully realized world, at the heart of which is this narrator character.
What makes Bastion different from other similar games, like Torchlight, for example?
Bastion belongs in the same genre as games like Torchlight and Diablo but the similarities don't go much farther than the basic emphasis on combat and character customization, which is principle to the genre. For one thing, our narrative technique is different from any other action RPG, or any other game for that matter. While it's unobtrusive by its nature, it adds a layer of depth and meaning to just about every interaction in the game, the likes of which you won't find in other action RPGs.
In terms of the gameplay, our focus is on rewarding player finesse and experimentation. In some action RPGs, if you encounter an enemy that's too tough for you, the solution is usually to level up or find better equipment. In Bastion, the emphasis is on player skill, and on growing the number of options available to the player so that eventually you can customize your character to best suit your personal preference. You'll have to defeat that enemy by reading its moves and positioning yourself in a way that you can exploit its weaknesses. You won't be spending time discarding worthless equipment or anything like that. Instead, each of the game's many weapons is fully upgradeable and viable all throughout the game.
I also think our visual style, world design, and music are quite distinct from other games.
What about the art style? Some compare it to the style of anime, others to games like Odin Sphere.
We think our artist Jen Zee really succeeded in giving the game its own distinct visual style, and we're thrilled with the positive response the game's visuals have received thus far, especially knowing just how much great artwork is in the game that nobody's even seen yet. I think the occasional comparisons we get to VanillaWare games like Odin Sphere and Muramasa to be incredibly flattering because I find those to be some of the most beautiful-looking games out there.
We knew up front that we wanted Bastion to be a 2D game because we like the crisp look and feel of 2D, and Jen was able to visualize our gameworld straightaway. She understood the particular tone we were going for completely nailed it in the environments and in our imaginative creature designs as well. People naturally try to draw comparisons between things, but once they've played Bastion, I think they'll see that not only is this a beautiful-looking game, but there's depth behind all the detail. None of the visuals are there just for the sake of being pretty and all the little touches that Jen's put into the artwork are supported by the fiction of the world.
Bastion was in the finals of this year's IGF. How was that like? Did it change how you feel about the game?
It should come as no surprise that we were very happy to be nominated in the IGF, especially since we were one of a small number of games to receive multiple nominations. Being recognized for both Excellence in Visual Art and Excellence in Audio reinforced to us that we were doing something right not only in the craftsmanship of these respective categories, but also in terms of overall world design and consistency. It's great that the art and audio are coming together for people to create an immersive experience. What's more, the IGF judging was based on a relatively early version of the game, so the artwork and audio have only improved since then.
What are your thoughts on the current state of the indie scene, given your background with large studios? Any games or teams you look up to, perhaps?
I think the single greatest thing to happen during this generation of games is the advent of digital distribution services such as Xbox LIVE Arcade, PlayStation Network, and Steam. These services as well as the variety of free tools out there have enabled small teams such as ours to create original games and get them out to people. I think a lot of people out there are starving for interesting new games that big publishers are much too risk-averse to try and make, so there's a perfect opportunity for smaller independent studios to go and make games that are specific, well crafted, and unique. To that end, I think the independent gaming is thriving right now, and it's the most exciting thing happening in games overall. It's an extremely competitive field that in some ways is just as competitive as full retail on a relative scale. Sure, these may not be $50 million projects like so-called AAA games are, but to the independent teams making these games, they have just as much if not more at stake in the success of their games. Nevertheless, it's a refreshing and amazing feeling, knowing that we can make whatever we want as long as we can make it well.
As far as game teams I look up to go, there are practically too many to mention. Braid and Castle Crashers are the two games that specifically inspired me to want to work on smaller downloadable games, and Braid creator Jonathan Blow in particular I think speaks with great insight and courage, so he's someone I look up to. Erik Wolpaw, who's a writer for Valve and someone I've known since my GameSpot days, is another inspiration – I think he's the best writer in the industry. I love games that are atmospheric and create emotion besides just fun, so I'm inspired by a number of independent studios as well as individual artists who've worked on such games.
Will we see a demo version of Bastion? What are your plans for the future of the game, are you planning any DLC or maybe even a sequel?
There will absolutely be a free downloadable trial version of Bastion, as that is conventional among all Xbox LIVE Arcade titles. We really hope players will at least give the game a try for themselves before deciding whether they want to play the full version. Reading about a reactive narrator is one thing but experiencing the world of the game firsthand ends up being very different, judging from the response we've seen in players. Our trial version sets up the story and introduces a lot of key aspects of play, so we think it serves as a strong introduction to the full game.
In terms of what we do next after Bastion, we have a lot of ideas but really our focus is still entirely on Bastion now and for the foreseeable future. After we ship the game for the Xbox 360 we will move onto the PC version, and from there we'll figure out what's next. A lot will depend on how well Bastion is received – we've put everything into this game in the hopes that it does well enough that we can make another game afterwards.
Any closing comments?
Working on Bastion has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I was constantly amazed by the efforts of all of my collaborators on the project. We've put forth our absolute best effort in this game, and so we hope it will surprise and delight many, many people and leave them with a positive lasting memory. When I was nine years old I played a game called Ultima IV, which was a mind-blowing experience that I knew would stick with me forever. As long as I'm able, I intend to continue trying to make games that can have a similar positive, life-affirming effect on people.
Thank you for taking your time to answer or questions, Greg! We wish you all the best in your future endeavors. You can find out more about the game over at the official site. Bastion is due later this summer for XBLA and later this year for the PC.
