Frederick Raynal stopped by Virtools headquarters on October 21, 1998 to talk Game Design with Bertrand Duplat and Frederique Krupa. PART ONE: Game Design PART TWO: Tools and Methods	The Future of Game Design Is there a big game design community that you know of? I don't know... I'm sure there are alot that we don't even know about. You have to have a bit of luck, being at the right place and time, to get to where I'm at now. I'm sure there are lots of people with good ideas that won't be able to get their work out there because they won't have the chance. There are also a lot that think they have good ideas, but that are incapable of being made. The question about knowing the community isn't really important. In the end what's important is the game. In music you can identify the people, in a game you only see the result. You don't see the people behind the scene. Do people share ideas, work, inspire themselves with others, and if so how? Well there are conferences like CGDC, that focus on technique and ingredients - how to make a game - but there's little exchange of game design content. So when I speak to people like Peter Molyneux, we tend to discuss technique and methods, but we don't talk about game design ideas. We don't share the kind of game we want to make. That's protectionism to the end. Is the programmer's role too important in the game design process? In game design, all the big game designers started off in programming, but in multimedia for example, the people tend to come from the visual arts. Is the programmer's role changing with new tools? We are going to get into that old war between graphic designers and programmers that has always existed. But unlike multimedia, which is by definition, very visual and in general very boring, game design comes from programming origins. Game Design is about the functioning of the game. Yes, there are visuals, but they are bound by the rules of the game, and the rules have always been about logic and technique. Coming back to Creation, even if its ultra comfortable to work on it, and you don't necessarily have to be a programmer to use it, you need to have the logic of a programmer to be able to make something. It approaches programming. In Game Design, the stuff has to work and has to be really logical. I think that a good game designer has to know how a game functions technically and understands the logic of programming. It's very square. It's why game conceptualizers aren't graphic designers for the most part. I often get asked what is the ideal computer science background, I would say that it is better to study programming for industry/machine and tools, rather than programming for database management. Database management is about displaying information, but industrial programming is about a captor waiting for a particular bit of information and launching an event... So many programmers that are in game design come from studying industrial applications. It's not input, management, and display. We are out of that mold. Can we open up the game design community? Can game design become as widespread as film or video, with its corresponding variance in the quality level of the work... In video, there are those that make art and those that make videos of their child's birthday party... It's very, very open. Well I think film is different. For a little guy to make even a ten minute film, even a bad one, he has to know about the work involved and go through a tremendous amount effort. At the competition for first time film at Imagina, you get around 300 entries, mostly Europeans. If you tried to do the same thing in game design, you wouldn't get 300 responses. Or you have weekly television shows of home video competitions, so you have non professional people setting up and filming gags to participate in these shows. Yes but that's easy.... So doing game design is more difficult, but is there a way? I'll come back to that question. A tool like Creation will allow people to show their work. It may also make lots of unhappy people, because while they will be able to make little things, since they are not be in the profession, they won't be able to get very far with their project. There are amateur video makers that are very happy that their work is being shown in peripheral competitions, so while some people won't find a publisher for their game, they may still be happy diffusing it via the internet. Yes, completely. In music, sometimes you have people with things to say, sometimes you have people that just want to make music. There is the pleasure in making things. People who have something to say in a game are off to a bad start... It can get really tedious. What about people at home or at college that are using Net Yarose, who may want to become professionals. Are there like in music, more people that are going to make games, like people join bands to play music? There aren't many groups that do real well, but there are plenty of bands that play in their garage. Today there are lots of gamers, but I am talking about the people in peripheral occupations like graphic design, multimedia... Giving a real straight answer, yes there will be more and more because when someone gets into video games, they realize there is a lot of money at stake. So they will want to try. Some will make it, some won't. The guys that made Abes came from filmmaking, special effects more specifically, and they did something really great. I hope that the games that are produced have a bit of soul to them. I hope the person will make a game because he wants to play it, he wants to give pleasure to others, and he has pleasure while he makes his game. It's like a piece music. It can work even if its industrially produced, but it still needs that bit of soul at its center. How do you see game design changing in the future, in terms of costs, size of groups etc... My impression from what you have said is that we are at a very early stage, where we are getting familiar with Realism or properties of 3D Games. Do you think that behind that lurks something new? Well, I did not invented this, but the head of Activision said a few years ago that in few years, there will be three big corporations for the distribution of games - who will have a stable of smaller studios that create the games. There will be the big classic themes for the games that will go everywhere. It's just like the film industry really. In the inventory, you will have at least a game like Quake. There will still be a big industry for reproducing the classics. People who really want to make innovative games will have a harder time getting past that. I think it will get worse and worse. Are there advantages to this as well? Like in the early days of cinema, films were crafted together very much like a cottage industry. They experimented. If it didn't work, it disappeared. Standards evolved. But the system works! And there are still independent films being released in the US. And it can happen here. Then we will arrive at the same problem as everybody else. You can't always self finance your projects, because it has to fit into an established system. What kind of games are archetypes for specific cultures, like Japan or the US, but that have no chance or crossing over into other markets? Like Deer Hunter in the US. Well, there are some games that are really out there... The Japanese really like fishing games. Sega's working on some. They've been around for quite some time, really bizarre fishing games, even in 3D, where you see bits flying from the mouth of the fish. You just sit there and you press a button. I don't get it, but they're popular. I don't think they can export that. And in Europe, any examples? Well European games seem bizarre to Americans. Well Sega, in any case, first it's made by that continent for that continent , and if it sells there, they see if will work for another market. If they buy it, they push the title. If not, well, too bad. But why do Americans find European games bizarre? Without thinking to hard, the styles of games are a little different. Americans are into simulators and war strategy games. France in particular - Europe's a little more varied - is more poetic, eccentric perhaps. We have little blue guys running around doing things with comforters on their heads. When Americans saw Twinsen, they thought they were hallucinating. Well as long as they couldn't make things explode, it didn't really appeal to Americans. And they have a lot flight simulators. They're popular pretty much everywhere, but Americans really want to have they impression that they have full control over all the various parameters, each key has to control something... You have a combo of different commands, they want a keyboard shortcut for it. LBA2 had to have all these keyboard shortcuts added to it. Americans like their game ultra straight, ultra realistic. It can't be too imaginary. You paralleled groups of musicians and game design team members. With magazines, web sites like Gamespot, a TV channel called Game One, etc., there is a mediatization of game design that is becoming more and more important. Game Design is infiltrating the mainstream magazines with review columns. Is there going to be a mediatization of game designers or game design teams, like musicians on MTV? Well at Imagina six years ago, if you mentioned you were from the game industry, they all laughed at in your face. They were into modeling and rendering, but when things slowed down in that arena, they started to love the game industry because they recognized it as an important source of work. But is there going to be a mediatization of game designers or game design teams, or will only the more enigmatic or media friendly ones seek the spotlight? I know that I - and I think I can speak for others as well - like to have a bit of recognition for my work. I like to hear people to say that my work is good. I like to discuss it with people like you who are doing things, or journalists that are knowledgeable about the medium. The media speaking more and more about game design is good, but unlike musician where you see the members, game designers are behind the scenes. No one cares what they look like. I like to get letters from people who are happy about my games, but the mediatization side - being recognized in the street, "Oh he's the one that did the game..." - I'm not so sure I'd like that. But the positive aspect to that is that it broadens the game design audience. Maybe they'll establish more programs in schools... But will people start buying games because its from that particular designer? It's already happening. This article may not be reproduced in any format without the authorization of Virtool S.A.