Entrevista de Play Magazine a Chris Seavor.
Single Player
Play: Originally, Conker went from hyper-cute to the poster child for mature gaming. How did this come about? Was it your doing or did Nintendo ask for it?
Chris: Nintendo definitely didn't want this! [laughs] I had an idea to take the game in a different direction because of the over-saturation of cute games in the market. We already had three potentially cute games in development. I took it over, looked at it and said, "What can we do with this?" I'm a big fan of South Park, and he had just gotten it over here, so I thought we may as well do something along those lines. I spoke to Chris Stamper and he said "Yeah, go for it." Nintendo seemed all right... It just wasn't any big, major political decision; everyone just sorta of went "Yeah, okay."
Play: When Conker was super-cute, what was he up against before he was shredding Tediz?
Chris: The original Conker was never clearly defined. It was just another cute character; it could have just as well have been a rat... we needed to give it an edge.
Play: So did you come up with the whole war against the Tediz?
Chris: Yeah, pretty much. The strong part of Conker though is the movie parody towards the end. It went from a comedy to a parody game. After we did the beach scene, everyone said, "Wow that's great, you need to do more of that!" To be honest, if I had to do it again, the whole game would be a movie parody.
Play: As amazing a game as Conker's Bad Fur Day was, it was a game ahead of it's time and probably on the wrong hardware...
Chris: No doubt about that.
Play: Since, the industry has come far, with the Xbox demographic evolving as much if not more then any because so many old-school gamers hopped onboard. So, if this is going to be a rebirth - which it should be - if any platformer is going to make a stand and really hit the big numbers, it's gonna be this -would you approach a sequel in much the same way?
Chris: I do things the was I do them... Yeah, it would be exactly the same way, because it's the only way I know. There were mistakes made in Conker, but I mean, I certainly wouldn't make the same mistakes again with the content. I would definitely refine it a bit, and make it a bit tighter.
Play: I didn't see any mistakes...
Chris: The biggest problem in the game was that it wasn't as in-your-face as the last half of the game, and especially the last third of the game. If there's a sequel, I'm certainly not short of ideas. There have been quite a few movies made in that time...
Play: Seeing the single-player game now... we were almost speechless.
Chris: And we're only at 60%. It's a completely new enginel everything is new, completely new. At one point, we considered doing a direct port, then we considered just bringing over the graphics and bumping up the polys... looked dreadful. Right, that's it, let's just take and make a new game... So that was the premise of it, so there's been a lot of work, and there's a lot more to do.
Play: I was blown away by the fur in Star Fox Adventures, but this is ridiculous. What are you doing?
Chris: [chuckling deviously] It's the same fur... it's just the number of shafts you can get away with and how you draw them.
Play: One of the levels we weren't able to play, and that probably everyone who's played it is looking forward to most, is the Beast of Poo Mountain...
Chris: Well, he looks like he's really made of poo now, and he has specular maps on him. The level itself has been completely reworked too... it looks really great.
Play: He'd make a great action figure! Have you given much thought to merchandising? These characters are certainly up for it and the timing seems better then ever.
Chris: I was disappointed orginally when there wasn't anything. Banjo had some action figures and stuff. I'd really like it. There are some great characters in there. I'd like to seem them McFarlane style... not all, but some of the more memorable ones.
Play: In terms of the way the games go together at Rare - do they get made the conventional way or are you guys more free-form because of your background?
Chris: We're hacks at the end of the day. We just make it up as we go along. It's also about teamwork. There are a lot of talented people in the company, so it's down to the kind of direction everyone gets, I suppose. I'm absoultely certain we do it completely different then the Japanese do, and we tend to work with smaller teams then most companies. I mean, I hear some teams that are 60, 70 plus. We certainly don't have teams that big here.
Play: Elsewhere there are 18-month lead times, and small budgets abound... having to do horrible things to make games.
Chris: We're given a lot of freedom, which is good. It worked pretty good with Nintendo and seems to be working with Microsoft as well. They let us do what we want pretty much... That's just the way it is; they just have to trust us. That's what worked with Nintendo and they recognize that so they're doing the same.
Play: So you do all the voices in the game? Does that come natural? I mean, there's a ton of comedy and characters in the game.
Chris: If you have a script, it comes out really wooden, really stilted... you've probably noticed in a lot of other games. So I just went and said, "Well, I know what the task is; you've got this big poo monster in the level and Conker comes in and just chucks cream corn out his ass..." And we just completely ad-libbed it. So for every task you hear and every bit of speech, there's about two hours that got chopped out because it didn't work. It was a combination of me possibly being able to act a little and [music composer/sound recorder] Robin [Beanland]'s skill as an editor to get all the crap I was spouting out for an hour and try to make a minutes worth of sense out of it... it was a team effort at the end of the day. It was really down to us working together. There was no plan. It was like, "Oh, let's try that," and off we'd go. Two years later we had enough material for the game so it worked. I find it really intimidating to think about a sequel; to do all that again on my own wouldn't be feasible. Going back and seeing what we've done converting the game, we've become aware of what a task it was. I can't imagine how we ever got it done.
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Multiplayer
Play: The way online is tuned, it seems like players are in for some dicey exchanges - this is a game where you don't want to be caught off guard. The give-and-take given all the different character classes and vehicles seems primed for some intricate battle strategies. Who hatched all this?
Chris: That was me again. Presumable you're aware of what we had at E3 last year?
Play: Roger that; what led to that going away and this new design emerging?
Chris: The response we got a E3. The first thing everyone said was: "These vehicles... you can't do anything with them, they're on rails." So we were like, "Right, better get some vehicles in..." So we went back to the drawing board. The other thing was that we had all thse types of characters. It looked like there were classes in the game and their wasn't. People were like: "This looks like a medic squirrel, why haven't I got any medical ability?" And then I thought, "Why don't we have classes?" I'm a big fan of games like Counter-Strike and lots of other games coming out now - there are tons and tons of games out there to inspire me - and I just thought, we can compete with these if we try, but we can also give it our own edge with the furry, swearing squirrels and overkill with the fore, which we're going to really go for with this one, but we can also still kind of gives a serious tone I think it needs The original multiplayer game was a bit of a throwaway thing. This is more serious. Like the battle career where there's actual experience in it. The more you play, the more you get out of it; you'll have rank and stuff like that. It's not a pick-up-and-play-game... it's not the kind of game you just dip in. You can play it like that if you want, but if you're dedicated enough there are advantages to playing over a long period of time. In a similar way to EverQuest has levels... I mean, people are so obsessed with what level they are... and at the end of the day, we're doing the same thing. You've got ranks and your medals and there are goals to give it longevity rather then going "Right, I'm going to kill some people."
Play: And balance is awesome... you've got players in the sky, vehicles and support on the ground, sharpshooters... imagining the teams you can put together and the way the matches are going to be played out, you're going to really need to be on your toes and work as a team.
Chris: That'll be nailed, that will. I'm hoping what you'll get is something people will take seriously and actually play it for its own merits rathen then to go, "Oh, it's just Conker multiplayer." It's the emphasis of the game - it's the focus of it - it's not a sequel to Conker at all... this is Conker Live!
Play: So you don't see online as a necessary evil? This is where you really wanna go with the game...
Chris: This is what I want to do. I don't want to do any other games. Single-player games just on their own... I think have had their day because the enormous amount of work they are to do. I don't know if people appreciate that amount of work these days. Some of the reviews I see these days; I look at them and think, "Oh my god, I know what much work when into that game and it's getting slighted..."
Play: You just hit on that we're all about... it is rampant. A lot of today's reviews read like a game cost a couple thousand bucks and two months to make. It's very sad.
Chris: And there's nothing we can do about that. But I think the industry is moving forward and with the Live side of things, obviously, the Xbox gives us an opportunity to do stuff we can't really do on anything else, certainly not at the moment, except maybe PC, but that's still kind of a different thing.
Play: Yeah... plus I don't wanna play with a keyboard and a mouse. Sorry; with Conker I can't do it...
Chris: No, yeah, fair enough. Me, I don't play single player games. When I get at home, I play Live [Lunar's Note: I wonder what his Live gamertag is.] I play PC games mainly... I play RPGs a lot and lots of shooting games. Single-player games are just getting a bit stale and stagnant because tou're sort of within the limitations of what the programmers has done with his characters, but with Live you're against other people. It's such a completely different thing; it shouldn't be viewed, in my mind, as something additional. It should almost be the focus of the product. There's a lot more you can do with Live. It isn't just about people fighting, which is commonly what we're doing. If you develop it more, you can probably do a single-player game where all the baddies are not done by the programmer but are actually other people. This is ultimately the direction I wanna go with a game... try and bring the storyline into a Live environment. I haven't worked out how to do it yet but I'm positive you can somehow. Then you don't need your single-player game because it's there; you've already got it.... as long as you've got your user base; that's the thing. As long as ther are people playing the Live game, it will work perfectly.
Play: I have this conversation all of the time. What you're talking about it what it's going to take to get people like myself playing online. People are waiting for the first real multiplayer action game where, say, one guy can jump farther so he makes the long jump and reaches out for the heavier character who in turn protects him in battle and so forth... basically a big platforming universe. Opposing forces coming at each other.... If you could achieve a Rare-style game inside your Xbox Live environment, I think you'd truly have the next big thing.
Chris: I think it's worth doing even if the audience might not be there for it. It's worth doing to try to push the boundries because the industry is beginning to get a bit stale again. It's either first-person shooters or... even platformers are in need of some new ideas now.
Play: The last kick we got going 3D, and now things have run their course. A lot of great platformers that would have sold huge are tanking now. Look what GTA did for 3D action. Just by putting an edge on a free-form engine, it's made history. Imagine what Rare could do innovating on the platformer.
Chris: The problem is somebody actually having the balls to do it... you can't just go off and do it. You need a strong idea and it needs to be worked out. These things don't happen by accident. But somebody needs to make a point of saying, "Right! We gotta do this now, and balls to the consequences; let's see what we can do with it and take a risk!" Otherwise we'll just deteriorate into a bunch of realistic first-person games.
Play: A bunch of movie games.
Chris: Yeah, exactly, yeah, and franchises.
Yep, running around with celebrities on the other end of my controller...
Chris: Yeah, that just really... that saddens me.
?:Well, you seem to be in the right place. Microsoft has the most powerful hardware, and seem open to innovation...
Chris: Yep, well, hopefully...
Play: Oh, and one more thing we're dying to know... what is Mepsipax?
Chris: [laughs] Pepsi Max. Actually, it's an in-joke at Rare. There's a guy that works here in R&D with a beard.. a big, massive beard... and Tim's nickname for him is Beardy; no, everyone's nickname for him is Beardy, and he sort of became the origin of Birdy, and he speaks exactly like Birdy speaks, and he drinks a lot of Pepsi Max, like 15 gallons a day... So we couldn't ise Pepsi Max, so we used Mepsipax. So, it was just me taking a piss out of somebody I work with.
Play: The mystery is solved.
