ARTICLE FROM CVG
The next game to feature gaming's most iconic female will see a change in direction from the main Tomb Raider franchise, with an isometric approach and digital download distribution taking focus.
In fact, when he sat down to speak with CVG, Crystal Dynamics' global brand manager Karl Stewart was keen to emphasise that this is a completely separate outing for Lara. We also got onto the thorny issues of piracy, DRM and the future of gaming more generally.
Where does this fit in with the Tomb Raider series and the main games?
We made the decision that this is a complete standalone story. It's got nothing to do with what's gone before, apart from the fact that it's Lara Croft and it's in a Tomb Raider universe and that it's got all the sort of pillars of puzzle solving, exploration and combat.
In terms of story the only thing that we're saying is that over the past fourteen years she's been on these huge epic adventures, and during that time she's seen these artefacts that she always wants to go and look for. This is just one of them. She keeps this journal; you'll see when you boot the system up it's all about that journal, you'll see that everywhere. But in terms of story, it's a complete standalone.
Why did you decide to do this kind of an off-shoot all of a sudden?
18 months ago when we went through that whole kind of restructuring of the studio we wanted to take risks and be a bit more bold, you know, try and look at how we could not necessarily stretch the IP, because I think over the last couple of years it has been stretched in its own right with ports across whole platforms.
I think this was an opportunity to see how we could extend the character, try something new, bring in new aspects. Like we've never done co-op so for us it was like, "Here's an opportunity in a smaller game with a unique experience to be able to bring something like co-op in, have people talk to each other."
So the decision to go in this direction was very easy when you start to add up all those cool features that we've wanted to do, and ultimately they come with risks in a disc-based game. So this kind of bite-sized gameplay chunk in-between the big pillar releases is an opportunity to be a bit more risky.
You talk about this being more character-centric but it's still obviously an action-based game. How have you implemented these character elements and how does that philosophy affect the game?
Up until now it's been a solitary game and you can still play that. You can still play single player and one of my pet hates and one of Daniel Newberg our creative director's pet hates is to have this horrible AI character follow you around. So we don't have Totec follow you around, we try and get away in the single player from having that horrible AI.
But for us being able to get to a different emotional level, co-op and having an additional voice... You've never spoken to somebody about a puzzle, so you've never been Lara and come to a situation and gone, "Ok what do you think, what do I think? Let's work together".
So even just that aspect alone gives us the opportunity to give a whole new dimension to the character and bring it to life. You know, you're not just sitting there at the end of a puzzle going "Hey! There's nobody here to cheer!" So now bringing in co-op gives us the opportunity to try new things.
Lara Croft is one of those characters that you could see a silhouette of and you'd know it was her. Do you feel you've been able to transfer that successfully?
She's iconic; she's what we call a breakable character. You could take that silhouette and break it into ten pieces and hand someone a piece of it and they'd go, "That's Lara Croft" just like you would an old school bottle of Coke. She has those factors that you'll never forget, they're there forever.
The biggest thing for us was if we're going to do an arcade game and if there was the possibility of us doing any more, you're right we needed to find something we could own and something that felt natural throughout that. For us the isometric is something we own. It offers us the opportunity to push the boundaries and you can see the vertical spaces and I think in an arcade game it's hard to find those things that you can say are as iconic as a disc based game.
So for us environments are one, so no matter where you are in the game you'll come to a point where you think, 'Holy shit look at the vistas, look at how we pushed it' They're the things that become iconic; the isometric, the fact that you have to work together, the voicing... They're pillars for us that we're making sure are standard. When you play the next one you'll be like, 'This is just like the first one but they've pushed the boundary a bit more.' But it's become iconic in its own right.
With it being a DLC game would you say there's been more scope to take risks? Or do you feel that this direction generally is a risk?
There's always a risk because you just don't know whether or not people are going to like that and I think as a studio we just had to embrace that and think, 'Ultimately we want to be seen taking risks'.
The big thing about digital gaming is that it's a financial risk of course, more so in this space because there's no data like Nielsen to say, 'Here's how many games X developer or publisher sold" It's all proprietary information. So for us it's a case of having to believe in the space, spending enough time talking to the first parties and pull it apart.
Ultimately you're building a game, whether it's digital or it's disc, the experiences still have to be there, whether it's a toned down 2GB space experience or whether it's disc based, you still have to have the story, you still have to have the right elements and feature set that make you want to pick it up and play it again. And not only that but tell people about it as well.
There was talk a bit ago about making Lara Croft more family friendly, I think that was mainly to do with her appearance. Has that been incorporated at all or is this whole concept of an arcade action game part of that more family friendly idea?
Whoever said that should be shot. I didn't say it (laughs). No for us it's not necessarily about us putting a stick in the sand and saying, "Right it's family friendly" It's the IP as cultures change, people's perceptions of what makes a great game change and I think ultimately developers and publishers have to be at the forefront of that and listen to people.
For us this felt right for us right now. It feels right for us going forward if we decide to do games based on this model in the future. But I think it's really got to be about what the gamers want at that time it's not necessarily about us saying, "Hey we're family friendly we'll appeal to everybody" It's not. It's an experience.
And digital gamers are the early adapters, they're the people who have taken that risk and say, "I'm willing to put 1200 Microsoft points or 15 dollars or 13 euros down to buy this game". They're still a small minority compared to the hardcore gamers and certainly they're not family gamers, they're driven gamers so it's all about creating an experience for that audience.
Is there work being done on the wider Tomb Raider series at the moment?
Right now all we're saying is that yes we've split the studio into two. One is dedicated to the pillar release. That pillar release, when we're ready we'll get everyone in a big area and talk about it and hopefully be very excited about what we're doing but right now our focus is on Guardian of Light and making sure we build and put out the best game possible.
DLC. Do you think this is the way things are going to? We ran a story about pre-owned games causing more of a threat to the games industry than piracy, which could push publishers to DLC...
I think there are restrictions. Obviously in the bigger picture, in the future you think, 'Holy cow that makes perfect sense' to be able to download games. But I think right now there are still far too many restrictions in play for us to be sort of able to say in the next two or three years. Bandwidth, you know, whether most houses have the capability to download a game fast enough when you talk about some of the games on Blu-Ray being 40 or 50GB.
And space, at some point we're going to have to think about being able to stream games rather than keep them on your hard drive because, you know, how many games are you going to be able to store at one time before you have to start deleting them?
Retail, I don't see it going away for a long time yet but I do see us having to be more creative in the way we blend the two together. I think the model as we see it right now is a frail one. Having the used market is not beneficial to any of us. Some of the plays that have been made more recently about having DLC available when you buy the game and then adding a charge to the consumer who buys it second hand. I think that's just naturally the way it's going to have to go to deal with those kinds of situations.
At the end of the day we take huge risks and we invest ten of millions of dollars in making a game and marketing a game and to think, stock turn wise, we could sell one but four people could play it. Fair enough if the game has been out there for a while and people want to pick it up second hand that's great but I just think that it's something that we have to manage very carefully. I don't think it's good for the industry to have too many sales coming from the used business because it just damages our ability to have unique experience and keep pushing the boundaries and keep building new tech.
For me I look at it and I see the future of it being remote storage and having enough bandwidth so that you can play those games remotely. I know there're a lot of tests, a lot of work going into it. But it'll take time for households to get up to that speed, to be able to do that kind of thing. I don't know what the percentages are right now but I can't imagine they're too high, you know, the amount of people being able to do that.
But I think that's where it's going to go if digital is going to make the best play, I think it's the best space.
What are the prices going to be?
We're looking at probably around $13 or £13. Something as fun as this we want to make it as accessible as possible and I think Steam gives us the opportunity to do that.
Specifically the PC version, how different will that be to the console versions?
When we have a dual stick shooter, obviously the PC is a little bit trickier. We didn't necessarily just want to bring in a point and click. We'd rather have, "Hold down the left mouse and move around and that's strafe" you know, and press space to fire. So we're working on the PC version to make sure that ultimately it's got the same simple, easy controls as both the platforms. We want to make sure people have fun with it but it has its complexities.
In terms of technical things like visuals, because you're able to expand beyond 2GB...
In every game that people develop PC allows you to push it a bit more so we'll be doing some more work on textures and elements of the game that bring a bit more theme to it that you wouldn't normally be able to do with 2GB. I think we can push it but it's just time, when you're focused on hitting your benchmarks it's tough. Right now PC space is one we're all struggling with because it's a heavily parted area, so we're trying to make sure we make the right decision.
I mean for us we've gone down the road of implementing Steam DRM where we've committed to the US being an exclusive Steam thing and we're going to make a decision as to whether or not we'll use different distribution channels. But I think for now, because it's online and it's got leader boards, Steam offers us the best opportunity to hit a broad audience with that type of game.
We've had more focus testing on this game than we have with any other game, it's amazing. Because it's such a risk on all fronts, not just the game but bringing it out on PC we want to make sure we get it right.
But as a downloadable game piracy shouldn't be too much of an issue for you, especially if you have Steam linked. Because of the whole point of being online and sharing leader boards... why would you pirate that?
Yeah you're right in some games it doesn't make sense but some games...Tomb Raider's got a huge following, when you look at Tomb Raider games in the past and how many times they've been pirated. I go on some BitTorrent sites and within the first 48 hours there's like four hundred thousand downloads, it's crazy. How many of those were sales, how many weren't?
I think with this the biggest fear we have is that people are going to be inquisitive and be like, "Ok what's all this talk about, how good is it?" and people are going to download it. Given that Tomb Raider has traditionally been a single player game we have the risk of people saying, "I never really wanted to play the online mode, I just want to play as a single player" You don't have to do the leader boards, you don't have to go online. We had to mitigate those risks by doing things like DRM.
A lot of people should want to play it with a friend and that will help.
Oh yeah immensely and I think games that have been single player have really struggled. I think we're in a more fortunate position. If you want to be able to play against your friend you've got to be able to download properly.
People have been really smart. Like Trials 2; that was a bold move with the BitTorrents. Let people play the demo and then they've got to buy it and they just made sure it was the hardest crack ever. And they sold, what did those guys say? A couple of hundred thousand on PC? That's huge.
I was following their DRM thing and I thought it was unique to be able to say, "Go for it take it! Go have some fun! Download it! Pirate it! But you can't play it all unless you buy it." So I think there's a bold move there somewhere but for us...
Yeah slamming on the brakes with DRM isn't necessarily the best thing because people hate it and then will deliberately pirate it.
Yeah and Steam's not perfect either but I think once you have an account you're more inclined to not want to give it up and destroy your credibility and your trust. You build up your achievements.
It's like saying, 'Hey I want to give somebody a pirated copy of my 360.' You don't. That's your Gamer Tag, that's you and your friends know you for it. So having things like a Steam account, whether you're collecting your trophies or you're collecting your achievements, you don't want to risk it. There's less of a chance people want to pirate it that way.
The next game to feature gaming's most iconic female will see a change in direction from the main Tomb Raider franchise, with an isometric approach and digital download distribution taking focus.
In fact, when he sat down to speak with CVG, Crystal Dynamics' global brand manager Karl Stewart was keen to emphasise that this is a completely separate outing for Lara. We also got onto the thorny issues of piracy, DRM and the future of gaming more generally.
Where does this fit in with the Tomb Raider series and the main games?
We made the decision that this is a complete standalone story. It's got nothing to do with what's gone before, apart from the fact that it's Lara Croft and it's in a Tomb Raider universe and that it's got all the sort of pillars of puzzle solving, exploration and combat.
In terms of story the only thing that we're saying is that over the past fourteen years she's been on these huge epic adventures, and during that time she's seen these artefacts that she always wants to go and look for. This is just one of them. She keeps this journal; you'll see when you boot the system up it's all about that journal, you'll see that everywhere. But in terms of story, it's a complete standalone.
Why did you decide to do this kind of an off-shoot all of a sudden?
18 months ago when we went through that whole kind of restructuring of the studio we wanted to take risks and be a bit more bold, you know, try and look at how we could not necessarily stretch the IP, because I think over the last couple of years it has been stretched in its own right with ports across whole platforms.
I think this was an opportunity to see how we could extend the character, try something new, bring in new aspects. Like we've never done co-op so for us it was like, "Here's an opportunity in a smaller game with a unique experience to be able to bring something like co-op in, have people talk to each other."
So the decision to go in this direction was very easy when you start to add up all those cool features that we've wanted to do, and ultimately they come with risks in a disc-based game. So this kind of bite-sized gameplay chunk in-between the big pillar releases is an opportunity to be a bit more risky.
You talk about this being more character-centric but it's still obviously an action-based game. How have you implemented these character elements and how does that philosophy affect the game?
Up until now it's been a solitary game and you can still play that. You can still play single player and one of my pet hates and one of Daniel Newberg our creative director's pet hates is to have this horrible AI character follow you around. So we don't have Totec follow you around, we try and get away in the single player from having that horrible AI.
But for us being able to get to a different emotional level, co-op and having an additional voice... You've never spoken to somebody about a puzzle, so you've never been Lara and come to a situation and gone, "Ok what do you think, what do I think? Let's work together".
So even just that aspect alone gives us the opportunity to give a whole new dimension to the character and bring it to life. You know, you're not just sitting there at the end of a puzzle going "Hey! There's nobody here to cheer!" So now bringing in co-op gives us the opportunity to try new things.
Lara Croft is one of those characters that you could see a silhouette of and you'd know it was her. Do you feel you've been able to transfer that successfully?
She's iconic; she's what we call a breakable character. You could take that silhouette and break it into ten pieces and hand someone a piece of it and they'd go, "That's Lara Croft" just like you would an old school bottle of Coke. She has those factors that you'll never forget, they're there forever.
The biggest thing for us was if we're going to do an arcade game and if there was the possibility of us doing any more, you're right we needed to find something we could own and something that felt natural throughout that. For us the isometric is something we own. It offers us the opportunity to push the boundaries and you can see the vertical spaces and I think in an arcade game it's hard to find those things that you can say are as iconic as a disc based game.
So for us environments are one, so no matter where you are in the game you'll come to a point where you think, 'Holy shit look at the vistas, look at how we pushed it' They're the things that become iconic; the isometric, the fact that you have to work together, the voicing... They're pillars for us that we're making sure are standard. When you play the next one you'll be like, 'This is just like the first one but they've pushed the boundary a bit more.' But it's become iconic in its own right.
With it being a DLC game would you say there's been more scope to take risks? Or do you feel that this direction generally is a risk?
There's always a risk because you just don't know whether or not people are going to like that and I think as a studio we just had to embrace that and think, 'Ultimately we want to be seen taking risks'.
The big thing about digital gaming is that it's a financial risk of course, more so in this space because there's no data like Nielsen to say, 'Here's how many games X developer or publisher sold" It's all proprietary information. So for us it's a case of having to believe in the space, spending enough time talking to the first parties and pull it apart.
Ultimately you're building a game, whether it's digital or it's disc, the experiences still have to be there, whether it's a toned down 2GB space experience or whether it's disc based, you still have to have the story, you still have to have the right elements and feature set that make you want to pick it up and play it again. And not only that but tell people about it as well.
There was talk a bit ago about making Lara Croft more family friendly, I think that was mainly to do with her appearance. Has that been incorporated at all or is this whole concept of an arcade action game part of that more family friendly idea?
Whoever said that should be shot. I didn't say it (laughs). No for us it's not necessarily about us putting a stick in the sand and saying, "Right it's family friendly" It's the IP as cultures change, people's perceptions of what makes a great game change and I think ultimately developers and publishers have to be at the forefront of that and listen to people.
For us this felt right for us right now. It feels right for us going forward if we decide to do games based on this model in the future. But I think it's really got to be about what the gamers want at that time it's not necessarily about us saying, "Hey we're family friendly we'll appeal to everybody" It's not. It's an experience.
And digital gamers are the early adapters, they're the people who have taken that risk and say, "I'm willing to put 1200 Microsoft points or 15 dollars or 13 euros down to buy this game". They're still a small minority compared to the hardcore gamers and certainly they're not family gamers, they're driven gamers so it's all about creating an experience for that audience.
Is there work being done on the wider Tomb Raider series at the moment?
Right now all we're saying is that yes we've split the studio into two. One is dedicated to the pillar release. That pillar release, when we're ready we'll get everyone in a big area and talk about it and hopefully be very excited about what we're doing but right now our focus is on Guardian of Light and making sure we build and put out the best game possible.
DLC. Do you think this is the way things are going to? We ran a story about pre-owned games causing more of a threat to the games industry than piracy, which could push publishers to DLC...
I think there are restrictions. Obviously in the bigger picture, in the future you think, 'Holy cow that makes perfect sense' to be able to download games. But I think right now there are still far too many restrictions in play for us to be sort of able to say in the next two or three years. Bandwidth, you know, whether most houses have the capability to download a game fast enough when you talk about some of the games on Blu-Ray being 40 or 50GB.
And space, at some point we're going to have to think about being able to stream games rather than keep them on your hard drive because, you know, how many games are you going to be able to store at one time before you have to start deleting them?
Retail, I don't see it going away for a long time yet but I do see us having to be more creative in the way we blend the two together. I think the model as we see it right now is a frail one. Having the used market is not beneficial to any of us. Some of the plays that have been made more recently about having DLC available when you buy the game and then adding a charge to the consumer who buys it second hand. I think that's just naturally the way it's going to have to go to deal with those kinds of situations.
At the end of the day we take huge risks and we invest ten of millions of dollars in making a game and marketing a game and to think, stock turn wise, we could sell one but four people could play it. Fair enough if the game has been out there for a while and people want to pick it up second hand that's great but I just think that it's something that we have to manage very carefully. I don't think it's good for the industry to have too many sales coming from the used business because it just damages our ability to have unique experience and keep pushing the boundaries and keep building new tech.
For me I look at it and I see the future of it being remote storage and having enough bandwidth so that you can play those games remotely. I know there're a lot of tests, a lot of work going into it. But it'll take time for households to get up to that speed, to be able to do that kind of thing. I don't know what the percentages are right now but I can't imagine they're too high, you know, the amount of people being able to do that.
But I think that's where it's going to go if digital is going to make the best play, I think it's the best space.
What are the prices going to be?
We're looking at probably around $13 or £13. Something as fun as this we want to make it as accessible as possible and I think Steam gives us the opportunity to do that.
Specifically the PC version, how different will that be to the console versions?
When we have a dual stick shooter, obviously the PC is a little bit trickier. We didn't necessarily just want to bring in a point and click. We'd rather have, "Hold down the left mouse and move around and that's strafe" you know, and press space to fire. So we're working on the PC version to make sure that ultimately it's got the same simple, easy controls as both the platforms. We want to make sure people have fun with it but it has its complexities.
In terms of technical things like visuals, because you're able to expand beyond 2GB...
In every game that people develop PC allows you to push it a bit more so we'll be doing some more work on textures and elements of the game that bring a bit more theme to it that you wouldn't normally be able to do with 2GB. I think we can push it but it's just time, when you're focused on hitting your benchmarks it's tough. Right now PC space is one we're all struggling with because it's a heavily parted area, so we're trying to make sure we make the right decision.
I mean for us we've gone down the road of implementing Steam DRM where we've committed to the US being an exclusive Steam thing and we're going to make a decision as to whether or not we'll use different distribution channels. But I think for now, because it's online and it's got leader boards, Steam offers us the best opportunity to hit a broad audience with that type of game.
We've had more focus testing on this game than we have with any other game, it's amazing. Because it's such a risk on all fronts, not just the game but bringing it out on PC we want to make sure we get it right.
But as a downloadable game piracy shouldn't be too much of an issue for you, especially if you have Steam linked. Because of the whole point of being online and sharing leader boards... why would you pirate that?
Yeah you're right in some games it doesn't make sense but some games...Tomb Raider's got a huge following, when you look at Tomb Raider games in the past and how many times they've been pirated. I go on some BitTorrent sites and within the first 48 hours there's like four hundred thousand downloads, it's crazy. How many of those were sales, how many weren't?
I think with this the biggest fear we have is that people are going to be inquisitive and be like, "Ok what's all this talk about, how good is it?" and people are going to download it. Given that Tomb Raider has traditionally been a single player game we have the risk of people saying, "I never really wanted to play the online mode, I just want to play as a single player" You don't have to do the leader boards, you don't have to go online. We had to mitigate those risks by doing things like DRM.
A lot of people should want to play it with a friend and that will help.
Oh yeah immensely and I think games that have been single player have really struggled. I think we're in a more fortunate position. If you want to be able to play against your friend you've got to be able to download properly.
People have been really smart. Like Trials 2; that was a bold move with the BitTorrents. Let people play the demo and then they've got to buy it and they just made sure it was the hardest crack ever. And they sold, what did those guys say? A couple of hundred thousand on PC? That's huge.
I was following their DRM thing and I thought it was unique to be able to say, "Go for it take it! Go have some fun! Download it! Pirate it! But you can't play it all unless you buy it." So I think there's a bold move there somewhere but for us...
Yeah slamming on the brakes with DRM isn't necessarily the best thing because people hate it and then will deliberately pirate it.
Yeah and Steam's not perfect either but I think once you have an account you're more inclined to not want to give it up and destroy your credibility and your trust. You build up your achievements.
It's like saying, 'Hey I want to give somebody a pirated copy of my 360.' You don't. That's your Gamer Tag, that's you and your friends know you for it. So having things like a Steam account, whether you're collecting your trophies or you're collecting your achievements, you don't want to risk it. There's less of a chance people want to pirate it that way.
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