n the course of the morning session, having let slip that John Cleese will star in Fable III, he leaned over, with the microphone on, and asked his adviser, "Am I allowed to talk about the Natal stuff?" "No," came the reply. Too late.
“What did you think of the speech?” he asks later in a plush hotel suite not far from the GDC venue.
I fumble for a response, but he carries on.
“I'm never quite sure whether people in the audience want to be inspired or informed. I always feel like I should have more formulas.
“I think the takeaways I’m looking for from appearances like that are about design formula for games.
“Because the design foundation stones, many of which date from the days of coin-ops, are actually huge millstones to what we’re creating. The games industry for me is on a path to what I would call true entertainment, not one where we converge with the movies or compete with the movies, but realising that we are absolutely viable as an art form or entertainment medium which is completely different from anything else.
“We can start with things like Heavy Rain and new input devices and you start to realise that playing a few games is for anybody and everybody and is unique to any other form of entertainment.”
The thing that struck me in your speech is how much uncertainty there is about what makes good game design.
“You know, it always shocks me how few good movies there really are. I'm a member of Bafta and I get the films every Christmas and I think, ‘My God why did anyone ever make this movie?’ And this is the movies. They have got the formula. They do storyboarding, character development, all that.
“As far as games are concerned, we have no formulas. Every time we think we have one, someone comes along and breaks it."
Yet the big thing at the moment online is social gaming, which seems to me to be the reverse of that. When you constantly give people what they know they want, then surely you risk stifling innovation?
“It’s very hard to see invention or originality coming out of this format, which is essentially a giant focus group. I always worry when someone tells me, ‘Well, 100 people liked this’.
“We are at the moment making something whose title I can’t reveal, but you saw a glimpse of it at E3 (in the Project Natal demos). It is so different and new that trying to get a focus group to look at it and respond is almost impossible.
“Imagine if I invented the bicycle and tried to explain it to you. If I told you I'd invented a machine that could go at 30mph and that travelling on a piece of rubber this wide would be the most popular form of transport in the world, you would look at me as if I was some kind of lunatic. You have to build the bicycle first.
“I did a game called Populous back in 1999, and publisher after publisher didn’t get it. They wanted missiles, bombs, weapons. It happened again with Theme Park.
“And it’s not just me. I went on the set of Avatar three times and thought, ‘Good grief, he's got the same problem I have.’ All I saw the first time was storyboards full of six-legged animals and I thought, ‘I don't get this.’ People were telling me it was going to be this great big 3D experience, and I was thinking, ‘That’s what they all say.’
"Next time I saw five minutes of footage, and I got it. I finally saw what the storyboards were about. And I am probably one of the most receptive people there are to new things like this.”
Since we’re talking about 3D, what do you make of it in games?
“There’s a lot of technology around at the moment, there’s motion control from Microsoft and Sony as well as Nintendo, plus there’s 3D.
“I can see how it makes things look fantastic, but I couldn’t bring myself to wear the glasses at home. I hate the idea of having something strapped to my head. My wife already thinks I'm a bit sad from what I do at the moment.
“I have to say, though, if you had those glasses for Fable III, it would be an amazing experience.”
This is my first GDC, and I’m struck by the sheer enthusiasm of the place.
“It's like we're explorers in a new country and every year there's another new country. I love GDC. It really exemplifies what the industry is.
“When it started the whole thing was in a hotel in San Jose. Everybody fitted into one dining room. 200 people were the entire industry. Now we take over the whole of San Francisco. That’s amazing in just 20 years.
“Part of our inspiration as an industry is Hollywood. When Spielberg made Minority Report, we as an industry looked at it and thought, ‘Wow! That’s cool! We can do that!’ But now we’re overtaking science fiction with things like Natal.”
What’s the attraction of Project Natal?
“I love what Natal does for me as a designer. It forces me to go back to he drawing board. A lot of the way games are designed now is dictated by the controller that players hold, but when you remove that you have to think differently.
“Since E3 we have built more emotional engagement into the preview you saw. But the most important thing now is that we can meet our audience on a one-to-one basis. I can make a character that can meet you. That changes everything: narrative, drama, gameplay, pacing. You as a player for the first time are seen.
“The only way I see you at the moment is through your thumbs. Now I can see you, the emotions on your face, whether you’re slouching, standing up, all of that.
“We can design experiences that truly resonate with you as an individual rather than with a mass of people.”
Have your games changed as you age?
“I try not to worry about that too much. I do think about what might be popular in Europe, the US and Japan, and we did ask ourselves whether Fable III should be a mature game or retain some experience for teens.
“For this game, we have really been inspired by Charles Dickens, the feeling of England being on the cusp of this industrial revolution and everything changing. This is all part of the setup. You are going to lead a rebellion against a tyrannical king who is forcing Albion into a state of near starvation and taking all the people's money.
“But then when you succeed and become king, you have to decide what changes you want to make. Will you abolish child slavery, demolish the factories? This is the start of a whole new and very different story, because to become king you have made a lot of promises to followers, and you can’t possibly keep them all.”
So, when will the game come out?
“These are not decisions for me. We are going to finish it in time so that the powers that be can make that decision. Thanksgiving is the shut-off date.”
Fable III will be released later this year.
