Matt MacLean interview

[funcroc]

I found this interview via SAF's F:NV thread

 

Interview with Matt MacLean, Lead Systems Designer, Obsidian Entertainment

 

How did you get started in the Games Industry?

I knew my whole life I wanted to make games, but when I was in high school/college (late 90's) I talked myself out of thinking that game design is a legitimate career - so I ran for office, got on the whole law school track, and generally set my sites on being a Supreme Court Justice (my other dream career). Besides, at that time, just about every game coming out was a shooter or sports games and I figured games were headed toward the land of Michael Bay and the lowest common denominator - and all that managed to sound ever worse than law school. Then I played Planescape: Torment and realized that, regardless of how unlikely it is I could make a living making a game, I knew there were people wanting to make the games I want to play and I needed to be a part of it - so I quit law school and started bombarding studios with applications. It took me 2 years of constant resume spamming and it took me losing my mind and writing insane applications (wherein I rant about how me and Queen Latifah are meant to be together and how hot the Golden Girls are and... I wish I were making this up). As horribly unprofessional as it was, it got me noticed. I guess I interview well since I was able to follow up my insane applications with professional in-person charm because eventually, someone gave me a shot. I wouldn't recommend this tactic to those looking for employment.

 

How has your approach to designing games has changed from when you started?

Most of what's changed is just my sensitivity to process, practicality, and iteration. Early on, I wanted to make games that I wanted to play, and wanted to dream up perfect designs that were right the first time through. Well, very few people want to play the games I want to play (I enjoy spreadsheets, reading manuals, and using every button on a controller) so I've since stopped using what I find personally to be fun as a metric for designs - I trust instead what I know others enjoy in their gaming. Otherwise, most of what I've learned in the past six years is just how to communicate wants and needs. It's easy to picture in my head how an NPC will behave in the game or how a scene will look - but until I spent years learning about how programmers, artists, and animators do their work, knowing what to ask and how to ask it wasn't the easiest part of my job.

 

Could you mention what are the boundaries/limits that game companies are trying to push?

The most superficial boundary is that of immersion - everyone wants to make the sexiest eye-candy game around and I don't blame them. Even though I enjoy 8-bit games to this day, there's something about modern graphics that pull you into a game. I'm more interested in the push to make games more (and I use this word reluctantly) procedural - taking a limiting factor in development and turning it into an easily scaled quantity. I played Wing Commander half a lifetime ago and it achieved '3d' by having a still image for each angle and range of ships flying in space... a brute force solution that became obsolete with good 3d. Similarly, I've seen prototypes of games trying procedural animation and, sure it's not a feast for the eyes, but it bodes well for things to come. I'm not going to hold my breath for procedural dialogue (a game that creates dialogue on the spot in response to the player) but if I ever fall into a frozen river and get thawed out hundreds of years in the future, I'll be a little disappointed if that's not there.

 

At the beginning of your presentation you were showing some really old great games, are games today really different from the old games in essence?

The notion of 'games these days' is increasingly harder for me to fathom. In 1991, I think I can say I played 90% of all the games available for the PC and maybe half of all available (in the U.S., at least) for the Nintendo and Sega Master System. Given the massive explosion of games (from AAA to casual), I have almost no sense of what games these days are as a whole. I'll say that 'big budget' games still have a lot in common with games of old (no surprise seeing those who make them grew up playing the same games). Things like points, fail states, win state, extra lives - these components are trivial and obvious because they're in every big budget game now and were in every game you had on your 8-bit Nintendo. Then I look at something like Storyteller (http://www.kongregate.com/games/danielben/storyteller) and it has none of the assumed necessary components of a game - but I'd say it's a game, a very fun one, too. But a game like Storyteller isn't what people want or expect from a game they pay to play - and in that sense, (most) modern games are a lot like older games - even if they're exponentially more sophisticated.

 

What is next for Matt Maclean, besides shaving that long beard?

I'm currently working on Unannounced Project. Which is crazy, really, because it seems like half the industry is working on Unannounced Project too, so I bet it will be pretty sweet. I'm looking forward to Alpha Protocol finally coming out and seeing how people react to the themes and features in the game. Other than that, I'd love to talk about what's next but you know... Non-Disclosure Agreements and all that.

 

 

Short Bio

Matt has been a professional game designer since 2004. He's started at Worlds Apart studios, working on GURPS Online, The Lord of the Rings Online Trading Card Game, and Starchamber, and then moved to Obsidian Entertainment where he worked on Neverwinter Nights 2 (and its expansion: Mask of the Betrayer), Alpha Protocol, and Fallout: New Vegas. Matt enjoys complaining about 'kids these days,' playing turn-based strategy games that keep him up until 3am, and drinking lots of coffee.

 

Looks like he is working on Dungeon Siege 3.

Edited June 11, 2010 by funcroc

[WorstUsernameEver]

I found this interview via SAF's F:NV thread

 

Looks like he is working on Dungeon Siege 3.

 

Looks like he's beardless.

........................................

He finally did it.

He did it.

He cut his beard.

He kept his promise.

He cut his beard.

[Pop]

Matt's good people. I'll be interested to see how DS3 turns out.

[kirottu]

So the Beard is now free to fight crime?