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Marie had a panel called "Too Many Features, Too Little Time? Kill Your Darlings and Save Your Game" in this year's Lisbon edition, but a year ago she talked about boss and combat design at the same venue. Our David Caballero caught up with her to talk about these and other industry/development topics.
"Hi Gamereactor friends, this is DevGAMM in Lisbon, day 1, and I'm here joined by Marie, who tomorrow has a very interesting panel.
But you already had one last year, so let's talk a little bit about both.
And you're a consultant, you've been a developer in very different roles with AAA games, different companies and publishers."
"But tomorrow you're going to be talking about doing many things with little time and trying to put some logic in order and cohesion to those tasks.
So which would you say will be the main takeaway tomorrow? You can use this as a rehearsal.
No need to, I will hold it.
So my talk is called Too Many Feats, Too Little Time, Kill Your Darlings and Save Your Game."
"And I think this is pretty descriptive to what it actually does.
So typically, especially like any sort of game, either when people are volunteering or in AAA or like a big team, there's always so many ideas.
And everyone wants to get one idea in the game that can ship.
But usually people don't really build onto each other's ideas."
"They like to come up with something else that wasn't thought about yet.
And the problem is then you have a bunch of ideas that are not necessarily centered around the same central point.
And what you need to do is kind of find what is the, is there a common denominator?
But then like, what is the core of this game and what is the soul of this game?
Because otherwise it might just seem like it's very diluted vision that has no soul."
"You know what it was about. You can't really explain.
Like you want something that is a tight and cohesive fantasy and you want features that support that.
What is the key to make that work?
What is the secret that you're sharing tomorrow?
So it's all about finding the synergy between these features to decide first and align with people."
"What is the core of our game?
Okay, if we agree on this, then we're going to use that as a knife to see, okay, this other thing, is it relevant?
No. Is it relevant? No. Is this other thing relevant? Okay.
No. But does it add value? Is it fun? Okay."
"Then maybe we can have a couple of these things that add value, but not too many.
Because that's when you're getting a little bit diluted and that's when your game is all over the place.
So just try to focus on features that support the core message of your game and what it's about.
And do you end up there by discussing with the whole team or do you think there has to be a lead in this position?
Like making those calls and saying, hey, this is relevant."
"This is not. And I'm going to take this idea or not.
Or it depends on the studio and project, of course.
No, there's always a creative director and creative vision holder that is at the base who's determining this.
But then they also usually at the beginning of each product, they will determine this with the team of who is making it."
"So with the leadership team, they will hone in on what are our game pillars?
What is our game about? Who is it for?
And then once you have that, you have to safeguard that.
So when you add more people to the production and they come with their ideas, you have to become more of a shepherd as a creative director to make sure that only the good ones are really adding a lot of value and that are really cogging into the wheel are the ones that get into the build and the game."
"I like the shepherd reference.
Yeah, looking forward to seeing the panel tomorrow, to attending.
And also you had a panel last year and it was about designing boss fights.
And of course, you worked with Wartner, you worked on Batman, you worked with Capcom."
"So there's a lot of fights in those games and in those companies.
So again, I guess you had some young developers attending your panel.
So how did you describe the process, the best way to create boss fights that make sense in the modern sense?
So the first step is always to understand what's your capabilities?
Can you make your own cinematics?
And then what's the framing?
Is there like a narrative?
Are you making a successor to a game that existed before?
Or is there like a comic that you're replicating to understand what's your creative freedoms?
What can you do and what are you allowed to do basically?
And then usually it's about what's the space in the game?
If that exists, will this take place?
Maybe it's iconic location, maybe it's a small location or maybe it's a big location."
"And if there's a strict rule, then you need to know that first to establish those guidelines.
Or I call it the creative box that you're operating in.
And then when you look at the boss itself, the first step is to have one foot in the familiar and look at the archetypes that exist today."
"Is it a flyer boss who are, you know, like breathing air onto you like a dragon?
Or is it a boss that is like a more martial artist that is like a little bit kung fu or some sort of martial art that they're practicing?
Or is it a big brawl that just wants to kind of come there and punch you?
And so try to put one foot in the familiar."
"And you can make hybrids, you can combine two out of these.
Don't try three at home.
And then you can take turns.
Maybe it has a rage mode and then in the rage mode it suddenly becomes like melee muscle."
"And so you have to determine what's the base archetype that you're doing.
And once you have that, it's all about understanding then how do you differentiate your version of that to the ones that already exist in film, that already exist in games?
How do you make yours special?
You can add traits."
"Maybe you add wings to it.
Maybe you make it like reflective so that, you know, sometimes it can just put its shell on and all the bullets are, you know, bouncing back.
Or maybe it's conductive so you can't melee it because you will get like electrocuted."
"So you need to find a way to shoot it instead.
So whatever kind of properties that you're adding to your boss.
And one trick that I'll share that we do when we design boss fights is that we make it super strong.
I give it armor, large health pool, can't be attacked from the back."
"But then we give one little loophole in which you can get it down.
I kind of call it you make it Superman and then you have Kryptonite.
And Kryptonite is the way that the players need to figure out that this is how they beat the boss.
Anything that you saw recently in terms of both boss and also, you know, general combat design that struck you as fresh or interesting in the past year or so?
I think what happened with Expedition 33 in Claire and Obscure is something that's super interesting."
"How they're combining kind of turn-based with actual real-time actions.
Being able to respond in real time.
And I think that's a space that deserves more exploration.
And it's really refreshing that someone is changing this after so many years."
"And I'm looking forward to more versions and adaptations and variants of how this could play out.
And if I'm correct, you also talked about the different phases to these combats.
So what would you say has changed or evolved as of late?
I mentioned Batman, which of course defined this sort of rhythm-based type of combat with prompts and QTEs."
"So what would you say about phases themselves and transforming combat within combat?
So I think phases haven't necessarily changed that much.
But more like the quality of how well does the animation work?
How fluid is it? How deep is the combat system?
How deep is the interruption system?
Why can you interrupt an AI?
And when are they able to kind of get free from your grip and leap ahead?
How do you make that realistic?
How do you empower players to have more powerful, more mobility moves and still make that look good?
So there's a lot of animation tech that is becoming better."
"And suddenly we can make moves that we didn't used to do because they looked janky and they looked stupid.
And now all of a sudden we can do that.
For example, if you're fighting an enemy, now they can do a twist, like 180, actually turn on the spot.
Whereas before, they would just be kind of floating and rotating on, which looks really bad."
"So the animation tech is getting better and better.
The hit detection is getting better and better.
And with that, we can make stuff in combat that we didn't used to be able to do before.
Yeah, and it's also about players not seeing it coming."
"Because they can predict.
And so you can innovate in that as well, as you just said.
One more thing.
You had a GDC talk this year, actually, about AI spawn algorithms."
"And they're also getting richer and they're also getting better to understand how can we dynamically and procedurally with AI understand how to spawn the enemies in relation to how many players there are, how the players are doing, where they are on the map, what they're currently engaging with, etc.
And all of that is getting better as well."
"Of course.
That looks like the future, but let's go to the past.
If I'm correct, you worked in a Dead Rising game with Capcom that wasn't released.
Correct."
"That was many years ago, because I think it was UE4.
I think we had UE5.
I don't remember, actually.
I think it was early in the shift there."
"What can you tell me about that project?
Any memory you can share?
What can you disclose about that project?
Something that you loved from that game that never released?
What I loved about Dead Rising 5, as it was cancelled, I was on the NPC team, so I made all the boss fights."
"And I loved the variation, the tiers of the enemies.
So we both had the typical kind of zombies that are not very intelligent, that will grab you.
But then we also have a little bit more advanced, semi-more advanced enemies.
So the ones for Batman, for example, would be a typical thug."
"We had the equivalent also in Dead Rising, what we would call that.
And then we had the armored version of that.
And then what Dead Rising does really well, that I really love, is they have the mini-bosses.
And it becomes a kind of tenant unit."
"And it's not as common to have it that pronounced in games as we do in Dead Rising.
And they were a ton of fun to do.
And the way that we designed them was that you should be able to drop them almost anywhere.
So they shouldn't be dependent on what kind of terrain or map that you were having."
"Because they could move around.
During the course of development, it wasn't really fully set where you're going to face these.
Whereas the biggest bosses that I also worked on, they already had their very unique arenas.
And it could be stuff like one boss fight that I designed was in a temple environment, where over the course of the fight, the temple breaks down more and more."
"And it gets more and more intense.
And the boss gets more and more angry doing more and more stuff.
So we really had a wide range of different enemy types.
And richer variation."
"It was really fun to work on that game.
And I'm really sad that it never got to see the light of day.
And it links back to what we were discussing about boss fights.
So that's fantastic."
"And I would have loved to see that one myself.
There are videos online if you search for it.
Dead Rising 5.
So we've mentioned Warner and Capcom."
"There's also Ubisoft.
So you have been related to AAA for a long time.
Now AAA is very different.
Also the so-called AA as well."
"And indie.
So how do you feel about the current high values, big teams sort of production approach there is today compared to what you know?
Well, I think just looking at it, these productions have been growing and growing and scaling in budget."
"And the risks are too high.
I mean, what we saw from Ubisoft, for example, they had to make a deal where they put some of their IPs in a new entity, in a partnership entity that they had instead."
"Because the risks are just so high.
So it's not really sustainable for a lot of companies to take these risks anymore.
But with the revolution of tools and AI, for example, programming is a field that uses a lot of AI."
"Also in animation, we've always used AI for a lot of these things.
And these tools are just getting better and better.
And with that, we can create more with smaller teams than what we had before.
And I think also another thing that we're seeing is the shift to co-dev teams."
"So a lot of actually the co-dev teams have been growing exponentially almost during the last three years.
Because the ones who are owning the IP, they don't want to hire a bunch of people."
"And then you almost see that three games and three IPs to keep a big studio afloat, and that you hire people and they always have something to do.
And that's a little bit risky."
"Whereas you can just take a co-work, you can give the one IP to a co-dev instead, and they can make something good with that together with you.
And then you can still have some central resource teams that help all the different projects that you're working on."
"So publishers can kind of work a little bit smarter and with a lower risk.
And I'm seeing that more and more.
And they don't have to scale up and down, which is always difficult after release and during release."
"All right. Thank you so much for your time, Marie.
I'm looking forward to your panel tomorrow.
Enjoy the rest of DevGAMM.
Thank you very much."
