Kameo: Elements of Power Interview: Senior Designer George Andreas

Kameo has a bright future, there’s no doubt. How has your vision for the game changed from when it was first conceived to more recent work done to make it ready for Xbox 360?
To be totally honest, not that much really. The core concept has always remained the same. Collect monsters (which we now call Warriors) and use their abilities to progress through the game world by fighting and using their individual environmental abilities. So this hasn’t changed. The execution, though, has changed to a degree. One of the things we always wanted to do was create a vast landscape with epic battles. But hardware limitations meant we always had to scale back our ideas to the point where it wasn’t even feasible on the last generations of machines. But the 360 has now allowed us to revisit some of our more ambitious ideas and actually turn them into reality. So the battlefield level is something that just wouldn’t be possible on any previous machine. With the 360, we really are at a point where we can turn some of our more ambitious visions into reality.

Did you have any concerns about switching over to the Xbox 360 platform? If so, what were they and how did you overcome them?
The only real concern was getting a game ready for launch. We had to totally rebuild every single asset. The backgrounds, the characters, the effects everything. Together with getting the game finished to a high enough standard and making sure we got it all working how we expected. So our only real concern was time.

What benefits and frustrations did you have because of Kameo’s extended development period?
The frustrations have long been forgotten now. Having to jump from one platform to another is probably the most frustrating thing any development team would have to go through. Believe it or not, it really eats into actual game development time. Every time we thought we got close to finishing, another giant hurdle appeared. Simply moving the game over to another machine didn’t mean we had plenty of time to redevelop gameplay or implement loads of new features. It was more about having to get everything you’d spent a long time working on converted over to a new machine, and then getting it all to work again! Anyone that has attempted a conversion will know what I mean! It takes a long time. And then having to redo the graphics, the backgrounds, the characters, the props and lighting to suit the new hardware. But overall, I really think the game has benefited from this. We have a very unique product in terms of the way it looks and the way it plays. From a gameplay perspective, we can now realise the battlefield level and support some online features too.

What has been your greatest challenge while working on Kameo?
Having to create 10 very different looking and working characters. The great thing about the game is everyone has their favorite Warriors. But the game is all about personal expression to a degree and giving the player a choice in how they combat certain scenarios and situations. People find they mould their own personalities around he warriors and end up creating their own fighting style. I thought this was all in my head, until I watched other people play the game. They all play it very differently. Obviously there are fight puzzles that can only be resolved using a particular warrior, but its how each player uses that warrior to accomplish the task that makes the game fresh and interesting.

What has been your greatest joy?
Hasn’t really happened yet. It will be when the game is on the shop shelf.

If you could be any of the Elemental Warriors or other characters in Kameo, which one would you be, and why?

In many ways, I would like to be them all. This may sound strange but they all have something about them that I empathise with and relate to. Pummel Weed has so much attitude and pent up aggression. Flex is soft and spongy on the outside, but beneath that soft comical exterior he’s a bit of a slapper. His slap storm is one of my favourite moves. Thermite is the smallest warrior by far, but definitely has the most devastating attacks – especially his back blast move!

But if I really had to choose just one, then it would be..? Probably Chilla. Because I could then set up my very own gorilla-gram service.
If you have to name only one thing that you hope players will appreciate in Kameo, what would it be?
The diversity of the 10 warriors and how they affect the overall feel of the gameplay.

It must have been an enormous challenge to program the warzones in Kameo where thousands of Elves and Trolls battle away at each other, but what a cool idea! How did you approach the development on it and what can you tell us about how this is done?
This may come as a shock to most people, but, to be honest, programming and developing the 10 warriors and their individual abilities took far longer than the entire battlefield to develop. Mainly because when we eventually got around to tackling the battlefield, we already had a very good working knowledge of the trolls and the fighting system.

With the battlefield, we knew what we wanted to do, but realising it is always another matter. I spent some time on my own for a while, going through what I thought we could do and how that wouldn’t take away from the rest of the game, how it would fit into the bigger picture. I got one of our concept artists to draw up some pictures to try and capture the mood and feeling of the level. I didn’t want us to create a completely new game system and mechanic that would suddenly make the rest of the game redundant.
I then presented the ideas to some of the senior people on the team. Normally what happens is that people don’t fully see what you see. But they know you’re enthusiastic about it and I suppose have faith in your vision and your ability. And then we go from there. The program manager, lead programmer and lead artist then do their best to support your ideas and move heaven and earth to help get the rest of the team on board and get things into production.

We were initially aiming for a hundred or so characters on screen. But a couple of our senior programmers discovered a way to get a few more characters on screen. A few thousand more, to be precise! Once we saw how many characters we could get away with on such a big background, we knew we were on to something pretty special.

It didn’t take long for the team to see the results and we just kept developing the idea and the battles until we were all happy enough with the results.

What primary complications does including a Live-enabled element to the game pose to developers?
Too many to list! If you plan to use Live in some capacity, then you build and design this into the game from the outset. It’s still a headache, but something you’re better prepared for. But with Kameo, we were never going to support any Live features. So for us it was a big change to the way the game worked in code and the way we had to approach the rest of the game.

How many people did you have on your team of developers and programmers?
For the most part around 15 – 20 people. But this figure’s gone up now to around 30, as we near completion.In the beginning, even George Andreas had challenges to getting into the video game industry. He knew what he wanted to do, but he found that his prospective employers didn’t want someone who had only limited hands-on experience. George made the rounds and met with rejection at every turn.

He changed tactics and began to knock on the doors of video game magazines. Here’s the rest of the story, in George’s own words:
I eventually landed a role as a writer on a new concept for a video game magazine. Our small four man team worked very hard determining what 20+ something’s wanted from a videogame magazine and eventually ended up with a magazine called EDGE. This went on to do very well and gain plenty of recognition throughout the video game industry.

Working on the magazine taught me an awful lot about the games industry. Together with the knowledge I already had from playing thousands of games on multiple formats, I learned to better understand what makes a good game, how games are actually developed and what it takes to make your product stand out from the rest. After two years of working on the magazine and gaining knowledge and contacts, I decided it was time to try getting into game development.

As before, I wrote off to several games companies, but the response this time was different. I was actually being invited for interviews. Working on EDGE had indeed opened many doors. I was being offered design jobs with practically everyone I spoke to, mainly on the strength of the work I had done on the magazine. I was in a very fortunate position now and could essentially cherry pick which company I wanted to work for and in what capacity.

Having weighed up all the pros and cons, I decided that Rare was the place for me. It was about to release DKC 1 and Killer Instinct and I thought that this was a very progressive company and one that I wanted to be a part of.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to get into a career doing what you do?
Designing games is great fun, but definitely not as easy as it looks. Unfortunately, just because you have the capacity to play a game and appreciate it, this doesn’t make you a great game designer. For me it’s the same as reading a great book. You can appreciate it’s a great book, and enjoy reading it, but that doesn’t mean you then have the ability to go and write a great book. If that was the case we’d all be writing best sellers.

You really need to have the desire to try and get beneath the skin of video games. Analyse them from every angle, dissect them and really try and study how they work. Why do things work or not work? How do things work? Why is it product ‘x’ does the same as product ‘y’ but is more fun to play, etc.?

If you have the determination, desire, aptitude, enthusiasm and imagination then you have all the basic tools you need to get into game design. It’s definitely better to start as a design assistant and be on at least one or possibly two products from the very start. See and experience all the ups and downs, why decisions have been made, how direction can change and why it has to, how is gameplay developed etc. Once you have done this, then you’re ready to try and go it alone.

Then all you have to do is come up with a great, workable concept!