Guillermo del Toro Demanded Innovation from THQ on Insane

Greg Tito

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Sep 29, 2005
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Guillermo del Toro Demanded Innovation from THQ on Insane



Guillermo del Toro sat down with the bigwigs at THQ and told them to bring a new feature to the table or don't attend the next meeting.

In case missed the teaser [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103876-Guillermo-del-Toro-Making-a-Horror-Game] reveal at the Spike's Videogame Awards, Spanish film director Guillermo del Toro is making a game trilogy. His films all have a hint of the occult (Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth) and Insane's Lovecraftian themes of madness seems no different. But in a recent meeting with Danny Bilson, the VP of Core Games at THQ and former filmmaker himself (he wrote The Rocketeer), del Toro said that he wanted everyone there to come up with a feature that you've always wanted in a game.

"He said, 'At the next meeting I want all of you to come to the meeting with one dream feature, one thing you've always wanted in a game ... or don't come to the meeting,'" Bilson said.

So what was Bilson's dream feature?

"Mine's Autotuning," he said "To have a great fiction game, everyone has to finish the game. To have a trilogy you have to get to the end and care about the story. You can't care about the story if you choke off halfway through or you get sick of it or fatigued or whatever. So the game will have the coolest AI-based auto-tuning where it's challenging for everybody."

Wait, so, Bilson is a creative guy, right? In addition to writing The Rocketeer, he also worked on TV series like The Flash and The Sentinel. And his dream feature is to come up with an AI to adjust the difficulty slider?

Surely, he could come up with something more interesting than that? Well, no, apparently he couldn't. And don't call me Shirley.

Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5732003/what-guillermo-del-toro-told-a-roomful-of-game-developers]

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Kenjitsuka

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Sep 10, 2009
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"In addition to writing The Rocketeer, he also worked on TV series like The Flash and The Sentinel. His dream feature is to come up with an AI to adjust the difficulty slider?

Surely, he could come up with something more interesting than that?"
Oh, I loved the Sentinel! Very good premise in that one!

OT: Indeed, the whole difficulty thing seems not very interesting.
You just pick your difficulty at the start and if they did their job properly you will be stimulated without getting frustrated anyway...
 
Jul 22, 2009
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Asking THQ for innovation is like asking the ocean for water.

Well... in my opinion it is.

THQ are currently my favourite publisher because of how they handle their games and developers, I'm looking forward to see how this collaboration turns out.
 

Rad Party God

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Feb 23, 2010
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He's not spanish, he's proudly mexican and he was born in the same city I live right now.
(Guadalajara that is, not a warp zone as my profile may say)

OT: Heh, it's good to hear he's putting quite an effort to make his game as good as possible.

I've bought quite a lot of their games recently and I haven't thought about it before, but I like THQ and many of their games are great.
 

manythings

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Fumbleumble said:
Why does this sound like 'level scalling' to me?
Well what I think he means is that it changes to accomodate you more than just your characters level. You can see it implemented in some parts of games. The finale of Half-Life: Episode 2 is designed to give people having trouble a chance but if you are doing well the enemies move faster and attack better.

OT: Always like the Flash...
 

scnj

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To be fair, Del Toro's attitude here is honestly the kind of thing we need to see more of within the industry. And as for the AI scaling answer, maybe he doesn't want to reveal some of the more interesting stuff until later. The game isn't out until 2013.
 

Animyr

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Trying to be innovative is not an new goal. A good one, but still...I read the title and thought "duh".
 

The Random One

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Well, that's certainly a new, interesting thing that I never saw on any- wait, I was sitting on a copy of Resident Evil 4. Never mind.

Although I've never seen it taken all the way. I'd like to see a game that constantly changed the difficulty. If you die a lot, it lowers the difficulty. If you suddenly stop dying, it brings it back up. Although it would be a shame to struggle to get past a particular difficult point and suddenly complete it because the game dumbed it down for you.

Also, creative skills are not universally interchangeable. Just because del Toro is an amazing moviemaker doesn't mean he'll be an amazing any creative project he wants to do. He's shown here he has nowhere the knowhow of games he has of movies.
 

Cogwheel

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GamesB2 said:
Asking THQ for innovation is like asking the ocean for water.
All the ideas you get will be far too salty to use for anything?

Also, I think he needs to play L4D. It takes flexible difficulty to a whole new level.
 

Jumplion

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Well, I've just gotten some more respect for Guillermo del Toro. This is pretty much how I hope to get into the industry, start with films and then move in to video games :D Doubt it'll work, but I'm damn determined.

We need more developers that demand innovation and quality in their games, and if del Toro if the one who has to do it, then it'll be kind of sad that someone from outside the industry had to show us a thing or two.
 

mindlesspuppet

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cursedseishi said:
Honestly, an Auto-tuning feature has never been implemented, well at least. It all relies on artificially nerfing or buffing mobs, or throwing more at you, depending on what you chose. A game that could monitor how well you handle situations thrown at you, and vary and adjust the next would be pretty nice.

Not so good at the hacking minigames? Game adjusts the difficulty to make it more accommodating to you, and subtly make it harder as you get the hang of it.

Capture the point too easy though? AI might increase guards around the area, installing some fixed weaponry to defend it, or the like.

It would be something like the AI director from Left 4 Dead, but given more control than just "spawn X tanks here".
There was auto-tuning in HL: Ep 2. It think there's been a few other games to use such a thing.

I just hope if they put something like this in you can turn it off. You get better at games, and everything for that matter, by practice. Trying over and over again to meet a challenge. If the challenge meets me, instead of the other way around, it's a pretty empty victory.
 

BehattedWanderer

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Jun 24, 2009
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Actually, I don't find that really outrageous. InFamous startled me the second time through when it told me I was doing really well, and asked me if I wanted to step up the difficulty. Flattered by the game, I did so, and felt a little better about it. Imagine the story mode on shooters featured what Bilson is asking, where even the people who don't normally play shooters can enjoy the game adapting its difficulty to suit them.
 

Arec Balrin

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Feb 26, 2010
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THQ not being much of a developer itself can't innovate for poop. Some of their studios can but Volition isn't one of them. Darksiders is rather polished but having finally got round to playing it now it's available on Steam in the UK and was immediately on sale for a fiver: Virgil don't know how to innovate either. A wasted opportunity, favouring instead a Devil May Cry meets Soul Reaver clone. A power-trip like that when you're playing as a horseman requires: A- More Horse, B- More Power and C- More distractions beyond exploration that really isn't.

Leaving just Relic who are busy innovating their own projects, which they've shown they can do in small increments.

But Volition have it, so expect a terrible PC port even if 'inSane' is even any good. But new innovations? It isn't difficult; hardware innovations are difficult which is why they happen so slowly, they have technical limitations to overcome. Software isn't as restrained. What is the last innovation we can remember in a game? For me it was Gratuitous Space Battles where you have no control of your ships, you just design them, choose them, design a strategy and let them do it. It's like Football Manager but with weapons of space-war and yes that counts as innovation even if FM had the basic embryonic idea before.

I'd love an RPG where there was just one resource for everything: XP, health, mana, levels, attributes and abilities are all the same thing. When you have none of it, you die. When you have little of it you can cast X spell: but it kills you because it costs too much. You have to be careful with how much damage you take, what abilities you use and how often because it could cause you to de-level. Let's also say the amount of it you can have has virtually no upper limit(what's the highest a computer can count up to?) and so the potential of what you can do is also unlimited. Design the entire game around that concept.

Then make it a PvP-enabled MMO for giggles.
 

Jeffro Tull

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Sep 27, 2010
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A game centered around Lovecraftian madness could really benefit from a feature like that. I can't help but think of the madness scale in the paper and pen "Call of Chuthulu" when I read that. Rather than getting rewarded for the way you are breezing through the are you fall deeper into your own insanity causing more enemies to spawn, seeing things, hearing things that are not there. Could be unnerving at times if done correctly.
 

Cyberjester

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Auto tuner, not just set levels of difficulty. Before it's more "If player gets through this in x time, go to next level of difficulty, or if player dies y times, go to previous difficulty". Actually changing it on the fly would be pretty interesting. And no game does that, L4D wasn't too bad, but that was just MOAR TANKS! MOAR TANKS!!

Then 7 or so hunters for teh lulz.


I approve of anything with the word "Lovecraftian" in it though
 

Ghengis John

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Me:"Guillermo, I want this feature where you use light and shadow to build a network of pipes that carry sounds different lengths to play music. This music is the writing of an alien species that speaks through dreams and powers their technology."

Guillermo:"You're hired."
 

Sniper Team 4

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Apr 28, 2010
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I respect the idea of wanting everyone to have a new idea, but don't we already have this? Isn't this simply changing the difficulty level in the options menu? If you want to be even more precise, doesn't L4D have exactly what he's talking about?