ZUBO | BETA
start on something that would be just as character driven and distinct. “We wanted to be able to build a world through characters, and something which could have strength and longevity,” O’Farrell explains to Develop in a room at EA’s UK studio base (Criterion are on the next floor) that is filled with Zubo concept artwork. “I didn’t want anything where you could say ‘I’ve seen this before’,” he explains, pointing regularly to a Zubo poster which features the games 55 individual ‘Zubo’ characters, which young players meet in the gameworld. But games for children – “good games for children,” O’Farrell stresses – are hard to get right. “In kids’ character games you’ve got to see the characters and go ‘wow’ straight away and see the life in the characters,” he says, pointing out that the biggest kids game hits of recent times, Lego Star Wars and Pokémon, worked their charms via animation and style. And while ‘make the next Pokémon’ is easy to write on paper, it’s not something you can magic out of thin air, even after years building digital recreations of Hogwarts. DEVELOPMAG.COM
So the team shut itself off from the rest of EA and rejected a timetable for production, instead kicking about ideas and character concepts for a number of months – a stark difference to many other games, whether produced at EA or not, which can have a somewhat rushed concept art phase. “It was very different, being allowed to let everything go. It means we were asking more
“Being allowed to let everything go was much more liberating in a creative sense…” Jacques Gauthier, Concept Artist questions, but it was much more liberating in a creative sense,” says Gauthier, who adds that the months spent refining the concept work meant that the style of the game was very definite before a single line of code was written.
Indeed, Develop’s first encounter with Zubo, back when it went under another name, was during a previous visit to the EA Guildford office over a year ago and a chance wander past the Zubo team with its walls covered in character artwork. The watchful eyes and ushering hands of a PR quickly dragged us away – but even then the artistic vision was as clear as it is on our cover artwork and across these pages today. But the secretive nature meant that the team was under the radar for quite a long time at EA – for both good and ill. Explains O’Farell: “We started becoming referred to as this secret-type project that people heard about, but didn’t really know anything concrete on. We didn’t have a SKU plan at that point – something unusual for EA because that means no ship date. “It caused arguments – because it was an unusual thing, that not every one knew about, and it had no revenue against it but was spending money on pre-production,” he admits, but the team took a chance and chose to ignore the accountants. “We just wanted to get a feel for the characters. And because we
Above: Artist Jacques Gauther spent almost six months working on concept work which laid the foundations of the Zubo character designs and much of the title’s overall style
MAY 2008 | 33