Now We are Talking
Alex Ness of Toys for Bob
CHILL Element: Water Phrase: Stay Cool! Character type: New Skylander Bio: Chill was the sworn guardian and personal protector of the Snow Queen. As captain of the queen’s guard, her many heroic deeds had earned her the respect of the entire Ice Kingdom. But when the Cyclops army began to expand their empire into the northern realms, the Snow Queen was taken prisoner during her watch, and Chill has never forgiven herself for letting it happen. Ashamed and embarrassed, she left the Ice Kingdom behind and swore never to return until she could reclaim her honor. Now as a member of the Skylanders, she remains courageous and strong, while always on the lookout for her lost queen.
58 Casual Connect Fall 2012
After starting off at SEGA, you worked at Crystal Dynamics for several years before joining the team at Toys for Bob. In your opinion, what have been some of the biggest changes you’ve witnessed over your twenty years? Wow, I feel like games have changed so much in the last 20 years—more than anything else I can think of, in fact, other than mobile devices. When I first starting working in games, we were in the 16-bit era. Not only was there a dramatic shift when games went from 2D to 3D, but even on a higher level, I think the biggest change is really this notion of reality. Originally, games were anything but realistic. As a matter of fact, they were quite the opposite. As technology got better, we began to get better at mimicking reality. You could go anywhere you wanted to go, do anything you wanted to do, and everything could be (or had to be) explained. Then, online play got bigger and bigger too. Going hand-in-hand with these innovations is the fact that it also took more and more people to make these more advanced games. Three-to-ten people used to be able to do all the design, art, and programming on a 16-bit title. Now, you’ll see teams can run in excess of 250 people for AAA games. That obviously means that games cost a lot more to make, which changes what kind of games get made (and I’m just talking about the console market). With social and mobile games, there has been an interesting renaissance of the old-school games, with small teams and narrow focuses and whatnot. Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure has been a huge hit, due in part to its integrated toy line. Why do you think this combination of toys and video gaming works so well? I think when kids play with their toys, they imagine them doing things and going on adventures. I know I used to. Not only would I imagine my G.I. Joes fighting in battles, but I really loved football—so I made up my own imaginary football league with G.I. Joes. Duke would throw the ball to Snake Eyes to beat Destro and Snow Job (Joes and Cobras could be on the same team). Anyway, one of the cool things Skylanders offers is the chance to actually have real adventures with these toys in the video game world. You don’t have to imagine any more! Sort of kidding there. You can still go on imaginary adventures, obviously, but now there’s a video game component as well. Hopefully it’s the best of both worlds.