ZUBO | BETA
EYE OF THE FORMAT HOLDER
Bright Light’s efforts have been so investigative the team has even built a working (and, we reckon, very marketable post-launch) card game used to hammer out the Zubo battle mechanics
an audience that EA doesn’t necessarily hit,” he says. CORPORATE MAGIC All through the extended production (the game is now into an alpha stage, with lots of bug testing already under way early in production – another attempt to buck the trends of development), O’Farrell and his team took a cue from their work with, of all people, J. K. Rowling to work out how they would continue to secure exec buy-in. And, they say, it turns out that the bosses at EA actually appreciate designers and developers who stick to their guns to maintain their vision. “Working with Jo Rowling and learning from her process really helped us understand how to control, decide and adapt our fiction,” says O’Farrell. “Often on the Harry Potter games Jo would be very accommodating to us, but sometimes she would just say no to our ideas, and explain why suggesting something wouldn’t work in the context of the fiction. That was a great learning process. Likewise we have had to be really firm – and here we’ve learnt that they [motions skyward as if to point to senior EA execs] really respect it when you argue back.” O’Farrell adds that in time it became increasingly clear to all involved that for a company like EA to learn about fostering an environment which encouraged new IP it would have to allow for creative push and pull – and more flexible deadlines – than it had previously. “It was hard sometimes, because exec members – on previous projects – sometimes want a game they are overseeing to be the game they want to make, and not the game everyone else wants, or should be making. I felt that changed with Zubo – and the execs here really learnt, and we end up coming out of DEVELOPMAG.COM
meetings having won our side on a certain point. Sometimes it’s not the case, and we get a bollocking – but you know they still support us and believe in our ability to deliver. “It’s been a learning curve for us, and has been revolutionary for everyone. I think other teams at EA are now going to know that ‘if Zubo can do it, so can we’. It’s already happening at EA and elsewhere in other companies – the same kind of thing is happening with Dead Space at EA LA for instance, and I think the industry as a whole acknowledges that it needs to start generating new IPs, but find the right ways to do it.” But the fact that Zubo survived the change to
“In making Zubo we never wanted to draw on anything else. It had to have its own identity…” Harvey Elliott, General Manager this process, and many of the problems inherent at the ‘old EA’ (for a time the firm was notorious for having produced numerous projects that were canned just before they hit alpha), is all the more remarkable. In Zubo’s behind-the-scenes lifespan, it has been under the stewardship of three different general managers as the EA UK operation shifted and changed until settling down into two separate studios – Bright Light and neighbour Criterion Games. In chatting with the latest of those GMs, Bright Light head Harvey Elliott, Develop gets the sense that Zubo isn’t just a special project
A unique relationship with Nintendo has helped Bright Light berak more ground for EA. Multiple trips to the see the format-holder’s in Japan and regular build updates have helped gain invaluable feedback, making Zubo is one of the first EA projects where the company has shown another its work in progress at crucial points in a project’s development. “It’s been really useful for us – they’ve been clear about what they like about the game and don’t like. It’s helped drive the build and show where we are now,” says O’Farrell. Since the dialogue between the two first opened, a team at Kyoto has been playing through levels and giving advice on a regular basis. It’s a process that goes beyond the evaluation done by the firm’s inhouse testing team Mario Club. “The problem with that process was that you’d get feedback, and sometimes you wouldn’t agree with it, but it was too late in the day to take it on board anyway,” says O’Farrell. Involving Nintendo earlier on has provided an invaluable way to improve the game’s quality. “The great thing now is that they are involved in the process, and we have time to take on their feedback. They have given us lots of constructive criticism. It was all valid and we’ve taken it all on. And these are the guys who have helped make Pokémon – people we really respect, so when people like that give you feedback you make sure you listen.”
given time to breathe, but also emblematic of the mood at the studio. Clearly, the studio and its teams feel they are just as worthy of attention as Criterion and its popular Burnout franchise (and given that Bright Light is working on Zubo, a new Potter title and games based on Hasbro properties – all part of EA’s new Casual Entertainment label – it’s hard not to agree). And as the story of Zubo’s creation shows, the team wants to prove that games don’t always have to be made under the same constraints as those that went before them. “We always wanted to have, alongside Potter, something that was original, a bit more risky and unproven like Zubo. And then further along something that united both of that and was a bit more family oriented, like our new Hasbro games,” explains Elliott on his overall plan for Bright Light. “In making Zubo, we never really wanted it to draw on anything else – it has very much had to be its own thing, and have its own identity. And I think the fact that, while the game has been in the works for three and a bit years, it still feels fresh to many of us – there is something in it that really draws people in – which speaks a great deal to how that process has worked. “And we’ve been very careful internally not to throw up our hands and go ‘Hey everybody, this is a franchise!’, because at some point someone has to step up and say ‘Well, this is the product’. That’s why we thought it was right to focus as much on DS as we can. Once it’s released – that’s when we we’ll figure out what might happen next. That’s been one of the great challenges, exciting and frustrating for various people, about the game. We’re learning to make these new games for new casual audiences in a totally new way.” www.ea.com MAY 2008 | 35