The story of Splinter Cell: Conviction, so far? It goes something like this: ‘Now you see him, now you don’t, now you see him – crikey, he’s got a beard, what gives, Ubisoft? And why’s there so much daylight? Oh, now he’s gone again. Oh, there he is. Yay, he’s had a shave. Gosh, he just smashed that man’s face into a toilet.’ Sort of like Jack Bauer doing a pantomime, then.

Last month VGD slipped on some PVC pants, screwed three Magilites to its forehead and skulked down to south London to interview Maxime Beland, Creative Director on Sam Fisher’s much-delayed, grim-faced return to the world of gaming. Set your jaw and read on.

VideoGamesDaily: Conviction has had quite a troubled development period. We hear earlier builds were scrapped because it was felt the game was becoming too similar to Assassin’s Creed. Is that a worry now? What did you change, in particular?

Maxime Beland: It was actually never a worry, that it was too much like Assassin’s Creed. The stress and the reason why we changed was because it didn’t feel like a Splinter Cell game anymore. So many things had changed – there were no gadgets, there were no lights and shadows, there were no athletic moves – a lot of the core values that Splinter Cell depends on.

And that’s what we changed, we brought them back. We were delivering them in a different way, it’s faster, it’s more dynamic – as you’ve seen, it’s still stealth but it’s a new type of stealth. I’m happy because I think we’ve succeeded in delivering stealth that is going to reach more people. It’s going to ring true with a lot more people, because it’s more permissive.

VGD: Some of our forum members have expressed the worry that the changes are still too drastic. If nothing else, Sam himself looks very different – the three-scope visor no longer graces the box art. What would you say to reassure fans of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, for instance, that this is still recognisably the same sort of experience?

Beland: I think it’s interesting what you say, because I think everybody has a different perception of who Sam is. I think to me the three dots are probably one of the best icons of the game industry – it’s so powerful, it’s such a powerful image, we know they’re very iconic for the franchise, and that’s why they’re back, that’s why Sam gets his goggles back in the game. Our main menu has the three dots.

So to me, that is still Splinter Cell. What is also Splinter Cell is Sam Fisher himself. But to me, a black wetsuit is not Sam Fisher. It’s one of the tools he uses when the situation asks for that. But in Conviction, because it’s much more of an urban environment, because there are moments with crowds, because Sam is not dropped off a chopper into a Siberian base, he is dressed in a way that fits the crowd, that fits the context for Conviction.

So we didn’t change Sam because we didn’t like the wet suit, I love the wet suit, he looks great in a wet suit – for me Sam is dressed for the party he’s going to. And for the next Splinter Cell, the context will define his uniform.

VGD: Will the crowd play more of a part later in the game? Or will it be more a question of secluded interior areas and patrolling guards?

Beland: There’s a lot of variety. A big point for me in Conviction was trying to give a lot of variety for the player. So we’ve got all kinds of maps. We’ve got maps that are more open, outside, with crowds, where you get to do some exotic gameplay in there in the crowd, and we’ve got moments like you saw where the crowd is a bit more window dressing – they’re there, but if combat starts they’re just going to run away and that’s going to be it. We’ve got maps that are completely isolated from civilians, more classic Splinter Cell if you want. So I think we’ve got a good variety of those.

1. Conviction dev “hungry” for Splinter Cell movie The 'biggest question' is who would play Sam Fisher....
2. Splinter Cell: Conviction Hands-On Preview Third Echelon's old posterboy goes in search of retribution. Our hands-on with Ubisoft's fifth Splinter Cell....
3. Mass Effect 2 Interview Game producer Adrien Cho on BioWare boozing, pushing Unreal Engine 3 to its limits, comparisons with Star Wars: The Old Republic and a "holistic" approach to development....

A not very long time ago in a conference chamber not very far away we had the opportunity to chat with Jake Neri, Producer with LucasArts on Star Wars: The Old Republic, the hotly anticipated BioWare-developed PC MMO. Here are the results. For maximum impact, print the article onto cellophane and move it slowly past eye-level whilst staring at a map of the constellations.

VGD: You have an incredible amount of spoken dialogue in this game, and in three languages to boot! Can you talk me through how you’ve pulled that off?

Jake Neri: Well we’re still in the middle of developing that. It’s a tremendous effort, we have a huge team collaborating on that both at LucasArts and at BioWare studios in Austin and Edmonton are working on that project. It is a massive undertaking, but the pay-off for the player is really huge, and I think that was something that we decided early on – when we wanted to go to full-voice, we wanted to make sure we could do that in all the key languages, to reach as many as people as possible. We’re trying to create a world phenomenon with the game, we don’t think we can do that unless you can hear it in the language which you speak.

Looks like an Inquisitor player to us.

VGD: Do you think this game will convert many Star Wars fans to MMO fans?

Neri: I think so, yeah, I definitely think so. That’s one of our goals. We understand the Star Wars audience pretty deeply, we’re very fortunate to be very much in touch with those fans. At LucasArts it’s a big part of what we’re doing, trying to understand those fans, because they’re are passionate and they’re all out there. We also know from working on things like Galaxies we have no problem with attracting people to the genre just based on the fact that it is Star Wars. So we feel like a lot of the things we’re doing – the story, trying to make you feel like a hero early on, trying to make sure that the combat is cinematic and action-packed – we think those things will bring in new players and we’re hoping they are. At the same time, there are hardcore MMO players that are going to want to play this as well, so we’re making sure that the game fulfils their expectations as well.

VGD: MMOs don’t tend to blow people’s minds with their production values. Do you think gamers in this genre really care for that kind of thing, and are you trying to raise the bar?

Neri: It’s one of the huge technical hurdles in the MMO biz. We can’t always control the scene like you can in a single player game, we have certain limitations with physics, right, we can’t do as much physics at any one time. Because in one scene you might have 250 people on-screen, and you can’t control the environment as well as you can in single player. Now that being said, as far as inside the genre goes, we’re certainly trying to push the boundaries of what you can and can’t do. Combat is a perfect example – very cinematic, very heroic, all over the map, lots of flips and acrobatics, lots of choreography in our swordplay, the ability to block blaster bolts, use force powers…

VGD: Old Republic takes place 3000 years before the original film trilogy, but after the events of the Knights of the Old Republic games. What state is the universe in at present?

Neri: It’s an interesting time. The Sith are there, and they’re ready to do some serious damage… The Sith are different in our world than they are anywhere else. We’ve heard a lot of questions about will we answer what happens in KOTOR 1 and 2. We don’t have a ton of detail on that, we know fans want to understand that, so perhaps we’ll address that at some point.

Somebody's just burned his own fringe off.

VGD: BioWare must be pretty clued-up on the Star Wars franchise by now, having developed KOTOR. How would you characterise your relationship with them?

Neri: They’re very familiar, and I would say that we have a really excellent relationship with them. It’s very collaborative, very free, we trust them quite a bit. They know Star Wars very well. And they have contributed quite heavily to it, in all honesty, so they’re a key trusted partner for sure.

VGD: I’m sure there’s always been a sizeable percentage of Star Wars fans at BioWare.

Neri: Absolutely. They’ve done a great job. KOTOR 1 was an amazing game that they were responsible for, along with the folks at LucasArts. Again, they’re a good partner.

VGD: Thanks for talking to us, Jake.

The game’s slated for a Spring 2011 release.

1. Mass Effect 2 Interview Game producer Adrien Cho on BioWare boozing, pushing Unreal Engine 3 to its limits, comparisons with Star Wars: The Old Republic and a "holistic" approach to development....
2. Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight Interview Epic, five page marathon chat with EA producer on appeasing the hardcore, obligatory logins, dumping Gamespy, the joy of Halo Wars and where the RTS will go next....
3. Splinter Cell: Conviction Interview Creative Director Maxime Beland on Denzel Washington, the problem of cut scenes, transplantable AI, platform exclusivity and much, much more....

Three and a half years into the Wii’s career, developers remain strangely reluctant to put the motion controller to what is surely its highest and noblest purpose: swatting lumps of pixel-gore out of gung-ho NPCs with four or five feet of chilly, computerised steel. There’s been the odd, clumsy stab in this direction at intervals, with No More Heroes perhaps the most notable contribution, but Wii operators as a bunch seem more interested in the entertainment possibilities of turning door handles, pointing torches at things, playing the sci-fi version of Operation! and, needless to say, shooting stuff.

We can attribute some of this disinterest to the less-than-surgical sensitivity of the Wii remote itself, in its original, out-of-the-box form. What serious attempts at samurai thwacking the platform can boast – Ubisoft’s Red Steel, for example – are to scientific swordsmanship what a food blender is to Antoine Carême, furious masturbatory gestures carrying the day against more calculating swipes and parries.

Nowadays, though, we have access to the incremental technology miracle that is Wii Motion Plus. And with it, Red Steel 2 – a considerably more stylised, no less frenetic slab of shoulder-disabling melee mimicry, into whose Samurai-Western-flavoured company we were ushered last week. Expect more detailed thoughts on the game next month, but suffice to say you can block somebody’s swing, skip round to their right, uppercut them into a mid-air combo and finally slam-dunk them into fountains of spangly victory loot without turning your wrist into a perpetual motion machine.

Say goodbye to your nadgers.

A Good Thing indeed, as we later confessed to Jason VandenBerghe, the game’s Creative Director. VandenBerghe’s credits include copious Bond games and The Godfather for EA, and Call of Duty and Guitar Hero for Activision. He is also quite possibly the friendliest man on the planet. Never have we had our knees amiably slapped so many times in the space of 20 minutes.

VideoGamesDaily: There’s been a lot of noise in the past few months about whether “hardcore” gaming can succeed on the Wii. I’m sure it’s something you’re asked about all the time.

Jason VandenBerghe: Yes, the great hardcore gamer jihad! You’re right, I am asked about this quite a lot. So, do you want the short answer or the long answer?

VGD: Your choice!

VandenBerghe: I think many developers and fans want to pose the question as ‘there are no hardcore players on the Wii’ or ‘there are hardcore players on the Wii’. This question is not interesting to me because I’m not making a game for hardcore players, I’m making a game for gamers, which includes hardcore players – they are welcome to play the game as well, no problem, I’m a hardcore player myself!

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2. Red Steel 2 Hands-On Preview Steel yourself for our hard-hitting hands-on with Ubisoft's second Wii swordfighting game....
3. Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight Interview Epic, five page marathon chat with EA producer on appeasing the hardcore, obligatory logins, dumping Gamespy, the joy of Halo Wars and where the RTS will go next....

Depending on who you read, real-time strategy is dead, dying or cuddled up in a leather armchair somewhere polishing its war medals and writing angry letters to the local gazette. The genre needs a shot in the arm, and what better franchise to wield the syringe than Command & Conquer, one of the oldest and most successful of top-down tank molesters. At a recent EA showcase, we caught up with Raj Joshi, producer on Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, for his thoughts on base-building, the competition and whether you really can squeeze the full range of options into an Xbox 360 controller.

VideoGamesDaily: Hello Raj, thanks for chatting with us. Do you think this kind of preview event does justice to a game, particularly an RTS title like this one? You don’t really get to experience the feature set in full…

Raj Joshi: I think it works pretty good, getting everybody together for the first time for a hands on on multiplayer, getting into a match and seeing how it comes alive dynamically with many people. We’ve been doing hands-on one-on-one through the single player campaign, and I think that although single player’s very important for Command and Conquer because a lot of people try to do that, I think our game really shines when you have five team-mates, you get to see the three different classes in action and work together with people.

So we’ve had some people play through three to four rounds, I think that’s where people get the real taste of it. It is tough because you need long enough to tech up and really get a feel for things, get well-versed… But I think it’s a good taste. Definitely better than half an hour sitting down with the single player campaign, trying to get through a mission, and trying to base an opinion on that. I think this is a little better than our single player stuff we’ve been doing lately.

VGD: Obviously the fanbase for the core series is huge and passionate, but do you think that the fourth game is one newcomers will get into?

Joshi: I think more so than before, having the mobile crawler, the class choice which hopefully will appeal to first-person shooter multiplayer players, where it’s more focussed. Rather than having all 88 units accessible at once and trying to figure out your path, you pick a class and that kind of determines your play style. Having that mobile base and not having to do Tiberium harvesting will hopefully help people jump in, and not having as many units to control at once. Plus the play style of multiplayer is more like first person shooter mode, where it’s kind of this domination style capturing of control points.

We’re hoping all these things kind of added together will make it easier to get into. It’s not a casual game by any stretch of the information, but I think more casual than, like, Red Alert 3, where the build order was very specific, all the units were very specifically good at one little thing. So that one was very oriented to the micromanaging player.

The man himself.

VGD: The C&C fan community is particularly close to the development team. Does the new game owe much to this relationship?

Joshi: Definitely. One thing, as far as the story goes, is that we’ve really researched everything the community has written over the past 15 years and integrated a lot of their lore into the way we’re wrapping up the Tiberium saga. So a lot of the key story points came from the community as well, and then were bedded back out with the community again.

1. EA Producer: C&C4 is more like an FPS But "not a casual game by any stretch of the imagination"....
2. “Big and simple” Halo Wars learned from C&C3 – EA EA producer feels Ensemble Studios worked well within the limitations of console play....
3. Red Steel 2 Interview Creative director Jason VandenBerghe talks Project Natal, Sony's wand, mature gaming on the Wii and cutting the grass in Zelda....

Survival horror, it’s generally accepted, has fallen on hard times. The progress of the Resident Evil franchise perhaps typifies what Destructoid’s Jim Sterling terms “evolution into extinction”: the last numbered iteration was an action game in all but heritage, preferring pad-mashing brutality to ammo-deprived suspense, laser sights to locked doors, turrets to tenterhooks.

Drawn to the bombastic production values and sales figures of major action releases like God of War, and with one eye perhaps on the downfall of PC-based point and click adventuring, the genre’s oldest hands have dosed up on adrenaline. Resident Evil 4’s release was undoubtedly the turning point, its baying mobs and customizable weapons a far cry from the lurking terrors of yore. In 2008, Konami threw its hat into the ring alongside Capcom’s in the form of Silent Hill: Homecoming, while EA’s Dead Space applied the same principles in zero G. Even the Project Ego/Fatal Frame games, protected from turbulent market developments by their relative anonymity, are starting to twitch a little: the fourth one made use of a shoulder aim.

It’s a transition the minds behind the latest Silent Hill, Climax Group, are all too familiar with. Discussing the development of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, a Wiimake of the PS1 original which launches in the UK on 26th February, Lead Producer Tomm Hulett comments wryly: “We looked at survival horror games now, and we saw they were really all about action, to the point where we call them ‘action horror’ games. Monster jumps out, you pull out your gun, you shoot him, he’s dead, you’re not scared anymore.”

Climax made its own contribution to this shift in Silent Hill: 0rigins, a dyed-in-the-wool PSP prequel which – prior to Homecoming, at least – boasted the franchise’s most combat-capable protagonist yet, but when it came to Shattered Memories, the developer was ready to turn a new leaf.

“The genesis of it wasn’t so much a reactionary thing as it was, you know, ‘when’s the last time I played a horror game that really scared me?’” says Lead Designer Sam Barlow. “A kind of feeling of ‘I’ve played a lot of horror games now and the template is fairly fixed’.

“And rather than picking that apart and stripping elements out, we said ‘right, let’s throw that away, and let’s pretend we’ve come down from Mars and we’ve never played a horror videogame. But we know what horror movies are like, and we know what thriller movies are like, that kind of stuff, and so what would we come up with?’ So it was trying to think of something new, something fresh and exciting, to see if there was a better way of doing horror in games.”

Light and dark: weapons of choice in the survival horror developer arsenal.

That “fresh and exciting” approach proved fairly straightforward: weaken the player to the point of incapacity. “We took out the elements that empower the player,” Hulett explains, “and threw you into this hostile environment, this nightmare world, where these intelligent creatures are pursuing you at every step. They can go through doors, they can climb over walls. They’re trying to get you, actively. And you have very little resources to escape them.”

1. Climax: Wii owners more receptive to “bold” ideas Silent Hill: Shattered Memories "wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the Wii"....
2. Monster Hunter Tri Interview Hands-on with Capcom's third and possibly greatest full Monster Hunter sequel, followed by extensive chat with Capcom UK's Leo Tan....
3. Metroid: Other M Hands-On Preview Samus gets all maternal in the most unconventional Metroid to date....

Picture the scene. A busy conference chamber in Kensington, London. Four HDTVs glare from an island in the centre of the room. At three of the four sit Monster Hunter veterans, unmistakeable in their branded gear, vaguely goth hairdos and businesslike demeanours. Their thumbs are a blur, their eyes narrowed in concentration. Astonishing feats of valor unfold on-screen, balletic rolls and perfectly timed, boulder-rupturing sword swipes, again and again.

At the remaining TV sits a journalist. Or rather, five journalists, each fighting for a clear view. While the other players remain monkishly calm, the journalists are shouting at one another. They are shouting things like “It’s behind you!” and “No, you can only do that with your weapon sheathed,” and “Hit him with a broom! Hit him with a broom!” and “Quick, try it on that herbivore!” And they are getting their arses well and truly kicked.

If you’re worrying that Monster Hunter’s move to Wii makes it any less of an ego-trampling, “character-building” purist’s paradise, don’t. The tutorials are apparently a bit fleshier, a little more palatable for the great unwashed, and some of the more esoteric weapons (the bow, dual swords, hunting horn and gunlance) are missing in action, but this is, at heart, very much still a dragon of a game – a game in which you spend dozens of hours trying and failing to take down some huge, devious and incredibly resilient mythical animal in order to get your paws on a fetching new set of lizard-skin boxer shorts. Noobs need not apply, even those with a sky-high WPM.

Play is once again divided between two hub towns – one for the offline missions, another for the online mode – and a mess of capacious, picture postcard landscapes, each further broken down into discreet areas with their own fauna and item drops. Load tunnels are back, but load times have been chopped to fractions of a second, and while the animations and textures don’t exactly blow Uncharted 2 out of the water, they take most other Wii releases to school.

New to the mix is a living ecology: critters will no longer simply home in on the player as soon as he or she enters their trigger zone, but interact with each other in a faintly plausible manner. Velociraptor-like Jaggies have territories, and will defend them, if given no option, against even the largest predators. Winged Rathlions rebuild their stamina between clashes by chomping down herds of grass-eaters. Some monsters can even imitate others, like the beaked Qurupeco, summoning cat-like Melynxes to hinder your assaults.

They make it look so easy.

Of course, the big draw on these shores will be the newly non-borked online functionality. Up to four players can join together in the quest for ever-bulkier and snazzier kinds of freshly-chopped dinosaur-slaying attire (there’s also local arena-style co-op for two players). Many of the new features have been designed with the Xbox Live and PlayStation Network crowds in mind. There’s Wii Speak support to bolster the returning suite of emoticons, and thankfully the use of Friends Codes is optional (though if you take the trouble to memorise ‘em you’ll be able to see where your fellow hunters hail from, as in Mario Kart Wii).

The new Classic Controller Pro – essentially a Classic Controller with beefy handgrips, extra shoulder buttons and wider spaced analog sticks – is some indication of the politics behind Monster Hunter’s shift from Sony to Nintendo consoles: Capcom, we’re told, was brought in on the design work. The controller is pleasure to use – a far cry from the crabclaw-inducing PSP layout – but the enthusiasm with which the device is presented is a little suspicious. How will the game fare on a standard Classic, or even a Wiimote and nunchuck, neither of which we were able to road-test?

1. Monster Hunter is a “platform”, not a game – Capcom UK PSP's success is "more about Monster Hunter players than it is PSP players". ...
2. Red Steel 2 Interview Creative director Jason VandenBerghe talks Project Natal, Sony's wand, mature gaming on the Wii and cutting the grass in Zelda....
3. Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight Interview Epic, five page marathon chat with EA producer on appeasing the hardcore, obligatory logins, dumping Gamespy, the joy of Halo Wars and where the RTS will go next....

Will it be on the PS3 or won’t it? Will Shepherd be in one piece by the finale or won’t he? Will you be able to jump twixt the sheets with the entire cast, or just its female members? Questions hang round Mass Effect 2 like bits of shrapnel in zero-G. Here are answers to a few of them, care of game producer Adrien Cho.

VideoGamesDaily: So, Mass Effect 2. The first one was obviously a highly acclaimed game, but it came out in the midst of a lot of exclusive content on Xbox 360. Do you think it got a fair share of the attention?

Adrien Cho: I thought actually Microsoft was a really good publishing partner, they really supported us, and they recognised what a unique IP Mass Effect became. And they helped foster that, and allowed us to do a lot of different things. And with a sequel now I think we’re able to branch out more with EA to an all-new audience. So I felt that we’re only going to be able to reach out to more people with the new game, hopefully people who didn’t get a chance to play Mass 1. One of the goals was to say “hey, give it a try – we’ve made everything a little more accessible, combat, the shooter aspects of it.” We want people who’ve never even played an RPG, who don’t consider themselves RPG players, but are maybe drawn towards the sci-fi aspects of it, the shooting aspects of it… This game will hold up with the best shooters out there, and you get some real cool role-playing elements as well.

We like a man who knows the value of beer.

VGD: With the greatest respect to the Old Republic guys, I feel like their title and many others in this genre has this sterile feel to it. Whereas with Mass Effect, the environment is much deeper, much richer.

Cho: I’m so proud of our art team. The end product is just amazing.

VGD: All these effects, all these lighting and filter tricks – you just don’t get that level of quality in many PC titles…

Cho: I think we really pushed the hardware a lot in Mass 1, and the great thing about Mass 2, with all aspects of Mass 2, is that we’re even more familiar with it. So from a gameplay side, from a design side, to the writing, we’re able to squeeze even more out. By the time we shipped Mass 1, we started to plan for Mass 2, and we immediately knew the areas where it was like “hey, I think we can do this better, we can get more detail in it.” And you can just see the environments, they’re absolutely amazing, like – you get this expanse of city out here, the flares, the buildings…

VGD: I like the grain effect in the distance.

Cho: Yeah, the fog – even the small stuff, seemingly the background stuff is just as detailed, if you look at the walls…

VGD: This is Unreal Engine 3 tech, right?

Cho: It’s Unreal. We’ve really pushed Unreal. I don’t recall a game using Unreal tech that looks quite like ours, and I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved with the art style.

Probably not one of the good guys.

VGD: And you were an artist originally, so presumably you’ve had a personal investment in this aspect of the product.

Cho: I was lead tech on Mass 1, and I continued to do that role a bit into Mass 2, but I evolved into more of a production role, and I gave up the tech/art role too a good friend of mine. But early on when we started Mass 2, one of the things we felt we could improve upon was the blurred textures. That’s part of the nature of the technology we’re using, but I was like “we’re going to solve that problem.” So I bet my friend – the lead cinematic animator – a case of beer that we will fix that problem. I’ve got a lot riding on that! [laughs] Aside from the pride, I’ve got some beer to make sure that the game looks a high def and as polished as possible.

1. Mass Effect 2 producer: devs “pamper” gamers Bioware's second sci-fi shooter will have "serious", "delicious" consequences, like in Demon's Souls....
2. The secret to Mass Effect 2’s textures? Beer Game producer to get lead cinematic animator wasted if technical issues are overcome....
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Vince Zampella, studio head of Infinity Ward

“It’s just a matter of detail, little touches,” Zampella told us during a recent showing of Modern Warfare 2. “Transitions from wall to ground are now hand-touched by all the artists so that everything fits.

“If you see some of the Rio scenes from the trailers, there’s just like these uphill broken stairwells that are half-covered in dirt, weeds coming through – one of my favourite parts in the whole game is there’s a back alley there, and there’s just two dumpsters and a piece of garbage, some trash blowing in the wind and the weeds coming up through the cracks in the sidewalk.”

"Might I draw your attention, gentleman, to the exquisite brushwork on the tin can in bottom left..."

Cracks in the sidewalk. Not exactly “attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion”, is it? Next up, an in-engine showreel of Zampella’s favourite discarded shopping trolleys.

Check out our tongue-in-cheek “Quickfire Q&A” with Modern Warfare 2, and stay tuned for our full review. The game’s out for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on 10th November, like you didn’t know already.

1. Quickfire Q&A: Modern Warfare 2 FPS Gamer gets schizophrenic with Infinity Ward's epic shooter follow-up. Can you hear duty calling?...
2. 1-on-1: Modern Warfare 2 vs Left 4 Dead 2 Can Valve's grab-bag of southern comfort and zombie goodness overturn Infinity Ward's steamroller of an action blockbuster? Click on for our pre-release feature face-off....
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In my early days in the industry, it was with considerable excitement that I first started to meet and interview some of my most idolised game creators. Trying not to be the ‘creepy’ fanboy (you know the type), I’ve only ever asked two creators for autographs. One of them was Yu Suzuki, when I first met him at just 16. Since then, I’ve met many of our industry’s best creators and execs several times over – and these days I tend to be past the gushing and cut to the chase!

But meeting our industry’s leaders and innovators is no less enjoyable. The reasons we love doing interviews are several. Firstly, they often make for really interesting and insightful analysis into what’s going on in the business of making or selling games – both for us as the interviewers, and we hope, for you guys as our readers. Secondly, they’re probably the best way to break exclusive information – if we can convince an interviewee to reveal new details about a project, it can be gold dust. And thirdly, we just enjoy building our little (or now, not-so-little) interview ‘Hall of Fame’.

In celebration of today’s relaunch from what used to be called Kikizo into Video Games Daily, we’ve dug into our archive of around 250 interviews, and whittled down a list of 50 games industry people.

The criteria for selection is like this: firstly, this is purely a personal endeavour, which means only those who I interviewed personally (and in person – or have done so at a prior date, in cases where other staff interviewed them for this site) – are on my list. Secondly, it should be noted this is not an indication of success, popularity, professionalism, rank in the industry, or anything else other than how much I liked interviewing them, how ‘good’ an interviewee they are, and basically how nice and/or cool I think they are.

The following appear alphabetically by last name…

J Allard
Chief Experience Officer, Entertainment and Devices Division, Microsoft



Almost mirroring the Xbox consoles’ own improvement in appearance, Allard transformed himself from looking like Prison Break’s Officer Bellick to the sleeker model he became in time for the publicity blitz around Xbox 360 in 2005 – and more importantly, just before our cameras homed in on him for a video interview to mark the occasion. Truth be told, “Face of Xbox” Allard could have turned up looking however he wanted; the great thing about interviewing J is can talk knowledgeably about anything from the intricacies of programming and middleware, to the Xbox Live he pioneered, to the business of Xbox and individual game titles and franchises. J is affable and energetic in his interviews, and it was one of my favourites to do at that year’s E3. We hope Allard returns to the gaming scene at some point in the future.

Video Games Daily Interviews: June 2005, Feb 2003

Robbie Bach
President, Entertainment & Devices Division, Microsoft



As “Chief Xbox Officer” Robbie Bach is top of the Xbox tree. He directs a global Microsoft division and is responsible for managing the entire Xbox business. While you may assume that a man with such an impressive financial net worth may pass up on the opportunity to sit down with pesky gaming sites, Bach in fact did sit down with us in 2005 ahead of the launch of Xbox 360. Our time with him resulted in a sizable 25 minute video interview, and as I’ve pretty much come to expect with executives from Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, he was unassuming and open, and yet confident and in control.

Video Games Daily Interview: July 2005

Kevin Bachus
Games industry veteran



One of the four visionaries behind what eventually became “Xbox”, Kevin Bachus left Microsoft in 2001 to start Capital Entertainment Group. At around that time, we met with him to talk about his new venture. Kevin granted us an extensive interview that was pretty revealing and made for a decent read for industry readers and gamers alike. Kevin is a nice guy, and we should probably go find out what he’s up to these days.

Video Games Daily Interviews: Feb 2003, Feb 2004

Tony Buckley
Game Director, Sony Studio Liverpool



We met Tony Buckley in his role as Game Director for WipEout Pulse at Sony’s Liverpool Studio. A humorous, quiet chap who executes some of the finest F-word usage I’ve ever heard, Tony entered the games industry in 1995 with stints at Digital Image Design and Infogrames, before eventually settling at the Sony family of worldwide studios in Liverpool to head up the WipEout franchise. Tony’s not shy about letting you in on a secret or two, and is basically quite funny, so it was a nice interview.

Video Games Daily Interview: June 2007

Akiyoshi Chosokabe
Designer, Konami Tokyo



The Wii edition of Pro Evolution Soccer did a fine job of restoring confidence in the PES series, which has had to battle with increasingly stiff competition from the impressive next-gen FIFA games. Alarmingly, last year was the first time we’d met with anyone from the PES development team (we still haven’t got around to meeting Shingo ‘Seabass’ Takatsuka), and back at a time when we’d repeatedly failed to tie down Hideo Kojima since 2001, we really wanted to make a decent impression with Konami on this one. Truth was, Akiyoshi ‘Greyhound’ Chosokabe made for a smooth interview; while Seabass has traditionally done the duties, Greyhound, a veteran of the PES series for over a decade, is less well known – but we think that may not be the case for long, given the successes of Wii PES and the fact that he seems like a lovely chap who should meet with the gaming press more often.

Video Games Daily Interview: April 2008

Denis Dyack
Founder and President, Silicon Knights



We last met with Dyack as his team was celebrating the end of Too Human’s gargantuan development cycle, but at the same time only just beginning its venture into the Too Human trilogy. Dyack is known for his nonconformist views on the games business. They are issues I was happy to pick his brains further on, and he was very happy to answer. I know Dyack gets a hard time from some areas of the games community sometimes, but I can tell you with certainty he’s a good, passionate guy to sit down and interview.

Video Games Daily Interviews: Aug 2008, Aug 2006

Ed Fries
Games industry veteran



I think I first met Ed when he joined us for an interview with Chris and Tim Stamper, the co-founders of a little developer called Rare. Ed seemed like a good guy, but what made me really like him was a few E3s later: Microsoft was showing a 10-minute closed-doors demo of Halo 2, which was by far the hottest thing at the show that year. Absolutely no filming of any kind was allowed for anyone. Except me, apparently. For some reason, Ed decided it was OK for me to film the whole thing, much to the surprise of the US PRs guarding the theatre room, who double (and triple) checked with Ed that he was “sure”. They didn’t exactly get to argue with Ed. Ed was the boss of Microsoft Game Studios and that’s all there was to it! Nobody else had that footage after the show. Like much of the industry and many hardcore gamers, we were surprised in 2004 to learn that Ed – a real gamers’ champion – would be leaving the Xbox management team. One of our best ever video interviews came when we hooked up with Ed again at E3 the year after his departure. The result was a half-hour video interview that offered a packed list of interesting content. An eighteen-year Microsoft veteran, he was in a great position to reflect and look to the future. Looking back at the video, it’s not difficult to see why Ed is still so well liked in the business.

Video Games Daily Interviews: July 2005, Feb 2003

Julian Gerighty
Content Director, Ubisoft Shanghai



Julian Gerighty is Ubisoft Shanghai’s all-round top-bloke. You’re as likely to see him dishing out an interview in fluent French as you are in English – although typically we stick to English. He’s super-helpful and enthusiastic, and really quite excellent at demonstrating titles in a personalised manner (even ones I may not necessarily be fussed about). I’ve met Julian twice, and basically he’s ace.

Video Games Daily Interviews: Oct 2006, Oct 2008

Yves Guillemot
CEO, Ubisoft



This one was a nice example of an unscheduled interview which relies on two things in order to happen: a polite, professional approach, and an interviewee who’s nice enough to say “sure”. Last year in Paris, Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot said “sure”. Unless you’re financial or trade press, it can be very difficult to secure formal interview time with people like Yves, so it’s great to know that no matter how big a deal some execs are, they’re happy to speak to journalists who make the effort when it counts. Everyone likes Yves. As Ubi Shanghai’s Julian Gerighty once put it to me: “I wish our boss was NOT such a good guy; it would give us more reason to justify our bitching! But he is such a nice man.”

Video Games Daily Interview: June 2008

Mark Healey
Co-founder and Creative Director, Media Molecule



We were first introduced to Healey by his then-boss Peter Molyneux, as he was starting to make a name for himself with Rag Doll Kung Fu – a game he developed “sitting at my kitchen table in my pants”. After leaving Lionhead, Healey teamed up with Alex Evans, David Smith and Kareem Ettouney to form Media Molecule. Although all of these guys deserve a place in the listing following the success of LittleBigPlanet (Smith being the only one we’ve not interviewed), we think it’s front man Healey’s quirky charm that wins him a place in gamers’ haearts, and ours.

Video Games Daily Interview: Sep 2008

No related posts.

Assassin’s Creed was a frustrating beast, equal parts brilliance and tedium. It loaded our tables with steeples and pennants, astonishingly lifelike NPC throngs and infinitely exploitable parkour playgrounds – but that love of the bigger picture was also its worst enemy, leaving Ubisoft Montreal precious little time and resources to blow on crucial questions of mission structure and variety. The game needed, demanded a sequel, a chance to capitalise on its own ambition. Fortunately, it shifted more than enough copies to warrant one.

Benoit Lambert is Game Director on Assassin’s Creed 2, which transits the action from the Crusades era to Renaissance Italy. He was unlucky enough to bump into us at a hotel bar recently. Insolent questions and heated answers after the cut.

VideoGameDaily: Have you played Batman: Arkham Asylum?

Benoit Lambert: I did.

VGD: Did you like it?

Lambert: Yeah, it’s really nice, really cool – very inspired, I would say, by the controls from Assassin’s Creed 1.

This is Ezio, the new hero. Show-off.

VGD: That’s interesting. One of the things that struck me about that game is that you don’t need a huge non-linear environment to create a fun, open-ended stealth experience. Did you ever consider narrowing the focus when creating Assassin’s Creed 2? Perhaps setting it within one city rather than spreading it across half a dozen?

Lambert: So, you’re saying like, make the game less open?

VGD: Yes, especially given the criticisms of inter-city travel in the first Assassin’s Creed…

Lambert: But I think criticisms were made of travelling between cities not because it was too much travel, but maybe because you didn’t have much to do. If the world is more full, there are more possibilities, more missions there, you would enjoy travelling. Look at games like World of Warcraft – huge games, and you are travelling a lot, but if there are interesting missions there you will enjoy it. If the landscape is different from one place to another, you will enjoy it.

The roof edge takedowns are delightful.

And just to come back to the fact that Batman is more linear, smarter at stealth – Assassin’s Creed is not a stealth game. Assassin’s Creed is an action adventure game where you can fight, do stealth, lots of things – you’re not limited to the stealth aspects. I think games like Thief, for example, are great stealth games but far less linear than Batman. You have a much bigger map, and you enjoy the game more. So I don’t think the size of the world relates to whether it’s a good or bad stealth game.

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