Gavin Rummery Interview
by Ross Sillifant
Ok, it's my pleasure to put questions to Mr Gavin Rummery (ex-Core
design etc), Gavin if you would, please...a little about your goodself for
our readers:
I've worked in the games industry since 1995 when I took a job at Core
Design after I completed my PhD at university. I was lucky enough that
the project I ended up on was Tomb Raider, which was just getting
started. Obviously that was a huge success, so I felt I'd made the right
choice going into games for a living!
I then went on to lead the sequel, then the whole team moved onto
Project Eden which took ages and then completely flopped - so a big
crash back down to earth. After that I moved up into management, first
as Technical Director and then finally as Studio Manager of Core. But
this was post-"Angel of Darkness" and the studio was fighting for
survival trying to define a future after Lara.
After Rebellion took over Core, I left and moved into the world of
social gaming where I've been since. I now have my own company,
Legendary Games, where we've been trying to forge a living making web
and mobile games and increasingly non-games for people who want
"game-like" apps.
I'd like to start by asking about the PSP games you over saw as
studio Manager, 1st up: 'Smart Bomb'.....
The PSP seemed ideally suited to puzzle games (mercury, Lumines etc
etc) and Smart Bomb seemed to be wanting to be something out of either
1 of the Lethal weapon films or the adam west Batman era, The Riddler
having planted explosives etc, so a fantastic concept, but it sadly
seemed in need of a lot more optimising and play testing as the timers
were far too harsh in places to make game readily approachable for the
more casual gamer and the sluggish controls added an extra level of
stress.
What can you tell us about the games origins and if there was a degree
of pressure put on the studio, to get the product out, no matter what.
This was Core's first PSP game, and the first project out of the studio
after Angel of Darkness caused Eidos to relocate Lara to Crystal. The
game came about from Eidos trying to decide where next for Core, and a
process where everyone in the studio had been encouraged to put forward
ideas for new projects. I can't remember the exact numbers, but I recall
that the number of game designs submitted was slightly higher than the
number of Core employees at the time!
Out of this, two projects were eventually selected by Eidos for
development: Smart Bomb and Free Running. Smart Bomb had a really good
demo based around a couple of the puzzles that got over the idea of
racing against time to defuse the bomb. However development time and
budget was small, and Eidos was pushing for release, so the game simply
didn't get sufficient play testing. The other problem was that the
development team and the play testers all became experts at playing it,
and set the game difficulty far too high. This resulted in the game
getting negative reviews when it finally shipped.
Moving onto Free Running, an interesting one as i believe Core did
the PSP version and Rebeliion the PS2 version? If so, I'd love to know
how it came about that Core ended up with the PSP version and also how
you'd adress constructive critiscm that whilst a novel concept, the
game seemed a tad 'pedestrian' as there was'nt enough motivation for
the player.. unlocking new levels, clothing etc not really enough to
drive them on.
Also as a PSP supporter, were there ever concerns over wether Sony
really knew how best to handle the hand held market? and what effect
the (rampant) PSP piracy would have on sales?
Core developed both the PSP and PS2 versions, but they were released
after Rebellion bought the studio because SCi (who took over Eidos)
wasn't interested in publishing the game, even though it was more or
less finished when they took over.
The game had a tough development because after green-lighting it, Eidos
still had doubts and kept requiring new demos every couple of months.
This played havoc with the planned development as it meant features had
to be brought forward to demo (including look and feel) rather than the
team having breathing space to experiment and just get on with it.
Ultimately the game *almost* worked, but again the balance was a bit off
because again it just didn't get the testing and polish time it needed
due to SCi suddenly deciding they didn't want the game a couple of
months before its launch.
With regards the PSP, we all thought it would do great because it seemed
much slicker and easier to develop for than the DS, but ultimately it
was the DS that caught the public's imagination.
The game I'd really like to talk about (and why I'm doing this
interview) is: 'Project Eden' a PS2 title that sadly many simply
seemed to pass by....it's been described by it's fans as 'A lost
gem'....'The spirtual successor to...The Lost Vikings....Hired Guns'.
It was supposed to be Core Design's next 'BIG THING'... a very
ambitious adventure game on the challenging PS2 hardware.....
Was there ever a concern that such an ambitious game would clearly
mean a long 'gestation period' and that whilst you/the team were
coming up with original game concepts, they'd suddenly pop up in
titles released before yours and reviewers would simply think... ohhh
right they've taken that section from...?
I'm glad you liked Project Eden because as you said it didn't seem to
get much love at the time, and we'd just put over 3 years into making it
so it was a huge disappointment for the team.
We didn't think it would take so long: it was meant to be a 2 year
project, but we'd just been too ambitious with our ideas. After Tomb
Raider we were just too over-confident, because that had been crazy
ambitious and yet had worked out so well. As it was, the team just
wasn't big enough to deliver on our grand plans.
As for other games being released and stealing our thunder: that's a
constant danger during game development. You get paranoid every time you
hear of another title that seems to be doing things you are doing, but
usually it turns out that the ideas are quite different.
Also whilst your 4 team characters had various unique abilities,
they seemed to lack a degree of personality (ie many of us would of
loved to have seen a sense of despair creep in, the deeper you got
into the game, instead they came across as a bit cold and clinical0
was this a real challenge to implement? I ask as a lot of the hype
Sony was pushing about 'power of PS2' was that ruddy Emotion Engine
and how PS2 would mean characters in adventure games would be unique
and respond to events unfolding around them etc etc.
Also, was the limited Ram a factor when designing the game? perhaps
reason for enviroments feeling a little samey in places due to
repeated textures?
Well the PS2 "emotion engine" was just marketing speak that meant
nothing: it didn't exist, it was just another CPU, except a painfully
complicated one that was hard to program effectively. We developed
primarily on the PC, with the PS2 conversion following behind, but
ultimately it forced us to simplify some aspects of the engine to get it
to work on the console. The textures were quite brutally squished as I
recall, and its lack of ability to multiply texture colours (it could
only add) caused all kinds of headaches with the shadow maps and torch.
As for the characters, yes it would have been nice to give them more
personality. But ridiculously, *I* wrote the story and script because we
never got assigned a proper script writer! And then had to direct the
voice recording even though I'd never done that before either. So it
would have benefited from someone other than a programmer doing that bit
of the job...
Ok, so i've mentioned The Lost vikings, Hired Guns etc, but did I
spot inspiration from some other classic names in there?
Spy Vs Spy? Big Trak? Aliens (Directors cut...sentry guns)...The
Thing...Unreal....
I was a huge fan of Hired Guns and that was the big inspiration because
nothing like it seemed to follow - the world just got obsessed with Doom
clones. As for Lost Vikings, I can honestly say not a single member of
the team had ever heard of it until the reviews starting coming in
comparing Project Eden to it!
And yes, Aliens was also a big inspiration. The original idea for the
game I pitched (and which we didn't really create) was based on the
"control room siege" sequence. The idea was that as your team went
deeper, they would find themselves attacked from all sides and would
therefore need to constantly weld doors shut behind themselves, leave
sentry guns etc to defend their backs as they continued forwards...
But that isn't really how the game came out because Heather and Neal
(the level designers) were such puzzle fiends, so the 4 player puzzle
solving ended up taking centre stage. Unfortunately the Eidos marketing
team didn't understand this at all and pitched the game as an FPS so it
didn't really reach the right players.
Was Project Eden a hard game to 'market' (i.e sell to the press and
public) for many the PS1 was thier 1st console and they'd have no idea
of Hired Guns, let alone what the Amiga was, as Sony had targetted the
non-gamer and it explored concepts like vertical cities (a fantastic
medium, as the atmosphere and sense of decay and stagnation increased
the further down you travelled) and Urban Exploration, long before
they became vogue.
Game also really came into it's own in co-op mode.
As I said above, people (including unfortunately Eidos themselves)
didn't really get the game at all. It looked like an FPS and a lot of
people reviewed and bought it on that basis, and then got very negative
as it wasn't their kind of thing. But people who enjoyed the puzzle,
exploration and adventure element did seem to like it a lot.
Ultimately, we didn't shake off our Tomb Raider sensibilities, and
produced a game that was too much of a mix of genres. It would most have
appealed to the kind of people who like action/adventure rather than
shooter, but they saw the screenshots and trailers and thought it wasn't
for them.
The co-op mode on PS2 was its best bit, and I've always loved sofa co-op
games, but it wasn't enough to get the game noticed.
There were claims (IGN/C+VG) that Project Eden was headed for Xbox,
there's also been talk of a version planned for the Dreamcast-any
truth to either version at least being considered?
If so how would each version of compared? ie DC having more Ram than
PS2, but lower polygon handling, Xbox offering more power, but also
things like Dolby 5.1, the HDD etc etc.
I don't recall us ever planning to target those platforms, or ever
really looking into them. Core didn't really have a relationship with
Microsoft at that time (TR was PlayStation exclusive) so I don't recall
Xbox being on the cards, and Dreamcast never got much love from anybody.
You came from the PS1...powerful, easy to code for (it seems)
toolsets enabling coders to get to grips with the hardware from the
off, into the PS2.. powerful yes, but something of a return to the
Jaguar/Saturn era of 'nightmare' coding..i.e you had to 'know' the
hardware inside out to get best results, Ram was limited (espically
compared to the Dreamcast), yet it allowed coders the 'freedom' to
utilise the raw horsepower as they required.. or at least that seemed
to be Sony's stance....
So was it as Sony claimed? you could allocate resources where you, the
people working on the games in question, saw fit and did it allow for
things like more complex A.I than other systems I wonder? A.I must
have been a key part of a squad based game like Eden, so I wonder how
easy it was to 'pull off' on PS2 and at what expense of other areas?
The PS1 had been such a success because it had such a simple and
straightforward architecture, especially compared to the other consoles
available at the time (and especially compared to the Saturn). So it was
quite a shock when the PS2 went back to the "bag of custom chips"
approach of earlier consoles, and effectively paved the wave for Xbox to
do to them what they'd done to Sega (i.e. gain lots of developer support
for a new entrant to the market).
Anyway, Project Eden was developed mainly on PC, with Ray Tran doing the
PS2 specific coding. He had plenty of challenges to get the necessary
performance from the PS2, which required moving chunks of rendering code
to the specific custom chips. But core gameplay code like AI was just
running on the main CPU. It also meant performance was never as good as
it could have been had we targeted the PS2 from the start, but when we
started we didn't even have a PS2 kit (not sure they had been released
at that point).
Ok, I'm going to squeeze 1 Tomb Raider related Q in here..but only
because it leads to a concern of mine :-)
I've always wondered if poorer than expected sales of Dreamcast Tomb
Raider put paid to Core developing any DC specific platforms and what
Core expected from a PS1-to-DC conversion, surely those who wanted the
game would of already played it on PS1 or PC?.DC version was always
going to be selling to limited market....
The DC version was after my time of being involved in the game, but yes
it is fair to say that the fact that even Tomb Raider didn't shift many
copies took away much incentive to develop anything else for it. Also,
the Dreamcast just clearly wasn't setting the world alight, so
publishers don't greenlight games for consoles that are failing - which
of course leads to a vicious cycle and dooms the console even quicker.
Had sales been better, what would you of done with a sequel and on
what format/s ideally would you of coded it on?.Also where did Project Eden
find a better home? PS2 or PC I wonder?
I think it did better on PC in the end, but I've never been privy to the
sales info. It wasn't good on either though.
As for a sequel, we obviously never really had a chance to think about
that. Mind you, we didn't think of making a Tomb Raider sequel either
until it was a hit.
Is it ok to ask what the working enviroment was like at Core Design
and how you found yourself moving from coder to studio manager (once
the Smith Bros had departed) and which was the more challenging role?
getting the best from hardware or from people in your team?
How on earth do you get the best from creative talent and try and
ensure they stayed with the company?
When I joined Core it was a very laid back place. Jeremy had basically
discovered that young, talented game designers made games he could sell
and make a profit on, and all he really had to do was let them get on
with it and then deal with the business side of things. So we had huge
amounts of freedom to do as we liked when we designed and built the
games, and new game projects pretty much just required pitching an idea
to Jeremy and getting the ok.
So Tomb Raider was born out of complete creative freedom, and a small
enthusiastic team that was sold on Toby's vision. But as team sizes and
budgets grew, this model broke down, which culminated in Tomb Raider:
Angel of Darkness being such a disaster.
I was made Technical Director with the task of preparing for post-AOD:
at that time every team developed its own engine, which was clearly
unsustainable, so the idea was to build a single Core Engine for future
games. The AOD fallout actually made this easier as everyone bought into
the idea, and that's what we did: Free Running and Smart Bomb were built
on the same tech base.
But after AOD, Core was never the same again as we didn't have a clear
role within Eidos anymore. By the time I took over as Studio Manager,
the writing was on the wall, though I didn't know it till a couple of
months later when I was informed Eidos was restructuring and small
studios like Core were for the chop. I successfully argued for a
reprieve on the basis we were the only ones making PSP games, but we
were then in limbo for nearly 18 months with our future uncertain whilst
first Eidos, then SCi decided what to do with us. Eventually we got sold
to Rebellion, but by then morale was low due to the non-stop uncertainty
over the future.
So my time as Studio Manager was not a happy one for me. I took the role
thinking I'd be able to make us fly, but instead found myself
fire-fighting and staving off continual threats to our future. Meanwhile
the teams were gloomy as they had a pay freeze, constant threats to the
projects they were working on, and no clear end in sight. Amazingly very
few people left; I think they all still hoped things would eventually
recover.
Do you feel the PS1 and PS2 were ever pushed as far as they could of
been, 3D wise? and which titles on both did you ever look at and
think, I wish I wrote that and/or...I could of done a better job on
THAT!.....?
I think by the end of a console's life they've usually been pushed
pretty hard to their maximum potential.
As for the games, I admired a lot of games on both platforms. I don't
recall ever wishing I'd written them though, and though there are games
I wish could have been better, again I don't think in terms of me doing
a better job - no doubt there are reasons why the game didn't achieve
its full potential. No one sets out to write a bad game after all.
Talk us through your setting up of Legendary Games and how it's
been as an experience, where you'd like to take the company.
After Core I worked at a start-up called Emote Games for a couple of
years until it failed, then on to Monumental Games which went bust a
year later, so all of a sudden, after 13 years at Core, I found myself
looking for another job for the 3rd time in 4 years. It felt the games
industry was getting more and more unstable.
So myself and a Monumental colleague got talking and decided to try
setting up our own thing - Legendary Games. The idea originally was to
make online turn-based strategy games based on the kind of board games
you'll find on boardgamegeek. The thinking was that board games are
inherently social so it would work well on Facebook etc and they were
things we could develop with a tiny budget.
We are now coming up on 5 years, so that's an achievement! Over that
time we've released various games, the most successful of which has been
Year 0: Tactics which has had 100,000 players. Meanwhile we've also
branched out into doing a lot of non-game projects with companies that
are looking for "game-like" applications e.g. a teacher training course,
a recruitment game, and a 3D room builder.
Ultimately I'd like the company to develop a successful IP of its own,
but we aren't quite there yet. Maybe next year :)
Misc Question's time (sorry)....
So, any Jaguar/Panther/Lynx/7800 (Atari Platform) coding under your
belt? anything on Konix Multi-system?
Any other Lost Games (any format) you worked on?
Nope to all of the above. Various prototypes worked on that never saw
the light of day, but nothing really worth mentioning. Well maybe Tomb
Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition, but I'm not going there...
Finally...Any messages you'd like to give to your fans/or critics?
here's the time and place to do so.
I don't think I've personally got any fans or critics: the people behind
games rarely do!
Gavin, thank you so much for giving of your time to take part in this
interview.
=> Return to Interviews of ex-Core Design members by Ross Sillifant <=