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Nick Laing of the Electronic Arts Incubation Group

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by Jason Nawara

Narrative in gaming has had its peaks and valleys throughout the industry’s three-decade history. The earliest games fed users with a satisfying, yet quarter-munching form of indoor virtual sport: shooting and maneuvering within the games confines to satisfy a reflex-based urge to fire weapons, run, jump or race cars. Mostly it was something based in the realities created by sports stars and action films. Talk to a true, life-long gamer, and you will learn that the act of gaming is really nothing more than the 21st century version of playing with action figures in a sandbox, except this time your action figure has a hundred million dollar budget to make your cherry bomb’s explosions look really, really dynamic.

But plotlines in games, as we’ve come to know them from a narrow view, are primarily based on saving the Princess, the world or both. With the earliest adventure games in the ‘80s providing a thrilling story like never before, games like Monkey Island, Zork or Maniac Mansion proved that plot was still king in this new medium. Eventually, the training wheels came off and quite a few great stories were told, especially with more advanced processing power and CD-ROM technology of the ‘90s giving game creators freedom like never before.

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge

More recently the misconception spread that gaming had became a monolithic business, churning out product after product, removing art from craft in the many twitch shooters that were churned out. But these were games, an entertainment meant to be played. Somewhere beneath the waves of dead zombies and orcs were dedicated videogame designers, changing the way the world thought of traditional narrative. Oddly enough, sports games were largely responsible.

Drama in sports is a given, and with the growing complexity of sporting games, these entertainment products have allowed the player to be thrust into the cleats of an up and coming football player, or a down and out boxer looking for justice. Either by a straight narrative, or by letting someone formulate their own character arc with subtle guidance from the game, the story is no longer the creator’s, it is yours.

Enter the Electronic Arts Incubation Group and producer Nick Laing. They have been working to engage users in an almost subliminal way from the aesthetics of a game, to the immersion cutting edge physics and artificial intelligence provide. While narrative in gaming has made a comeback with minimalist experiences such as Dear Esther, Nick shows that the most important innovations simple, story-based games, are being pushed forward by the mega-development houses like EA Sports.

Nick Liang

Nick Laing

JASON NAWARA: What is the EA Incubation Group?

NICK LAING: The EA Incubation Group deals with cutting edge technology and we are looking out towards the future to see ultimately what our franchises will become. A lot of people don’t realize how innovative sports games are. There are things we have to do that are far more complex than other games. Especially with contextual awareness, the drama, the story and the commentary, the progression of a character as driven by the user. So we do as much as we can to prep the other franchises.

Madden 2001

Madden 2001

NAWARA: When Madden 2001 launched on PS2, that was the first EA game on the system; it really set a precedent for graphics on the system and the technology expanded out from there. Is that an ethos EA lives by?

NICK LAING: You always see that big hit, especially with the launch titles. I remember when we got the reflections working on the helmets—that was a massive thing and everyone was talking about how realistic it looked. But what they missed in 2002 was the adaptive artificial intelligence at the time. We were really moving down the path of teaching the computer to play intelligent football. We tried to show it to the users through the game commentary—it was contextually aware even back then. Now it’s even more complex.

Something flashes or something is on fire or it’s something you’ve never seen, like the reflections on a helmet. That’s what attracts your eye. Over time, your monkey brain eventually gets used to it and expects to see that and wants to see that, but it’s the narrative and drama of the sport that will keep the players engaged.

NAWARA: Throughout the years EA has put the user in the virtual cleats of an avatar, so what is it like from the creator’s standpoint? The first level is the aesthetic immersion, but what is the next step of bringing the player into the reality you want them to be in? What are the challenges?

LAING: Well, it’s vast so I’m going to speak broadly for sports game developers in general, EA and otherwise: Sports fans: you are the most difficult customer that any game has, because you know what a football game looks like. So anything that I do that doesn’t meet the expectation that is burned into your head from the thousands of sports games you’ve watched or been to and seen in person, I’m going to always fall short of that. So when it comes to putting the right cleats on the right athlete, the right headband… we’re meeting a certain level of expectation. Of course he’ll wear those shoes because that’s what he does. But the expectation that that’s going to be fulfilled is a little more complex on our side. We have to make sure those “favorite shoes” aren’t just available for your favorite character, but then again for every other character. To emulate real life and all of its possible permutations is something that giant games like Skyrim are only scratching the surface of, and that’s something we’ve been having to deal with for a long time.

NAWARA: So a step further to the basics: how difficult is it to create a script for the player/user in My Madden mode?

LAING: Getting a player to experience the lifestyle or the life drama of being a pro athlete has always been something we grasp at fairly regularly in our cycles. Some titles have had big wins—the last Fight NightFight Night Champion… that was a classic boxing movie videogame going out there for justice and doing what’s right, but it was heavily scripted.

Fight Night Champion

Fight Night Champion

What most sports fans and sports gamers know is that every time you fire up a game, tiny bits of drama happen when you play a Madden game. Or let’s say NCAA. In that game, you only have four, maybe five years to make your mark and then that’s it. You need to have yourself positioned to get drafted. Every loss, or moment of success leads to that final moment. So you’ll dig deep in the stats to find a good story, or you could find disappointment. “Ah, I’m in fifth place in the division in sacks, I need to step up the stacks and do what I can to make sure the coach calls those plays.” It’s these personal narratives that create the drama that you otherwise wouldn’t have. It’s too fantastic to create all those nuances of drama, but an individual can make that happen themselves.

Screenshot from Fight Night Round 4 (courtesy of IGN.com)

Screenshot from Fight Night Round 4 (courtesy of IGN.com)

NAWARA: The development arc of the Fight Night series is interesting, and it seems like that’s the path most studios will take: Fight Night Round 3—the first release on Xbox 360—showcased new technology and was pretty bare bones. Then they built up and Round 4 was a bigger game, then Fight Night Champion has its own huge story mode. Is that the development path that we will be seeing more often in gaming now? Less risks to begin?

LAING: I’d say there’s no official position by EA on that. My own personal feelings are EA is an entertainment company. Videogames are entertainment and any company that makes a game is looking to entertain. Up until this point we’ve been able to entertain people with a personal narrative. It’s kind of like an RTS (real time strategy game) where they don’t always come with a clear story, but you kind of create your own narrative fighting from point A to point B, then losing armies and gaining ground. It’s the same thing playing Madden. I always win my first three games of a season then go on an embarrassing six game losing streak. Home, away; it doesn’t matter.

Then I have to go on an amazing run to squeak into the playoffs. We didn’t program that in, no one can program that in there, but it is still a real story. You play college football and NCAA and you play as some Idaho State or something, and try to get drafted out of there instead of a big state like Miami U or a Division I school just to make yourself a powerhouse over a four or five year run. There isn’t always a story there why a certain player you want in your school says “yes” or “no,” but what I realize is that I’m making up these stories as we go. Like when we played EA MMA: a lot of people played the way I did and made a kickboxer and just thought “Oh, I’m ’gonna be awesome.”

Screenshot from EA MMA

Screenshot from EA MMA

Then they get killed one day and they say, “Okay, I’m going to England and studying boxing.” So then you go and study and find a good coach and then it starts developing in your mind. It’s very dynamic and bigger and crazier than even the best story games could ever do. So now we’re understanding and seeing how more people are getting interested in that personal investment and personal motivation to become really, really good at something and solving your own problems and the power is available to us in the new generation. That, and just the knowledge we have now is going to allow us to create some really good, really powerful narrative experiences. We can’t write that because it’s always dynamic. You can win at any time and you can lose at any time.

That’s one of the cool things about sports. Every game matters. But we need to make the game smart enough so that your story continues whether you win or lose. And sometimes in spite of whether you win or lose. Here at the Incubation Group we’ve worked on that a bit. It’s all about artificial intelligence, contextual awareness and making sure the game knows what’s important to you, the user, even if you don’t call out what possible directions are available.

NAWARA: See, no one has more backstory to their fighting game characters or Madden players than me. I have pages on every career.

LAING: See, that’s great. Knowing what’s going on. That’s why The Ultimate Fighter sparked MMA awareness—it’s because you finally knew what those guys were about. We knew what they were doing and where they were from, or who was an underdog, and who was a sure thing, but we didn’t know them. When we know them, it makes us happy to see them do well. It’s like the Olympics—it’s 128 hours of human interest stories and 17 hours of people doing difficult things.

NAWARA: What are the most difficult scripts you’ve had to work with in the context of game creation?

LAING: Comedy is the most difficult. I worked on Outlaw Golf and Outlaw Tennis—awesome games, but the comedy was really hard. Every single bit was tough because we had a boss that thought he was funny, and no one thought it was funny. And he thought it was awesome, but it’s your boss, so we do it and see, and it turns out terrible and it takes a real long time to get it funny. Then when it is funny, even then, you don’t know. I can do some non-sequitor stuff, but not for very long.

"Summer" in Outlaw Golf

“Summer” in Outlaw Golf

Eventually, I don’t know if it’s funny or annoying. Luckily they were always short. The other was with scripting athletes to play a part, and that was difficult because you get the person in the studio, and the script wasn’t so hard, but the rewrites so the athlete could be more comfortable saying certain things—those were brutal.

NAWARA: Aside from sports, but for gaming in general: do you think minimalism and letting the users create their own story is the way gaming is going? Or will there be a place for heavy narrative still?

LAING: See, the world is changing in gaming. We were getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and then we kind of branched off. We’re still getting bigger—the last five years for me have seen my team sizes grow and the complexity of our games is just mind-boggling. So there’s space for large teams, but there’s also space for small teams and the independent scene whether it be iPhone or Steam, they’re finding their way.

What’s clear is that there is a spot for short play cycles, with singular mechanics, short play-throughs with maybe just one or two mechanics with no deep strategy or something. Not based on reflex skill or puzzle skills, but still very good well-polished games that are short. Candy Crush, you know? It’s The Walking Dead. Really good stuff, but not a whole lot to do.

Candy Crush

Candy Crush

Now, one of the most complicated RPGs (Role-Playing Games) of all time is Madden, and it’s not going to get any simpler. It may have on roads and ramping. If I have my way, I will make it as easy as possible for anyone who is trying, but it’s big and it’s going to continue to get complex. So minimalism commenting on the independent scene—yes. You shouldn’t rely too heavily on it. But for us it’s just going to get bigger and more complex. I don’t know if you watch soccer, I can’t handle soccer at all, but if you turn off the commentary it is absolutely unintelligible for me, I have no idea what’s going on. Hockey for me is the same way. I will sit with Canadians in Vancouver at the EA Studio up there and I will really try to keep up. Anyone who hasn’t been born and raised around American football needs the commentary on to learn the rules. It’s a complex sport, and it has a lot of rules. Now, not just rules on the field, but rules off the field as well. How people get to their team, people coming on and off the field to play the game on the field—that is really complicated.

Screenshot from Madden (courtesy of IGN.com)

Screenshot from Madden (courtesy of IGN.com)

You need people reminding and reinforcing all of that stuff and most importantly: they are also the ones that call out the human-interest story. They call out the guy who was a walk-on from Idaho State who isn’t that good, or he’s surging to the top. I’m going through last year’s Madden with Matt Flynn and just wanted to embarrass him and play so he gets fired off the Seahawks and then try to come back and see the game recognize that. “He had a few bad years but now he’s beginning to turn it around,” you know? That is something, because it’s dynamic, something that could happen any other way throughout the course of Matt Flynn’s career. That’s something any other game would have a hard time doing. We did the same thing in EA MMA if you remember: if you fought the same person a couple of times, either randomly or in career mode, the commentators would remember that and say, “This is the rubber match!” That means a lot to you, it enhances the drama.

NAWARA: Because that’s so situational and no doubt costs money to create something that only a select few will see. As a gamer I appreciate that.

LAING: We find that there’s a few different players. There’s the player that straight up puts 99s on his player and dominates the world—a man among boys. Then there’s the guy who creates a character he’s interested in, and then tries to win. You want to be awarded from all sides of that.

So if you create your 99 character, yes, we’ll talk about how dominant that character is and how there will never be another like him. But if you create a realistic character that deals with the highs and lows and the wins and losses, just like he would in real life, we want to recognize when things are going bad and he’s just on the field to make a paycheck or he’s turning around his career. That’s pretty important stuff, I think that’s pretty cool.

NAWARA: There was a time, in the late ’80s to mid ’90s, when adventure games ruled the roost. Games like Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max and Monkey Island. Then that genre died off and now they are making a comeback. Why do you think the revival happened?

LAING: I talk at schools and I say “Who plays videogames?” And some people don’t raise their hands, so I ask, “You don’t play videogames at all?” “Nope, not at all.” I ask if they are on Facebook, and they realize that they do play videogames. Or how about a phone? What apps are on your phone? The consumer has changed and they’re ready for those games again. When those games first came out and were popular, there wasn’t the industry that you have now. There just wasn’t enough people and the industry just wasn’t that big. Now it’s enormous so there’s different types of players looking for different types of experiences. What’s cool is that we get a lot of people who haven’t played the original Super Mario Bros. They love it and say it’s a great game and wonder why they haven’t heard of it or seen a commercial on TV. Well, it’s twenty years old. I think a lot of those games are coming back because the market has changed. We got a little bit insular and relied a little too much on reflex games, what some people refer to as twitch gaming where you needed that reflex skill to win. Or then you needed strategy skill in a strategy game of chess.

Screenshot from Myst IV: Revelation

Screenshot from Myst IV: Revelation

Mechanically it’s very simple to move that chess piece you know? It’s not mechanically difficult to click on objects in Myst. But those games kind of went away because the people who were really spending money on games were looking for a healthy dose of the reflex component. And I won’t really say they went away, there is always a strong PC presence where it doesn’t take as much money, but now we have platforms in everyone’s pocket so the market stretched out and the genres have a wider base to reach into. Now people who would never buy a console are still playing videogames, but they’re not necessarily going to want to play Halo 4, they’re going to want to play something reminiscent of Myst and that’s really cool because they’ve never played that before. So they’re going to get a chance to see that. Then once the graphics get completely realistic then the most important thing will be the storyline, the character development and the narrative. I thought Alan Wake was really cool at that. It was really big on having the thumb skills to play it, you couldn’t avoid that, but it was really interesting. Walking Dead was good because you didn’t have to be a “gamer’ in the classic sense to play that game.

NAWARA: Did you ever play LA Noire?

LAING: Yeah that’s another one like Alan Wake where you needed some thumb skills to play it and shake off the shackles of our past. My wife would probably still be playing it if driving a car didn’t make her a homicidal maniac. You can opt out of that, arguably, but still.

Screenshot from LA Noir

Screenshot from LA Noire

NAWARA: I loved that game and Heavy Rain. The creators of that have a new game coming out called Beyond Two Souls, but that just makes me think that these big narrative games are only a one out of every two or three year release in the gaming world, which is unfortunate. Or is that a reality?

LAING: Are you saying there aren’t enough?

NAWARA: Yeah. I think it’s a financial investment only few people are willing to take on.

LAING: I can’t really speak on the budget of other games, but I would say Heavy Rain and Alan Wake only cost a fraction of what a Madden costs. A fraction. So I don’t know if it’s about cost. As much as I want to make different games, and you should hear some of the ideas I have for games, I’m always the guy who is saying “You can’t do that.” Or “We need to figure out another way to make that game happen.” Because we have overhead and a responsibility to our shareholders so we can’t make a game unless it pays for these bills. You know? Just like any other business. I can’t run a deli and sell sandwiches that cost more to make than to sell. So, there’s a lot of opportunity for that stuff in the smaller market and the independents. I would say for Playstation Network and Xbox Live—that stuff will have a lot of opportunity. But for us it has to make corporate sense, it has to align with all of our strategies and how we want to please customers and what we’re doing as far as digital delivery and customer or user experience and it has to work in all of these ways and still pay the bills, so it’s a little harder.

But, we’ve got more gamers than ever before, more platforms than ever before, more ways to play games than ever before and more ways to pay for the entertainment you want. No one is trying to steal money or pickpocket you. I hate the word “addictive” or “addictive gameplay.” Man, my whole life has been videogames, comic books and toys. So I just want people to have fun, and if what I do you think is fun or you enjoy something I make and it’s good for you, I think it’s fair to ask for a dollar once in a while. (laughs) So what happens with the smaller companies is this same thing. They go and they try to create some narrative and some gameplay and some interesting thing for you to do and spend some time on that you think will be fun or enriching in one way or another and then there’s money there. I think more adventure games can come out of that. Then once those make enough money someone from the big office in California will call me up and say, “Hey, can you make a game like that one everyone is buying?” And I will say, “Sure, I’ll look into that.”

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Jason is a writer living in Chicago focusing on martial arts and videogames. You've seen his writing on SI's Fansided, Bloody-Disgusting and Creative Screenwriting. He wants to talk gaming and comedy with you @JasonNawara.

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