Vi snakker med Arkane Austins Harvey Smith om indlevelse i spil

Skulle du have gået glip af det, så blev Fun & Serious Game Festival afviklet i sidste måned, og selvom der ikke var nogen fysisk messe at tage til og opleve, så var der ikke sparet på ikoniske designere og dygtige spilskabere, der i stedet gav os et indblik i deres arbejde igennem Zoom-opkald og Google Meet-sessioner. Blandt andet Warren Spector dukkede op, og ligeledes gjorde Harvey Smith fra Arkane Austin, og ham fik vi faktisk mulighed for at tale en del med. Han har blandt andet stået for Dishonored-serien, og herunder finder du både videoudgaven af interviewet, samt hans svar.

Vi snakker særligt om "Immersive Sim"-genren, altså en genre der primært defineres af spillerens egne valg, og hvor fremgangsmåde og taktisk spidsfindighed belønnes af alternative slutninger og en anderledes narrativ streng. Netop Dishonored-serien eksisterer indenfor denne genreramme, og strækker sig tilbage til det originale System Shock og Thief.

Først og fremmest spurgte vi ham om hvordan han ser genrens spæde rødder:

"You know, it's funny because I've been in games like 27 years now and in some ways, I still feel like the new guy who's learning things. I'm insecure about my role and about the impostor syndrome. 'Am I worthwhile?', in the games we work on as a team. And all the fan validation is very powerful and is helping me heal or grow overtime as a person, creative people often say that. So I don't feel the precursor to anything because I remember the people I learnt from."

Dog har Smith lært fra de bedste, såsom netop Warren Spector, Richart Garriott fra Looking Glass, samt mange andre.

"With Doug Church, Marc LeBlanc, Rob Fermier, Art Min, and all these other guys, all these other people that were influential in some way. Their viewpoint on narrative, on gameplay, on places, spaces and level design, on player experience... It shaped me, so to me they are the precursors of me, and maybe I'm the precursor to some other developer, I hope, a good influence".

"But it's a group effort. the whole team collaborates and some of the best ideas, some of the things you remember the most, it might have been suggested by the audio guy or by a quality assurance person who's playing the game. So it's a long lineage of people, it goes back before video games of course. For thousands of years people have been making formal games and play is probably one of the oldest experiences, it probably pre-dates language, and so it's crazy to think how much time and history have happened just since the first video game".

Smith har været interesseret i spil siden han har helt lille, og spillede blandt andet Pong på en Atari 2600 som barn. Det skulle dog vise sig at det var det skrevne RPG, såkaldt "pen n' paper", der skulle fange hans interesse, og skabe passion for spillerens egne valg, som formede den overhængende historie. Dog noterer han, at spil er kommet langt som kunstform.

"But video games have changed from being a black screen with two white paddles to being like Red Dead Redemption, where you're riding a horse under a storm and shooting at a rabbit that you're going to skin and cook. The degree of change and breadth in video games is huge; you can be talking about a game like Shadow of Mordor with the Nemesis System and going deep on that, or you can be talking about The Sims, or a roller-coaster simulator. The game I've been playing more than anything right now is a card game called Pirate Outlaws and it's a Slay the Spire-like game and it is just so deep, and you just keep understanding it at a deeper level even though it's very focused. And I'm also looking forward to playing Deathloop by the guys in [Arkane] Lyon, Watch Dogs: Legion, and there are constantly games of all different kinds coming out, and evolving in all these interesting ways. It's almost humbling just to be a part of it anyway."

Harvey Smith er i fuld gang med et hemmeligt nyt projekt hos Arkane Austin. Studiet i Lyon er ved at færdiggøre Deathloop, så det store spørgsmål er hvad Smith og hans hold har i støbeskeen. Nogle mener at der er tale om en efterfølger til Prey.

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