How Mainstream Media Treats Games and Unreal Dancing?
Tom's Games:The mainstream media likes to make us their whipping boy all day long.
Mark Rein: Yeah.
Tom's Games: Do you think that...
Mark Rein: Hang on, can I stop and get a cookie?
Tom's Games: Oh yeah, please go ahead.
Mark Rein: I'm starving.
[Rein heads for the snack table and returns with two sizable chocolate chip cookies.]
Mark Rein: Sorry.
Tom's Games: That's OK.
Mark Rein: You want one?
Tom's Games: Yeah, sure.
The mainstream media loves to beat up on video games. Do you think that because games are so prevalent now that people know when the media is getting it completely wrong? Do you think that people are savvy enough to know that by now?
Mark Rein: Nope.
Tom's Games: No?
Mark Rein: Nope. Never underestimate the lack of "savvy-ness" of the American public.
Tom's Games: That's what makes them the American public I guess. Does it still bother you when the media attacks us or do you just blow it off?
Mark Rein: No, it bothers me. I think part of the problem is we don't have the political clout of Hollywood. Why should games be treated any different than movies or other forms of media and entertainment?
Tom's Games: Right.
Mark Rein: I guess the reason is we don't have the lobbying forces, and the politicians don't see us as important as movie stars and things of that nature. And our customers don't seem to care to defend themselves when they get trashed on by politicians. That's ultimately what the politicians are doing. They're trashing the gamers and disrespecting gamers' rights to choose. That's ultimately what they're doing.
Most politicians are older people who've never had any experience with this medium so they seem to think that their voters aren't our customers. That'll change over time. It was the same with rock 'n roll. Do I find it annoying? Absolutely. Mass Effect was a perfect example. I felt like telling those idiots on Fox, "Did you know that the Xbox 360 had parental controls?" Some lady said, "I can't control what my children are doing on it." Yes you can.
MStar is part of a digital avatar program developed by Nurien and using Unreal Engine 3.
Tom's Games: I can remember seeing Gears of War targeted by the news. They would always show a screenshot or a movie of the chainsaws and their headline would be, "Videogames teach children to kill each other with chainsaws."
Mark Rein: Gears stayed nicely off their radar for the most part.
Tom's Games: Really?
Mark Rein: Gears is so over the top and so cartoonish with its violence. You're shooting these hideous monsters. I don't think it was a hot game for the news.
Tom's Games: Do you still play games for fun?
Mark Rein: Oh yeah.
Tom's Games: What are you playing now?
Mark Rein: I haven't had a lot of time to play recently because I've been on the road a lot but I played the Burnout Paradise demo. That's very cool and I'm looking forward to getting that. I played the Turok demo and I'm looking forward to that one. I played Mass Effect. My game of the year is BioShock. I loved that. I loved Portal as well. I try to play as much as I can. I also like sports games and driving games. I'm looking forward to Gran Turismo Prologue.
Tom's Games: Something like Portal is short but such a quality experience. Do you try to make your games a set number of hours?
Mark Rein: I don't think you should judge a game solely by its length. I think you should judge it by how fun an experience it was. It's funny, people were criticizing Gears of War for its length and then a bunch of much shorter games come out and people stopped criticizing games for their length. If you judge games by length you're just encouraging developers to put in filler. The more filler you have the more diluted the game gets.
That's something we did well with Gears of War. Almost every moment is a pretty well-polished experience and we're going to do even more of that with the next one. I think that's what people remember. It's fun per minute not minutes per game. That's a great quote: fun per hour not hours per game.
Tom's Games: Have you considered moving away from shooters and action games and into something like RPGs?
Mark Rein: I think there's still low hanging fruit in the areas we're engaged in both on the engine and in the games. I think we can still do better in everything we're doing today. The quest for perfection, even though you can never attain it, drives us more than trying something new. We're always trying something new. I think Gears of War had lots of new things and even in UT we're always trying to do something new. This is the genre that we love and that we're good at. That's not to say it's the only thing we'll ever do but certainly we still feel that we're not perfect at it yet and that we can get better.
Tom's Games: Shooters and action games seem to be what the Unreal Engine is best at as well.
Mark Rein: Oh don't say that! Didn't you see our dancing game? [MStar from Nurien was shown at the Epic Games Press Preview.]
Tom's Games: I did.
Mark Rein: Come on! That is a world class game. Have you ever seen a dancing game that even comes close to that in terms of visual quality and how real it looks and how cool it is and how smooth it is? Come on! Unreal Engine is the ultimate dancing game engine now!
Tom's Games: Is that a quote?
Mark Rein: Yes!
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