- Hi, I'm Glenn Schofield, artist and video game director,
and I'm here to answer your questions from Twitter.
This is "Video Game Support."
[rhythmic music]
@_drbrucewanye.
"Why do horror games scare me when horror movies don't?
"Laugh out loud."
Because it's immersive.
You are right there.
That is you.
That is great to hear because that's what we try to do.
We try, and the more we immerse you and make you feel
[keyboard typing] like you're the character,
the more you're gonna get scared.
@trustmeimruski.
"Bruh, why don't startup studios
"just make their own game engine?
"Like brooo, stop being lazy!"
Wow, okay.
Well, my teams have made plenty of engines
and they are hard.
They take years and years, especially for nowadays,
you need to take an old engine and rework it.
But making an engine from scratch
in today's market is going to take you years,
and millions of dollars, and you'll still get it wrong.
By the time I got to EA,
they had a lot of different engines around,
and we were starting to build one for "Lord of the Rings."
And I don't know, they were about a year into it.
I said, "What are we doing?
"We're two years away."
So we looked around and we got creative.
"Lord of the Rings" is about large areas,
and then, sort of a castle on the end,
or something, a fortress.
What's like that? "Tiger Woods."
Long areas and at the end is where you go get food,
where you're done.
And so we took the "Tiger Woods" engine
and turned that into the "Lord of the Rings" engine.
You just have to be smart [keyboard typing]
about what you do and what you use for an engine.
@ferragamodoinks.
I'm sure I got that wrong.
"What steps do I need to take to be a video game director?
"'Cause I feel like I can be the video game Spielberg."
Good for you, that's confidence.
To be a video game director,
you're gonna have to move up the ranks.
You gotta learn the inside and outside of video games.
So you just can't come in and do it, no way.
You gotta have a lot of knowledge.
You can come up in many different ways.
I came up through the art field, you know?
I started as an artist in video games.
I've seen people come up from producers.
You're gonna need experience.
You're gonna need to know everything about the video game.
I don't need to know the technology,
but I need to understand it.
And it's changing in every game.
So you just can't jump in. [keyboard typing]
I'm sorry.
@dezsemporium.
"Do horror game creators get scared
"of their own creation sometimes?"
No, what happens really is that after a while,
you've played the game so many times,
you don't know if it's scary or not.
If in the beginning, the first time that I say,
"Hey, let's do this here,"
and if the first time I see it, I jump or I get scared,
then I know it's good.
Hold on, I've got something.
So this is Two Head from the "Callisto Protocol."
I'm sure that the first time you see him,
you will be very scared.
We went through a lot of iterations to get to this.
He's morphed into two heads.
And you can actually blow off either side
and one head will fall off,
and they'll still be coming at you with half his body.
[keyboard typing] So he's pretty scary.
And he's really hard to kill.
@MamalehYoshi.
"Why are video games $60?
"Why are they all $60, who agreed on that?"
I don't know who agreed on all that.
I surely didn't.
I think that it's the console guys
who come up with the cost,
but there may be some of the publishers
have something to do with it.
But I gotta be honest with you,
they've been like 50, $60 for, what, a decade?
Something like that?
In which time, games have doubled
or quadrupled in cost.
And the price hasn't gone up.
And you can see the difference
between a PlayStation 2 game and a PlayStation 5 game,
and you're almost paying the same price.
Man, I don't wanna put the cost on the fan, I don't,
but they're expensive to make.
[keyboard typing] They really are.
@spiritsdestinyu.
"How do you write a video game script?"
Well, it's pretty complex.
I don't consider myself a writer,
I consider myself a storyteller.
So I'll write 20 pages or something on what this game was.
And once I have a story,
and I've talked to everybody sort of into it,
and through it, and whatever, we bring on our writers.
The next two, three years,
the writers are working with me
and they're writing the script,
and they're adding the characters, and things like that.
So it is a long process because a video game is pretty long.
10, 12, 13 hours, something like that.
So the scripts are big.
They change a lot because this is about gameplay
and something might not be fun.
[keyboard typing] We leave a lot of room
for change.
@ckittel.
"Who makes up these game ratings?
"'Comic Mischief,' come on, really?"
I don't have a problem with the game ratings.
It seems like most games that deserve an M get an M.
I've never had a problem with a game's rating.
I think maybe in the early days we had one,
a problem with one in Europe and we worked on that,
one of the European countries.
But at the end of the day,
we talked them into what it should be.
I don't have a problem with it.
Now, but the critic scores,
[keyboard typing] oh boy,
I could talk to you all day about that.
@ieka95.
"I never knew that motion capture process
"also included with voice acting recording.
"Or do they record that separately
"and did a lip mimic on motion capture?"
There's another process called performance capture,
or what we call P-cap.
And that's actually where we capture the voice acting.
On motion capture, it's really just about the movements.
The fidelity isn't the same as performance capture,
which are big stages that we actually have to go
down to Hollywood to do.
There's only a couple down there.
So we go down to the Sony one.
And here's an example of us getting the motion
of a kill scene.
- Primo dodges.
He strikes to the legs, which swipes him out.
He comes up, cracks, splits the head open.
- Right, okay. - We don't really do the lips
or the voice here on motion capture,
but we'll get [keyboard typing]
75% of the moves for the game,
at least in the motion capture studio.
@TressaAimuuru,
sorry.
"I'm not good at making scary things.
"How do horror games come up with the most unnerving stuff?"
Play a lot of scary games.
Watch a lot of movies.
If you're passionate about anything, right?
You're gonna get into it.
You're gonna be studying it.
You're gonna be absorbed in it for years.
I've been a sci-fi horror fan since I was really young.
I'm constantly thinking about it,
constantly have ideas in my head, so I know I have some.
But for us, I put it out to the team.
We got 200 people.
They're gonna come up with ideas.
I'm always asking them for ideas
because it's not about my ideas always getting in the game,
it's about the best ideas getting in the game.
I don't care where it comes from.
So we're constantly asking the team and having
[keyboard typing] brainstorming meetings,
and doing things like that.
There's a second part to it.
"And how do the creators of them not like,
"scare the shit out of themselves
"when looking at their own assets?"
You know, sometimes I gotta tell you,
like with the gore system that we have in our new game,
the first time I saw some of that stuff I was shocked.
Not necessarily scared,
but I was really psyched 'cause I'm like,
"That's brand new, haven't seen that.
"That's gonna gross people out."
Especially on the latest platforms.
[keyboard typing] I mean, consoles.
Man, this stuff looks amazing.
@TwoFOOL, "Why are video games important?"
Video games are, I think, incredibly important.
They are an art form.
It's entertainment
It's a social network.
They're just part of pop culture now.
They are part of our world.
Video games are bigger than movies
and music combined doubled.
They're that huge.
I also think that they're the next medium,
we're already doing it, to tell a great story.
I mean, look at video games
and the difference between where they were 10 years ago
and where they are today.
Huge jump.
We're always working on next technology.
What's the next thing?
You know, movies, which I love,
10 years ago to today, there's not a big leap, right?
But video games are constantly, constantly changing.
That's one of the hardest things
[keyboard typing] about making 'em,
but it's also one of the funnest things.
@x24sonic,
it's a long one.
"How the [beep] do you design levels?
"Like in a survival horror game building,
"how do you decide which rooms are locked or empty
"and what order the player will go through them?
"How do you come up with the layout and progression?
"Because I don't know where to start."
That could take me all day to answer,
but we start out with a paper idea, a paper map.
We have software now that we can lay it out pretty quickly.
And we move things around and stuff like that.
And this is done by the designers.
So the designers are laying out the gameplay.
When people look at it and go,
"Hey, that looks pretty good,
"we don't know yet, but well, we think it looks good,"
we'll then go into our engine and we lay it out in blocks.
We call it Block World.
Very simple mesh.
We put a character in and we run through it.
If we like that, we then have the artists look at it,
because the designer is just looking at fun.
So sometimes they'll have a hallway go into a bathroom,
and the bathroom have a second door
that goes into a bedroom.
So we have to get it right.
The artists will go in and make sure architecturally,
the building is correct and tell them,
"We have to rework it a bit."
As far as which ones are locked,
and which ones are empty, and everything,
that comes with the gameplay.
That's usually, probably 50% is
got on your paper map
over the course of making a level.
And making a level can take two years because you're
[keyboard typing] working on it,
working on it, iterating, putting the enemies in.
So it takes a long time.
These things change.
@angelos_and, "Why are the simplest games always the best?"
I hear what you're saying, but I don't necessarily agree.
Some of the simplest games are great, right?
It's easy to get in, easy to understand,
and you don't have a lot of startup time to get into it.
You know, "Rocket League,"
and even "Cold Duty" to an extent
is easy to get into these days.
I mean, it's hard to play against a lot of people, but...
I like games that take not a long time to get into it,
but they build up the mechanics a bit.
Takes a little while, and you're learning the story and all.
[keyboard typing] So I'm not always about
the simplest game, but I understand what you're saying.
@JeffWhitmire1.
"What is the scariest video game ever?
Very good question.
And I'm sure a lot of people have different answers,
but mine has gotta be one of the "Silent Hills,"
Probably "Silent Hill 2."
I mean, when that horn went off
and I knew Pyramid Head was coming at me,
I just ran and that was terrifying.
Or you're in the fog, your little Geiger counter goes off,
and you knew something was around you,
just really frightening.
So great game. [keyboard typing]
Scared the heck outta me.
I wish they would make more.
@PorbleG, some great names here.
"What makes a good horror game?"
Well, obviously one that you keep wanting
to go through it, right?
Because you know you're gonna get scared,
but if you wanna play the whole thing,
that's a good horror game.
But what makes it good?
Well, I think story is important.
I think story will pull you through, right?
Obviously tension, and sound,
and music will get you through.
Not being frustrated.
That is a fine line when we're making a game, you know?
We can make something that kills you 10 times,
but you'll just throw your controller and blame us.
But if you die like three times,
you're kind of blaming yourself
and you wanna get through it again.
So we are really careful about how hard you make it.
We get analytics, and watch people play,
and all sorts of things.
So we don't want you too frustrated.
Somebody said to me once, they're like,
"What I loved about 'Dead Space' was that every level,
"I knew you were gonna show me something new,
"and exciting, and different. [keyboard typing]
"Whether it scared me or not, I couldn't put it down."
@edelpinomusic.
"How important is sound design for a video game?"
Wow, right up my alley, especially for a horror game.
Sound design, and music,
and everything else is 50% of the game, right?
It's 50% of the horror.
I consider music and audio in a horror game a feature,
it's a mechanic, it's that important.
And for all my other video games,
I've been sitting in the booth
with the audio directors for 20 years.
It's that important to me.
But in a horror game, it's a mechanic.
Let's say you're doing a machine.
Well, for a scary game, the machine should sound scary.
And so we make sure that everything we kind of put in,
even though it's relatable,
it's gotta have a weird or an off-putting sound.
And then, we get the music in.
And when I say music, it's not music as you know.
I mean, it's scary, it's got weird instruments.
Sometimes it gets a little abstract.
And the whole idea here is to add that tension.
And that's the key to a horror game
because then you can make your scares much better
and much bigger because they're already sort of tense.
And then, at that point, when we do a scare,
what we call a stinger,
here's an example of a stinger from the "Callisto Protocol."
[scary music] It's gotta be on point.
It's gotta be right there, right on the money,
or it's not gonna be good. [keyboard typing]
So we spend a lot of time getting the timing right.
@214DJ_.
"Y tf is Eldon Ring so hard, bruh?"
Well, I guess that's subjective, but yeah, from what I hear,
I haven't played it, right?
Pretty busy right now with this video game.
From what I hear, yes, it's very hard.
But that's sort of what's going on
in the video game industry right now.
And I've seen it go up and down over the years.
Sometimes they get a little bit easier,
and then, they get a little bit harder.
We're going through that period right now.
And a matter of fact,
we're gonna make ours pretty tough too.
I just think [keyboard typing]
it's sort of that point in video games,
and just keep playing, you'll get through it.
@TDSN19, "How well does a finger mocap work?"
Well, I have one right here.
It's awesome.
We used to have to animate the fingers
and it was a lot of work.
You know, you'd mocap the whole thing,
then you gotta go in because the hands gotta look right.
They gotta grip the guns,
they gotta grip this, they gotta punch.
They've saved us a lot of time,
lot of energy, and a lot of headaches.
Well worth their money, [keyboard typing]
and they work great.
@NICK_GAUGE1, "I always wonder,
"how long does motion capture usually take to finish?"
By having a motion capture stage here,
at Striking Distance Studios,
we're able to capture motion every day.
If we need to get a run,
we can do a run in the morning,
by the afternoon, the run is in the game.
Might need a little tweak here and there,
or maybe something to get it
from one animation to the other.
We do it in real time, and then,
we just take that motion and we put it in game.
So it's really quick.
And that's what makes quality for us.
Being here in the studio gives us the ability
to have quality [keyboard typing]
because we can do something over, and over, and over again.
And the key to video games is iteration.
@AllThingsHOrrOr.
"What is your favorite monster design in a video game?
"Is there any obscure ones you think deserve more praise?"
Wow, I have seen some great ones.
I mentioned Pyramid Head before.
Pyramid Head is just weird, right?
And so I gotta hand it to them for that one.
I like Nemesis from "Resident Evil."
I mean, [keyboard typing]
"Resident Evil" over the years
has had some really good ones.
But I think I'm gonna stick with those two for now.
@Bigassluigi, "How the hell do game physics work?
"Do you have to give the program
"the formula for gravity or what?"
I'm not an engineer, I'm an artist, but yes,
we've been working with physics for 20, 30 years now.
So game physics, some of that is when the character falls,
they hit the ground, right?
That's gotta look good.
And that's game physics in itself.
That is a huge thing that we have in games.
And it's very expensive.
That's why sometimes when a character's dead on the ground,
you go to kick them,
they don't move in some games because if they move,
you're talking about just using up performance
and things like that.
So that's why you see that.
The formula for gravity, or no, we don't have to do that.
Now, zero G, which we had in one of my games, "Dead Space,"
we had to stake it 'cause you're floating around,
and that took a lot of work.
It was like when we have to do swimming
and put them in water, it had to feel something like that.
I'll tell you one of the secrets of "Dead Space" was,
you know when you're in zero G,
you're kind of moving differently.
Well, we put it in what we thought was real zero G, timing.
It started feeling sluggish.
So what we did was we gave it the same amount of speed
as the regular walk, but we made the animation look slower.
And so we never got that sluggishness.
And no one ever knew [keyboard typing]
that it was the same size, same speed.
No one ever got back to us.
@hannahmarief_.
"Can someone explain to me why I get actual anxiety
"when I'm playing a video game?
"As if I might be shot in real life."
Well, let's hope that doesn't happen, Hannah.
The anxiety is, of course, you don't want to die.
You don't want to have to start over.
Everybody, whatever you've accumulated,
whether it's going through the level or upgrades and stuff,
you don't wanna lose that.
You've earned that.
So I think that's part of it.
In a hard game,
the anxiety is what we want you to have all throughout it,
anxiety and tension because then, we can scare you more.
So that is something that we try and manufacture.
If a game isn't manufacturing it on purpose like we are,
it just comes from [keyboard typing]
not wanting to start over,
not wanting to go to a checkpoint,
not wanting to die, I think.
Well, that's all the questions for today.
I appreciate you sending them in
and I hope you learned something.
[rhythmic music]