You heard me, sir. You are hereby invited to shove your mouse-and-keyboard fanciness in any number of discreet locations. I shall explain more, after the break.

It’s understandable that many gamers would want to play Mirror’s Edge with a mouse-and-keyboard arrangement. Mirror’s Edge is, after all, a first-person affair, lending itself naturally to a mouselook feature. It’s from such previous PC experiences, in fact, that Mirror’s Edge was born. Nick Channon of DICE, the game’s producer, told me that the impetus for Mirror’s Edge came out of DICE’s experience making FPS titles. “We’ve been creating Battlefield for the last 7-8 years,” said Channon, “and we wanted to create something very different and new, but utilizing the experience we’ve gained from first-person. But we wanted to create a game that was based around movement, not shooting.”

EA’s Aaron Krause, Marketing Manager for Mirror’s Edge, described the game to me as a “First-Person Action-Adventure.” He echoed Channon’s sentiment, saying, “This game is all about movement; it’s all about chase, going as fast as you can… how do I get from point A to point B… this isn’t a first-person shooter. You can play the entire game without shooting a single person. You can disarm your enemies and use their weapons against them if you want, but you’ll be rewarded with achievements and trophies for not shooting anyone in the game.”

Channon sealed the deal, stressing the vitality of a first-person perspective for a game like Mirror’s Edge. “We feel that first-person is really important because you make the connection with the character. As soon as you’re in third-person, you start watching the character. We wanted you to feel like you were there.”

With such a strong emphasis on a seamless first-person experience, the debate would seem to be over. I’ve been grateful for the natural feel of mouselook ever since the original Marathon, and if you were to offer me The Orange Box for PC or 360, I’d opt for the former every time. Before long, I had the chance to get my hands on Mirror’s Edge for the first time, and I steeled myself, promising not to let the console vs. PC experience cloud my first impression.

The feature on display was the hardcore-friendly Time Trial mode, a collection of pre-arranged events which will challenge players to race through the Mirror’s Edge world as fast as Faith can muster. Each trial takes place within the game’s normal levels, and using Faith’s many moves, players must guide her through a series of glowing checkpoints. The paths can vary in length, requiring a one-minute sprint or a 2-3 minute roundabout journey, which also lets the trials vary in difficulty and experience. There’s many more places to make mistakes along a longer path, but making improvements will usually be much more apparent — in a one-minute trial, each improvement is a matter of shaving off a few hundredths of a second. I was able to try out two different trials — one across a bright, sunlit series of rooftops, and another through a dank and massive storm drain, festooned with pipes and catwalks.

Fighting to improve my own time was both fun and frustrating — as a hyper-competitive, leaderboard-obsessed jerk, I take an unearthly pleasure in annihilating an old score, whether it be my own or someone else’s. Mirror’s Edge provides quite a tense opportunity to do so: While the controls are certainly simple and intuitive, and any player can execute a broad variety of breathtaking maneuvers, performing a successful Time Trial demands the utmost precision and timing. Leaping from roof to roof isn’t tough in and of itself — but shifting your weight downward just before landing will allow Faith to tuck and roll with the impact. Fail to do this, and Faith will absorb the landing with her legs, which she’ll need a precious second and a half to recover from. Getting up on top of a utility shed is simple enough, and Faith is a quick climber — but if you can use your prior momentum to bound upwards from an adjacent vent, Faith can grab the shed halfway up and vault to the top instead of climbing, saving you another half-second.

To top it all off, the Time Trial mode includes a glowing red “ghost” of your best (or your friends’ best) performance. This can be quite useful if you happen to swap ghosts with someone whose time is better than yours, allowing you to study their moves. Even against your own ghost, though, it also lends a sense of urgency and tension to the experience, really emphasizing the racing portion of the game mode as you literally chase your best time. It’s maddening when you miss these time-savers by mere inches, watching your better self dash off into the distance, which will inevitably lead us less-patient gamers to mid-trial restarts. But when all my moves finally came together for that perfect run, and I gritted my teeth, straining to beat the timer to the finish line, and squeaked under my old time by one more second, I practically spiked the controller in triumph.

As much as I enjoyed the Time Trials, I had to wonder how appropriate they were to a game like Mirror’s Edge — a game built around “free” running; a game allowing complete freedom of movement and the opportunity to explore the many paths across its urban playgrounds. In a few of my experiences, the time trial is anathema to freedom: Instead of leisurely experimentation and exploration, the time trial demands scientific perfection. A player needs to deduce which set of choices will command the ideal performance, and then replicate those choices without flaw. I asked Channon and Krause about these differences, and learned that there was still plenty of exploration to be done before a player would be able to nail the perfect time trial.

“You’re only limited by your imagination,” said Channon. “What you’ll find is, absolutely, there will come a point when you can’t get through a level faster, but it’s getting there. The time you just set [referring to my latest trial] was a very good time, but we can beat that quite significantly. I think that’s the beauty of the game, is shaving off those seconds. It’s how you use the environment, it’s finding different ways to get through… ultimately, there comes a point when you can’t get any quicker, but that will take some time.”

Krause shared a few of his time trial tips with us, demonstrating the level of creativity that can lead to the ideal speed run. “I’m constantly finding little ways to shave milliseconds off my time,” said Krause, pantomiming a few of his choice moves. “Instead of running straight up stairs, there’s wall-running next to the stairs. Or, wall-running, doing a 180 turn, jumping, and clearing an entire flight of stairs. It’s always about finding that little trick, and every time you play, you can always challenge yourself or your friends, with your ghost, to beat your score by even a millisecond.”

In addition, even if it does come to a point where an expert gamer has devised a perfect, unbeatable line, EA and DICE will be making sure that the replayability and exploration of the Time Trial mode stays fresh: During the interview, it was suggested that plans were in place to deliver new time trial challenges to Mirror’s Edge, utilizing different levels, via DLC.

With a full appreciation of what Time Trial was bringing to the table, and a few practice runs under my belt, it was time to put the new competitive mode of Mirror’s Edge into practice. EA concluded the event with an actual Time Trial contest, offering shiny red Mirror’s Edge iPods for the top few scores of the evening. My colleague has said before that while the controls for Mirror’s Edge are simple, a downside to the experience is the controller-based camera, which really needs to be handled with a mouse for proper execution. I’m here to tell you, that’s a complete load.

I had never played Mirror’s Edge prior to this preview. I had never watched anyone else play it, nor did I really remember what I’d heard about its controls. I had about 20-30 minutes of practice prior to my turn in the contest, which was my entire Mirror’s Edge experience up to that point. That said, I had zero problems with the camera, and the controls are just as intuitive as they say. I came away from my time with Mirror’s Edge firmly believing that any gamer ought to be able to pick up the controller and pull off any number of Faith’s moves. It’s a testament to the simplified controls that a total novice like me was able to put forth a respectable performance in a competitive environment. Would I have done better with a mouse? It’s entirely possible — but anybody who tries to tell you that you need a mouse for a “proper” Mirror’s Edge experience is full of it. Console gamers will be able to play the game just fine, and have a lovely time doing so. How can I be so sure about this?

You tell me.

Don’t be fooled by Mr. Hollister’s flagrant and disturbing PC affections. There’s no problem with the camera on Mirror’s Edge, on a console. You know, unless you suck or something.

Mirror’s Edge launches on November 11th for PS3 and Xbox 360, and later in the Winter for mouse-using PC folk. In the meantime, EA will be releasing a demo of the game later this month. If you pre-order the game, in fact, you can try out the Time Trial mode for yourself in the demo, via Xbox Live or PSN.

And stay tuned for further details on that shiny new iPod, which we just may decide to part with sometime soon.

Related posts

• E3 2008: Mirror’s Edge Hands-On
• EA Studio Showcase: Battlefield Heroes
• Mirror’s Edge PC Impressions, System Requirements Revealed
• Mirror’s Edge Dated, But Not for PC
• EA Studio Showcase: Lord of the Rings: Conquest Hands-On

“You’re only as good as your last title.” says High Voltage Software VP/Chief Creative Officer Eric Nofsinger. He’s explaining to me how the company’s reputation is riding on much-hyped Wii first-person shooter The Conduit. To me, the words make perfect sense — four and a half months ago, I wrote how the game is High Voltage’s first major attempt to escape a resume filled with mediocrity. Combining that with knowledge that the company’s Wii tech investment was self-funded, it shouldn’t surprise me that this attempt might also be their last.

But those words bring me no pleasure, because this time I’m not pontificating from an armchair. This time, I’m not concerned with crafting obvious electrical puns. This time, I’m not accusing The Conduit of being the next Red Steel. No, this time I’m standing face to face with gentlemen who have shown me a title with the potential to revolutionize console shooters in more ways than one, and it is with nothing less than genuine empathy that I ask them what would happen should The Conduit fail to carry their hopes.

At the 2008 Nintendo Media Summit in San Francisco, GameCyte spoke to Eric Nofsinger and Micah Skaritka of High Voltage Software about how the company managed to fund The Conduit, how fans have shaped key elements of its design; and how, despite all odds, it might turn out to be the triple-A shooter Wii core gamers have supposedly been waiting for.

GameCyte: Nintendo has set out to prove that you don’t need lot of technology and lots of powerful graphics to make a fun game, and you guys are railing against this with this high-tech first person shooter that attempts to pull every ounce of power out of the Wii. I personally agree with your opinion that there’s a market for this kind of game, but how do you feel about going against the grain like that?

Eric Nofsinger: I think it is a risk… but with risk, there’s also great opportunity. We look at it and we see that with the kind of gamers that we are, the kind of gamers that other folks we know are, gameplay is obviously king — and we’re very much aligned with Nintendo in that fashion, we believe that gameplay is the most important thing in a game — but we also believe that if given the option of having great gameplay and great graphics, a lot of consumers would want that. We want to deliver both. The system, I think, is capable of a lot more than most developers and publishers are pushing it to do.

GameCyte: You say this started out as a tech demo, to show off your Quantum3 engine that you used for Gyrostarr, as well as…

Micah Skaritka: We’ve used that in a lot of our titles, and it’s very versatile. We’ve used it for everything from Family Guy to Harvey Birdman; I think most of the games we’ve released in the last three years have been on Quantum3.

GameCyte: So you’d been working with this engine for a while.

EN: What happened was we decided to do a major enhancement to it. We rearchitected some segments of it using our advanced technology group, which allowed us to introduce things like normal mapping, light mapping, dynamic water, full-screen effects, material-based effects… we were able to do a lot of really cool wizardry through that tech demo. Basically, we challenged our ATG group, “Hey, here’s some stuff out there on these other systems. Is this possible on the Wii?” and it seemed like everything we threw at those guys — “Can you do this?” — they’d say “Let me get back to you,” and then they’d come back in a few days and go “Yeah, we figured out a way to do that, it will take this amount of time. Can we do it?” and each time management would say “Yeah, do that!”

They put a lot of effort into it, and I think it shows. That demo became our proof of concept that all this stuff is capable of being done on the Wii — and about 12 months ago, we started on The Conduit. We knew we can do the gameplay, and after our ATG group proved we could do the visuals, we decided to combine them.

GameCyte: I’m curious about how you were able to make this huge R&D investment in all these graphical abilities for your engine. What was the original purpose? Were you trying to sell the engine using this new enhancement? Was there something particular you were going after with this investment before you decided to make a game with it?

EN: Everything we do is meant to eventually end up in a game; we’re not a technology company in that we’re making technology just for technology’s sake. However, when we did make it, what we were hoping to achieve is a real competitive advantage. We had a strong indication that many of these things would be possible if we put the effort into it, because we have done GameCube games in the past, among other things, and it seemed like most of what we’d seen on the system were the same kinds of graphics we’d seen on the GameCube, and that didn’t seem right. It inherently seemed flawed, because you should be able to do more with a more powerful system.

GameCyte: Was there another game in the works, perhaps an aborted project for one of your other clients for which the new tech was originally intended?

EN: No, not really. It really all started, initially, with a conversation between our CEO Kerry Ganofsky and myself, where we were sitting around and bemusing the state of the Wii. We were saying, “We love the Wii, this is such a neat system,” but our game consoles were gathering dust. The first-party stuff was awesome but there wasn’t a lot of great third-party stuff at the time, and we said to ourselves “this sucks, we’re spending all our time on 360 and PS3…”

GameCyte: I’m just rather surprised that you could make an R&D investment like that — even assuming all your staff were in-house — without a project in mind for the technology.

EN: One thing we’ve been fortunate with in recent years is venture capital; outside investors are willing to put money into game products and into us exploring notions for products and building prototype phases, not just full development of games. With The Conduit, the news piece was “Who’s the publisher?” and a lot of folks asked that, but although it became kind of a big news thing it really wasn’t ever in question for us because from the start of the game we’ve had full funding to complete the product how we wanted to complete it.

That really put us in a different position where, knowing we wanted to do an original product, setting aside a certain amount of money to do research and development just seemed to make more sense than to leap right into the game and hope for the best.

GameCyte: You knew there was going to be an original project, but you weren’t sure what it was going to be.

EN: Exactly.

GameCyte: So you wanted an original project, you had all this technology, you saw that the first-person shooter software market was wide open on Wii — how did you go from there to an actual game? From where did you pull in the gameplay, the story, the AI?

EN: Well, a lot of that came from within the team. We had a lot of things that we liked about different games, and some things that we didn’t like… The setting came first. We knew we wanted to do something that was real-world, not just based on something completely fantastic — not for this version. We wanted to do something that had some sort of realistic setting that would allow us to really showcase technology in that setting, and something that would be identifiable, that people would be able to look at and go, “Oh, okay, I get that.” We’ve got the Pentagon, the Oval Office, the Library of Congress, the Jefferson Memorial; there’s a lot of cool stuff that really hasn’t been explored, and I think it’s something that people will pick up on right away and say “Oh, that’s neat, I recognize that, it looks just like it.”

GameCyte: The storyline — was that already in someone’s head before this tech project began?

EN: No, not so much; it was definitely an involved progress. We’re fans of science fiction; we’re fans of conspiracy theories…

GameCyte: Any particular conspiracy theories?

EN: We’re big fans of the Templar, and the Masons; in my office I’ve got this gigantic encyclopedia of secret societies…

GameCyte: (laughs)

EN: One of the things we realized early on was that folks that are into conspiracy theories are really into them, and there is a plethora of wonderful material to draw on out there. We’ve peppered a lot of the environments with many, many little story elements — like little objects that are in certain historical locations. If people look around, they’ll find all kinds of things that will make them ask questions. It’s part of how we’re trying to tell the story.

Another thing that was critical to us early on is we realized that we didn’t want to spend all our resources on heavy-handed cinematics. The influence there was Cloverfield. We kind of liked the idea that the characters of Cloverfield are thrown into the middle of this event, but also that a lot of things aren’t really explained to the viewer; you pick up on things in the periphery. We wanted to have a deep story for the players who did want to go and explore and discover more of the universe, but didn’t want to club players over the head with it.

GameCyte: I notice you named a couple of the camera modes SteadyCam and HandyCam, with the latter giving you that shaky effect… is that direct inspiration from the film?

EN: There’s definitely inspiration there. We know people want to experience the game differently though, and that’s been a carryover throughout. At all of these trade shows, all of the forums, we read all of the posts… we really want that feedback about the game. When you say “triple-A shooter” that means a lot of different things to different players, so we’re not so full of ourselves that we think we have all the answers. We listen to fans and press, and try to incorporate that into what we’re doing. That goes down to the customization of the control, our camera, all of that. We want to give as much customization as possible.

GameCyte: There was an interview at Nintendo Wii Fanboy where the team mentions how they’d liberally taken the best elements of Halo, GoldenEye and other triple-A FPS titles and integrated them into The Conduit… What I’d like to know is, what Wii titles did you take inspiration from?

EN: I’m not sure if there’s a clear choice on the Wii, but I will say we looked heavily at Metroid and Medal of Honor: Heroes 2. Metroid does a lot of things right, but it’s not really a first-person shooter per se; it’s got some elements of the genre, but it’s more of an adventure game. But then you look at Medal of Honor: Heroes 2, and they do a lot of things right there, but it’s a port. We wanted to do something that was exclusive to the Wii, and was built from the ground up to be a definitive first-person shooter for hardcore players. We try to steal from the best, so we take ideas from wherever it makes sense, and then apply them judiciously.

GameCyte: Other than the control scheme, is there anything you can put your finger on that fan and press feedback have influenced?

EN: Oh, absolutely. We got great feedback on the default turn speed, the character run speed [both are now adjustable - Ed.], we got feedback on some alternate mappings, and those are all in the works. People on a lot of forums said they liked how it looked, but they felt that some of the screenshots and videos looked a little jaggy, and so that was one of the things that we got on right away — we came up with a new system that allows us to get right up on a texture and have it look really crisp and clean. Folks said they wanted depth of field; we put depth of field in. Those are all things that fans and press have asked for, we’ve listened to, and we’re integrating. We’ve got a big ol’ punch list. We’re not going to say that we’re going to get to everything on that list, but we’re going to keep listening and the things that make sense that we can get in, till the day we ship, we’re going to keep listening — and the things that we can’t get in this version, we’ll put in the next version.

GameCyte: You’re planning a Conduit 2 already?

EN: Absolutely. We look at this as a franchise, and something that we want to do multiple versions of. We know we’re not going to be able to hit everything out of the gate exactly how we want, and we know that we want to have a really good, solid first outing that Wii fans and folks who specifically want core gamer games on the Wii are going to support. I think people are going to feel like they got their money’s worth, but we’ve got a big ol’ universe of stories that we want to tell. This little segment of the story takes place in D.C, but there are a lot of other things that we have to tell about our shadowy government organizations.

GameCyte: What location do you think we might go to next?

EN: That, we’re not saying just yet. But we have some really strong ideas.

GameCyte: Will we know by the end of the game where it might be headed?

EN: I think by the end of the game you’ll have some strong hints as to where some next settings — some next openings might be. There are definitely some threads at the end of this story. Our storytelling isn’t about wrapping everything up in a nice tidy bow; the kind of gamers we want are thoughtful, they like to be challenged in their storytelling, they want to ask questions. We want to provide them with a lot of answers but leave them with questions too — areas that they can discuss.

GameCyte: You’re not going to leave us with an Assassin’s Creed or Halo 2 cliffhanger ending, are you?

EN: No, no, no… we want to give them a journey, and make sure they feel like they’ve experienced something. We don’t want to be so cliched and Hollywood that we’re beating them over the head and going “This means this.”

GameCyte: Your control scheme contest — have you received anything particularly awesome there that you’d like to share?

EN: Well, we received a whole lot of awesome, really… in the first twelve hours since that press release went out, we received 400 submissions — very detailed, full-on control breakdowns. With the rules of that contest, having to map all of those to all of the different elements, we figured that we weren’t going to get back as many as we did, at least not at first — but we got a lot of really interesting schemes.

Now, the real trick for us is not “did we get anything really interesting,” it’s narrowing it down to just a handful so it’s not an insanely crazy set of 75 controller options or something.

GameCyte: (to Eric, Micah both) If you had to pick, what your single favorite control mapping of the ones submitted so far?

MS: I’ve only seen a couple of them so far, but there were some crazy ones in there. There was a weird shake one… I think the fire trigger was on the shake instead, so you’d shake the Nunchuk to fire.

EN: I saw one that was interesting where they kind of mapped everything out to the Wiimote and Nunchuk but then they also had a whole scheme in there for using the Wii Fit. That was interesting.

GameCyte: Oh, I would love to see something akin to Police 911. It’s this arcade game where you stand in two spots on the ground and it’s got a camera that watches your profile, so if you shrink back or crouch you can retreat behind cover. You could do that with the Balance Board.

EN: That’s a good idea.

GameCyte: Another favorite — what are your all-time favorite guns in shooters you’ve played?

EN: (without hesitation) Cerebral Bore.

The Cerebral Bore from Turok, that’s probably my favorite. I just think it’s crazy. I like a lot of the weapons from Duke Nukem, a lot of the weapons from the better Turok games… a lot of the weapons from Perfect Dark — those are all great games for really distinctive weapons.

MS: I like the Needler. It makes it so you don’t have to be as precise, but you have to get it as much over there as you can, and then you get to see it explode.

GameCyte: Which Needler though? Halo 1, 2 or 3? They’re all different…

MS: Halo 3 is the one I’ve had the most experience with. It’s kind of like the replay gun. What was that movie, with Gary Oldman and Bruce Willis…

GameCyte: That sounds familiar… The Fifth Element?

EN: (holds up notepad with “Police 911″ circled in black ink) You said that title was called Police 911. Do you know if that was Konami or…

GameCyte: I’m pretty sure that’s a Konami game.

Ladies and gentlemen, he actually just wrote that down. Police 911.

(all laugh)

Can you tell me who your publisher is?

EN: No, we can’t yet. Unfortunately, we’ve got the gag order, it’s in the hands of lawyers. We really do want to tell people. It’s a done deal, it’s just a matter of the last bits of contract negotiation on that going back and forth. Until that gets sown up, I can’t really say.

GameCyte: But we can say you have a publisher.

EN: You can say we have a publisher.

GameCyte: How long have you been in negotiation? What was the point at which this company said “Yes, let’s do this?”

EN: It’s been about a month that we’ve been in serious negotiations with them. I mean, we’d talked to many other folks before that, but then it sort of got whittled down to the best condenders. I will say that the publisher that we did go with… we didn’t necessarily go with whoever was the highest bidder; we went with the publisher we felt would be the best partner, and would be willing to work with us and make sure that we could continue to make a triple-A title, and was very open to the idea of starting on a sequel.

GameCyte: Going back to the beginning of this interview, I’d like to ask — what if you’re wrong? What if Conduit doesn’t have the fanbase you hope it will? What if it turns out that the core gamers you’re hoping for aren’t on the Wii, they’ve actually on a different console? What happens then?

EN: I think it changes the landscape; I think a lot of folks are waiting to see how we do, to see if it is a viable system for hardcore gamers. I believe, and I think many people believe — our entire company believes that the Wii is a viable system for core gamers. We’re going out swinging hard, and we’re going to give this our all, and if it doesn’t work, we can’t say it’s for lack of trying. I’d rather go out there and fail then give it a half-hearted effort — which I think a lot of folks still are.

I think a lot of folks still are dipping their toe in the water, and they’re doing some things that are interesting, but they’re not really taking it to the next level. We want the Wii to be the gaming console, and I think that’s not just pretty graphics; it’s great gameplay and pretty graphics, and great audio, and great storytelling, and a great multiplayer experience… we’re trying to pull all that together, and it’s a lot of work.

But I think that if it can be done, we’re going to do our best to make sure it happens. Our reputation is riding on this.

GameCyte: You think so.

EN: Oh, very much so. I think that just like in movies, you’re only as good as your last title, and I think that High Voltage has worked on a lot of titles over the years, mainly licensed titles.

GameCyte: Is this your first original title?

EN: It’s not our first original title, it’s our first major-scale original title. We’ve done some WiiWare titles…

GameCyte: Gyrostarr.

EN: We had some limited success with that, it’s been doing well for us, but I look at this as our first attempt to make a triple-A title. I think most gamers are smart and realize that a lot of the licensed titles we’ve done in the past, those were timed-to-market products and they could look the other way, and now go “Well here, now they finally have a chance to do the kind of game they want,” and they’re willing to look at our company and say “Okay, they’ve got this history, they’ve made a lot of games, they can make a game, now here’s their shot to make something really, really good” and we have to live up to that promise.

GameCyte: You decided to do that on your own, though — you didn’t have that publisher to begin with.

EN: Yes.

GameCyte: So… can you tell us anything about Animales de la Muerte?

EN: (eyes light up) Absolutely!

GameCyte: What’s that about?

EN: Well, it’s a zombie apocalypse in a Mexican zoo.

GameCyte: (laughs) High concept.

EN: It’s a crazy, over-the-top and gruesome brawler, multiplayer kind of Smash TV-style game. Like Monkey Island, you have to save the good animals, and if they get infected, you have to take out the bad animals. It’s a simple little game concept, but it’s funny as hell and there’s lots of comedy, and we think it’s something really good. Internally, where we’ve been on the fence with it is we’ve put a lot into the development of it, and we’re looking at doing it as a WiiWare title, but honestly we’ve had a little bit of trouble squeezing it into 40 megs.

We’ve got a lot of cinematics, and a lot of comedy there. We don’t want to kill the comedy.

GameCyte (points to Wii demo station currently running The Conduit) Well, you guys are making a reputation out of doing things with limited resources…

EN: For sure, but… I don’t know, you look at Strong Bad and that game’s really fun, and they’re doing it on WiiWare so that’s certainly inspiring.

GameCyte: What would you say to publishing on PSN or Xbox Live Arcade?

EN: Maybe… I think that could be cool. PSN would maybe be a good one. I feel that Live Arcade right now is really saturated, and it’s hard to stand out. Maybe if fans were really vocal and said to us “Yeah, we’d buy this on Live Arcade…” I just feel there’s a lot of stuff out there, and on WiiWare there’s still a lot of great opportunity to stand out and do something special.

GameCyte: You do know that reading this, there will be fans who will say “Yes, we’ll buy this on Live Arcade,” right?

EN: That would be great! I welcome the emails. We have no shortage of correspondence, and definitely to anyone that’s ever emailed us, we do try to email everyone back. It’s not always the quickest turnaround time, because we receive a lot of email every day, but we really do listen to what folks have to say. You won’t see us just sending cheesy form letters back. What makes me feel really good are the folks who contact us and say stuff like “I was going to sell my Wii, but now I’m going to hang onto it cause this is awesome,” or “I haven’t bought a Wii yet, but now I’m going to because of this.”

GameCyte: How many of those have you gotten?

EN: A good number… I think that gamers in general, there’s sort of a perception that gamers are just kind of fruity or whatever, and I consider myself a gamer…

GameCyte: And you don’t consider yourself fruity.

EN: Well, I’m fruity.

GameCyte: (laughs)

EN: Well, I think that we’re also incredibly passionate individuals, and we really care a lot about quality entertainment. I’ve had so much correspondence with folks that are really open and just want to make sure that we succeed so there are more great games for the Wii coming out.

GameCyte: That’s really great to hear.

Can you tell us anything new about Animales?

EN: I’ll say that we have a pretty wonderful menagerie of horrific animals that have gotten built up. There’s something wonderfully grotesque about a walrus with half of its head missing… The one phrase I can leave people with is “Zombie Petting Zoo.”

GameCyte: (smiles) I’d be clapping but my hands are full.

What have you learned from your experiences with Gyrostarr? We’ll admit it didn’t do terribly well in our review…

EN: It was a good first outing, but I don’t think it was a perfect game. We got a lot of great feedback, and one of the things we learned from it, probably the biggest thing we learned was to get feedback from folks like yourself early and often. I think most of the reviews we got for the game are fair, and I think that in the critiques that they gave of the game, there are a lot of things that we could have fixed. We’re not so full of ourselves that we think that we’ve got the answer for everything, and I don’t think that you can say you’re making a game for core gamers if you’re not listening to core gamers and implementing that. I think you’re making a game for yourself as a core gamer, and maybe that was something that we did wrong with Gyrostarr, was that we made it a little too much for ourselves as opposed to getting that feedback.

That’s something I really think we’ve really been doing right on Conduit, and we plan on doing that on all of our future original titles.

GameCyte: You’ve had plenty of partners in the past, and I’m sure you’ve had many deadlines, but self-funding this title you haven’t been strained the same way. Is that correct?

EN: That is correct. We impose our own internal milestones, but what’s different about it is we’re far more quality-driven as opposed to checklist-driven. We don’t just check things off a list and say “done, done, done,” until it’s all fun.

GameCyte: That rhymes. (smiles) From a gamer’s standpoint, I respect the old 3D Realms/id Software model. But are you worried that now you have a publisher, you might once again have these constraints?

EN: I’m not — with the publisher we ended up with, it’s a partnership. They’re going to have good input just like anyone else would. They recognize what we have and what we’re trying to do, and I think we’re very much aligned in that. Plus, that was a critical component to our contract negotiation, making sure that we still were able to, as I said earlier, making sure that they had the same goals in making a great game as we do.

GameCyte: Has it been agreed, then, that you’ll be able to set your own deadlines and maintain your own quality standards?

EN: As far as the quality standards and things like that, yes. As far as the actual ship date and things like that, they have their own set of criteria that will need to come into play. They have marketing teams that need that, and actual physical manufacturing that they have to worry about, and QA — one of the reasons we’re most grateful for a publishing partner is being able to align with a QA team. We’ve got a great internal test team that does a really good job, but a publisher will be able to unleash an army of testers on our game.  It’ll be great — we’re going to find so many bugs and issues, and we’ll be able to fix all that stuff before the game hits.

GameCyte: Thank you both for the interview. This was a real pleasure.

The Conduit is slated for a Q1 2009 release on the Nintendo Wii. You can read our hands-on preview here.

Related posts

• Conduit Devs Conducting Control Scheme Contest
• Hands-On Preview: The Conduit
• First-Person Shooter “The Conduit” Aiming at Nintendo Wii; Do We Care?
• WiiWare Wednesday: Toki Tori
• WiiWare Wednesday: Protöthea

As the two major players in the tiny stereoscopic 3D gaming market, you’d think NVIDIA and IZ3D would be at one another’s throats — each attempting to leverage their own software and display solution to gain what little of a foothold is available. But as GameCyte discovered in interviews with product managers at both firms, right now that’s simply not the case, because both companies are banking on something bigger.

NVIDIA’s Andrew Fear on IZ3D: “They can do nothing but help, right? Because right now, they’re talking about stereoscopic gaming…”

IZ3D’s Aaron Rapp on NVIDIA: “NVIDIA’s got a broader reach than we do… if they sell the idea of 3D, then now everybody’s on a common playing field…”

They want to make S-3D gaming into a mass market phenomenon, and though each may have the software, hardware and industry connections to serve consumers already interested in stereo 3D, it’s entirely possible neither alone has the marketing force required to sell it to the masses ignorant of its true potential.

But there is one man whose sole purpose in the industry is to do just that. He’s a connector who has the ear of every major S-3D manufacturer. He’s an educator who wrote the most comprehensive, unbiased introduction to existing stereo 3D technology available. He’s an expert on the field — though he himself was introduced to the tech only a few years ago. By his admission, he’s the man who popularized the term ‘S-3D’.

And he is the president and CEO of an advocacy group designed to unite manufacturers, developers and interested individuals for the express purpose of forwarding S-3D gaming.

Last week, we spoke to Mr. Neil Schneider of Meant To Be Seen about his own momentum, the state of the market, and how his group is working to convince gamers and software developers alike that our games are, indeed, meant to be seen in stereo 3D.

GameCyte: How did you manage to become an advocate for the nascent stereoscopic 3D industry?

Neil Schneider: My original background was in television production. I used to produce TV shows in Montreal, and then I worked in talk radio, and I was the first to broadcast live internet radio in Canada using – we know them now as Real Networks, but back in the day they were known as Progressive Networks. I started off in radio, moved to Toronto, used to do cover stories for Information Highways magazine, and then I jumped again and created a new business to focus on continuing medical education. We’d interview the leading minds in medicine, and then doctors could log onto the internet and listen to specialized internet radio programs at a physician’s level. In that case, I was funded by the pharmaceutical industry. I had a career there, and over the years I did a number of media projects, but my secret passion was gaming. It’s funny how life works out.

As far as the tie-in to video games, what happened was that I took an interest in upgrading my computer. It started off modestly enough –- I spent five hundred to six hundred dollars on the computer itself. But I thought “Gee, my games could be better.” So I bought a graphics card… but still thought “Gee, my games could be better.” Then I got a sound card, and it got to the point where I ran out of things to buy for my computer, and through word of mouth I heard about shutter glasses. So I went to eBay and bought a pair for fifty dollars, and it was the most memorable thing I’d ever purchased for my computer.

GameCyte: What kind of shutter glasses were these?

NS: This was about three years ago – time flies – and they were called X3D. I don’t think they even make them anymore. They were the same idea as those at eDimensional, X3D was another brand… I could go through the brands for you.

GameCyte: Are all these glasses more or less the same, or was there something special about the X3D?

NS: They weren’t all that unique from each other; what really drove the gaming experience with the shutter glasses was the software support. At the time, NVIDIA was the software support…

GameCyte: And I gather the shutter glasses were only compatible with CRT monitors?

NS: At the time, stereoscopic 3D was only possible with CRT monitors. Even modern stereoscopic 3D gamers are very passionate about having fair-sized CRT monitors, but the monitors have become fewer and farther between because LCD has taken over.

GameCyte: There were numerous reasons for that… but I’ll admit, when I bought my LCD panel a few years back, I didn’t think about whether it would play stereoscopic 3D games or not.

NS: The transition from CRT to LCD was a very important part of stereoscopic gaming history. 3D gaming has dated back easily about 10 years now, and when the CRT monitor was on every desk, 3D gaming held true promise. But because LCDs are thin, light and more environmentally friendly, the CRT monitor literally fell off the desk. The LCD replaced it, and because the LCD didn’t have the true refresh rates that CRT monitors did, the LCD panel on its own was no longer a viable option for 3D. When the CRT monitor fell out of favor, so did the opportunity for stereoscopic 3D.

GameCyte: So looking back at your career path for a moment, it seems you’ve always been at the forefront of technology and education — is MBTS3D the logical end result of your experiences and interest in gaming?

NS: I didn’t think of it that way… for me, the reason I took the 3D route is that I enjoyed the experience so much – it added so much to my gaming -– that I couldn’t stop talking about it. Even my wife would say, “Don’t talk about the 3D glasses to our friends, they just won’t understand and I will have trouble explaining it to them…” I was just so passionate about it, and when I went online…

Well, let me explain the predicament I was in. I was getting the latest games, I was having perhaps a 60% success rate, and even then there were tradeoffs. I’d have to turn down special settings, I’d have to come to terms with anomalies on the screen that I couldn’t get rid of, and so I went on the online forums.

NVIDIA had forums, there were some independent websites that had discussion forums, and they were just filled with frustrated, angry people who just loved the 3D so much, but the software updates were limited and they were having all these problems. I thought “Gee, there’s a lot of energy. Anger is frustration and frustration means you want to get something done but it’s just not happening – how can we take that energy and use it to actually move things in a positive direction?” So I said “I love this gaming, I really see a future in this, I want to play my games the way they’re meant to be… meant to be seen.”

GameCyte: (laughs)

NS: So I started researching it, and I found that in the 10 years of 3D gaming’s history, there have been a lot of solutions on the market that most people just don’t know about. There have been countless shutter glasses, countless head-mounted displays, all kinds of 3D monitors. Now, granted, all of the technology was very modest compared to what we have here today, but the problems were very consistent –- and the core problem was that there was no working relationship between the game developers and the manufacturers. The manufacturers have come out with some very promising products, but without that working relationship –- excellent software to present in front of customers –- ultimately their products were not marketing successes. These companies either moved on to other businesses, or they took their stereoscopic 3D technology and focused on the business market –- research and development, working with molecules – -very niche markets, very costly markets with companies that are willing to spend ten to fifteen thousand dollars on a head-mounted display. Not really consumer technology.

So I decided to found Meant To Be Seen. I raised my sponsorship from the 3D manufacturers, and our whole mandate is to create benefits for the different members. Benefits for the consumers, in that they get the 3D experiences that they’re paying for; for the game developers, so they’re able to tell really good stories using 3D technologies and market their products to the right people; and ultimately for the manufacturers, so when they spend all their money on research and development to put out these innovative solutions, they have happy customers and they have the software to show them.

It’s a win-win for all involved.

MTBS's Neil Schneider (right) with Lenny Lipton, CTO of Real D

GameCyte: When did you go from a man-with-a-plan – a gentleman advocating the technology to friends, relatives and acquaintances – to someone who had clout with manufacturers, developers and so on?

NS: It… it happened a lot faster than I anticipated. It took perhaps six months to raise the money. I put a plan down on paper, and it just seemed so obvious to me that this would work. When I told my wife what I wanted to do, she just laughed. It took about six months, and the website was launched in March 2007.

The membership was very excited, because they didn’t really have a home for stereoscopic 3D until that point, and I started doing presentations within no more than three months. The whole idea behind MTBS is positive energy – there are no competitors when it comes to MTBS, because we’re all after very much the same thing. There are different players, like IZ3D, NVIDIA, TDVision…

GameCyte: Who signed on first? Who gave you the first shot at turning this from a enthusiast community into a full advocacy group?

NS: I have to give credit to IZ3D. IZ3D was formerly called Neurok Optics, and they were previously into the medical imaging business, but they really saw a big opportunity in gaming – as did we all. I had called a number of manufacturers – and I’m not going to name names – who said no, no, no, no no… IZ3D said yes. I explained exactly what I wanted to do, and how I wanted to do it, and I insisted that we were an independent organization who would work with whomever we want and put whatever content we want, and they said “Neil, you just do what you have to do. Make it happen.” It was a golden opportunity for myself and for the industry, and we’re very thankful to IZ3D.

A number of months later, TDVision joined as well. TDVision is prototyping new head-mounted displays – special helmets with independent screens for each of your eyes – and they’re making waves in Hollywood as well because they have something called TDV Codec, a way of encoding stereoscopic 3D content to be distributed to the home. These are small companies that are really putting their resources not just in their own products, but building the industry up so S-3D is the mass market success that we’re all after.

GameCyte: Tell me about MTBS’ role in building that industry.

NS: For game developers, what we do is test games for problems that aren’t obvious, so they can fix them, and ultimately our goal is to certify games so when gamers go to the store, or go online, they know ahead of time which games are going to be compatible with their 3D solutions.

The biggest problem that I found was when I wanted to play a game, I had difficulty finding out what settings I needed to get the game to run. Not everyone has the patience to do that.

We also do actual game reviews, looking at them from the point of view of a stereoscopic 3D gamer. “How is the game in true 3D?” “How does 3D add or take away from the gaming experience?” It’s a different perspective from 2D gaming reviews, and our members really enjoy that.

GameCyte: When you pick games to review, do you choose those that you know work well in stereoscopic 3D, or do you try to test all the latest games?

NS: Our goal is to test all the latest games. To date, we’ve been getting game samples from Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Epic Games… you name it – all the game developers are familiar with what we do and they send us game samples on a regular basis. We profile the games that are successful on our website. What I mean by that is if a game is an abysmal failure and we can’t get it to run in 3D at all, we’re not going to talk about it on the website, because it’s not of use to our members. People want to know what works, not so much what doesn’t work.

I want to make it clear though, certification and reviews are two different things. Our reviews are actual reviews of how good the game is and so on. Certification is more fact-based, and what that means is it either works or it doesn’t, and if it works what criteria make it work, and what anomalies can you expect.

But in both cases, we will only profile games that actively work in stereoscopic 3D.

GameCyte: This certification process – is this a service you offer developers?

NS: Yes, but I want to make it clear that we do not charge game developers. This is a complimentary service, and what we do is when the game developer earns that certification from MTBS, we will actually promote that game to our members as a safe purchase.

Now, Unigen and Dark Basic Professional are two game engines that have implemented native stereoscopic 3D support; when you create a game using their software, you get true stereoscopic 3D without the need for additional software by IZ3D or NVIDIA, and so we’ve given them native MTBS certification.

If you go to our front page, you’ll occasionally see advertising for their products on our website, which we also do not charge for. The reason we do this is because we want to give game developers as much benefit as we can for implementing 3D support.

GameCyte: So, let’s talk a little bit about the challenging facing S-3D adoption. You’d mentioned that there was a missed opportunity back when there was a CRT on every desk – why was that?

NS: There were a couple challenges. Back then – and this is pretty consistent up to today – NVIDIA had a graphics card share of maybe 30% of the market. ATI was another 30%, and then the difference was the graphics cards that are built into the computer, which don’t really have the processing power for what we want to do. At the time, NVIDIA was the only software solution on the market, and when it came to supporting stereoscopic 3D, it didn’t just mean that a developer was going to support 3D gaming, it also meant that a game developer is only going to support 3D gaming for a portion of the market. It was a niche of a niche.

Another challenge with the technology was that the software wasn’t quite up to speed with the technology. Even then, with older games, you still had to turn down settings and special effects to get the games to work, and this was a customer challenge. If you wanted to play stereoscopic 3D games, you had to have a certain level of expertise. Another issue was the LCD shutter glasses themselves. The technology worked great – I wouldn’t be in this business if I wasn’t impressed by what I saw with the shutter glasses – but there were some myths and challenges which end-users didn’t understand and got frustrated with.

I’ll give you an example. Shutter glasses work by flickering very quickly between left and right eyes, and it has to be at a certain refresh rate or you can get sick and so on. Well, what happened was people were buying this technology, and they weren’t having their computers set up the right way, they’d get this nauseating strobe effect – which shouldn’t happen if it was set up properly – and got turned off by the technology. Now, there’s this stigma of 3D and shutter glasses having this strobe effect.

GameCyte: You mean to say that was a myth even at the time?

NS: Even at the time. People would try it, they’d get frustrated with it, they’d throw it away… it’s really harmful when there’s such misinformation. Even today, if you brought up 3D with an average gamer, the first thing they would do is say “Ugh, I think those red/blue glasses are cheesy” or “I get headaches from those LCD shutter glasses.”

Those were some key challenges, and then again there was no business relationship between the game developers and the software developers. NVIDIA, to their credit, were really the pioneers in releasing this software. In my understanding, the software was free for the manufacturers, and they were not charging for the software for end-gamers, but they didn’t have the leverage for the game developers to get involved, and leverage is key.

Even today, leverage is going to be key. With a game developer who earns millions and millions of dollars, what’s going to convince them to make sure that their games are compatible with these 3D technologies? Well, if NVIDIA represents 30% of the market… game developers don’t like to do proprietary things, they want to support as much as they can, because they don’t want to limit their audiences. It was both a blessing and a curse that NVIDIA was the only player; a blessing in that they were pioneering and showing what the technology can do, and a curse because on their own, I don’t think they had the leverage to make things work.

It’s a different world today, but back then it was too much, too soon.

GameCyte: Today, it seems like the stigma is still there – but now, you also have to convince gamers to trade in their LCD monitors for better ones. How you plan to surmount this new challenge?

NS: I ask this question to a lot of our own interviewees: “What problem is 3D solving?” What I mean by that is this: You have to understand the problem before you can state what the solution is. The technology is Meant To Be Seen, meaning you don’t grasp the benefits of 3D until you see the technology first-hand, but we don’t have the luxury of being able to show 3D to every single gamer in the world. So how do you convey the benefit of 3D without them actually seeing it?

The way to do that is to define the problem. We think the problem is that gamers are spending top-dollar on their computer equipment, they’re getting framerates as high as 80 to 100 frames per second in some games, and it’s an issue of justification. How do you justify the expense of your computer? Adding stereoscopic 3D, because it adds superior game immersion, helps justify that. I asked a graphics designer who saw the 3D first-hand, “what problem does this solve for you?” and in his words, he said “You know, this is the first time I’m seeing my work the way it was designed to be seen. I always render my content in 3D, but I’ve never actually seen it in 3D.”

With NVIDIA, I interviewed Andrew Fear, as you have, and I asked him what problem 3D solves. He said, “Well, we live in a 3D world. The only thing that’s not 3D is the screen that we’re looking at. Stereoscopic 3D makes our gaming appear as it does in the real world.” I thought that sounded simple enough, but is that a problem easily defined enough to get people to bang down the doors to buy the latest 3D panels and HDTVs and so on?

If I told you had bad breath, the first thing you’d do is run to get mouthwash or brush your teeth. We want a similar reaction out of gamers. You’re only seeing your game in 2D; you really should be seeing it in 3D.

GameCyte: Back in the days of the CRT, all you had to do to justify your purchase was hope for decent driver support, but now you have to actually go out and purchase something new, and justify that expenditure as well. Is defining the problem really enough, or will there need to be some price point which needs to be set in order to make this happen?

NS: I’m unconvinced that price point is what’s going to determine the success. Let’s look at modern graphics cards. Graphics cards are the bread and butter of NVIDIA and AMD, and one day Intel as well, and what drives gamers to continually upgrade their equipment? The problem they’re working to solve is frames per second, and if you want to be a competitive gamer, and score as well as other people, you need more frames per second, and that’s why you spend top dollar on graphics cards and CPUs and so on.

GameCyte: The virtual arms race.

NS: Exactly. So that problem’s defined. Now it’s easy to state the 3D problem when people see it first-hand, but that core problem of how to convey it textually… that’s something that we’re working to solve. But it’s not unnatural for gamers to upgrade their equipment to get an additional benefit.

GameCyte: With all your contacts, can you tell me what 3D hardware adoption is like so far in the LCD era?

NS: I can’t speak for IZ3D’s numbers or TDVisions, but we know for certain that there are approximately 1.5 million units – and I’m talking all the 3D products put together – I’d estimate about a million and a half to two million by the end of the year.

In a good way, history is repeating itself. I mentioned that when the CRT fell off the desk and the LCD replaced it, stereoscopic 3D kind of fizzled with it, because there wasn’t a medium to display 3D. But now…

The way NVIDIA has positioned it, there’s this Viewsonic monitor coming out towards the end of the year, they have the software support to work with it, and if gamers get their Viewsonic monitor [and NVIDIA’s glasses – Ed.] they’re going to have this 3D experience. But in two to three years, maybe even less time, this 120Hz Viewsonic fast refresh rate LCD panel isn’t going to be a niche market product – every LCD panel will have this feature. It’s not going to be something unique, and it doesn’t have to be implemented for the purpose of having 3D. I don’t think Viewsonic is going to position its monitor as a 3D-only monitor.

Same with DLP. We’ve got Mitsubishi and Samsung 3D HDTVs on the market today, but are customers buying these televisions because they’re 3D? Not necessarily so, because they’re priced very similarly to traditional DLP sets; it just so happens that the technology of DLP is compatible with LCD shutter glasses.

As far as the IZ3D solution, the big benefit there is the polarized solution, so it’s not shutter glasses based; it’s priced out at under $600 US, which is somewhat competitive with a high-grade 22-inch; and on condition that the true 3D experience is there, it’s a justifiable expense.

So this isn’t a huge leap for a 2D gamer to jump into 3D – it’s not so unnatural. It’s just that previous hump that was there when CRT fell off the market has now been replaced. The technology just had to catch up.

GameCyte: So the technology is there now, you’re saying, and the question is whether we can get gamers to buy into the immersion.

NS: That’s where I fit in. That’s why we’re working so hard to make sure that there are benefits for game developers to release good, compatible stereoscopic gaming software.

NVIDIA has their own stamp of approval, called “The Way It’s Meant To Be Played.” The way their program worked, and the way it still works today, is that they work with game developers to optimize the game so it works well with their brand of graphics cards. However, with stereoscopic 3D, even though they talked about it in their programming guide and have this whole section dedicated to it in the guide, it wasn’t a requirement for earning The Way It’s Meant To Be Played standing.

The knowledge was there; there just wasn’t a motivation.

GameCyte: Are you saying that has changed, that stereo 3D compatibility is becoming a requirement to earn NVIDIA certification?

NS: It’s not my place to answer that; I can’t speak to NVIDIA’s goals with their own program. But whatever encouragement NVIDIA provides to promote 3D gaming, we’re very supportive of.

GameCyte: NVIDIA’s told me about their own outreach to game developers; how does MTBS work with software developers to forward this technology?

NS: Let’s say you’re a game developer, and you’re well aware of DirectX but you don’t know the first thing about S-3D technologies, and you haven’t sampled the technology. What we’ll do is connect the game developer directly with the companies working with MTBS. We’ll get the equipment in their hands so they can sample it and see any problems firsthand. As far as programming for 3D, we have very close relationships with the major stereoscopic 3D driver developers, and we will share with them any findings and feedback and connect them with the right people to make sure the technology works.

From a game developer’s point of view, instead of having to reinvent the wheel, we give them all the necessary resources to make sure their resources look good the first time. On the premise that the game does indeed look good, then we will promote that game to our members as a safe purchase, we will give them complimentary advertising on our website… at the end of the day, we want game developers to look as good as possible.

GameCyte: You’ve told me about how MTBS3D’s partners contribute to forwarding S-3D technology, and how your organization benefits them in return; what do your members get from this arrangement?

NS: Our members get a great deal. First, MTBS is the number one resource and authority group for stereoscopic 3D technology in the home. Up until recently, it was unheard of to be able to communicate directly with manufacturers and leading names like IZ3D, NVIDIA, Real D, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, and countless others. There is finally a direct communications link between consumer and S-3D product maker. IZ3D and TDVision in particular are continually updating and adjusting their products because of feedback and ideas put forward by our members in our forums. Empowerment to make a difference, to have a part in making a difference - I think that’s very exciting and important for members.

GameCyte: Since modern games are natively rendered in three dimensions, it’s not much of a jump to enable stereoscopic 3D support in the games via software driver. But have you heard anything about games being built from the ground up specifically for stereoscopic 3D?

NS: We know it’s public information that Ubisoft is working with James Cameron on Avatar, so there’s nothing I can share there that you don’t already know, but what is exciting – and I’m not in a position to go public with it yet – is there’s a leading console developer that makes games for Xbox and PlayStation 3 and Wii, and they’re very excited to implement native stereoscopic 3D support in their upcoming console games.

They’re actually looking for new MTBS partners to work with to supply hardware and such so that they can get the games tested out. If there are any of your readers who could help with that, that’d be a big plus.

I will share that one of the game developers who we’re working with made a remark about why they might want to go the native route versus the driver route, and it goes like this: when you’re playing a modern 3D video game with a driver, the gamer can control the entire experience – how much separation there is, how much convergence or pop-out experience there is, and you can customize it according to your eyes and your preference. But all game developers are storytellers, and the big successes are the story-driven games.

He said, “Stereoscopic 3D is great; it’s such an effective medium, but what I’m concerned about is putting too much control with the gamer, because that could impact how my story is told. One of the reasons we’re working to implement native support is with the exception of adjustments to make sure it’s comfortable for the gamer’s eyes, we want to tell stories we want to tell the way they’re meant to be told.”

GameCyte: So there is progress being made towards native 3D gaming, then.

NS: Oh, 100%. It’s not just about marketing and “how many gamers are going to see the game in 3D,” that’s not the driving force for game developers to take an interest in this. It’s about storytelling. Does 3D add to the story? If S-3D is successful, it has to be a story-driven success; it can’t be a technology-driven success. As long as it compliments the story, then our industry is in good shape.

GameCyte: I hadn’t heard much about the importance of story before; I figured that S-3D was a technology concern, and gamers interested in technology would gravitate toward it. What is it about the story? Is it just the “I am there” experience?

NS: The 3D experience adds a lot of fun, you’re more in-tune… There’s a criticism that I sometimes hear that competitive gamers are concerned that the 3D will somehow affect their scores if the framerates are too slow, but in practice I find that I play better in stereoscopic 3D than I do in traditional 2D, because I’m more in-tune with the game.

GameCyte: I’ve heard that a few times, that you can be more competitive in S-3D, but when I’ve asked “is this something we’ll see in competition,” the answers have indicated that this isn’t something that’s being done yet.

NS: We’ll have to wait and see. I have… I’m not in a position to comment on that yet, but it’s… We’ll have to wait and see.

Related posts

• Is Your Gaming Future in Stereo 3D?
• Is Your Gaming Future in Stereo 3D? — Part Two
• AMD Game-ing the System With New Marketing/Standardization Ploy
• Xbox 360 Slimming Down for 2009? Update: Nope.
• Xbox 360 Music Peripherals Will Also Be Compatible With Everything

Early this month, when Depth Entertainment’s Scott Faye told Kotaku that work was finally commencing on a Duke Nukem movie, the collective reaction at GameCyte was one of disbelief.

It wasn’t that there was anything necessarily wrong with a Duke Nukem action flick; to the contrary, we figure the Duke would make for a spectacularly forgettable summer ‘blockbuster ‘ with a minimum of prep work. What we were concerned with was the fact that the production was being overseen by Scott Miller’s Radar Group, a firm designed to cultivate new intellectual property and property with the potential to become a “storyverse” a la Lord of the Rings, with characters, storylines and the like that could translate well to film and other cross-media adaptation.

In our opinion, Duke Nukem was neither new nor Gandalf.

But who wants to hear our opinion when Scott Miller can just explain things for himself? Read on to hear how 3D Realms head honcho and Radar Group CCO Scott Miller intends to turn Duke into a worthy movie star — and why his early films have taken nearly a decade to get off the ground.

GameCyte: The Duke Nukem movie has been in the works for nearly as long as Duke Nukem Forever: over 10 years. Could you please tell us how the film went from Threshold to Dimension, why production went silent and how it ended up back in your hands now?

Scott Miller: The reality is that there’s been no Duke movie “in the works” for nearly eight years. It’s true that Threshold Entertainment acquired the rights, but there was never a good script written, and the project never got off the ground. Several years ago Threshold lost its right to the project. In just the past few months we’ve decided to pursue a movie again, this time through Depth Entertainment, the production studio behind the Max Payne film. We love that the Max film appears to be a high-quality production and appears to capture the vibe of the games. The most recent trailer really brings home this point.

GameCyte: In August of ‘98, you announced that 3D Realms and Threshold had completed a compelling story draft after six months of work, and in March 2001 when the Dimension deal was signed, we heard that Duke would be defending Earth from a alien ship on collision course. Is that still the basic concept, or are we looking at a new film?

SM: We’re taking an all-new direction this time around. I haven’t seen that old material in years, and can’t even remember what it was about. So, we’re starting from scratch on a story. Our first order of business is to create a Duke Nukem storyverse, which is similar to a story bible, and fleshes out all of the characters, their histories, motives, and gives a very detailed description of the Duke Nukem “universe.” Once this is created, we then have the foundation to create a story and a script. This storyverse document will also be useful for future projects.

GameCyte: Radar Group, you’ve said, is all about cultivating “storyverses” and leveraging them across multiple media. But to be honest, while I’ve always thought there should be a Max Payne movie (and thought A Man Apart was that movie when I saw its trailer), I’d never thought Duke had much of a story or much of a universe. What’s changed?

SM: When Duke 3D was released, it was thin on story and characters, no doubt. Max Payne and Prey, though, had better stories and better characters. This is both a function of our growing industry, as well as our growing desire to give more compelling context to all of the gameplay and action. So, by building a storyverse for Duke Nukem, we’re bringing that franchise into modern times. A lot of this is going to be seen in Duke Nukem Forever, because we have several key characters besides Duke, including Bombshell and General Graves. And Duke’s personality and history will be more prominent in the game.

The bottom line is that Duke Nukem was created before we had the storyverse idea nailed down. Max Payne was our first game that was purposely built as a storyverse — in large part as a result of the lessons we learned from making Duke Nukem 3D. So, while Duke comes across as a little shallow now, that’s only because we haven’t released a modern day product that fleshes things out like in recent games.

GameCyte: Scott Faye told Kotaku, “We’re expanding Duke’s ’storyverse’ in a very significant major way without abandoning or negating any element that’s being used to introduce Duke to the next gen platforms.”

There, it sounds like he’s implying two things. First, that Duke Nukem will appear on consoles… and not just as an XBLA release. Has something like that been finalized? Second, he makes it sound like the movie’s plot or setting might tie into that of Duke Nukem Forever. Can we expect anything of the sort?

SM: Scott Faye is alluding to the idea that we’re adding a lot of story and character material to the franchise, yet at the same time, we’re not going to change anything that already exists. For example, we’re not going to change Duke’s style of deadpanned humor, nor his raw distrust and hate for aliens. So, the key pillars of Duke’s storyverse will remain, but there’s a lot of new stuff we can add to the storyverse to bring it up to date with the times and give us a lot of new material to play with on future projects, be they films or new games.

The movie, by the way, will not tie into Duke Nukem Forever. It will be a standalone story.

GameCyte: You’ve pitched Radar Group as a valuable proposition for third parties — smaller developers — who need your support to nurture their original IP. But all the titles and movies that Radar Group has so far revealed (save Incarnate, perhaps) are former 3D Realms projects. Not to knock any of these titles, but what do you have in the works that will serve as a true testbed for the Radar Group model?

SM: I think Radar has announced three game projects, Prey 2, Earth No More and Incarnate. You’re right that Prey is a hand-over from 3D Realms. Earth No More was barely in production with 3D Realms when it was shifted to Radar, so most of the world will see this game as strictly a Radar release. And, we have other unannounced projects that have no ties to 3D Realms.

The short story is that it helps get Radar off the ground to have Prey 2 under its belt. But all of the other titles are original.

GameCyte: Can you tell me more about Incarnate and its developer?

SM: There’s not much to tell, yet. The original idea came from Frank Hannah, who wrote the acclaimed movie, The Cooler. Highly recommend it, btw. Incarnate was a project that Frank was working on strictly as another film. Scott Faye was working with Frank to develop it, and sent a few pages of the story my way for some feedback. I’m usually really critical of the stuff Scott sends my way, so he’s used me over the years as a no-BS sounding board. This project immediately had me think it could be the foundation for a great game, and a few months later Radar had a deal in place. Incarnate asks the question, “Does evil ever die?” But I can’t say anything more about the story. A major studio is interested in producing an Incarnate film, and of course Radar is working on the game project. What’s interesting is that the game will have considerably more story depth than the film, simple because the game script will be about 250 pages, and the film script just 100 pages — typically, a page of script equals one minute of film time. So, the good news is that the game and the film will stand on their own and each deliver a compelling, unique experience. And, we have no interest in releasing them simultaneously, such that one is compromised to meet the release date of the other.

GameCyte: How has the Max Payne film changed between today and 2001, when Scott Faye’s Collision Entertainment first bought the rights?

SM: There have been several scripts, but only the most recent writer captured the essence of the games. The bottom-line is that it’s really really hard to make a film based on a game. We’ve seen too many examples that prove this, with doomed results. Working with Scott Faye over the years has been a unique experience because Faye is driven first and foremost by the idea that the film must be a great product on its own, and not just rely on the success of the game. There was never any thought to settle on an okay script. This will remain the driving method of operation behind all of the films Depth brings to market.

GameCyte: How do you feel about Max Payne finally coming to theaters, seven years later?

SM: Really good! But only because I know we pulled off something extremely difficult. I wouldn’t be so happy if I knew that the film was Hitman quality. There’s little to be proud of with a product that doesn’t represent the game properly.

GameCyte: We know how you feel about sequels, but Mark Wahlberg is apparently interested in making another Max Payne movie. What do you say to that?

SM: I love sequels, as long as they’re done with the same quality and care as the original. As for Wahlberg, I hope he has the chance to make a sequel, and in fact I predict he will. He’s said that so far, Max Payne is his favorite movie role. I think that says a lot about the original concept as it was developed in the late 90’s, and the quality of the film script. I mean, the guy was amazing in Departed, Boogie Nights and other films. It’s mind-blowing that Max Payne is his favorite among the many he’s done.

GameCyte: Lastly, any word on Max Payne 3?

SM: Honestly, I am in the dark about the game. I’m not even sure Max 3 is being made. The bottom line is that neither 3D Realms or Remedy has anything to do with future games, and Rockstar has nothing to do with the film side. I offered to be creatively involved with Max 3 several years ago, if they wanted to make another game. But I was turned down. The good news, though, is that when the game does come out, it’ll be the first time I get to play a Max game as a fan, not knowing anything about the story, the locations, or anything else. I look forward to having that experience.

GameCyte: Thank you so much for your time, Scott.

Special thanks to Radar Group’s Casey Lynch for helping to provide this interview opportunity.

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We got the idea for this contest back when we were previewing Nyko’s disappointingly non-functional paper-based controller. There have been more than a few gaming papercrafts in our time, most of which were assembled with more competence than our hastily cobbled Wing model. As if on cue, the Castle Crashers DevBlog shared a few of their submissions with us, demonstrating what talented fans can do if they’re motivated. We want to see more, and we just happen to have the proper motivation — a big ol’ pile of free prizes!

We also realized that another perfect motivator is right around the corner: There’s only five weeks left until Halloween. Every year, gamers have the perfect excuse to take their devotion beyond reasonable limits, and dress up as their gaming heroes, villains, and other NPCs. Let me show you what I mean:

That’s the full photo as used in my avatar. I’ll upgrade my sentries just as soon as I finish my pretzel. Cream gravy! Of course, I cheated and picked a character whose costume can be largely completed with a trip to the hardware store. I’m sure you can do better.

So, with plenty of reason to work on some physical manifestations of your love for gaming, GameCyte is proud to offer you fame and prizes in exchange for your hard work. We want to see your best papercraft, costume, sculpture, cookies, public art installation, or any other physical creation you can craft. Heck, you were probably going to make a Halloween costume anyway, right? It doesn’t have to be themed around Castle Crashers, it can be based on any game you want, and it doesn’t have to be an item from the previous list. You can even use a pre-made papercraft kit if you like — though obviously we’ll be far more impressed by original designs. The only condition is that it has to be something physical and three-dimensional. Flat drawings on paper, paintings on canvas, or CG models do not count (though are nonetheless very impressive). Here’s what to do:

Once your creation is complete, you must take a photograph of your piece. If it’s a costume, you (or anyone else) need to be wearing it in the photo. In addition, somewhere in the photo needs to be a legibly written disclaimer that reads “GameCyte Castle Crafters Contest 2008.” You can be holding it up as a sign, or it can be written on a card standing next to your papercraft/sculpture, but it needs to appear in the photo — you can’t photoshop it in later. This way, we know it’s an original creation, and you’re not just sending in a photo of someone else’s work you found online. That’d be mean.

From there, you need to send us the photo. Either attach it to the email, or drop in a link to Flickr, Picasa, or otherwise, but send your submissions to jesse@gamecyte.com with the subject “Castle Crafters Entry: (your name)”. We’ll feature your entries in blog posts and invite your fellow GameCyte readers to grade your work!

You have until the end of Halloween to submit your entries, so getting us a photo from the party while you’re wearing your costume will do just fine. Entries will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. PST on Friday, 10/31/08.

Based on our own judging, as well as the reactions of your fellow readers, we will pick a winner and two runners-up. The prizes are as follows:

• First Place: A code redeemable for a free download of The Behemoth’s Castle Crashers for Xbox Live Arcade, $20 in points for the console network of your choice (Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, or Wii Shop Channel), and first pick of one gaming swag item
• Second Place: $20 in points for the console network of your choice (Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, or Wii Shop Channel), and second pick of one gaming swag item
• Third Place: The two remaining gaming swag items

For our swag selection, we’re giving away a Pure chain wallet, an Aion: Tower of Eternity baseball cap, and two Nyko Wing T-shirts. Entries are being accepted starting now and lasting until Halloween, so get crafting — and good luck!

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There’s no denying that NVIDIA made a splash when they announced that they would resume support for stereoscopic 3D gaming. After vanishing from the scene for two years, some thought that they might never return, much less with their own proprietary shutter glasses and a potentially lucrative partnership with ViewSonic — a display manufacturer currently finalizing a LCD monitor that, running at 120Hz, they hope will finally enable stereoscopic gamers to trade in their chunky CRTs.

But NVIDIA’s no longer the only game in town. In their absence from the stereo 3D market, a new competitor named IZ3D sprung up with their own stereoscopic LCD monitor, and as graphics giant NVIDIA enters the market today they find IZ3D a small, but developed incumbent. In this part two of a series on the current state and future viability of stereoscopic 3D technology for gaming, GameCyte speaks with IZ3D about the company’s origins, their current 3D offering, and how they plan to deal with the sudden reappearance of NVIDIA.

During the day, Aaron Rapp works for IZ3D as its product marketing manager; at night he helps run the IZ3D-sponsored gaming community FearedGamers.net. Here, Mr. Rapp and I have just begun to discuss whether or not FearedGamers plays a role in the company’s business.

GameCyte: Are they playing on IZ3D monitors?

Aaron Rapp: A few of them are playing on IZ3D monitors. It also helps in research -– we’re able to do research, run marketing ideas past them, see if it’s something they would like to see. We also send out review units and they can keep them for a couple weeks or so and give us feedback. So it does help us.

GameCyte: Have you gotten any feedback that’s actually helped in the development of the monitor?

AR: Oh yeah, absolutely. A lot of the feedback we get helps with the development of the monitor. Actually a lot of it is the development of the software behind the monitor; the monitor itself is hard to change right now, because it’s already in production, but we’ve already fixed all the problems anyway, so it’s not the hardware that needs fixing, it’s the software.

Between NVIDIA and IZ3D, NVIDIA is the only other software provider in terms of 3D drivers. IZ3D is the only independent company that does their own 3D drivers.

GameCyte: What about other stereoscopic solutions? Do the rest use NVIDIA, or do some of them also using IZ3D’s drivers?

AR: That’s an interesting question. A couple of years ago, that was the case. Actually, IZ3D at one point, we were using NVIDIA drivers, until NVIDIA stopped updating.

GameCyte: Can you tell me when that was, by any chance?

AR: It was either the middle or end of 2006, I think. They just stopped. Nobody heard anything from them, no updates, and for a lot of us – for a lot of companies that were trying to enter the 3D market… you can’t have a product without the software behind it. It put a lot of stress on companies including ourselves.

So, we put our own money in to help develop our own 3D software. And at this point our 3D software is, most places, better than NVIDIA’s. Now NVIDIA only supports their partners, and right now the only partner they have is Zalman. So unless you have a Zalman monitor, you can’t use the NVIDIA drivers.

GameCyte: They’ve actually just announced partnerships with Mitsubishi and ViewSonic, I believe.

AR: Right, but neither one of those companies has hardware actually out on the market yet. They’re not actually in production.

So people with shutterglasses or dual-projector 3D… or people who may have a Zalman monitor with an ATI card, they can’t do anything, because the only support for Zalman monitors is with NVIDIA cards. We’re in the beta phase of our driver version 1.09, which will support eight different outputs including interlaced, shutter glasses, dual projector… I think there are seven or eight different outputs.

GameCyte: Do you support anaglyph?

AR: Yes. Anaglyph is a free output that we support. The other ones take a license, and the price for these licenses hasn’t been released yet, but it’s small in comparison.

GameCyte: So you’re offering a separate software solution for other hardware providers, is that correct?

AR: Correct – we will be, once the driver is released.

GameCyte: What kind of time frame are we looking at for that? You said the drivers were in beta.

AR: I would say the next… two to three weeks.

GameCyte: Have you had interest from any particular hardware manufacturers?

AR: Yes… we have, but that’s about as much as I can say.

GameCyte: Can you tell me a little bit about the history of IZ3D?

AR: They go back to around the year 2000, where it started in an incubator-type company based out of Moscow, working to improve existing 3D technology. That company was Neurok.

After a certain point, Neurok started to see that there was a future in this technology, so they branched off and made their own company, called Neurok Optics. Neurok Optics had gone off and tested various existing technologies up to and including arcade-type dual projector solutions, but didn’t find anything that was really practical, especially when looking at the consumer. They came up with the current dual panel technology that you currently see in the IZ3D monitors, and that was where it really started to take off.

In April 2006, they released the 17-inch, the first widely available IZ3D monitor. It was priced at $1299, and what it was really used for was to validate whether there was a need in the market. We got a lot of good feedback, a lot of attention, but the problem was we were a little bit behind the curve in terms of size. 17-inch was small for gamers – gamers were already trying to get 19-, 22-, 26-inch…

GameCyte: Were consumers looking at CRTs at that time, or LCDs?

AR: Ours was an LCD… gamers, about that time, were doing the transition. When they were doing the transition though, they wanted to go to a bigger size. We were kind of behind the curve… However, we were noticed by a company called Chi Mei Optoelectronics – a large LCD glass manufacturer – based out of Taiwan.

We formed a joint venture company in January 2007, and there we were able to lower the price for a 22-inch. When the 22-inch was released it started out at $999; we were already making improvements because we were using a larger manufacturer.

GameCyte: And at $999, were you making a reasonable profit?

AR: Oh yeah, yeah. The thing with our solution is we’re using double the hardware, so lowering the price becomes difficult when you’re using double of everything. Two LCD panels, a larger backlight, two boards instead of one, that type of thing. Luckily though, because they make those types of things in large quantities, the price was able to come down.

The first manufacturer we used is what they call a tier three manufacturer, kind of small…

GameCyte: And Chi Mei is a big name.

AR: Yeah, Chi Mei’s huge. Chi Mei does manufacturing for many different companies…

GameCyte: I was just going to ask you – I believe that one of NVIDIA’s partners for these monitors is also using Chi Mei.

AR: ViewSonic. ViewSonic, Westinghouse are the two that I’m currently aware of.

GameCyte: Do you have any notion of why they would help build a competitor when they already have a vested interest in IZ3D?

AR: They’re not really a competitor for Chi Mei. Chi Mei wants to make money off of panels, so if they can sell to both at one time, their panel business goes up. It’s not really whether one will fail and the other succeed; they think that if one succeeds, the other will succeed too. The market’s so small, and people want choice of some sort.

With us, they’re making a pretty good profit because we use double the tech.

GameCyte: Do you believe then that the new Mitsubishis and ViewSonics and so on will not cut into your profit?

AR: Well, honestly, in the end it’s going to help us. NVIDIA’s got a broader reach than we do, and that’s a fact that everyone’s aware of. It’s not something that scares us, it’s just something we’re aware of. We’re always pushing the idea of 3D, sometimes more than we’re pushing our product.

But if they sell the idea of 3D, then now everybody’s on a common playing field of “Okay, here’s the market, people are actually out there searching for this stuff,” and we believe we can win. Like we were speaking about earlier, shutter glasses are not a new technology. No matter how you look at it, they are an active 3D solution, and active 3D solutions by nature have always had a negative effect for long term [viewing].

Gamers – especially hardcore and enthusiast-type gamers – they play for long periods of time, and if you want to play in 3D for long periods of time, you can’t do that with an active 3D solution, no matter how you look at it. Your brain is going to figure it out some time, that something’s not completely right.

GameCyte: So you don’t think shutter glasses technology is the way to go.

AR: No, absolutely not. There’s a point where, with shutter glasses, at left you’ll see a blank spot, and nothing there, then the right and a blank spot, and so on and so forth. What your brain has to do is fill in that blank spot somehow, and after a while you get the fatigue, and the headaches.

We’re using one of the very fe