Wii [Wii] Factor 5 na Wii (Rogue Squadron?)

Take Five: Julian Eggebrecht
Are Wii developers sloppy? GCN's unchallenged technology-pusher, Factor 5, says yes.



February 8, 2007 - Welcome to IGN Wii's 'Take Five' series of articles. Join us every Thursday as we pose five questions to various industry icons, from the developers making today's biggest games to the marketing groups and public relations firms selling them. These interview-style snapshots are designed to give our readers a quickly digestible peek into the minds of the industry's most important contributors.

Julian Eggebrecht is no stranger to Nintendo fans. He is the president of Factor 5, which was one of GameCube's most valuable developers. The company created the Rogue Squadron games and simultaneously pushed Nintendo's hardware more than any other studio, including even Nintendo. Eggebrecht is currently directing the Sony-published PlayStation 3 effort Lair, which is nearing its final stages of completion.



1. Do you see videogames as games, art or both?
Julian: Videogames right now are more games than art, but we need to get to art. I think on the art side, we already have it with games like Okami, parts of Zelda were amazing, and abstract stuff like LocoRoco was fantastic. But in the interactivity and the ability to touch the feelings of people, I think we're still too gamey and not artsy enough. I don't want a deliberate push for it, but it would be nice if we basically could get more artistic content into the interactive side and I think right now the industry is probably too much geared toward money, quite frankly. Some of the things which might help there are the small downloadables because we can go more artistic there, both from studios like us, which can do small incubation--like teams, as well as the initiatives like Linux on PlayStation 3. Install it, hack away, OpenGL -- you've got it right there. I think we might get a really cool grassroots thing going with that, and that will help the overall industry and hopefully get the artistic side out of it more.

2. What do you think of Nintendo's Wii console and is there any chance that Factor 5 would make a future Wii title?
Julian: I love the Wii, absolutely. As I've said many, many times, the perfect combination of consoles to have at home is a PS3 and Wii. Everybody really should have one. Will we make something for the Wii? Well, obviously we would have an extremely powerful engine on it with our work on Rebel Strike, but for right now we certainly haven't planned anything for the Wii outside of some third parties who have approached us about licensing DivX and MusyX, which would be a no-brainer for us. Speaking about games, right now we're quite happy with Sony and Lair is obviously something that is with Sony and will stay with Sony. As to other original IPs, I think as long as we and Sony can agree on price, budget and everything else that makes these things tick, we're quite happy with who we're with right now. On the other hand, I as a creator would love to do something with the Wii-mote, something wacky, but I also can do that just by hacking into the thing and never making a commercial game with it [laughs].

3. Where do you see PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 in three years?
Julian: It's all about the long term view. The one thing that I'm a little bit worried about with Nintendo is that a similar situation as the GameCube might happen. I do think they have a much stronger launch this time around, no doubt about it. But still, Nintendo always had a challenge keeping third party content on their platform and keeping third parties happy. Or, if the third party stuff doesn't happen in large enough amounts, then supplying enough first party content. If they get that right, I think the Wii can sustain quite a bit. With PlayStation 3, I don't have any doubt that in three years it will be the most sold system. On the other hand, though, I don't think it will dominate the market quite as clearly as PS2 did. I don't think there is any doubt about that anymore -- that Microsoft has quite a bit of traction and won't suddenly out of the blue lose that traction. This round of consoles will be a much more even thing, with Sony clearly in the lead in three years. The wild-card is really Nintendo's casual gamer thing. If Nintendo really manages to have a huge breakout thing and suddenly every second housewife is buying a Wii, then we're looking at a completely different scenario. But I don't know if that's going to happen.

4. What is the biggest problem that game developers face today, in your opinion?
Julian: The biggest problem is scale. I mean, we certainly experienced that with Lair. This time a lot of people expected it to be simple, but in the end it was probably the hardest time we had since the 2D-to-3D days. So the ramp up was pretty brutal and at the same time as you do ramp-up, it's suddenly about managing huge amounts of people. EA did that years ago and we were hearing the stories from them back then about how hard it was to do a game with a team of 100. Now we're there and yes, it's damned hard. That's probably what everybody in the industry is going through and for us, it's made us think hard about how we can scale back on the team sizes going forward and instead have a stronger efficiency again because if you go with a certain amount of people, things simply start to get inefficient, which is what I hate the most. So for the future, the key term is efficiency.

5. Resident Evil 4 was a beautiful GCN title. Rogue Squadron was doing things at launch that developers still haven't done on Wii. Why do you think that is? Are studios getting sloppy on Wii?
Julian: Yes. I'm so disappointed knowing exactly what the Wii can do -- and I still think nobody knows it better than we (no pun intended) [laughs]. I really have to say, boy, am I disappointed! They all have finally figured out, five years into the hardware's life cycle, how to do at least basic shaders and a rim light, but that's what everybody does. But I still don't see enough bump and normal-mapping, if any. I still don't see enough post effects, although you would have insane fill-rates with Wii. I don't see any of that. I was digging out Rebel Strike the other day and was looking at it, and we had some people who were visiting ask, "Why isn't anybody else doing this on Wii?" And I am at a loss. I really am.

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UnRealPT disse:

Mas também é verdade que a Nintendo podia lançar um jogo bom graficamente para começar a tentar começar a "nivelar por cima"...Fico á espera do Metroid 3.

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Yggdrasil disse:

Se sair no natal, é plausível termos um trio de jogos explosivos da Nintendo para a Wii no mês de Dezembro: Metroid Prime 3, Super Smash Bros. Brawl e Super Mario Galaxy...e que ninguém tenha pena da Wii!

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B3n3v3nt3 disse:

A Nintendo já revelou que não vai lançar esses jogos ao mesmo tempo. Pelo que sei acho que o Metroid Prime 3 já estava pronto para sair mas foi adiado por razões desconhecidas (componente online adicionada? ou puro marketing?) Mas acho que daqui a umas semanas vai haver uma feira/conferência qualquer da Nintendo e penso que vão revelar mais promenores.

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RG: Let's talk about Nintendo, You know Nintendo's hardware very well. Recently, you showed yourself disappointed with many studios graphical efforts on the Wii. In a hot selling machine like this, why don't we see many great looking games?

Julian Eggebrecht: There's a distinction between... because I think people took my comments as that I don't like the look for example for Wii Sports. I think what Nintendo is doing in the Wii Sports is perfectly fine because they're utilising the hardware for that style exactly as much as they need to utilise it. My complaints were actually about the games which try to go the traditional, more photorealistic route, because there you really have to push it, and they're really not pushing it. Why not? Hmmm I don't know, the hardware is very, very easy to understand. Now the problem might be -and it just might be- is that some studios -or some publishers specially- are discarding the graphical capabilities automatically simply because it is a Wii title and they're basically telling the developers "look, we won't pay for any advanced graphics". Because the Wii, I mean not that you would meet a 20 million dollar budget like on the PS3, but if you want to get really, really advanced graphics out of the Wii, then you have to spend probably more money than basically going for the cheap solution, so that might be an inherit problem, so it might actually not be the laziness of certain developers, but it might be the... inability or the non existent willingness of the publishers to actually give them in a budget to do better graphics.

RG: So maybe we can blame the publishers instead of the studios?

JE: I think that at the end of the day it's a mixture of both, because as a developer who is working on a more photorealistic title I think they also have to step up to the plate. They've to take a look a bit deeper and then go to the publisher and say look, just because we've done ten comic book type graphic titles, this one needs different graphics, so let's take a look a bit deeper into the hardware. You're giving us millions of dollars to find out how our assets end in the 360 GPU's work, we want to take a look a bit deeper into the Wii GPU because obviously you can do more. Many have proven... Resident Evil 4 clearly from Capcom or our own Rouge Squadron series has prove that you can do a lot more with the hardware, so it's not secret that it's in there, somewhere. But developers need to step up to the plate and the publishers as well... or they need to be open about it and if they're really willing to do it then they need to find the graphical style which is simply different, I mean that's another solution they have there.

RG: Can it be because of their tools? That it would be easier if the Wii had standard shader effects... or is it a matter of work because you have to prepare the shaders for yourself?

JE: The one thing which makes it probably harder for developers who are coming from the traditional direction is that the shader system inside the hardware works quite differently, you have something more right about that than the traditional AGI and the video pipelines. Because the thinking back when the basic graphics hardware structure was developed was to get very, very efficient, that hotwired a lot of things. But there're many possibilities in terms of how to use that hotwiring and actually rewire it, if you're clever about it. If you connect you can get a lot of shader effects which would've been on the 360 or the PS3.

RG: If you "create" them on the Wii

JE: Yeah, because... on the Wii, you just have to be more ingenious. But the Wii, on the other hand... I mean, think about it: it's got so much more power compared to the GameCube. If even with the extremely similar shader hardware, the system clockrate is so much higher, you can do so much more advanced things, so if people just would look at Rouge Leader, Rebel Strike and Resident Evil 4 and then say: this hardware is significantly faster than those games it should have the very minimum they should get that and then they should build on top of it.

RG: And with much more memory...

JE: Yeah, exactly, and the memory! That is a very good point. Aside from the shaders, our main limitation which we always found on the GameCube was the memory: the memory was a struggle the whole time; it was a very hard struggle. That was actually our biggest struggle. When we got the Wii specifications we were excited because we said "wow, this is actually the amount of memory which we needed"

RG: The memory problem you had before

JE: Yes, exactly, that would've been our "dream memory". (laughs)

RG: Going with that... have you considered the option of sharing your previous development tools with other studios? Because Rebel Strike was an awesome looking game.

JE: The Star Wars engine was never developed in a way that you can just sell it to somebody, because we never thought of it as something sellable. If we would do a new engine or something which is more around or current engine because with four years... it'll be the one which is basically been used as the basis for Lair. If we would do a Wii version of that, certainly that could be something which somebody could license. But I wouldn't just drop the old Rebel Strike stuff just onto somebody, because at this time I think we're so much more clever about the load of the data path issues, which you guys in the press never see because you get to see the finished game. So all of these things now that we're much more clever about. And it was way too painful back then. We don't want to take up the old engine, but having said that I would do a new engine, and certainly it'd be fun to do that on the Wii.

RG: So would you start from zero or downgrade something that you've been using on Lair?

JE: In terms of the data path and things like that, we would probably use what we're using nowadays really exactly because you can transfer that over. In terms of shaders and very specific things like physics, we would start from scratch, because you need to tail up that very much to the hardware.

RG: Just one more question about that thing. Some other tools like the Unreal Engine are widely and easily licensed and used by many studios. We haven't seen a modified version of them for the Nintendo platform, which could make a full and easier use of its graphical and control possibilities. Why?

JE: I think the issue with that... you would have to ask them. I think the more successful the Wii platform gets, the more Epic and other engine vendors will probably think about the whole thing. But if their engine is all thought about and all built around the current generation in terms of 360 and PS3 graphics hardware, then they might have a problem actually getting for example the data sizes down to a point where they work nicely on the Wii. Outside of that this guys usually haven't work much or at all in the GameCube days on the graphics side, and that comes down to exactly what you were asking earlier and I don't know if with their high end graphics program... as they're willing to look at the hardware and do something completely new. But I can imagine that there will be several engines coming out, also for the Wii, because the more successful it gets, the more people will ask about the pros of portability. But it is a tricky issue because you can take the PC and then you say "for the PC and the PS3 and the 360, all have an arrange to kick off memory" for example. That's so much more!, so all of your data structures... certain things within the engine always assume that you have that much memory, it might be practically impossible to go over to the Wii. So it really depends on your engine and if it was designed in mind with something very small and very large, and it's sometimes not very easy to scale in very large and very small.

RG: So then it's not a matter of scaling but maybe reworking

JE: Yes, exactly.

(...)

RG: Mario Galaxy seems the best example of what the Wii can do. How far do you think a studio can go from that point? In other words, how much does the game use the power of the system in your opinion?

JE: (...) Certainly looking at it, it's the first game -also which I saw at E3- where I said "yes, this thing is actually taking advantage, it's running at 60fps, it's basically doing new graphical things with the hardware". Having said that though, it's nice because of the things it's doing; it also does have certain advantage by having exactly the perfectly right style for the hardware. Doesn't make it easier at all, but nevertheless they have a big advantage due to that, because, of course, the Mario style just fits their hardware absolutely perfectly, and they're taking nice advantage of it. I think the biggest challenge which you have on that specific hardware platform is to go into the photorealistic route, because in the photorealistic route there're certain things which the basic structure of the graphics hardware was not meant for and which you have to find really clever tricks to basically make up. And that's kind of the next... that's the big barrier on the platform. I think certain developers will grab it. Certainly, if we would do a Wii game, we would try to do that.

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I mean, think about it: it's got so much more power compared to the GameCube. If even with the extremely similar shader hardware, the system clockrate is so much higher, you can do so much more advanced things, so if people just would look at Rouge Leader, Rebel Strike and Resident Evil 4 and then say: this hardware is significantly faster than those games it should have the very minimum they should get that and then they should build on top of it.

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Crrash disse:

eles não estavam contra a wii? o lair deve ter-lhes mudado a opinião nah
é bom ver uma developer que nós bem sabemos está habituada a puxar as maquinas da nintendo desde a N64, a confirmar que a Wii é muito mais poderosa. vamos ver se fazem uma nova engine boa especificamente para a Wii.

não entendo é porque que as pessoas dizem que a Wii não é nada de jeito para jogos foto realistas... então o Resident evil 4 não continua gráficamente belo? e tambem os rogue squadrons? só por haver melhor não quer dizer que o antigo já não funcione.

bem espero que umas developers leiam esta entrevista e aprendem que vale a pena esforçarem-se quando fazem jogos para a wii

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ToTTenTranz disse:

O homem parece um pouco "orgulhoso" demais para quem acabou de lançar o maior flop de 2007 (para a consola que foi provavelmente o 2º maior flop de 2007, a seguir ao Lair).
"Ah e tal se fossemos nós faziamos isto e aquilo".
Então que façam mesmo, porra..

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BrOiller disse:

É. Isto é o reverso da medalha da filosofia da Nintendo em alargar o mercado das consolas e que está a dar resultados e a contaminar os produtores de jogos. Se o alvo principal da Nintendo são os que nunca jogaram/ jogadores casuais estes não têm a exigência de um jogador habituado a gráficos melhores. As editoras estão a ver que a estratégia está funcionar ( é ver as vendas ) e não se esforçam em fazer motores gráficos de raiz para a Wii, nem precisam.

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Crrash disse:

não é exactamente isso a filosofia nintendo, porque o que dizes vai completamente contra o que a nintendo anda a fazer com os seus melhores jogos.

a nintendo achou que evoluir muito mais nos gráficos não interessa neste momento (porque ambos a gamecube e a xbox conseguiram produzir jogos que ainda hoje são lindos), o que interessa mais é trabalhar no controller que já há mais de 10 anos não avança.
ou seja gráficos interessa claro, mas não interessa avançar muito mais do que já se podia alcançar se não melhorar outros aspectos da consola.

e o alvo principal da nintendo não são os jogadores casuais, continuam a focar nos hardcore (como dá para ver pelo SMG, SSBB, MP3-C, MKWii, BWii, etc.) mas a nintendo reconheceu e com razão que para os hardcore não precisa de fazer muito marketing, porque nós próprios vamos á procura dos novos jogos nintendo. Agora tem de focar o marketing no mercado que por si mesmo não vai á procura dos mais novos jogos.
pode ser que esse mercado não seja muito exigente com os gráficos, mas quantos jogos nintendo são gráficamente fracos? 2? 3? (nota-se wii sports tem gráficos simples, mas não fracos.)

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I_Eat_All disse:

Creio que não foi "não interessar" (até porque aumentaram os specs)

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