English
Follow us
Gamereactor
Videos
HQ

Harvey Smith - Fun & Serious 2020 Interview

We had the pleasure to talk with Arkane Austin director about several topics such as immersive sims and modern game design. We also touched upon recent developments such as Zenimax Media's acquisition by Microsoft/Xbox or what the new generation of consoles offers the studio. Finally, we also look back at things such as Dishonored 1 & 2 reception, Raphael Colantonio's retirement, and even video game history in general.

Audio transcription

"For another year, we at Gamereactor are, of course, covering Fun & Serious Game Festival.
But this 2020 edition is special, it has to be remote.
But that didn't stop us, thanks to the organization, to have the opportunity and the pleasure to interview some of the speakers."

"And one that I'm personally really looking forward to talk to is Harvey Smith.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Hi David, it's really good to be able to talk to you. I wish I was there in person in Spain, but this is nice anyway.
It's a change in my routine. And anyway, hopefully we'll have a vaccine soon and we can all visit."

"Let's hope for that. Let's talk a little bit about that.
How would you say 2020 has treated you, you know, as the studio and the employees?
How you guys managed to work together at a distance? And how would you say it went for you at Arkane Austin?
I think we all feel the same pressures and the same pain that everybody else feels, not being able to just go live our lives and be free and see our friends and all of that."

"But at the same time, we feel luckier than most because we still are working together.
Our game is still making progress. We like each other very much.
So every day, you know, having the interaction with people, it's the best of a bad situation.
I guess you cannot talk much about that project that you just mentioned."

"But how would you say you guys at Arkane are embracing the new opportunities that the new generation, not the next, the new just released next generation brings to the table?
We're very excited about additional memory and solid state drives and faster processors and haptic feedback and further connection between players so they can, you know, talk to each other as they play or whatever. We're excited about all those things."

"Every time there's a new console generation.
And then, of course, the PC keeps trying to, you know, leapfrogging up. It's all very exciting.
Some of your games are considered to be part of the immersive sim genre.
How would you say these immersive sims are perceived by the audiences nowadays?
You know, what's funny is a lot of what we love and what we have done, other people have been doing as well. And it feels like it's permeated the whole industry."

"You know, so like a lot of people do very immersive body movement now where it feels like you're in the body and you can climb up and slide and things like that. A lot of people care a lot about narrative now, where it's even if it's not a plot game or an RPG, narrative is still very important.
Character is important. Having a diverse cast that feels like the real world, having a place with a sense of history, feels like real people live there."

"You know, mechanics that you can use with expression or improvisationally, sometimes that mix with other mechanics in a fascinating way.
Those elements that we love so much, they have really been digested by the whole game industry and they pop up everywhere now, you know, in different forms."

"And of course, level design, which is one of the aspects of your games, especially that I really love with Dishonor, etc.
But given current trends with open worlds, bigger and bigger worlds, the so-called emerging gameplay, etc."

"How would you say these very special aspects of the immersive sim genre could evolve in the next few years?
Yeah, it's really interesting watching people try to take handcrafted level design with a sense of place and who lived there. And it feels dirty and dingy with a sense of history.
And it's thematically in alignment with the themes."

"But then translating that into an open world, which is a vast open space with some elements being procedural.
Those two things that kind of sometimes are at odds with each other.
So it'll be really interesting to see how teams in the future manage to get those two things to sort of play nice together.
But yeah, the trend is in general for more space, more exploration, more playing at your own pace, a natural simulation."

"If you're working on a game and you can make the weather work or the sun change to the moon and day change to night and all, those are powerful things.
I know the goal of games is not to simulate reality, of course.
But whatever the goal of your game is, in a prettier environment with a deeper sense of history and an ecological simulation, you can do a lot with that."

"There's something to be said about minimalism and stripping everything down, but there's also something to be said about putting me in a place that feels worth exploring.
A place that feels like people lived there and cared about it and something happened.
And having an art style and having things like weather or the passage of time."

"Those are interesting in and of themselves.
Those are fascinating toys to play with.
Yeah, you mentioned weather several times now.
Actually, on Dishonored 2, you kind of played with some weather-like powers, right?
Yeah, we draw from all the things that are sort of primally powerful."

"What if I could push somebody over a ledge with wind?
Our artists put a lot of work into every...
In Karnaka and in Dunwall, different times of day and different skies and things like that.
But it feels like a dynamic weather system and how it influences the ecology, whether the area is wet or dry or whether fire spreads."

"There's so many areas where you could start exploring if you wanted to make a game and you wanted to go deep in that area.
Especially weather across the passage of time, vast amounts of time.
It just feels like there's so much still to explore in games."

"We're not even close to fully mapping out and modeling all the things that would be fun to play with.
That's really nice.
With Arkane, of course, being part of Cinemaxx, and even though very recently we were talking to Phil Spencer and he said, hey, this is not finalized yet, the operation is not complete, so it's not part of the same company yet with Microsoft and Xbox, of course."

"What would you say these joining forces could mean to Arkane going forward?
I don't know, in terms of ecosystem, platforms, resources.
How do you picture that currently?
Yeah, I mean, that is a thing that is in process and I don't know much about it and I can't really comment on it, other than to say they seem like a great partner."

"From my perspective, more people, more money, more technological opportunities just means that we as game developers can focus on making our players happy, which is what the player experience is still our North Star at Arkane.
Exactly."

"Okay, perhaps you can tell me a bit more about Arkane as an operation pre and post Rafael Calentonio.
You know, three years ago when he announced he is taking a break, it was in the morning of another event and then we had him on interviews, that was breaking as he was talking to us and it was shocking to us, but of course interesting in terms of how the studios would go on from that moment on, right?
Looking back at that 2017 decision and how you guys have been working, the two studios up until now, what would you say has changed or if you took a really different direction, what are your feelings about that?
Well, that's the thing about me and Raf, we're still friends, we live in the same city, we see each other now and then even during the pandemic, we meet in the backyard with masks on and have cappuccino and stuff, but I've worked at Arkane for 12 years now and Raf and I have been friends for a long time."

"The thing about Arkane is even before Arkane, I was into those kinds of games, those kinds of values.
No two Arkane games are alike, right?
Dishonored is not a contiguous space or contiguous time, it's chopped up missions with a heavy emphasis on stealth and history."

"Prey is science fiction and it's a contiguous space and contiguous time with a heavy emphasis on physics and the themes are empathy, whereas in Dishonored they're power and what you do with it, how you wield it.
So no two Arkane games are ever going to be identical, they overlap, so we'll always overlap."

"But having worked on Deus Ex and those things in the past, it was a natural fit for me working with Raf because he and I were both very much inspired by Underworld and System Shock and Thief, that was the lineage that we come from.
And so Arkane's values creatively are derived from that, they're derived from a love of those games."

"And so Raf carried that torch for a long time with some of his key leads and then he and I carried it together with some of our key leads and now I'm carrying it with some of our key leads as well.
And I think even if I was gone tomorrow, I hope not, but we're living in uncertain times, even if I was gone tomorrow, the people would carry on with the same values basically because the company's identity is built around that."

"Yeah, you've mentioned System Shock and of course the two Dishonored games, Prey.
I mean, Dishonored were a pretty impactful experience to me personally and I think I enjoyed the first one more so than the second one.
But anyway, looking back at those titles, it's been some years now."

"How do you feel about the feedback you got from the community, from reviewers?
And is there anything that you see now that is really clear to you that you should have done otherwise or you're just super proud about?
Well, at the end of the day, all I can see is the games as they exist in their final form and the experiences I had with the teammates."

"And both of those things I'm just incredibly proud of.
I have memories about standing on stage and announcing that Emily Kaldwin was going to be the main character in Dishonored 2, which was very powerful.
And so many people reacted positively to that."

"I do hear from people that love the second game more or people that love the first game more.
And it just depends, I think, on what you're into and tastes and all that.
The second game, seeing Corvo older, that was very cool, I thought.
Having all of his powers and all of Emily's powers."

"But as far as what we do different, it's a very dangerous game to play because some of what is great about those games only happen because of some of the mistakes we made along the way.
I think I regret, of course, any technical problems we had."

"But half of the time, those are my fault because I pushed for more features or wasn't disciplined enough to cut things off earlier so that the tech guys didn't have time to polish things.
But any time the game runs bad on somebody's video card or whatever, you feel bad about that, of course."

"Otherwise, the games and the teams, I love both of those games.
They were eight years of experience, from Dishonored through the Daud DLC to Dishonored 2 with Emily, to Death of the Outsider with Billy Lurk.
It's all stuff I love."

"Yeah, you've mentioned, of course, System Shock.
We started talking about Immersive Sim as a genre.
And, of course, here at Final Series Game Festival, you're sharing a space with Warren Spector, which is not physically, of course, but you collide here."

"So looking back at your careers, do you consider yourself a precursor to this genre?
Would you like to share any memory of that time?
You know, it's funny because I've been in games like 27 years now."

"And in some ways, I still feel like the new guy who's learning things.
I'm insecure about my role and my imposter syndrome.
Am I worthwhile, the games we work on as a team?
All the fan validation is very powerful in helping me heal or grow over time as a person."

"Creative people often say that.
So I don't feel like the precursor to anything because I remember the people I learned from.
You know, I had the privilege of working with Warren and Richard Garriott and Looking Glass Studios with Doug Church and Marc LeBlanc and Rob Fermier and Art Min and all these other guys, all these other people that were Tim Stelmach, influential in some way."

"Their viewpoint on narrative, their viewpoint on gameplay, their viewpoint on places and spaces and level design, player experience, that it shaped me, right?
And so to me, they're the precursors of me."

"And maybe I'm the precursor to some other developer, I hope, you know, a good influence.
But it's a group effort.
The whole team collaborates and some of the best ideas, some of the thing you remember the most, it might have been suggested by the audio guy or by a QA guy or a QA person who's playing the game, you know?
So it's a long lineage of people from, you know, and it goes back before video games, of course."

"You know, thousands of years, people have been making formal games and play is probably one of the oldest experiences.
It probably predates language.
And so it's like, you know, it's crazy to think how much history has happened, you know, just since the first video game."

"I remember as a child playing Atari 2600 games or Pong and then the Coin Ops when I was 10 years old in the grocery store.
And then all the pen and paper RPGs I played, all the D&D and stuff."

"And then that is all a really short window of time, historically speaking.
Like somebody told me once that it took 100 years for photography to be considered an art."

"And so like video games are not only they're just like a blip, but imagine if even photography did not change that much in all this time.
Like, yes, it was black and white at first."

"Yes, you had to stand still for a long time.
Yes, people posed with their dead ones, which is like crazy, you know, to think about.
So culturally it's changed, but really it's capturing an image and now it's colorful and you can do video."

"But like video games have changed from being a black screen with like two white paddles to being like Red Dead Redemption, you know, like you're riding a horse under a storm and shooting at a rabbit, you know, that you're going to skin and cook."

"And the degree of change in video games is huge and the degree of breadth.
Like, you know, you can be talking about a game like Shadow of Mordor with the Nemesis system and going deep on that."

"Or you can be talking about The Sims or you can be talking about a roller coaster simulator.
You know, the game I've been playing more than anything right now is a card game called Pirates Outlaws and it's a Slay the Spire-like game."

"And it's just so deep.
You can just keep understanding it at this deeper and deeper level, even though it's very focused.
And so, and I'm also looking forward to playing Deathloop by the guys in Lyon."

"I'm looking forward to playing Watch Dogs Legions, Watch Dogs Legion.
And, you know, just like constantly games coming out of all different kinds and evolving in these interesting ways."

"And it's almost humbling just to be a part of it in any way.
It is, it is.
And I guess the imposter syndrome is just a very humble feeling.
When can we expect to hear from you guys?
Oh, first we have to have a vaccine."

"And then we have to go out and party for a while.
And then, you know, so I don't know.
I don't know.
But yeah, we're definitely excited about talking to people when we get the chance to."

"Of course.
Really looking forward to hearing from McCain and from you and from whatever comes next.
Thank you so much for your time."

"Stay safe and healthy.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you. Bye-bye."

Interviews

More

Videos

More

Movie Trailers

More

Trailers

More

Events

More