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Matt and Yug are saying Nintendo is the new Black, Starcraft 2, and new steam update

Matt and Yug are saying Nintendo is the new Black, Starcraft 2, and new steam update

Podcast by Yug

Classification Board of Australia Part 1

Classification Board of Australia Part 1

Interview by Jae

Vancouver 2010

Vancouver 2010

Review by Cav

Interview with Steve Stamatiadis

Interview from Yug - Tuesday, 22 July 2008 @ 10:19am

I recently got a chance to sit down and interview Steve Stamatiadis - Creative Director and Co-founder of Krome Studios, and talk to him about a whole bunch of things including his involvement in the Star Wars: Force Unleashed games, his upcoming project Blade Kitten, and a few tidbits of information about the next Ty game. Steve really is one of the most respected and prominant figures in the Australian video game industry, and it was excellent to get a chance to visit his office - which is packed with awesomeness - and have a chat.




Yug: Steve, first of all thank you for taking the time to sit down with me

Steve: Thats fine!

Yug: I should actually let you know you hold the dubious distinction of being the very first person that we ever interviewed on AustralianGamer

Steve: Really!

Yug: Yup, we’ve interviewed you twice, this will be the 3rd time

Steve: Maybe I’ll be good this time!

Yug: You shouldn’t bag yourself out, thats not how it works!

Steve: I’m getting in early!



Steve in his natural environment


Yug: The first question to start off with is what project are you currently working on ... or, better still, last time I talked to you it was all about Spyro. Since then, there’s been Hellboy, Viva Pinata and of course Start Wars. I’m curious to know how much direct involvement you have in those projects.

Steve: On most of the other ones, because we have alot of projects going on, I usually come on in and do a playthrough to give suggestions. Because, we’ve got alot of really good people here, we don’t need to babysit people – thats the plus. So my job is to come in and go “hey, thats really cool, thats really good, but lets fix that up because it doesn’t feel like Hellboy.” Most of the time I do tend to say stuff that the guys are already thinking – I’m a bit of a Jimmeny Cricket character. Occasionally I’ll say “oh guys, you have to change that, that’s just wrong”, but it’s pretty rare.

Star Wars though, as you can see in this area, I’ve been alot more hands on. I’ve done a bit of everything – character design, art direction, game direction, design, company stuff – hands in everywhere on star wars.

Yug: Surely working on a Star Wars licence is one of those ‘do before I die’ things to tick off the list.

Steve: Actually, there’s only two or three licences I really wanted to work on. One was Hellboy, and I didn’t get to work on that closely because we were doing Ty at the time, so I sort of missed out on doing any hands on with Hellboy. The other ones I was interested in was Get Smart ...

Yug: As in, based in the old series or something to do with the new movie.

Steve: No no, it would be something like a point and click adventure game based on the old school Get Smart 10 years ago.

Yug: Yeah, I see that! I probably should have researched this before hand, but who came up with the story for the new Star Wars game?

Steve: Hayden Blackman from LucasArts is the project lead, and he’s worked on alot of Star Wars games, and I’d probably say it’s his baby – he’s the one who’s been driving it. Working with him we were able to create some new stuff for our version, but Hayden’s kept his hands in it, and his writing has a very Star Wars feel, which works. A term we came up with during concept art was ‘Swaising’, which is to Star Wars-ise stuff. So you do a design that might not be very Star Wars looking, so you swaise it up!

Yug: Are there certain paramaters involved to star wars something?

Steve: There’s hundreds of man years worth of artwork that’s available, and we have access to that stuff which is awesome. We say ‘we need reference for Darth Vader’ – and you don’t get a couple of shots of Darth Vader, you get a couple of dozen shots of things you’ve never ever seen before. Some weird publicity shot of Darth Vader from 1978, costume shots from all different angles, etc. Star Wars has a feel, even the prequels have a very Star Wars-y feel. You can look through shapes, colours, textures – there’s alot of important things there. And the most important one is dirty. You don’t realise how dirty the Star Wars universe is in movies, that lived in universe. Everyone’s seen lots of shots of Star Wars costumes that are all pristine, but then you look at a shot of that same costume in frame in the movie, it’s got mud slapped over it, greased down, etc.

Yug: Makes it feel more genuine as well

Steve: Sometimes its real shapes just put in the wrong place, or flashing lights ... it’s amazing what they get away with. There’s reference shots for guys from Episode IV and it’s just a pipe with a handle. On screen though, it looks fine! Or it’s a gun with three scopes on it. That’s what makes Star Wars fun though, if you look at the details then sure – some of its crappy, but it does look like a universe that’s been used, and we kept that stuff in mind.

Yug: So, have you created any new characters in this new Star Wars game?

Steve: Well, here is one we did; pretty much everyone in the concept team had a hand in this. < shows me the figurine >. This is the Junk Gollum.



The Junk Gollum figurine


Yug: So, were you guys involved in the creative process from early on?

Steve: LucasArts had worked on stuff for about a year, not actually making the game but designing the story and character stuff, and when we came on board they were about to get onto full production of their game, so we pretty much started at the same time as they did. So they took control of all the main characters and locations, but with alot of the secondary characters we were able to work on them. So while the whole game follows the same story on the same planets basically, the individual missions on the planets are different on the different versions.

Yug: Is that because of the different platform limitations?

Steve: Partially, but also because the stuff wasn’t 100% in place. We got a chance to create stuff in the Star Wars universe, and go through the LucasArts approval process. Early on when we weren’t sure, I thought ‘what if we get it wrong and screw it up’, but Haden were very reassuring and encouraged us to make our own stuff up.

Yug: They put alot of faith in you.

Steve: They did! So they said, create your own stuff, and we took a stab at it, created a vehicle, got it approved and thought ‘oh, that wasn’t so hard’.

Yug: And so suddenly, that vehicle you made is part of the Star Wars community.



Proof that Steve really is a Star Wars fan - this is a shelf in his office


Steve: Yeah, and I mean, I’ve been a Star Wars fan for over 30 years now, I know this stuff backwards – why am I worried about it! So in the end, we created the Jedi Temple, did a couple of Darth characters ...

Yug: I played through the Jedi Temple level on the Wii version at Krome Melbourne.

Steve: That was one we came up with, and Haden loved it, so we have that as a unique level. We also have Nar Shadda ...

Yug: Wasn’t that from Jedi Knight? It starts off, you’re flying through the vertical city ...

Steve: That’s right, so we got to take our take on that which was great. And we also did an extended Cloud City level which was pretty awesome, but I can’t say anymore than that!

Yug: Cool! Well, if we could move on to some of your own stuff now. I was at SupaNova Brisbane, and I saw a bunch of girls, Krome staff, walking round in pink wigs and scantily clad clothing.

Steve: I tried to discourage them!

Yug: Really? Why!

Steve: I did!

Yug: Well they were dressed up as Blade Kittens, which is a character you’ve created. From what I can tell, it’s something you’ve been working on for quite awhile now.

Steve: I started working on it about halfway through the first Ty game.

Yug: About 5 years ago?

Steve: Well, it goes back further than that, if you take when I first started doing comics in 88 – pretty shit stuff – I would always be doing stuff in the background, the game stuff we were doing like Harry and Amazon Queen, and I was always doing other bits and pieces. And with any stories I do, some things fit, and some others didn’t, so I would keep coming up with different story ideas which went into this big pool of ideas. So about 2001, I sort of said ‘I like this robot thing here, I like this element, I like this stuff’ and I started grabbing all the elements and back history that worked together, and that became the Blade Kitten universe.

Yug: And it’s all you – story, artwork, characters?

Steve: I hope to expand out, get a team to help me with the other stuff ...

Yug: What other stuff?

Steve: Oh, like writing – when you have to write a script for a game, it’s alot of work.

Yug: Well, hang on, something else, I didn’t even know there was a Blade Kitten game. Is this confirmed?

Steve: We are starting soon, obviously we have to get Star Wars out first.

Yug: There is that little project in the way I suppose.

Steve: Design wise, things are pushing ahead on it ... it’s an action game, but kind of a new take on it in some ways.



Exclusive screenshot from the upcoming Blade Kitten game


Yug: So, this will the second unique character that you’ve created?

Steve: Forth or fifth actually – Ty, Harry, Flight of the Amazon ...

Yug: Well, the biggest game that I associate with Krome is Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. It’s just this fantastic and successful original I.P. that went really well.

Steve: Well, the other licences aren’t exactly small titles!

Yug: Of course, Hellboy, Star Wars, even Viva Pinata!

Steve: We had to restart the Spyro licence too, which was great as we were all big Spyro fans too. There’s alot of projects we can’t take!

Yug: So, how did you get the Star Wars licence, what’s the story there?

Steve: Well, we had finished off Ty 3 and we had started on the fourth Ty game, which was called Gunyip, which would be aerial combat – or as I like to call it, the most authentic simulation of marsupial air combat ever. So we were working on that for a couple of months, came back from Christmas holidays, and had an email from an old friend who we had worked with on Championship Surfer – the first Krome game we did – and they were at LucasArts and asked if we’d be interested in working on a new project. So the next day, we got the design docs for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Yug: Did you even read the brief before you agreed to it?

Steve: Nope, there was a picture of Darth Vader and I was like ‘I’m sold!’

Yug: There’s nothing wrong with that!



The Force Unleashed - Epic force powers


Steve: I was even more excited because it was REAL Star Wars, original trilogy – pure, unprocessed Star Wars. So we decided to go aggressively after this, and we talked to the guys about doing a Star Wars demo and the decision was unanimous. So, had this plan to do an awesome demo in 6 weeks, and all we had was the design doc, no final characters or any major details. So we thought, what force powers would you want to see, what kind of character, etc. So we put together a basic jedi character, and included saber controls, and included some clones you could slice up and trees you could chop down, guys would come in on drop ships and jump out, throw around rocks and droids ...

Yug: So, you did that demo in 6 weeks?

Steve: No. We did that demo in 3 weeks! We had LucasArts give us some feedback, doing due diligence, checking out the studio to see if we can do what we say we can do. So we showed them that stuff, and while they were here we actually put in a space combat element, because we had the Gunyip engine which was all the flying combat. So we did an art swap, had some Star Destroyers shooting down Tie Fighters – while they were here, and they were like “Wow”.

Yug: So, did you get much of a reaction from them while they were here?

Steve: They liked it, but it wasn’t until we sent the stuff off on Friday night that I got the call on Saturday morning from (Rob) Walsh saying “Hey, you guys ready to go to America and see LucasArts on Monday?”. So we flew off, Tuesday morning, arrived Tuesday their time, and they were still running the demo on all the machines in their building. And it hadn’t crashed, which was the most awesome bit! The loved it!

Yug: That’s pretty cool, to be able to wow the people at LucasArts.

Steve: Everyone really got behind it, and was really energised. You look at it now it’s a bit clunky, but you can see the genesis of some elements in the final game. We learned alot of things too, about the difference between making a game Unleashed and making a Force game – there’s a difference, and it took us 6 to 8 months to learn that.

Yug: What do you mean?

Steve: If you just do a normal game with force powers, they’re pretty laid back. Mind tricks, moving little objects around ... it’s a bit boring. Whereas Unleashed is all about being overpowered, having lightning blasts take out guys in an entire room, walls that shatter as you run past ...

Yug: Epic force powers and huge reactions?

Steve: Yup, and remember we’re doing this on a PS2, PSP and Wii.

Yug: Did you know back then that you’d be working on the Wii version as well?

Steve: That one came up later, we wondered about it if it was going to come up.

Yug: Well, to me that would have been one of the most daunting things, where you responsible for doing the Wii lightsaber controls.

Steve: Everyone’s talking about 1:1, but everyone has to remember that if you want to act like a Jedi that’s like 20 years of training by swinging a controller around, it won’t be cool and fun. You’ll get tired very quickly. REALLY quickly. So, we took the tact of reading the responses, making the character respond to your movements, adding combos, and making it feel very visceral. So, we have stabs, uppercuts, and slashes. The guys down in Melbourne have been really good, going off and trying stuff which have worked, and we talk to them on a daily basis.

Other aspects like the finishing moves. On the PS2 it’s a button press, but on the Wii we tried mapping buttons – which got really complicated because no-one knows where they are – to matching swings – but people couldn’t do the swing stuff because they didn’t know which way to swing! So we settled on the very simple movement where you punch the nunchuck or the wiimote at the right time, and it’s just tricky enough. So there’s all the stuff like that, and although people think we should have just don’t 1:1, we spent a long time trying to get it work. I’m really happy with what we’ve ended up with.

Yug: Do you have alot of contact with the other offices in Melbourne and Adelaide.

Steve: On Unleashed, yes, because we’re all working on different versions of it. The PS2 version is technically the lead version, but at the same time everyone has contributed to each of the versions.

Yug: It’s not like one studio is totally responsible for each version.

Steve: There’s guys in Adelaide that built stuff for single player, guys in Melbourne that did stuff, Adelaide guys did some work for the Wii version, etc etc. It’s a bit cross promotional thing.

Yug: Bringing it back to Blade Kitten for a bit. First of all, is it bizarre to see people at SupaNova dressed up as characters that you’ve created?

Steve: It is a little bit.



Blade Kitten artwork is pasted all along Steves office walls


Yug: There’s been costume competitions and kids dressed up like Ty.

Steve: That is cool! There was one kid at SupaNova this year who’s dad made the costume with a boomerang and everything. That’s cool!

Yug: Satisfying feeling?

Steve: Most satisfying seeing American kids who love Ty running around going ‘mate’ all the time!

Yug: They love Aussies over there!

Steve: They do! Cultural exports!

Yug: A friend mentioned there’s a Spyro movie being made at the moment ...

Steve: We’re not involved in that.

Yug: ... is there any plan on a Ty the Tasmanian Tiger movie?

Steve: No, we’re letting Ty have a bit of a break, mostly because I wanted to stop for a bit. Once a month someone asks when we’re doing the next Ty game, and yeah, we’ll do it eventually. There’s a book here of the next Ty game – there’s plans, don’t worry!

Yug: From a game developers point of view, when you play games in your spare time do you have trouble playing without picking out the flaws in the game?

Steve: Only if they’re bad. Most games are pretty polished these days, and if you play them and it’s fun, you have fun! Most games fit into one of those two categories.

Yug: That’s good then, I thought working in games may have ruined your enjoyment of other games.

Steve: No, it’s just sometimes hard to sit down and have time to play them!

Yug: Final question to finish up, for the people who may have missed SupaNova – where they could have seen you dressed as Indiana Jones – what’s your advice to people who are wanting to get into the games industry?

Steve: Practice, practice, practice. Work hard at what you do. It’s not enough to say I have the knowledge, you have to have the passion. You get folios come through that have a high res character model, and I think ‘you may have used alot of poly’s, but that doesn’t make it a high res character model. You have to show that you’re at a level that’s employable, not just having done a course that shows you the basics. You’re basic stuff is great, but put the extra effort in to learn what techniques are being used at the moment. Try to specialise too, if you’re a really good rigger, or a really good UV unwrapper, or a really good AI coder – GREAT! Focus, show us you can do that. Don’t just say you can, SHOW us. And don’t show us everything, just show us a handful of your best stuff.

Yug: Excellent, Steve that pretty much wraps it up, thank you so much again for your time though!



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Yug @ 11:04pm 28 Jul

Cheers man, I enjoy interviewing people in the industry I know and have alot of respect for as well, and Steve is definitely one of those people!

Ionboy @ 4:16pm 22 Jul

i agree i love reading all the interviews, you have good provoking questions that get great insightful answers were all looking for smile.gif great interview yug

Barry McBruce @ 1:40pm 22 Jul

I really do enjoy these little interviews yug, especially the what say you to ppl wanting to get into the industry, its mostly the same response, but that just helps me hone my folio..
Excelent work.
Steve seems like quite the cool bloke as well.

Yug @ 10:19am 22 Jul

INTERVIEW [ Interview with Steve Stamatiadis ]