Dev Box Interview: WayForward’s Director Sean Velasco

It usually takes a small army to create the video games that we play, and, most of the time, all of the focus gets put on the game itself, and not on the people that came together to make it. Our Dev Box interview series takes a look at some of the unsung heroes that have committed their lives to entertaining all of us. In this week’s expanded Dev Box we are letting WayForward’s Director Sean Velasco provide us some insight into who he is as a gamer, and how he ended up working in the game’s industry.

Name: Sean Velasco
Title: Director
Company: WayForward
Job Description: Designing and directing games from inception to completion. Pitching game concepts, giving feedback, creating mockups, doing level design, sketching ideas out, and generally bothering programmers and artists alike.
First title worked on: “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” (CELL)
Most recent title worked on: “Contra 4″ (DS), “A Boy and his Blob” (Wii)

What game has most influenced you, and why?
I’d have to say “Super Metroid” on SNES. It’s my favorite game of all time. The controls, the abilities Samus collects, and the shooting action… it’s all second to none! Perhaps the best part is the presentation. With no cut scenes or dialog, the game weaves an interesting tale and generates a palpable sense of isolation and tension. It’s all totally interactive.

What are you playing right now?
I am always in the middle of like twenty different games. “Fallout 3″ has been in my Xbox a ton lately. I am loving “Half-Minute Hero” for PSP; it’s a tongue-in-cheek RPG that you finish in 30 seconds. I am playing through “Cave Story” again, which is a fantastic little PC game that is the work of a single talented person. The new “Monkey Island” games by Telltale are also quite good. I’m interested in “Demon’s Souls” on PS3, which has some of the most intriguing multiplayer concepts in recent memory. Lastly, I am eagerly awaiting “Modern Warfare 2.”

What was your first break in the games industry?
Right out of college some buddies and I put together a cell phone game. It was a top-down puzzler like “Adventures of Lolo” (NES). It starred a cute demon and we called it “Heck Razor”. We managed to catch the attention of Disney mobile, which promptly has us re-skin the game to sell as “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?
It’s probably a common one, but I guess it’s “be yourself”. Don’t fake it! Everyone will know if you aren’t into what you do. Find out what you can be the best at, and what you can enjoy doing, and then just go for it. There are always ups and down, good and bad projects, but it’s tremendous to wake up every day excited about going to my job and being creative.

Where do you look for inspiration?
Everywhere! Past and current experience, films and games, and even dreams. Recently, I had a nightmare about this horrible charred little creature. I had to make a sculpture of it in order to get it out of my mind. Now it sits in my house and it’s no longer scary.

Often, thinking about the controller will give you an idea for how a new game should play. For instance, I was thinking about the PS3’s motion control wand, and the idea for a new game popped into my head. Oddly enough, it’s currently in prototyping stages for DSiware as opposed to that platform.

Many times I will see a new game’s feature and think to myself “we could implement this in a better way!” That sense of frustration at the NES game’s implementation was a large inspiration for making a new “A Boy and His Blob” game.

Lastly, when a game follows genre conventions, it’s also good to get immersed in the pop culture world of that concept. For “A Boy and His Blob,” it was animated films. For “Contra 4,” it was action flicks.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned about game development?
Writing documentation and planning designs out is a big part of my job. However, in the long run, the only thing that matters is the final game itself. All the ideas and planning get thrown out the window if the game isn’t impressive. It may sound obvious, but the most important thing is to focus on the game! Everything else is secondary.

Who do you think will come out on top this console generation?
Tough to say! Wii has been hugely successful but I think it will be hard to keep that up. Many people have been buying it but not buying more games for it; low attach rate is a bummer. I love the Xbox 360; their online infrastructure is second to none. It has a bunch of amazing games both retail and downloadable. The PS3 is still a mystery, but it’s picking up steam. I don’t think it’s shown its full potential yet, which is a funny thing to say about a system that’s already been around for 3 years. So in short, I don’t know. They all have good points. My only hope is that motion waggle games die a horrible death the same way that FMV games did.

What do you think is the biggest problem current games suffer from?
Most big-budget single player games nowadays don’t feel much like games to me. They lead you on a journey that you know you are going to win. You press buttons for quick-time events and experience calculated “wow” moments at all the right places. It’s like applying a traditional 3-act structure to a movie. Whenever that “lowest of the low” point happens about 2/3 of a way through a film and the main character has a sad montage where he wistfully looks into his reflection in a puddle of water, I just tune out. It’s boring. Budgets are so big that nobody can take a risk with those types of games. So, that’s a problem.

I also think that peripheral fever is a big problem nowadays; not that they exist, but that developers are using them in bad ways. From balance boards to fake guitars, everyone is trying to shoehorn designs to work with these new technologies. The way I see it, if your game design is only possible with the new technology, then you should use it. Otherwise, stay away!

Lastly, I’d say that value is a big nebulous thing with games right now. The prices people are paying are way out of whack. For instance, a digital copy of a game is generally the same price as a retail copy. Why? A digital copy is usually a non-transferable piece of data. They didn’t have to print a disc or a box. It didn’t have to be shipped anywhere. I can’t sell it back to the store, or even loan it to a friend. It’s not worth anything close to a hard copy of a game that you physically own. Micro transactions seem to be skewed too. Paying additional costs for what used to be free (multiplayer modes, maps, cheats, unlockables skins for characters, etc. ) is a slippery slope. The problem is that games are getting more expensive to make, so we are nickel and diming players to cover the cost. The solution? Don’t make such expensive games!

What is the most important thing that has happened to gaming in the last 10 years?
Digital distribution. We haven’t even scratched the surface, but it’s huge. It’s now possible for small games and indie projects to come to fruition without a publisher. Games like “‘Splosion Man,” “World of Goo,” “Mighty Flip Champs!,” “Cave Story” on Wii… we’re going to see labors of love; inventive and original ideas coming from everywhere! This, combined with a new emphasis on user-generated content, is an enormous leap for innovation in games. It’s a very exciting time!

Where do you see gaming in 5 years?
I think the current crop of consoles is going to last much longer than the previous ones. We’re getting to a point of diminishing returns, so we can probably hold out. The exception might be handhelds, where we are seeing a lot of competition and evolution very quickly.

The landscape will probably be like a magnified version of what we have now; games with huge budgets that are major productions, all the way down to tiny indie games like you have on DSiware and iPhone. I expect this to become even more stratified as companies find their niche and flourish there.

I’m guessing that motion control and the other nonstandard interfaces currently en vogue will die out, leaving only the strongest. For example, IR control on the Wii allows for precision aiming; it’s like a mouse for your TV. That’s a great thing that should be iterated on.

Overall, I’d keep in mind that 5 years isn’t that long of a time. 5 years ago, weren’t we still playing “Half-Life,” “Halo,” and “Grand Theft Auto”?

Related Posts:

• January 13, 2010 -- Dev Box Interview: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories’ Producer Tomm Hulett
• September 9, 2009 -- Dev Box Interview: IO Interactive’s Game Director Jeremy Petreman
• September 5, 2009 -- A Boy And His Blob’s Final Trailer – Beautiful Jelly Beans
• July 6, 2009 -- E3 ‘09: A Boy and His Blob Preview Interview
• May 7, 2009 -- Dev Box Interview: Nyko’s VP of Product Development Amir Navid