S. Carless

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Superman: Man of Steel

Simon Carless: Nominating Expert Net Vision / Net Excellence

You enjoyed fame in the Amiga demo scene as a musician and you have been running your own label Monotonik before moving into game design. What's the relation between music and games?

Carless: I guess, in a lot of ways, there isn't a lot of connectivity. I loved composing and creating music, and it's really rewarding to run a net.music.label like Monotonik, but my main focus is on making the best videogames I possibly can. Music is really important to videogames, and especially some types of games. But first and foremost, a game needs to be fun, and that largely happens separately of how kickass the soundtrack is.

How is music playing an integral part in many videogames? Especially in Asia, music-related video games are very popular. What is so fascinating for you?

Carless: Music-based games are a particular interest for me because, obviously, they combine my twin loves, and it's where music and gameplay intertwine. Music games feel very different to most other types of videogames, too - visceral and rewarding in a non-violent way. It's particularly intriguing how you almost learn to play an instrument when playing music games such as 'Frequency' or 'Beatmania'. You memorise patterns, you learn rhythms and whether the melody goes up and down, but you don't need to tune up your instrument or go to lessons once a week to play Bach and learn your scales. Neat!

What are the most important trends in gaming? What about multiplayer on-line games ('Phantasy Star Online' for example has been awarded a distinction at last year's Prix Ars Electronica)?

Carless: Many of the most important trends in gaming are to do with many people interacting at once online. If you're playing with or against many tens or hundreds of opponents from all over the country or even the world, the depth of gameplay experience can be multiplied. There's no way that artificial intelligence could replicate the degree of satisfaction you can get from human motivations and emotions interacting with each other like they do in massively multiplayer games. In other words, it gets personal - you're no longer fighting to beat faceless circuitry, you're fighting to beat some 14-year-old punk kid from Alabama. Which is infinitely more fun. Until he beats you. For the seventh time.

But it's not all about multiplayer games. The new generation of consoles have brought such expanded power that much more expansive games are now possible, using more advanced physics, better 3D engines, and plain cooler graphics to stamp out many of the constraints which game creators have been trying to sidestep with the first generation of 3D consoles and computers. It doesn't necessarily follow that more processing power means better games, but it at least means the opportunity to make better games.

It seems that videogames are crossing over into other media. Will the games be the new 'Hollywood'?

Carless: In terms of revenues, games are certainly approaching Hollywood-style box office takes. It's clearly going to get bigger, too, and many games (but not all!) will become more 'filmic' in presentation.

But Hollywood is a very different beast in a multitude of different ways, as film companies have largely shown by their inability to tap into the games industry successfully. And, indeed, games companies have shown when they try to get into movies (ahem, Street Fighter, Final Fantasy?)

So ... it's a whole new ballgame, a different kettle of fish, and so on. But at a basic level, games are a powerful new entertainment medium which is still in its infancy, yet has elements different to any other industry that's gone before. I guess that makes games the new games, then.

What are you currently working on?

Carless: I'm senior designer at Circus Freak Studios. We span off from Infogrames Inc. to form our own company in June 2001, and we've recently announced we're working on 'Superman:Man Of Steel' for Microsoft's XBox console, to be published by Infogrames under their Atari label in Q3 2002.




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