And we’re back with part two of my epic encounter with Paul Barnett of EA Mythic and the Warhammer Online project.

Yesterday we began by talking about Paul’s introduction to the games industry, and how he came to work at EA Mythic in the first place.

Today we’ll do up the part of the conversation where Mr. Barnett chats about his views on the gaming industry itself. This was my secret intention all along, to get him to weigh in on the role of people within the games industry as advocates and promoters of the industry in general. We also talk about Mr. Barnett’s favorite piece of content in WAR, and the role of those pesky designers we’re always hearing so much about.

Come back tomorrow for our conclusion, the audio of the recording (not to be missed, much better than the text here), and (at his request) my own thoughts on Mr. Barnett and his opinions.

Oh, plus: Hello to Paul’s Mum and Dad! Sorry about the swearing. He really is a nice guy. :)

MMOG Nation: So just to wander a bit afield. From your background on the Mythic website and your own comments here today, you had a different sort of introduction to the games industry. But I think a lot of the folks who might be entering the industry in the next five years are going to be coming from programs in universities and higher education systems designed to “make game designers and game developers” -

Paul Barnett: I challenge that right off the bat!

MG: Okay.

Paul: They have no idea how to make game designers. Game designers are not made. Game designers are created through their craft. It’s like all those people who go to writing classes. Or all those people who go to literacy classes. Or all those people who have taken English exams. If you’re a writer, you’re a writer. You know what it actually takes? It takes craft, it takes diligence, it takes talent, it takes the ability to look at lots of different things and put them together. The amount of people I meet who just want say “I want to be a games designer!” And I say, “Well, what do you want to do?” and they say “Well, I want to design games.” And they’ve never done anything else other than relentlessly play computer games. As if that’s the only place you can get inspiration from! Going on a course where some bloke can tell you tell year old theory that is useless … the amount of people who do things like the ‘Spanish Prisoner Conundrum’ … What the hell does that got to do with it?

Game design is found in card games, board games. It’s found in trying to open a car door. It’s found in graphics novels, it’s found in literature, it’s found in Paradise Lost, it’s found in Shakespeare, it’s found in South Park, it’s found in watching the screen loader on Cox Cable! It’s found everywhere! It’s not just found through an Xbox and a bloody keyboard. And I get infuriated by people who go off and … like reading books, “How to design computer games”. Burn them! Burn them all! They’re of no use to you whatsoever. If you can’t figure out how to design, then you’re not a designer. If you’re not compelled by it, if you’re not put into a position where you just … it becomes everything you want to do … and I tell you another thing, while I’m ranting! The one thing that ticks me off about designers, is they don’t know when to bloody well stop designing. Fun, you fuckers! It has nothing to do with another mechanic, it’s got nothing to do with ’something clever’. A designer’s one job is to stop costing us money. Stop coming up with things that will delay my project and cost me money. Instead, use what we’ve currently got.

Great test! Fantastic test: ask anyone who reckons they’re a designer, anybody, and say to them: “With the game of Chess, what rule would you change? What would you change it to, and why?” And then, watch the response.

MG: Okay.

Paul: It’s all in that question.

[Paul gave me the answer to that question, but swore me to secrecy. I'd have to kill you if I told you.]

MG: Thank you sir! So, to get back to your game. What has been your favorite piece of content added to the game so far?

Paul: Well, my absolute favorite?

MG: Yeah.

Paul: It’s the quip when you try to log into the game on the Beta server and it goes “It’s not finished yet, ya Pillock” That’s my favorite bit. It sort of sums it up. We have people log in and they go “But that doesn’t work!” Of course it doesn’t work, we haven’t finished it. That’s probably my favorite bit. If I had to pick a different bit, there’s some really really good gags. I like those quite a lot. I can’t tell them to you cuz they’re not as funny in text, but trust me they’re funny. What else do I like?

PR Guy: The Squig suit.

Paul: Yeah, the Squig suit. The fact that we’ve got pet classes, right? Pet classes, just not crap. Here’s the problem with pet classes right? They’re rubbish, they’re all rubbish. Who wants to have a little widget that wanders off and fights for you? How bloody crap is that? It’s sort of like - I don’t know what it is. It’s like being in school, and threatening people only because you’ve got a big mate next to you. He’s a cretinous coward. So! What we did with pet classes is we have these Squig herders, little tiny goblins with big ears who are basically on speed. They’re great. They wander around, and they summon these Squigs.

And one of the Squigs they summon is this battle-armored Squig; enormous, great big armored Squig with a ring through its nose! And the Squig turns around and he eats the Squig Herder. And he’s sort of in the stomach of the Battle Squig, and he grabs ahold of all the intestines and he pulls on the intestines to make the Squig bounce around the land and fight things. And the Battle Squig sort of chews people up. And then when it gets wounded it sort of staggers around and coughs, and spits the Squig Herder out of his gob, and he sort of flies through the air doing this: “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaghh!” That, to me, is what our game is all about: because it’s Pet classes, just not crap. It’s fun. F@ckers.

MG: I have played Warhammer Fantasy for almost ten years, and you’ve now given me nightmares. Thank you.

[mad cackles from the Mythic end]

Paul: And that’s what it’s all about, right?

When you’re working on these games - here’s the thing that keeps Mark Jacobs awake at night, and makes him scratch at his arm. The two problems you have when trying to do a Warhammer MMO: Problem Number One: 99% of people attempting to figure out how to work on an MMO have effectively played WoW, and it has totally corrupted them. They are incapable of understanding that their entire reservoir of experience comes from one game and one game alone, and it pollutes and corrupts what they do. So everytime you try to add something or do something to the game, you have to go through this crazy WoW filter.

Where people either say: “It’s not in WoW, we shouldn’t have it” or “It’s in WoW, we’ve got to have it.” Limits your thinking. That’s problem number one. And that’s one of our hard problems we have to fight every single day. And the way we fight it, by the way, is that we realize that WoW is a work of flawed genius. You can’t steal from it because you don’t know which bits are genius, and which bits are flaws. What you have to do is stand back and revel in it. Look at it, and go: “Well done. Bloody good job.” And then make your own game. So that’s our first big problem.

Our second big problem is the Warhammer world. You see, the Warhammer world is this crazy idea, and it’s a great idea. Unfortunately, for us, the most popular realization of it is the toy soldiers. So, when you say to people, “We need to do giants in the Warhammer world”, they can’t help but look at the toy soldiers. Originally we used to catch them measuring the toy soldiers. They’d measure the giant, and then they’d put him in the game in the right proportions for the toy soldier.

And I said, “Why have you done that?” And they said, “Because the giant is about three times bigger than the player. We measured it” I said, “No, no, no - the giant is three times bigger than the player because he’s made out of metal. And if they tried to make him really big, he’d cost five thousand dollars. So they only made him three times as big, out of metal. The actual giant is enormous! Scale him up!” And so, there are our two big challenges: Not getting corrupted by WoW, and realizing that Warhammer is an idea that we have to bring to the screen. Not just: toy soldier game that we sort of ape and copy.

[For additional discussion on this subject, check out what Paul wrote about the issue of scaling the Bloodthirster in the game on his Myspace blog.]

MG: Do you get the chance much nowadays to actually play?

Paul: Errr - no! What I spend most of my time doing is talking to Alan Merrit and Rick Priestly. Rick Priestly, because he invented Warhammer, Alan Merrit because he’s sort of like this well of information about what the idea of Warhammer is. If I played the toy soldier game I’d end up being corrupted, like if I played a lot of WoW.

MG: So - just to throw a left-field question at you. The Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) is a great place for high ideas, and one I’ve heard a couple of times in the last few years is that “the games industry doesn’t have good spokespeople.” There aren’t people out there in the front, talking to the cameras, and making gamers seem like normal people - not creepy people who sit in their bedrooms and plan murder.

Paul: Well, the first problem is GDC. That’s the first problem right there. People shouldn’t go to places like that. What the hell are they doing? It’s like Dungeons and Dragons, right? There are two ways you can present Dungeons and Dragons. You can go on TV, go out to the TV and the mass media and get into Esquire Magazine or GQ magazine and you can talk it up. Or, you can go to Gen Con. And you can talk to lots of fatty sweaty D&D people. Right?

MG: Right.

Paul: So videogame people can either go out and embrace the media, or they can all gather at computer gamery events and they can all go, “It’s rubbish innit? What we need is more ideas! We need bigger thinking!” Or, you can wash and shave and dress nicely and you can actually attempt to engage with the industry outside of computer games. You can actually bother to talk to new media, print media - I’ve just done a load of videos, right, about how to get into the computer games industry. And they’re the most uncomputery “how to get into the computer games industry” videos you’re ever going to see - the actual view of how I think you get in. Rather than, you need to go to college, it’s very important with design, learn C++ - none of that, that’s all rubbish. It’s all rubbish, it’s always been rubbish. Young kids aren’t interested in the minutea, they aren’t interested in the detail of the computer games industry.

They’re interested in the idea of the computer games industry. They’re interested in the rock stars, they’re interested in the movie stars, they’re interested in what you can actually be. And it’s so incredibly difficult to show that to people, it’s so incredibly hard to say to a young kid, “It’s all going to be all right. Do you really want to be in the industry? You can be like that guy.” We don’t have anyone we can point to. And the reason we don’t have anyone we can point to is because we are relentlessly manipulated and crushed by the money men.

When was the last time you actually met somebody, who had any form of power, who actually really really loved computer games? You never do! You always meet either money people, who are dull as dishwater, or you meet those sort of idiot-savant crazy sort of insular people who just go, “I love design, design’s really important.” You know, and they have to like wear a bib because they can’t speak in public. Carmack’s sort of the only one we’ve got, and it so incredibly hard! If you can’t see the superstars, how are you supposed to ever believe there is an industry for you? And you just copy what you see. So at these computer games conferences are loads of computer games people trying to show off to loads of computer games people. And you go, “It’s the wrong audience, lads. You need to shine and radiate your joy and love affair to normal people. You need to not make normal people afraid of you.” You know, we should be fighting against the concept of geek, and nerd, because we’re not interested in that.

We’re interested in coolness. We’re interested in more people who are like Steve Jobs. If I can stand up and make normal people go, “Hell yeah, I want to do that!” - I want the computer games industry to be cool, like Apple. I want the computer games industry to be really cool like rock and roll. I want people to go, “You know what? I want to be in this industry, because it’s full of really good people who really want to do great work, I love listening to them, and they’ve got ideas.” They’ve got something to say. They’re not just going, “I’ve got an even better game design, my game design is even better than your game design.” Oh, I can tell you - When they get obsessed with - what do they call it - Real Money Transactions? Who the flying hell cares one iota? Outside of our little pool? Who the hell cares about that? Who the hell cares about real economy? There are people who have web sites who go on and on and on about the gold economy in MMOs. What a twaddle! What a load of twaddle.

The only computer games software house that I’ve seen recently who seems to have even the slightest inkling of what to do is Rockstar games. One, cuz they’ve got a dead cool name. Two, because they’re mostly English. Hooray. Three, because they’ve understood that Grand Theft Auto is in fact a load of nonsense. It’s a big goofy extravaganza. They’re sort of close to what we want to do. Don’t you find it odd as well? It really drives me batty, we’re obsessed with not leaving the fingerprints on our work? We’re obsessed with this idea that we can’t show people who make these games. Our video blogs, that we do for Warhammer Online, we [unintelligible] for that because I walked around with a phone videoing stuff. We actually had people going, “You can’t show that.”

You can’t show - to hell with that! They show you what it’s really like! It’s funny, it’s silly, it’s interesting. We have a lot of different people! We have people who aren’t just white! You’d think there were only white people, bloody adverts - marketing is sort of waving at me now - I’m going into spasms, sorry. Just that bit where you go, “For god’s sake lads, and girls, if we want to talk up the industry then we have to learn to be joyous and outward faced.” Let’s stop talking about C++, let’s stop talking about our new clever way of doing a design, and let’s start talking about the fact that we earn quite a lot of money, that we pay the bills, that we’re interesting people, that we’ve got a career, that you can do it, that we can all do it. And if we all work together, we can have a bloody good laugh. And! Mom will be impressed.

<=== Go Back to Part 1

Go ahead to Part 3 ===>