On Tuesday I had the chance to speak with Ben Miller, game designer and expansion lead for Eye of the North. We talked about his game, his background getting into the games industry, and some of the philosophy that went into creating the spiritual successor to Guild Wars: Prophecies. 

MMOG Nation: What do you think, coming from a game design perspective, is something that a veteran massively multiplayer gamer will really dig their teeth into when playing Eye of the North? 

Ben Miller: One of the biggest things as far as Massively Multiplayer games go, is sharing the experience with your friends. Whatever that experience is. I think Guild Wars in general has been really great about allowing friends and groups of people to share this really epic narrative experience together. Eye of the North has that in droves. The other thing that is going to be really cool is the openness that Eye of the North has; you can experience the different storylines at your own pace, at your group’s pace. You can pick them up and drop them whenever you really feel like it. It’s not necessarily this big long windy road. It’s a lot more open, it’s a lot more free and I think that a lot of players are going to enjoy exploring the expansion together in groups. As well as experiencing the story and narrative.

MN: Is that where the mini-games come in too, giving people different ways to play? 

Ben Miller: Definitely. One of the things we’ve really tried to do with this expansion is look at how people actually play the game. Even how we play the game. We wanted there to always be something to do. These mini-games (Polymock, Norn Arena, and Dwarven Boxing), really allow you to further your character’s own personal progress while doing something fun and exciting regardless of who is online. A round of Boxing or Polymock takes something like five minutes; it’s the perfect thing to do while waiting for one of your friends to get online. 

MN: Experiencing storytelling together, with you friends, is that one of the goals with introducing the new races and their tales? 

Ben Miller: With Eye of the North we had the chance to build a very strong foundation for what Guild Wars II is going to be. Not only do we have these three expansive campaigns to build off of, and the cultures we’d already created, but with GWEN we had the unprecedented chance to take some of the new things that Guild Wars II is going to introduce, some of the new races, and lay the foundation for the future. Allow players to experience the new cultures, the new characters, that are going to carry into Guild Wars II. The Norn, the Asura, and especially the Charr … who in the original game were this ruthless, single-minded menace. They were pretty one-dimensional; you see Charr, you kill Charr. Charr killed humans. In Eye of the North we really wanted to explore who the Charr are, what they are all about, what’s going on in Charr society in this period of history. All those sort of juicy lore-bits, dig deep into them. There’s no group hugs at the very end, but that’s where those races come from. 

MN: There are a lot of Massive games coming out this year into next; how do you feel like Guild Wars players are going to deal with the choice of Eye of the North vs. a new game? Do you think there’s anything in particular that makes GWEN stand out vs. a completely new title? 

Ben Miller: Well the coolest thing about Eye of the North, and Guild Wars in general, is that it’s not the kind of game that makes players make that choice. You buy the game and you can play it when you want, with who you want. It’s not like you have to choose between this subscription game and that subscription game, and if I’m not playing this subscription game then essentially I’m wasting money. If you do have a subscription game, you can play Eye of the North without feeling like you’re losing any of your investment into that other game. It stands out in that aspect; you never have to make that choice. 

MN: What’s your favorite mini-game? 

Ben Miller: They’re all really good. I used to play a lot of Street Fighter 2 Turbo a lot for the SNES; probably the Norn Fighting Tournament has to be my favorite. There’s so many omages and little in-jokes to not only Street Fighter, but Mortal Kombat, Samurai Showdown … if you’re a fighting game geek then the Tournament has a bunch of hidden easter eggs that people will really get into. 

MN: It’s really interesting seeing your enthusiasm for this product. You’re still having fun with it, obviously, after working on it for so long. Do you think that’s an important thing in general, for designers to be playing the games that they’re making? 

Ben Miller: Oh yeah, definitely. I don’t think that there’s a good way to make a game that you don’t play. Whatever is in your head, whatever game you think you’re making, you need to actually be playing the end product to get any sort of sense of the actual product that you’re making. So it’s kind of an imperative that you play your own game. Hopefully you’re making a game that gets you excited, that you not only enjoy playing but enjoy the creation process. Also, finding inspiration is probably the biggest thing through books, movies, other games. You can find inspiration anywhere. That’s probably the biggest thing. Besides playing the game, that’s what keeps it exciting: incorporating all of this other cool stuff that you’re experiencing into the system that is the game in a way that other people can get a sense of what inspired you.

MN: You talked about inspiration; what are some of the things that inspired you for this expansion in general? Any movies or books that you had in mind? 

Ben Miller: The Norn fighting tournament has a bunch of omages to fighting games, as I said. With individual quests we have a lot of strong influences. We have this dungeon called Arachne’s Haunt that we showed off at E3. All of the characters are named after characters from Aliens; Hicks, Hud, Vasqa. You’re basically going on a bug hunt against a bunch of spiders. It comes from all over the place as far as inspiration goes. Little chunks of content from everywhere. I wouldn’t say there are any particular influences on the game as a whole … it’s kind of a collaborative, organic process among the team.

MN: One thing I have noticed as I’ve been playing today is that you folks aren’t afraid of being funny. Having fun in your game …

Ben Miller: Yeah yeah yeah. Out of all the games we’ve done, Eye of the North is sort of the game that we’ve embraced the most with that. It’s been really fun making because it’s sort of more like ‘we just want fun, cool stuff’. That leads to having lighter moments that allow the serious moments to be more serious. I think it lends a lot of range in emotional tones throughout the quests and missions that makes the experience more well rounded, and also more fun to work on.

MN: Do you think that that’s something more folks are deciding in general? That games should be something that can be funny, have humor? Not always doom and gloom, death and destruction.

Ben Miller:  I guess it depends on the kind of stuff you’re into. Some people are really into that, and some people really like funny, lighthearted stuff. It all depends on why you’re playing games and what you’re attracted to. I don’t think that it’s a trend per se, but I think it’s really cool that something as big as Guild Wars is content-wise, it’s a really great canvas to get those emotional tones. Whereas a game that is more of a funny/silly game doesn’t have the space to do something more serious. It’s much more of an open canvas with Guild Wars; you can have those grey moments of funny/serious/sad and it ends up being really well rounded.

MN: If I can go off on a tangent, what do you think of folks who take game design courses?

Ben Miller: (laughs heartily) 

MN: Why do you laugh, if you don’t mind my asking?

Ben Miller: I was like a junior in high school, and at least in my school that was the year that the teachers brought down the ‘people’s elbow’ and were like “Alright, it’s time to start applying for schools cuz this is going to dictate the rest of your life.” And so I was like … what do I want to do? And so I was just thinking back to all the cool gaming experiences that I had and one stands out very very vividly. It’s literally Christmas morning, I’m sitting in my front room with my family, the Christmas tree is all sparkly and I’m sitting there on our TV playing Legacy of Kain. The intro cinematic opens up, it has that knight running down the hallway, and that evil vampire guy owning him up really hard, and for some reason as a junior in high school I was like “That’s so cool.” There was something in me that clicked, that made me want to give people experiences like that, to tell stories an whatnot.

So anyways, I decided I wanted to make videogames, so that’s why I laughed. I got myself stupidly in debt with the Art Institute, and got my bachelor’s degree in game art and design. I was one of those people taking game design classes …

MN: Sorry, I didn’t want to sound negative about it …

Ben Miller: Oh, no. There are definitely great things about it, and there’s a downside as well. It’s definitely a viable way to get into the industry, though (he laughs as he says this). At the end of the day there’s a catch-22 in any kind of industry you want to get into. You need experience to get a job … and you need a job to get experience. But, depending on the kind of program you’re in and the classes that you’re taking you might luck out. At the Art Institute I was fortunate enough to have not only art production classes but game design classes as well. I ended up learning the technical skills of how to make models and textures, as well as how to implement them with different engines. So by the time I graduated I had a weird sort of portfolio of level art, level design, and game design along with my formal education. Along with that were all the art assets I built for all of that stuff. If you are taking design classes make sure that those classes are enabling you to actually create games; being able to go to an employer and say ‘here’s my work’ is incredibly powerful.

You know, hopefully if you’re coming out of a school like that you’re going somewhere that you’ve done mods for. There’s no reason that if you went to, say Relic (who made Company of Heroes), and said “Guess what, I just made a bunch of these awesome maps. I made my own models, and scripted out a scenario: it’s the night before Normandy and there’s a French resistance. I made my own units; it’s not really about this, it’s a cool workable thing.” If you were hiring, you’d go “Hey, that guy already knows how to use our tools! And he understands our pipeline.” As far as classes go, make sure where you’re headed is somewhere that will appreciate what you have to show for it.

MN: Great. I’ve found it really interesting to talk to designers about this issue; everybody has an opinion one way or another. Thanks so much for your time, sir. It’s been a pleasure talking to you today.