If you haven't heard of Giants: Citizen Kabuto, then you've probably been living on an isolated island out in the Pacific. Giants garnered a number of achievement awards in 2000, setting new standards in 3rd Person action involving lots of humour and a topless Sea Reaper. Mr. Stevenson recently granted us some of his time by answering our questions. The Armchair Empire would like to thank him for putting up with our constant follow-up emails and for sharing his thoughts with us. Grab some grog and read on!

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Bob Stevenson (Giants) Interview

Conducted by Omni

April 26, 2001

Would Giants have been as well received if attention were only paid to one of the three races? How would the story differ if this was so?

I would hope so. We’d have put all of that same creative energy into focusing on one race but it wouldn’t have been as interesting for us. Although, it would have been a hell of a lot simpler to make. It’s hard to say how the story would differ in retrospect, because you make choices based upon your goals. The Story was largely about the relationship between the Meccs and the Smarties. Even if we had chosen not to allow the player to play Delphi or Kabuto, I think they would have still found their way into the story.

You share design credit on Giants. What percentage of the credit would you say you deserve?

The core design team on Giants was a three-headed monster: Tim Williams, Nick Bruty and myself. There are so many aspects included in the Design credit. Game Design, Technical Design, Character Design, etc. So, I’d say it was exactly 33.333%!

What was the biggest influence on the art in Giants?

A desire to create an original look that was fresh, alive, colorful and full of large open spaces. Tim, Nick and myself spoke over many a long lunch about the style, lighting and the feeling we wanted the Giants universe to have. Nick and I then experimented until we found something that truly excited us.

Final products are usually very different from the original conceptual doodles and notes scribbled on restaurant placemats. Approximately how many changes were made to the characters from the initial design meetings right up until it shipped?

The main characters apart from Kabuto went through fairly short stages of evolution. The Meccs, Smarties and Delphi went through about a month of evolution. Kabuto has gone through some fairly major structural changes as we’ve used him to showcase our technology. He’s still going through changes as we speak.

Will we still be talking about Giants two years from now?

Yes you will. We have big plans for the Giants universe that we will be revealing very soon.

Do you think the current PC hardware is able to keep pace with current games?

The PC market is a very fragmented. The rate at which hardware has improved has created a huge performance gulf between low and high-end machines. So, the real question is: "Is it worth creating a game that truly pushes the latest PC hardware?" The more you push the higher end machines the harder it is to find a large enough market to cover your costs let alone make a profit. If your game doesn’t run on the full spectrum of machines out there it gets very tough. This happened to us with Giants.

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Did you see much of family and friends during the development of Giants? Or did you just tell them, "I’m going on an 24 month business trip"?

It was a real problem. We were in crunch mode for almost 2 years. My wife was very pissed off at me. So I won’t be doing that again :)

How many requests have you had for a Sea Reaper swimsuit calendar?

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Hundreds, all from a guy named Reg. Very strange.

What was the single biggest crisis encountered while working on Giants and how did you overcome it?

Andy Astor one of our Co Founders was diagnosed with Cancer. Sadly, Andy passed away shortly after we finished the game. We all miss him very much.

How much play testing was done on Giants? And how much time did you put into playing it before it shipped?

An awful lot of testing was done but the truthful answer is probably still not enough especially as Giants ended up being a much longer game than we’d anticipated and that made the testing process even harder. As such, there were some major bugs that slipped through the holes as we were too busy just dealing with all the pressures of meeting our Christmas deadline. I played all the levels I worked on, which was about half of the game but I was involved in so many areas of shipping the game that my ability to just sit and play the game was fairly limited.

In terms of your involvement in the gaming industry, is there anything you would do differently if you could start all over again?

In my 16 years of working in this Industry the most consistent mistake I’ve seen myself make in the past and that I see others make is to be too slow to stop working with people and projects that they don’t believe in. It’s easy to slip into that situation and very hard to get out of it. So you just need to be extra diligent in picking your teammates and projects. Thankfully, we have a great team, working on great projects.

Describe for us a typical day during the Giants development cycle.

My god, I forget… it seems so long ago now. A typical day would be waking up tired driving to work with Nick at around 8-9am. Have a morning status conference call with Interplay at 10am. Work hard. Relax my brain by having a good lunch and a laugh with the team. Then back to work, headphones on listening to music. Constant distractions from business phone calls. I’d work until about 7pm have dinner then work until I was too tired to work anymore. We’d leave anywhere between 10 – midnight.

Will we ever see a first-person shooter that concentrates on political processes rather than blowing things up?

Deus Ex seemed to be a step in that direction. I think the answer is definitely yes. As the quality of storytelling improves in our Industry I think it will hopefully be easier to captivate a player without needing to rely on mindless destruction to engage them. Look at Hollywood… D’OH!

Where do you see Planet Moon five years from now?

How’s this? Northern Italy. Situated in a large area of land. Our office would have a built in cinema, swimming pool, small vineyard and a big play area for our kids. We’ll continue to create games that make us laugh and are fun to play. We’ll also potentially be making movies by that point if the two industries haven’t already fused together.

What is your beverage of choice?

Great Wine or the occasional tall Gin & Tonic with Beefeater’s Gin.

Canadian Trivia Question: Name the Canadian actor that starred as reporter, Steve Martin, in the North American version of the original Godzilla.

Raymond Burr… Howzatt!

Correct!

Planet Moon's Official Site.

Thanks again for your time, Mr. Stevenson


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