Paul Reiche seems surprisingly laid back for the man who has just finished what is tipped to be the most profitable video game of the year. As Studio Head of Toys for Bob, he’s the steady hand behind what was originally touted as the new Sypro the Dragon game and has since grown into the Skylanders franchise, a family fantasy that allows you to purchase action figures and transport them into your game.
We caught up with Reiche this week as he took some time away from the game on holiday with family in London. Without a hint of the tiredness usually associated with this stage of game development he fielded our questions about Skylanders Giants and was soon enthusing about a genre he obviously loved.
Reiche’s gaming roots can be traced back to pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons, as well as other table top gaming. From here he worked on a variety of technologies and franchises which, while synonymous with family gaming, weren’t to the scale of Skylanders.
As we talked in a sun-soaked London members club, his daughter reminds him on occasion to use people’s surnames when he mentions them. Reiche’s habit of using colleague’s first names reflects the family feel of the Toys for Bob team – not unsurprising as many of them go back some twenty years.
We ask him how he handles the pressure of creating what Activision is calling their next $1 billion franchise. “Well, it’s the support from Activision that has made this achievement possible. It was because of their emphasis to aim for something spectacular that Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure turned out as well as it did.”
While there is plenty of truth in that, we ask if it also adds to the pressure to deliver a similar success with Skylanders Giants, the follow up game which will be released 19 October. “Don’t get me wrong there were head in the hands moments, and real deliberation over which way we should take things, but the result of all that is better decisions and a better game.”
“We knew we had to improve on the original game, but could have done that a number of ways. Should we simply add another eight elements -- basically repeating the first game with new content? Should we stick with the same characters and create a deeper experience for them? Should we add more characters for the existing elements? Each of these ideas were on the table, and we had some real head scratching over which would be true to our ideal of toys coming to life and remembering your adventures.”
Giants has ended up steering clear of adding new Elements -- the groupings of Skylanders figures -- and with that it avoids adding too many new figures. Instead it walks a middle ground of new Giant characters with new abilities, a handful of additional normal sized Skylanders characters and a bunch of returning figures from the first game.
“We realized we were hitting our character creation limits and didn’t want to devalue the original characters. Weighting and the balance between size, power and attacks is important to keep in check.” This honest assessment of its own limits is an intelligent move -- having conquered all with Skylanders Spyro’s Adventures Toys for Bob could have been forgiven for ploughing on in similar fashion. Hearing this restraint certainly tempers over-reactions to the need to buy new figures in Skylanders Giants.
Other headlines are likely to catch family gamer’s eyes when the game launches as it can seem like a hard sell at first. Happily, many of the right decisions have been taken though. Most importantly for families who have invested in the first game is that all their figures, along with upgrades and money, are supported in Skylanders Giants. Also, all the new versions of figures released for Skylanders Giants will work back in the first game -- provided they are for existing characters.
“We wanted to make sure that the old characters still mattered in Skylanders Giants” explains Reiche. “That journey and investment players have experienced with the characters in the first game carries over into Skylanders Giants.”
One tension remains in this new ecosystem though. Young players who have invested time, money and meaning in original toys may struggle to understand why they need to buy those characters again in Giants to access the new Wow-Pow attack only available to Series 2 figures.
We put this to Reiche. “There’s no perfect answer to this. The Series 2 figures are in no way seen as a necessity to buy again if you have an original version of a character. But at the same time we wanted to be sure that parents saw an added benefit of purchasing the new figures. We’re breaking new ground here trying to be both backwardly and forwardly compatible.”
It’s hearing the thinking behind this that gives a real insight into the inner workings between Toys for Bob and Activision. Reiche has previously been vocal about how Activision’s desire to “go big” on Skylanders resulted in the successful game we know today. But is their grand overseer really as enabling and life affirming as the disembodied Eon we meet in the game?
“They really were a big support but more than just financial. Eric Hershberg for example, is an unusual CEO. His background in design led to him being involved in the Skylanders creative process at a detailed level. His head for communication helped hone many of our character ideas. For example, there was one figure were we’d tried all sorts of names and had settled on Pyrohound, Eric suggested Hot Dog and it stuck and focus grouped really well. Sometimes the simple ideas are hard to spot.”
This may sound like keeping the boss happy, but Reiche is convincing about the value of this input. He talked us through a whole host of support, both creative and brand, that Activision has provided. From Joby Otero’s (Activision’s VP of Art and Technology) input into licensed products to Mike Stout’s (of Activision’s Design Group) input on game design and combat there’s a sense that Toys for Bob has embraced the non-financial goods that Activision has to offer as much as the monetary security that comes from the heavyweight publisher.
Beyond Activision it’s clear that Toys for Bob’s success with Skylanders has caused other developers and platform holders to look closely at the technology that ties real-world and in-game objects – such as Radio-frequency Identification (RFID) and Near Field Communication (NFC). We ask Reiche if the novelty of Skylanders Giants will be eroded as consoles like the WiiU come with physical object detection built into its new tablet controller.
Unruffled by the suggestion he is philosophical. “Technology comes of age with games like Skylanders, but always ends up pressing the reset button in some way. Chris Crawford compared forest fires that resulted in more varied flora and fauna, with game development. We have ecologies of organisms that are superseded every cycle, but we also have evergreen franchises that are hard to supplant. We’re fortunate because these cycles mean that development doesn’t have codified rules that can’t be changed.”
He doesn’t finish the analogy for us but the point is clear. Toys for Bob aim to thrive not by creating an unchangeable gaming paradigm, but by embracing the changing bedrock of gaming technology with tools and personnel that can respond in kind.
We ask what this means for Skylanders Giants and Reiche sketches out some of the less expected and more risky elements of the new game. Whether this is the Luck-a-thon device that enables players to adjust combat mechanics or the meta card game that mirrors Reiche’s enthusiasm for Magic the Gathering there is plenty of new content beyond the new characters.
New Arena battles, Challenge modes and Hats also bolster the number of ways you can customise your characters. Add this to the higher level cap (from 10 to 15) for characters old and new, as well as the ability to switch upgrade paths without resetting them as you had to in the original game and it’s hard to remain sniffy about the original Skylanders not getting the new Wow-pow attack.
Every indication is that Skylanders Giants will be a lot of fun to play, whether you already have a collection of plastic friends staring back from your shelf or not. This is, of course, still aimed at families and children but it looks much too enjoyable to leave in their hands alone.
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Andy Robertson reviews video-games for families and produces the Family Gamer TV show.
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