It shocked gamers when news of Haden Blackman’s departure from LucasArts rippled through the industry months ago. With the success of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed in 2008, Blackman’s name and face became synonymous with the Jedi action franchise. The impressive-looking TFU2 sequel was well on its way and it seemed like the video game division of George Lucas’ empire was getting its mojo back. Then, Blackman’s departure and rumors of significant layoffs in the internal development studios came in rapid succession, putting into question whether LucasArts would ever make its own games again.
(More on Techland: Haden Blackman Resigns From LucasArts)
In the meantime, speculation bubbled as to where Blackman might wind up. Would it be THQ? Ubisoft? EA? Now, the answer’s come in the form of Fearless Entertainment, a new development house started by Blackman and friend Cedric Collomb. (Collomb formerly held the position of Director of Engineering at LucasArts.) Techland spoke with Blackman to get details on his break with LucasArts and what he and Collomb hope to accomplish with Fearless.
Evan Narcisse: I guess congratulations are in order. I had no idea this was coming. It’s so weird not talking about Star Warswith you.
Haden Blackman: I know.
If I can say it without stirring up any bad feelings, the new trailer for TFU2 looks amazing.
Yeah.
I’m guessing it’s work you’re still proud of.
Oh, absolutely. I’m super proud of The Force Unleashed franchise. I was fortunate because, when this whole notion of starting my own studio started to become a reality, it’s something that I considered for quite a long time. I didn’t really throw myself into it wholeheartedly. I kind of discovered a kindred spirit in my cofounder Cedric Collomb, who comes out of a tech background as lead engineer on The Force Unleashed, and the director of engineering at LucasArts after that.
He and I really had a lot of the same ideas in terms of the type of studio we wanted to form, the type of culture we wanted to create, and the types of games we wanted to make.
And that’s when I started have serious thoughts about forming my own company. But the timing worked out really nicely in that I was able to stay at LucasArts until Force Unleashed II was essentially ready for submission. For example, I was able to stay involved in the trailer. I was involved in all the story board meetings, and approving the script, and seeing all the animations coming through.
So, I’m super-proud of all the work that went on through that entire franchise. I’m just really proud of the team. I mean, the team did some pretty amazing stuff, I think, on both those games.
Are you able to talk at all about the severing of your ties with LucasArts? I mean, there’s been a lot of speculation. What can you talk about in terms of how your leaving there came about?
Yeah. Really, I left because I wanted to form Fearless Studios. That was the motivating factor for me. There was the obvious speculation that I left because of the regime change and things like that. I went through six regime changes in my 13 years at LucasArts. [laughs] That’s not the type of thing that would scare me away or make me want to leave on my own. For me, it was really about the opportunity to form my own studio and create this new sandbox to play in.
I guess my philosophy behind this whole thing is I had a really great time playing in George’s sandbox for 13 years. But you reach a point as a creative, I think, where you want to see if you can go and build your own sandbox. I’m ready to play in new universes. I’m ready to explore different types of stories and different types of genres. I mean, you and I have talked a lot about various game genres in the past.
When we’ve spoken in the past, I think I mentioned that I’m a big horror movie buff. I love big action titles. And certainly some of our concepts that we’re working on now fall into the same kind of big, story-driven action category like TFU. But, we’re also exploring some horror titles and some other stuff that I think is almost the polar opposite to Star Wars. And that, to me, is very creatively fulfilling, and that’s kind of what I wanted to do. So, I’ll always love Star Wars and I’ll always be very thankful for the opportunity to work on Star Wars for so long. But, again, as a creative, I just reached a point where I felt like I had other stories to tell, and other types of games that I wanted to make, and other genres that I wanted to explore, both from a gameplay and content standpoint. I just didn’t see the opportunity there at LucasArts, and just decided it was time to form my own studio.
(More on Techland: Blackman Unleashed: Talking with The Force Unleashed 2’s Executive Producer)
I have one more last Star Wars thing and we can just leave it all behind.
Yeah, no problem.
It must have been pretty–if the rumors are true–disappointing to hear that TFU3, which I know was never announced or confirmed or anything like that, may not even be happening. Do you still have a desire to see that thing happen, even if it’s not you manning the helm on it?
Yeah. Absolutely. I really believe in The Force Unleashed franchise. Let me just say, I know what you know. Since leave LucasArts, I’ve tried to disconnect as much as possible and really focus on getting Fearless up and running. So, I only know what I hear through the same rumor mill that everyone else relies on. I’m really hopeful that the franchise will continue. I really feel like that core fantasy really resonates with not just Star Wars fans but with gamers. And I think Force Unleashed II is an improvement on Force Unleashed I in a lot of ways. And I think if they continue the franchise, they’ll be able to continue to improve the gameplay.
(More on Techland: Disturbance in the Force: Big Changes Coming at LucasArts?)
The whole notion of me not being involved or whatever, I don’t really have a lot of sense of ownership over it just because, again, it’s Star Wars. At the end of the day, George and LucasArts own everything Star Wars. And you kind of understand that when you start working at LucasArts. I’ve long since let that go. But at the same time, if there was ever an opportunity to work on The Force Unleashed franchise down the line, that’s something that Fearless Studios would definitely consider as part of our portfolio. We definitely have ideas about how to continue to improve the gameplay. I definitely know where I would take the story. And I think that there’s still a lot of legs left in the franchise. Given a proper schedule, I think that we could do a bang-up job with Force Unleashed III. But ultimately, that’s LucasArts’ decision, and we definitely hope that they continue the franchise one way or another.
And now onto Fearless. My first thought when I got the word that you guys were forming this company is you’re obviously somebody, who I think building story and building a universe, is one of your strengths. You’re co-writing Batwoman from DC Comics, and have long been a writer outside of video games. Should we expect the same story-rich environment for your games?
Absolutely. Our mantra is “Be fearless,” and what we mean by that is we want to take creative risks. We want to mitigate those smart tech decisions, but we’re really about let’s try to push the boundaries creatively. Let’s tackle some new things we haven’t done before. But, at the same time, we know where our strengths lie. The types of games that we’re exploring right now, most of them fall into the story-driven action category. That’s a really broad category and can include lots of different genres and lots of different game mechanics.
Cedric and I have both worked on a number of different genres over the years. I think we’ve probably touched on every traditional game genre out there. And we’re really interested in finding ways to fuse elements from different genres. I’m a big believer in what Cliff Bleszinski says about shooters taking on more and more RPG elements. I think we see that happening in a lot of different genres. So I think you can expect us to experiment and explore different gameplay mechanics, different gameplay systems.
But, at its heart, each game will have a very strong narrative, a very robust story, a very strong setting, and iconic characters, which are all very important to us. We want to create characters that are relatable, that you can actually care about, that hopefully become iconic, and really represent the game that we’re making.
You mentioned big story-driven games. I’m assuming that more downloadable, bite-sized programming is part of your ideas as well?
We’re sort of in the early stages of content exploration. We have about six different concepts that we’re really excited about. Moving forward, they’ll get refined and probably honed down to a smaller group that we really invest a lot of time and energy into. But, they run the gamut from a kind of big, over-the-top action title, to hardcore horror. But we also have ideas that we’ve kicked around that are smaller scale games, things that might be better suited to iPhone or to XBLA or other forms of digital distribution.
We do believe really strongly in episodic storytelling. We think digital distribution and episodic storytelling are a big part of the future of gaming. So we’re very keen on those things and are putting a lot into thought, especially around the episodic nature of storytelling and the way we can create the type of games that we can create that would really leverage that. Again, horror is one genre that I go back to a lot. I think if you play a game for too long, you just kind of get desensitized to it, so horror might be a perfect genre for an episodic model. You get those nice hour-and-a-half, two-hour bite sized chunks. You never get that sense of being desensitized and then you get the next chunk a couple of weeks later or whatever.
So those are the types of things we are definitely thinking about. Cedric and I, we’ve had great success building big multi-platform games. I think, in the short term, that’s going to be a big part of the studio’s focus.
You mention horror a lot and obviously you’re a horror fan. What other genres do you feel like are really under-served by the current video games development landscape, and what would you like to tackle?
We have a lot actually. And we’re trying to take each of our game concepts kind of in a different direction and kind of push them in a different direction.
We would really like to tackle RPGs in the sense that we would like to make them more accessible. The RPG is a genre with depth of story and character development. But, I think that some things turn people off of RPGs, like the more cumbersome mechanics or a lot of the data management or character management. Maybe we could dig underneath the surface a little bit so that the experience is a little bit more accessible.
We’d love to find ways to kind of reinvent the RPG and infuse it with other genres, an action RPG or a shooter RPG. I think there’s still a lot of room in the sci-fi category. I think that we see a lot of the same type of themes and types of characters in sci-fi settings in games. And I think there is some opportunity to explore some different visions of the future, and maybe some alternate timeline type things. So those are all the things that we’re considering. There’s obviously a lot of games in this category, but I still think there’s a lot of room for the kind of melee-centric action game. Again, a game that has a very strong story and maybe offers a little bit more choice and a little bit more exploration than some of the games that we traditionally see with the fixed camera. So those are all the types of things that we’re thinking about.
Superhero games are very close to my heart. When I say superhero games, I don’t necessarily mean capes and tights. It’s more about that type of over-the-top action, big powers, a mythic story. I gravitate to what we classify as superhero games all the time. I think that there are a ton of things that can still be done there, and new directions to kind of take that fantasy.
I imagine that you are not at liberty to talk about concepts yet, right?
No. Other than to say that we have about six concepts in development and they do include things like a big superhero game, a hardcore horror game, an episodic concept, and a couple others.
OK. What about funding? Where are you guys getting the money from?
Marc Jackson is our interim CFO and we have a relationships with Seahorn Capital Group. At this stage, we are pursuing multiple routes of funding, including traditional publisher/developer funding models, and the film financing models, which is a little bit new to the game industry but we think it has great potential. We’re open to all funding options right now, but those are the ones that we are most actively pursuing. I can’t actually go into detail about any of the discussions we’re actually having right now. So far, everything seems very promising.
Obviously, your role is as head of creative. Is Cedric going to have creative input as well?
Well, to the degree that he and I are really good collaborators, yes. We, I think, have worked really, really well together in the past. I have collaborated with him on tech decisions and he’s collaborated with me on creative decisions.
But, in this case, the collaboration will be around what types of games should we be making, and what areas do we want to push things. Cedric really sees his role as CTO, as the one responsible for figuring out the tech strategy and for getting the game vision done. He’ll definitely weigh in and have opinions about the game vision. But, he’s kind of letting me run with that. The counter to that is that he’ll be making most of the tech recommendations and be driving the tech strategies. His primary focus day-to-day will be on the tech strategy. He definitely has opinions about the creative asects. He’s worked on a number of very successful franchises everything from Harry Potter to Black to The Force Unleashed, so I really value his opinion.
The other really great thing about working with Cédric is that we are both aligned in terms of the areas where we want to push things. So we don’t want to build tech just for tech’s sake. We will go ahead and buy licensed tech, and will looks anything that we can to help us realize the game vision. There are areas that we know we want to invest in. Things like AI and animation, so we can have more authentic characters. We’re both big believers in simulation in terms of environmental interactions. So, we’ll be investing in simulation tech most likely to get more authentic environments. We both want to invest heavily in tools for designers, especially around the notion of storytelling in games, and how the technology we implement can bring more storytelling elements into the gameplay itself. Those are kind of the big areas that we’re focusing on. The last one is data mining. We’re really interested in mining data around how players play the games, so we can find more inventive ways to customize the experience for each player. That can range from the choices that you make affecting the story, down to some kind of dynamic difficulty scaling.
So, those are the areas that he’ll be charging ahead with. Having those conversations up front has been really helpful, because it’s helped us form the creative concepts and figure out the direction that we’re headed with the game designs.
When do you think you guys will be announcing a slate? How long will we have to wait to see what’s cooking?
It sort of depends on how the industry reacts and how things shape up over the next couple months. We’re hopeful that we’ll be able to make some announcements in the first half of next year. We’ll definitely be giving updates on our website. And posting concept art and stuff like that, just to keep people engaged in what we’re doing.
As we bring more people on board, we’ll probably have some announcements. We have some key hires that we’ll be making in the next couple weeks that hopefully we’ll be able to let people know about. A lot of the timing depends on how things shape up. We’re really committed to making sure that we put our best foot forward. For now, we wanted to announce the formation of the company and get that news out there and make sure people knew that Fearless had been founded, and that Cédric and I are involved in this new venture. But, at the same time, we want to make sure that the concepts are really rock solid. That we have solid tech plans, solid production plans, and the right people to build these games before we commit to any ship dates or anything like that.
Fair enough. Since leaving LucasArts, what have you been up to? I know you’re obviously working on Batwoman. Gameplay-wise, are you catching up with anything? What’s your time away from the cubicle been like?
Yeah. It’s been interesting. I started work on Fearless pretty much the day after I left. The day I was no longer a LucasArts employee, I was a Fearless Studios employee. I have been pretty heavily involved in getting the company up and running.
(More on Techland: Batwoman Returns This November)
Still, I made a lot of time to play games. Red Dead Redemption, I finally just finished, and thought that was excellent. Just started out on Alan Wake at your recommendation, and have been enjoying that. Playing some flash games on Kongregate and just seeing what’s out there.
There’s a few really interesting tower defense games on Kongregate that have captured my attention a little bit. League of Legends, I’ve checked out. Halo: Reach, too. Trying to get in a couple of hours of Medal of Honor today. There’s been some Crackdown 2. I finally was able to get around to Overlord II.
I loved the first Overlord. So I’ve been goofing around with Overlord II and seeing what they’ve done. I got a copy of LEGO Harry Potter and have been playing that, and it’s really fun.
You’ve been doing a lot of catching up!
Yeah, I’ve been all over the map, and play as many different games as I can. I went back and revisited some of Mass Effect 2. I’ve started looking at games that are in the same vein of the types of games that we’re looking at making, so going back and looking at the F.E.A.R. series, for example. Obviously Alan Wake. I have a huge library of superhero games, so I’ve been going back and looking at lot of those and seeing how they handle some of the problems that I know we might run into. So, stuff like Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and a handful of others.
Right. So you’re just basically looking at what’s come before and trying to see where you can carve out your own, I guess, innovations or tweaks.
Yeah. For me, everything begins and ends with the question of “What is that core experience?” How do we want the player to feel as they’re playing the games? So, I’ve been trying to go back and play some of these games and just kind of focus on that. I spent a lot time studying a lot of their mechanics in the past. Now, I just want to play it again to see how does this game make me feel. I try and come at it with fresh eyes.
What’s really great is just having a lot of time to do more research into areas that typically we overlook. I’m reading up on anthropology a lot, on psychology, architecture. Doing a lot of research in other areas that we all know are important to game design, but as game designers and game creators, we don’t actually, in our day to day jobs, spend a lot of time focusing on. So that’s been really rewarding too.
Yeah, it’s funny that you say that because I had a chance to speak to Ken Levine when they did the reveal of BioShock Infinite. And you can see all that stuff in the game. You can see there’s an understanding of, for lack of a better term, like social sciences and human behavior in their games, and I’m assuming that’s something you want to bring out as well.
Yeah. Absolutely. There were a handful of us on The Force Unleashed team early on that had taken extensive psychology classes in college. One guy was actually as psychology major. We were really interested in exploring some of those thing in Force Unleashed I. For a lot of different reasons, where the focus of the game went didn’t allow for some of the data tracking things that we wanted to do. I’m hoping that I can take some of that passion I have for that and redirect it to the new stuff that we’re working on. At the end of the day, we’re hoping to make games that people fondly remember 5, 10, 15 years after they’re done playing them. And, as they’re playing them, we want them to feel big thrills and that there being surprises at every turn. So, we have all these lofty ambitions about where we want the company to be in the future and how many games we want to be building.
We want to create our own IP and those type of things. A lot of the same things that other independent developers want to do. But we’re also very focused on, OK, first and foremost, let’s just really make a fun game that people will have a great time playing, and that they’re constantly surprised.