00:14Oh, cool, yes. My name's Paul Barnett. I'm now the creative director. Mwahahahaha! There's no stopping me at Warhammer Online
00:23being made by EA Mythic.
00:24They kindly allowed me to buy chairs. Director, creative director chairs. If you do well in the computer game industry,
00:32one day you might get chairs. You might get a box of fruit. You might be allowed to have your
00:39own currency stuck on a wall with a little sign going, Hello! All this could be yours if you appear
00:48mad enough on enough videos on the internet.
00:58Humans! Why would I play anything but humans? I love humans. Humans are great. If you're going to spend hundreds
01:04of billions of dollars making a fantasy world, then play humans. You know, something that you can effectively be in
01:11any other game. No, wait a minute. Orcs! Orcs for me!
01:14Because they're big and they're brutish. They've got the fangs. They're simplistic. They beat stuff. Or Dark Elves. Have you
01:22seen the trailer? How cool are the Dark Elves?
01:24They take the punishment. Lick the blood. Do the lies. They look sexy. They look thin. They're basically Europeans. And
01:32then they whittle people to death with the High Elves.
01:35Actually, I couldn't play High Elves. English posh people. No time for them. Dwarves! A lot of empathy with them.
01:39Gritty. Short. Beat people up. Chaos.
01:43Humans with tentacles and crab claws. How great's that? Humans. No. Squig herders! To be honest, I really love the
01:52squig herders.
01:55Oh, grief. I think everybody is a Warhammer fan. They just might not realise it yet. How long have I
02:02really liked it? Ever since I got to spend a lot of time with Rick Priestley.
02:06I mean, he's a small, bitter, twisted individual who's also irritatingly a genius. I talked to him all about Warhammer
02:15and he is joyous and wondrous about it.
02:18And there's another guy, Alan Merritt. He's also an irritatingly genique person. Genique? Probably not a word. He's really clever
02:26too.
02:27They basically convinced me Warhammer was worth spit and then I read about it and liked it. So about 15
02:34years.
02:41When you want to make a gazillion billion jillion euros from a computer game, there are certain things you have
02:49to do.
02:49One is set your rating. Ours is rated at teen. Teen.
02:56And whatever that means, it means blood, sex, gore, gore. So we have to cut our cloth accordingly.
03:07We have tried to make our game as dark, gritty, goreful and humorous as we can while still getting this
03:14clever T rating.
03:16Now if for some reason we're allowed to get a, I don't know, an M rating, maybe it'll change. We're
03:23not.
03:23While it's a T rating, we've taken it as far as we possibly can.
03:33Well, the way the game currently works, if you log in and, you know, one of those people who just
03:38likes exploring, adventuring and questing,
03:40never ever wants to kill another human person at a keyboard, then you can play our entire game.
03:46happily. Never have to go into RVR.
03:49On the other hand, you can log in and play our entire game just in RVR.
03:53And never ever do any PvE. And you can get all the way through to the end of our game.
03:57And they're the two styles of game we went for.
04:01All I want to do is butcher other people. All I want to do is adventure in dungeons.
04:06And because we made the game with these two extremes, it means there's a really broad middle section.
04:13For people who want to do mostly PvE with a little bit of RVR, a lot of RVR with a
04:19little bit of PvE, or a mixture of maybe half and half.
04:22We didn't build the game for that middle section. That middle section happens naturally because we built the two extremes.
04:29What do I think about the balance? Well, it depends what mood I'm in.
04:33I mean, sometimes, you know, if I'm on the backbone right near the server and I've got the best client
04:39build, I quite like RVR.
04:41If, on the other hand, I'm playing for my apartment on my crap machine, you know, and I'm on a
04:46dial-up modem, I really like PvE.
04:49If I've had a big argument with someone and I don't really like them and I'm in a foul mood,
04:54I want to go in and mercilessly kill stunties.
04:56On the other hand, I've had a good time, I've drunk some beer, I want to go online, and then
05:02I want to meet one of my mates and destroy bloodthirsters.
05:06So, I'm actually quite a good person for the mix of styles that I want, and I'm pretty happy with
05:10the mix we've got in the game.
05:12Yeah, it's all pretty good.
05:19Well, you talk about what's in the game. What is in the game is the wonderful history and richness of
05:25Warhammer.
05:26Gyrocopters are in the game. Juggernauts are in the game, Rhinoxes are in the game, Cold Wands are in the
05:31game.
05:32All the great stuff is in it, the huge catapults from the CGI movie are in the game.
05:37How much you get to interact with them? Well, that depends on, does it make sense? Does it fit with
05:41the game player? Does it fit with the game style?
05:43Does it fit with what we're trying to do? Take, for instance, Mounted Combat.
05:46You can put Mounted Combat into a game, but what effect does it have on RVR? What effect does it
05:50have on dungeons? What effect does it have in cities?
05:52And you have to take all the game considerations into account. Where we can prove there is a game consideration
05:58that we can meet, and there is great IP, we intend to use it.
06:04The Bastion Stair is a great example. On the face of it, it looks like it's impossible to build. I
06:10mean, a stair that goes to infinity.
06:12You'd have to be a lunatic to put that in your game. Well, we are lunatics, and we've put it
06:18in anyway, and the stair does go to infinity.
06:20And it's wondrous. Now, on paper, that was a stupid idea. When you actually see it in the game, and
06:27how we did it, it's fantastic.
06:31And it's like that with all the equipment. Take the steam tank. What a fantastic thing the steam tank is.
06:36We're building it.
06:37Does that mean that you should be able to just get in and trundle around, roll people over and blow
06:41them up? I don't know.
06:43People far cleverer than me are figuring that out. How's our content going to look? Will you be able to
06:49take them into dungeons?
06:49We have to decide. What makes sense? We're trying not to rush off and just pile stuff in, and then
06:56break the game, because we didn't think it through sensibly.
06:59What are we going to do with vehicles? Whenever possible, we're going to give them two players, and allow players
07:05to use them in a way that is joyous, balanced, and engaging.
07:09Where it's not possible to do that, we're going to control them. When it's not possible to even control them,
07:15then they will appear in that sort of iconic atmosphere.
07:19Gyrocopters, for instance, are used to move people quickly around the land, because they're great.
07:29One of the great things about our Warhammer background is for 25 years they've been building races, and we know
07:37all about them.
07:38There are great races waiting in the rings. Bretonnians are fantastic! Any excuse to smash the French.
07:44We've got the Vampire Counts. How cool are they? Wet Undead. You can't go wrong. Kemri. The Egyptian Undead. They're
07:54fantastic.
07:54Bone Giants. Chariots. Skaven. Ratmen in all their glory. Neat, neat, neat. Snorting their Warp Storm. It's terrific stuff.
08:03Lustria. Crazy fat power slads. I mean, it's just, it doesn't get any better. So we don't have to spend
08:10much time thinking of new races.
08:12We've got tons of them to play with. Wood Elves. Wood Elves alone. Rock!
08:17So, what we'll be doing is launching the game. It will be a startling and riveting success, because we are
08:23not stupid, and we have done our jobs.
08:25People will play it in their millions. And it'll be so great, people will say to us, what next? And
08:32we won't have to go into a lot of R&D.
08:34We'll literally be able to go, well, let's pick one of the other fantastic races and work that up.
08:40In fact, we already have two documents that we've written all about the sort of things we want to expand
08:45when the game is launched.
08:47And no, I can't tell you about it, because Marc Jacobs is in charge of all that. And quite frankly,
08:52until he decides it can come off his desk and go into public consumption, it's illegal.
09:01Some people out there may be saying to themselves, he's got an easy job. I want that job. I want
09:07to sit in a chair and speak gibberish into video cameras.
09:10He doesn't really do any work. And you might be wondering how you get a job like mine. So I'll
09:15give you a couple of tips.
09:161. Wash. Wash a lot. Nobody comes and talks to people who are smelly. They just don't. It's true.
09:252. Understand what work you can do. Don't tell people you're a great artist if you can't draw.
09:32I always tell people I can't spell and I'm dyslexic, because it's true. And I'm colour blind, because it's true.
09:393. When someone tells you what to do, make sure you understand it. Otherwise, you go and waste your time.
09:464. Always do what you're doing in the timeline they give you to do it in. If you do it,
09:51but it's five weeks late, they won't reward you.
09:565. More importantly, make sure you know people who own computer games companies, who are looking for someone to put
10:03them in, who ring you up and say,
10:045. I'd really like it if you come and be the creative director on our game. That's what you do.
10:09It's all about contacts. It's not about anything else.
10:113. Pleasure!
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