If you recently came upon a man in Washington state who was clinging to the side of his garage, holding a toy gun, and getting his picture snapped by his wife -- and if you asked him what in the world he was doing -- he probably wouldn't lurch into his theory about video games someday conquering all other forms of entertainment. But that is pretty much what put Ed Fries on that ledge.
A longtime rock climber and former head of developer relations for Microsoft's Xbox division, Fries was clutching his garage so that he could demonstrate to the makers of "Dark Void," an upcoming Capcom game about a hero in a jetpack, how a man could hang under a ledge and still have a free hand to shoot a gun. This isn't something rock climbers need to do very often, but jetpacked video game heroes do.
He wanted to help the "Dark Void" team get that part right, because "Dark Void" is yet one more game that Ed Fries hopes will help video games finally take over entertainment
A temporarily broken promise brought Fries to the "Dark Void" project. When he was at Microsoft in the early part of this decade, he worked with key members of Airtight Games, formerly some of the developers of the flight-combat game "Crimson Skies." At that job, years ago, he refused to allow them to add on-foot sequences to their game. "I told them they could do it in their next project," he said in an interview with MTV Multiplayer. "I didn't get to keep my promise." The "Skies" team's next project was cancelled.
In 2005, however, Fries re-connected with them, co-founding Airtight and helping them prepare a game pitch for Capcom. The Airtight team created a slice of a game set in Egypt, involving a battle in a pyramid, combat on a motorcycle, and a few other features that failed to thrill the Japanese publisher. Fries said he pushed the Airtight guys to re-think their ideas and to focus on a comment made by one of the Capcom team members, who had said "3D games aren't really 3D…So much of the action in 3D is really 2D flipped on the side." That was a hint about how Airtight could create something special.
He remembers the look of the studio's lead designer, "a deer caught in the headlights."
Think about that, Fries told the Airtight guys. He remembers a meeting to raly the team and the look of the studio's lead designer, "a deer caught in the headlights." But within a week, that designer, Jose Perez, came back with something called "vertical cover combat" -- essentially "Gears of War" cover-combat tipped on its end, set on the cliff-faces, and enhanced by the ability to fly in any direction with a jetpack. And it's that idea that sent Fries to his garage, hugging the siding of his house while wielding a toy gun, to make a point.
"Dark Void" is now making the press rounds. We recently watched a producer play part of a level in New York. The hero can boost around a level, dropping behind an ambush to tilt the odds. He can scramble and hoist himself up a cliff, clinging under outcroppings to take cover while enemies shoot down from above. He can soar through the sky to jack a UFO. The game is also at E3 this week, one more game with a helmeted hero and a gun, but with a twist that may make it feel like nothing else.
Steal the "Dark Void" idea, Fries came close to advocating, during our interview. He wants the game to feel novel and important. "Hopefully we'll have our piece in influencing the future," he said. "You have to have new development teams trying new things, putting out titles that haven't been seen before. At Airtight we can draw on the experience that we have with other titles and put that into this new game but I think you'll see these ideas of verticality that we've developed in 'Dark Void' [elsewhere] -- whether 'Dark Void' is a success or not people are going to look at them and say, 'Hey, these are new ideas. Let's incorporate them.'"
Fries has released over 100 games. This new one, set for release next year, is one step closer to a larger goal. "For me my whole career challenge has been: I want to beat television. I want to beat movies. I want interactive entertainment to be the biggest form of entertainment, the most powerful, that reaches the most people. We're not there yet. But we're getting closer than we were 25 years ago. I think that interactive entertainment is fundamentally more compelling form of entertainment than anything else that's out there."
That's what puts a man on his garage. That's what brought "Dark Void" to E3.
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