DICE Veteran Sebastian Armonioso: "Game developmen

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DICE Veteran Sebastian Armonioso: "Game development was a wake-up call for me"

http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/400x0/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/battlefield_5F00_bad_5F00_company/Sibben.png "Sibben" just stares at you if you happen to mention campers.

Game Designer Sebastian "Sibben" Armonioso has been an avid gamer since the 70's, when the first arcade games appeared [That would be Asteroids for 10 cents -- Editor's note]. Ever since then, his life has revolved around games.

-- Suddenly, I felt the urge to start working with games, as well. Back then, this was hardly an obvious carrier choice -- very few people in Sweden worked with games, and people kind of thought "Do you actually work on games -- don't they just magically appear?" You didn't know who the developers were, or how everything was done. Nowadays, you have loads of university courses in game design to choose from.

-- Anyway, I applied for the job as artist at DICE and got it, and I have been here ever since. This was in the mid 90's. What i really wanted to do was game design, but back then, there weren't really any clear cut roles like that -- game design was pretty much something that everyone dabbled in.

What was your work samples like when you applied?

-- I had done some rendered 3D models at home that I sent to DICE. Since this was pretty long ago, just being able to put textures on stuff meant you were considered pretty cool. They were like: "Nice portfolio -- can you start Monday?" And that was that. I imagine today would be a completely different story.

-- This was when DICE had just bought Refraction Games [Where Lars Gustavsson worked, remember? -- Editor's note], so in my interview I actually got to see the Refractor engine that would later give birth to Battlefield 1942. At the time, this was simply a soldier standing still on a field, but just the fact that you could see really far was cool. And for me to get a glimpse of what would grow into Battlefield 1942 felt amazing.

What was it about Battlefield 1942 that was so cool back then?

-- Well, I think this was when a game usually had either nice graphics or physics. Battlefield 1942 kind of merged all those things: you could run and gun, it had vehicles, and it had huge distances. It was awe-inspiring!

http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/400x0/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/battlefield_5F00_bad_5F00_company/ME1.png Still absolutely breathtaking.

Later on, you did level design for Mirror's Edge. That must have been tough, since it's all first person, but contains a lot of traditional platforming elements?-- Yes. The idea was to include the kind of traditional climbing and jumping that we know from Tomb Raider or Prince of Persia -- but it of course became very complicated because of the first person view. For example, it was hard to judge distances to objects.

So how did you solve those problems?

-- The thing is, we did enormous amounts of prototyping for Mirror's Edge. We created so many different test tracks and tried out all sorts of moves to see what worked and what didn't. That was really key.

How do you view Mirror's Edge today?

-- Artistically, I view it as a huge step forward. We did a lot of things in Mirror's Edge that hadn't been done before, or that we did in new ways. I think that the protagonist, Faith, is still one of the coolest characters ever, and I love the whole setup with the ultra clean city where oppression lingers everywhere. It was perhaps a bit hard and frustrating at times, and it was kind of niche, but I am very proud of this quirky game that dared do things its own way. I was kind of sad that it didn't do better sales-wise, but I think people see it now as a game that truly broke new ground.

And after Mirror's Edge, you moved on to Battlefield 1943 as lead designer?

-- Yes. It was kind of funny, actually. At the time, we were unsure what to do exactly. We had the new Frostbite engine that had been used in Bad Company, and me and Patrick Liu were thinking, wouldn't it be cool to try and rebuild the classic map Wake Island in Frostbite? From there, the idea of a bigger remake wasn't far away. We didn't want to make a carbon copy of Battlefield 1942, just pick the very best parts, and when we realized this was too good to keep on a hobby level, we had the chance to experiment with a new distribution method as well.

http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/400x0/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/battlefield_5F00_bad_5F00_company/1943_2D00_2.png Still absolutely destructible.

How much of Battlefield 1942 did you simply drag over into Frostbite?-- Well, we played a lot of Battlefield 1942 back then, and sort of rediscovered it. We noticed that it was still awesome, but at the same time, it had some design elements that didn't hold up to the test of time. So we tweaked a lot of things.

What kinds of things?

-- They were mainly to do with the tempo and size of everything. You had to wait a long time to spawn, and then you often had to travel large distances to get back into the action, for example. Once we had re-edited and polished it, it was very satisfying to see that Battlefield 1943 became a huge hit, and that our instincts were spot on.

And after that came Medal of Honor. What did you think when you got the assignment to design the multiplayer for it?

-- We didn't want to simply reskin Battlefield and slap on the Medal of Honor logo, that was for sure. At the same time, we wanted to build on our own strengths. So what is it that we can do? Answer: We can build very well-balanced maps with lots of action. I remember thinking: "Can we get closer to Counter-Strike and Quake, while keeping that special DICE touch?"

Medal of Honor is much more focused on infantry than Battlefield. How come?

-- Partly because this was not supposed to be Battlefield. Partly because the whole theme of Medal of Honor is these small infantry squads that operate in Afghanistan -- they simply don't have a lot of tanks or other vehicles down there. We also thought we had a good approach to the faster kind of infantry battles from working with Battlefield 1943, so we wanted to grab the chance to experiment some more with it, and take it further.

Where did the idea for Combat Mission come from?

-- We wanted a multiplayer mode that gave a feel of continuity and story. We were actually inspired a bit by Left 4 Dead, where they do this very well, the way they put everything into context. We try and do the same by use of voiceovers and direction, and how the string of objects in the Comabt Missions all fit together.

What was it like working together with Danger Close?

-- It was cool. We visited them a lot, and they came over here as well. The thing is, for Medal of Honor, we could not simply make up everything we needed -- we relied on the authentic input from Danger Close and the military experts they were working with.

http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/400x0/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/battlefield_5F00_bad_5F00_company/mohmp3.png No time to rest!

So how much freedom did you have during development?-- Well, we could choose what we wanted to take from the singleplayer game, and what we didn't. For example, we didn't include lean or prone, even though they are both in the singleplayer. For multiplayer, it just introduced camping and lowered the tempo.

What is it really like developing games?

-- It's tough. It's a lot of hard work. As a gamer, it's something of a wake-up call to start developing games yourself. You have to learn the hard way that you simply can't include everything you wish into a game.

How do you play games now that you are a developer yourself?

-- I play them a bit differently nowadays. It's hard to detach from my professional self, so I tend to dissect games, much like a director does when he watches movies, I presume. I kind of miss that feeling of total immersion playing games that I could get in the old days.

FOUR FACTS WITH "SIBBEN"

Age: 39

Lives: Stockholm, Sweden

Secret Skill: Pasta Sauce Cooker Extraordinaire

Alignment: Lawful Neutral

GAMEOGRAPHY

Mirror's Edge Level Designer

Battlefield 1943 Lead Designer

Medal of Honor Lead Designer

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