WHO?
Miika Tams
WHAT?
Digital Chocolate, Senior to executive producer, for 3 years;
Non-gaming related consulting, for 1 year;
RedLynx, Lead designer, creative manager to producer, for 5 years;
Housemarque, Designer and lead designer, for 4 years;
Before that: One year of architecture at university, that was the closest thing to gaming studies at the time I could find.
QUICK! WHAT DO THESE BRING TO YOUR MIND?
Nokia N-gage – Did some great games for it. Like Pathway to Glory that won some awards, doing that was grand.
Finnish games boom – What? … Sympathetic
Indie vs. AAA – Other is done for passion to do something, another with the purpose of economic goals. But they could be the same thing also.
Good or bad team – Producer’s fault
Where you are five years from now – Maybe resting somewhere under the palm tree? It is that classic parachute theory, some say, “Then I do nothing for a year!1!” But one month later I’m going to get bored.
Game I play now – Walking Dead. After a long time, it was the kind of a game I played through almost in one sitting. It is perhaps overhyped according to some, but I do not remember when I last was filled with so much genuine emotion the game was full of. In the evenings I was in bed reading a book, and I found myself playing until the early morning .. well, at least until midnight. It is a really simple game, some may think it is just an interactive story. But it was easy, you soon discovered, it was a successful experience, really well-paced dangers, totally incredible solutions, and how it connects with the TV series. And then I tried their other games, and they did not give me emotional bond with the world. It’s classical storytelling method, you’re all the time under the fear of death, it is dangerous. You are continuously under fear. And it is the environment, and you’ve got always two solutions to pick. Do I take care of myself, or of the child assigned to me, or a group. Which is your priority, and then you make a quick decision, some make no sense, and review the situation really fast. Simple drama but really well paced.
HOW TO STRIVE FOR SUCCESS?
In a way, you construct the team to be such that it builds the product. In producer’s point of view, what matters is who is making the product, that the team has been selected well and are ones who know what to do. And you must decide what you want to do, and stick with it. The ship won’t turn into an airplane mid-stream, what I mean is that when you choose what to do, you then commit to it with your fullest. A comparison, every time you start building the Titanic. Not the ship that sails into the iceberg, but that is the largest and finest ever to cross the ocean. So there is the risk you may sail into an iceberg, but every time you make it the finest. Otherwise it would be senseless to even start.
Maybe I’ve always liked like schedules, that things happen in order, and that the gang know what is going on. I’ve always been interested in that, how to organise things. It is no stranger than that. And you notice it helps, you can work on the product better, and thus are better able to influence what is being done and what it will become. I do not analyse myself, rather the product, and then I think about the production team, and then learn along the way. So you move forward and do better with the next game. The game has to be good, but it doesn’t necessarily matter if it is the world best or good. And then the work can succeed. Success may be just a coincidence, so you pursue a certain uniformity in your performance, that you keep the schedule and get the product shipped, that it is done in every way in a sensible way.
WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GAMES CAREER AND OTHER CREATIVE STUFF?
Games are terribly interesting, there is no other industry where I think I would rather work at and have as a profession. The important thing professionally is I do not use my free time for games. If I speak the truth, there’s plenty of things I’ve done, but I don’t have big ambitions in my free time. I just do what I find sort of fun and do creative stuff to release the creativity without any economic goals. With music and art especially, it goes slightly in waves, I have always done the same things since when I was a kid. I have played, used to draw a lot, music, and I’ve always done games. Sometimes I just do more of some of them. With games, when you learn something, and you are able to do it professionally, you get excited. And then you do it because you like it but also because you know about it. And how I see it, I do things that are interesting to me. At its best, it still feels like when you were a teenager, you get the same feeling. I think otherwise you wouldn’t do it this long, without the excitement.
I can’t deny it, honestly, I have to say I play very little. After a few years in the business, I just, I wanted to make a strong separation in a positive and negative sense. That way I am more excited when I get to work. It was a long process, but I noticed suddenly I didn’t play at all, or when I was making the snowboard game, I noticed that wait a second, I was no longer snowboarding. It’s not something you notice at that moment but in the long run, you will notice your Xbox has remained in the closet, you do not plug the leads any longer. Well, sometimes, like the Walking Dead. It took a couple of years, as then I noticed that way the options would have been a burnout and to leave, or to switch industries. You can’t be thinking about games all the time.
I’m excited about the games, of course, and I could play, but it did not work for me. It might be possible for some. And that’s also why I do not really go to game related events that much. The brain needs a rest. I don’t mean, I do have lots and lots of really good friends from the games industry, and we spend our time in gangs, that’s two different things. But it’s probably mostly the experienced people, so they share the situation. And we do not at least play any games! But I do think it is the same for every creative field, if you want to spend more time in the field you have to learn not to do it 24/7, if you want to keep the freshness and distance.
YOU ARE THE FIRST ONE INTERVIEWED WHO HAS SWITCHED FROM CONSOLE TO BROWSER GAMES! WHAT WOULD BE SOME NOTABLE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THEM?
Well the biggest difference was the title product manager! Of course, the business model is very different. So different. But years ago, with the consoles, when the average age in the industry was a little over twenty, and then we went around the world, we hanged out in Alaska filming the mountains, made stuff with a group of dudes… So it was quite a different world than it is now, now there are product managers. You’re like “HUH?, we just did stuff”.
But each has its benefits. Perhaps, how I think about it, the film industry blockbuster idea is closer to console world. With consoles you get the finance first, then there’s a creative vacuum for a long time, it takes years before you talk about customers. Ideologically it is closer to art, but it is an incredibly big risk. And there you, indeed, have an intense schedule, some hurry and even awkward moments. What happens is such a classic, like you have an expedition that gets pulled through the harp in Greenland, and then all of you survive. Something like that might be in a way missing on the casual games side, that production cycle does not have the drama. When you start it is like in a war movie, nowadays it would be The Expendables, that you gather together a gang, it is sort of casted. Then you do it, the task will be completed, and then you are looking at the result from afar, see it in the game stores. It is just different in the classical production, first there’s a little more time, for pre-production, then it gets busy, then you get a little more busier, and it is a difficult journey. You have to treat it that way, and it is good to a certain extent and becomes sort of fun.
Then how I see it, browser games, the casual games are like a sitcom. You make a pilot, then you check how people like it, hone it, and you produce new seasons. If it is good enough, then it stays. It is a bit different, it has a longer arc. It develops. And nobody would want to do it without it developing, it would consume you. And, games do always play the conventions of their genre. You are doing that kind of a game for those users who play that genre. And it is terribly important to realise you must know and give to them what they expect. Sure you make a better one, and all kinds of little gags. But you don’t do something so that they are like, “what is this, what should I do”. So for example, console car games have been around for quite a long time. But with these newer games, the convention is still sailing, things are tried and learned. And then years after, you learn, and the audience, that this style is done this way. Then you just come up with something slightly new, a new story, and a little on how it is marketed. It is a bit like a fresher form of entertainment, browser games, which makes it also really interesting, because the genre conventions are not that worn yet.
* Note: interviews are done in Finnish and translated directly to English, so some minor edits get done after the publishing now and then *
* EDITED 26 April 2013 for consistent outlook *
how i begame me *---(^_^)---* 