EVA 2009

.Interview with Nick Fortugno

Nicholas Fortugno (born May 13, 1975) is an American game designer and educator. Fortugno is perhaps best known for designing Diner Dash, a top-selling casual game developed by Gamelab, and the award-winning Ayiti: The Cost of Life. We chated with him before his participation in EVA 2009, where he’ll be delivering a keynote and running a workshop.

How did you got into games?

I was a tabletop roleplayer and board game player since I was five. When I was in college, I started running live-action roleplaying games, and my more experimental and artistic work introduced me to Gamelab. I was hired as an intern there because of my LARP work, and worked my way up.

What’s LARP?

Live-action roleplaying. It’s sort of like interactive theater, except there’s no audience.

What sort of people would you find in those performances?

Oh, the range was pretty huge. All people interested in performance, but that ranged from actors to bankers to students to lawyers. A decent percentage of crazy people as well, but not as bad as you might fear.

Tell me about Gamelab, what was it like there?

Great. Gamelab was very committed to innovation, and Eric Zimmerman and Peter Lee were very open to design discussions and creative disagreements. Frank Lantz was also there when I started, so it was an amazingly brilliant and creative collection of people.

Casual games brought a lot of new people into games, was this your initial objective?

We knew it was a market, but we didn’t know how big it was going to become. We were interested in it because there was business in terms of publishing there, and because it was a new audience and that meant we could do new kinds of design.

What are the main differences you see between current casual games and the ones you where doing in Gamelab?

Well, casual games have started to calcify around hidden-object games. There’s even less incentive to innovate then there was then. This is not saying that there was a lot of innovation then, but at least you could find partners interested in expanding the market.

Also, the iPhone and Facebook didn’t exist as gaming platform. Of course, I would argue that FB is even worse on innovation than casual games are.

On the other hand, the web has exploded as a place for interesting design. The question is how to monetize that, but there’s so much creativity there it inspires me.

Is there room for new mechanics in casual games?

Of course. I think the most arrogant thought in the casual games space is that we now totally understand the audience.

I mean, we’ve been doing this for only 10 years. I think there’s still a lot of things we can learn about who will play these games and what they want.

This is true about single-player games generally, by the way. 40 years is not a long time for a creative industry.

Maybe it will take some time for people to relax about new ways to play.

I Agree. The audience will also get more sophisticated. Look at hidden-object games. They started as I Spy games, now they are Myst games, and they are a small step away from LucasArts games.

Let’s switch subject a bit. How do you begin a new project? What are they key aspects you determine initially to get started?

Who is the audience? What kinds of games do they like? What desires does that show? What is the budget and scope? What is the platform? What has worked on that platform in the past? What does the technology allow?

How do you approach that? Do you do formal market research?

Some market research. We keep up on analysis for any field we’re interested. But frankly, you can learn a lot just by looking at the most successful games in the space.

What do you look for in them?

What kind of play do they produce? How complex are they? How difficult do they get? What kind of content do they have, and how much story? All of these questions are litmus tests for the audience’s interests and tolerances.

It’s abstract, but that’s the way you need to study games if you want to innovate successfully.

Do you start with a mechanic, a theme?

Depends on the project. It can go either way. With client work, it’s almost always theme first. Independent work can come from either direction.

In other creative industries the concept of auteur is very clear: directors for movies, authors for books, composers for songs. Game Designers, specially independent ones seem to be emerging as the auteur for games. What do you think about that?

I think it’s a good thing overall. It creates celebrities that can shepherd projects in the industry and be focuses for attention outside of it. It also opens the door for greater chances on experimentation, which is healthy for the whole industry.

You seem a bit skeptical though.

Well, games aren’t made by single people. Unless you’re Jason Rohrer, you had a team. I like rewarding teams. Still, it’s good to have faces to represent things, and I think the industry desperately needs some faces in mainstream culture.

But you talk about rewarding in a way like if the rewards come from someone in particular, not the audience of game players.

I think we’re a creative field that is still not recognized as an art fully. Casual players still don’t really think of themselves as game players. I think that audience needs to be prouder of play. It’s not that I want more focus from a non-player group, I want players to see gaming on par with other creative media, and celebrity is something that can help that.

Where do you get inspiration for your work outside of games?

Honestly, everything, but if I try to narrow that down, certainly other art forms (painting, theater, film, etc.) and life experiences that are new for me. I deliberately try new things just to experience them. I think that keeps you alive as an artist.

What would you expect to see in a latin american game?

Hmm…I think that Latin American games have shown a quality in art production that I’ve come to expect. I guess I think it’s a region that generally produces quality work, regardless of the success of an individual title. There’s been a little experimentation, although not as much as I see in the States.

Thanks for everything Nick.

Sure thing. Take care.