The Untold Story Behind the Design of Transistor - Documentary

00:36:31
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL2Pk2jP_6s

摘要

TLDRThe video provides an in-depth look at the development of Supergiant Games' second title, "Transistor," following their successful debut game "Bastion." The team faced creative pressures and challenges in designing a game that would not only live up to their first game but also differentiate itself in terms of identity. Initially, development was fraught with struggles, especially in defining the storyline and main characters. The original protagonist concept involved a boxer with a spirit friend, but the team later pivoted to focus on Red, a singer who loses her voice, wielding a mysterious weapon. The development process was long and iterative, with many ideas revised or discarded over time. The team also focused on innovation in gameplay, trying to incorporate strategic elements into the action RPG genre. Music and art played crucial roles in shaping the game's distinct identity, with contributions from various team members aimed at integrating narrative and gameplay elements seamlessly. Despite initial fears about the game's reception, "Transistor" was well-received, solidifying Supergiant's reputation for creating innovative and deeply engaging games.

心得

  • 🎮 Creative pressure to match and exceed Bastion's success.
  • 🔄 Iterative design process with numerous revisions.
  • 🛠️ Challenges in defining the game's story and characters.
  • 🎶 Integration of music as a key narrative component.
  • 🔄 Shift from original concept to focus on character Red.
  • 🎨 Unique art style influenced by cyberpunk and art nouveau.
  • 🧩 Development of strategic gameplay elements.
  • 👥 Involvement of the full team in the creative process.
  • 📈 Fear of sophomore slump mitigated by the game's success.
  • 🎼 Role of music in setting the tone and enhancing the story.

时间轴

  • 00:00:00 - 00:05:00

    The team felt pressure to create a game as successful as Bastion. Transistor went through major redesigns and creative struggles. Discussions about the new game started after Bastion's release. The team wanted something distinct from Bastion, not just a sequel, aiming to make a game with a strong identity and atmosphere.

  • 00:05:00 - 00:10:00

    The goal for Transistor was a sci-fi love story with more tactical gameplay. The challenge was integrating all team members and voices in the creative process. Pre-production took 19-20 months with struggles in story, character, and gameplay development, requiring new innovative solutions different from Bastion.

  • 00:10:00 - 00:15:00

    Transistor faced invisible pressure from Bastion's success. The team wanted to avoid the "sophomore slump." They aimed to make Transistor more strategic with turn-based elements inspired by games like X-COM and Advance Wars. The story initially had different characters and was redefined to feature a singer named Red.

  • 00:15:00 - 00:20:00

    The story for Transistor evolved over time, starting with different protagonists and eventually focusing on Red, a singer with a story involving loss and revenge. The design shifted from a fantasy idea to a cyberpunk setting, which was challenging but finally clicked with new character concepts and art direction.

  • 00:20:00 - 00:25:00

    The game's mechanics were complex, especially the function system that allowed various power combinations. The team worked on making Red's abilities versatile in combat with strategic elements. Emphasis was on creating engaging AI and a design that encouraged players to explore different strategies and setups.

  • 00:25:00 - 00:30:00

    Transistor's release was daunting for the team as they feared negative comparisons to Bastion. However, it exceeded expectations and allowed the team to continue developing games. Players appreciated the unique blend of story, atmosphere, and gameplay, and over time, Transistor gained widespread recognition.

  • 00:30:00 - 00:36:31

    Transistor's music and narrative were crafted to integrate deeply with the game world. Darren Korb and Ashley Barrett worked on music that resonated with the story of Red, creating an emotional experience. The game emphasized player choice and innovative mechanics, avoiding traditional difficulty settings.

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思维导图

视频问答

  • What was the initial concept for Transistor?

    The initial concept involved a protagonist who was a boxer with a spirit friend.

  • Who became the final protagonist in Transistor?

    The final protagonist was Red, a singer who loses her voice.

  • What was one of the major design challenges faced during the development of Transistor?

    One major challenge was integrating a sci-fi story with strategic gameplay elements.

  • How did the team address the narrative component in gameplay?

    The narrative was integrated with strategic and action RPG elements, supported by strong music and art contributions.

  • What influenced the art style of Transistor?

    The art style was influenced by cyberpunk aesthetics and art nouveau.

  • What was the music's role in the game?

    Music played a crucial role in setting the game's tone and was integral to expressing the main character's narrative.

  • How did the team feel about the sequel's potential success?

    The team had fears about a sophomore slump but ultimately felt elated with the game's positive reception.

  • What changed in the protagonist's design during development?

    The design changed from a boxer character to Red, focusing on an emotional sci-fi narrative.

  • How did the team encourage gameplay variety?

    They integrated over 3000 combinations of actions but recognized players often chose familiar strategies.

  • What was a unique element of the gameplay design?

    Incorporating a strategic component into an action RPG with tactical elements inspired by games like XCOM.

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  • 00:00:00
    [TYPING NOISES]
  • 00:00:09
    - There is a feeling, I think, amongst
  • 00:00:11
    most if not all of us that, like,
  • 00:00:13
    whatever this game turned out to be,
  • 00:00:15
    or was, had to be at least as good
  • 00:00:18
    as Bastion, so there was that pressure.
  • 00:00:21
    DANNY: Transistor obviously went through
  • 00:00:24
    a pretty significant redesign and a
  • 00:00:26
    lot of sort of, like, creative struggles
  • 00:00:28
    to try and find its feet.
  • 00:00:31
    DANNY: Can you tell us about that time
  • 00:00:33
    the story it originally had, and kind of
  • 00:00:35
    where you ended up?
  • 00:00:36
    - [LAUGHS] What?
  • 00:00:38
    - Yeah, but like, how much
  • 00:00:40
    have they revealed to you?
  • 00:00:44
    - Yeah. Ooh, boy, Um.
  • 00:00:48
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
  • 00:01:02
    - We were done with Bastion in, like, May,
  • 00:01:04
    even though it didn't come out until July
  • 00:01:06
    in the year 2011. So we'd been done with
  • 00:01:09
    Bastion for a long time.
  • 00:01:10
    We only started talking about Transistor seriously
  • 00:01:12
    in September of that year so all this time
  • 00:01:14
    we're kind of on pins and needles,
  • 00:01:16
    both kind of cooling off
  • 00:01:18
    from having worked, from having pushed ourselves
  • 00:01:21
    to make Bastion the best it could be
  • 00:01:23
    And also, like, realizing that
  • 00:01:26
    yeah, we could make something else.
  • 00:01:29
    So the conversat-- The kind of
  • 00:01:31
    official conversations about what our
  • 00:01:33
    next game would be didn't start for
  • 00:01:35
    quite some time. We quite quickly
  • 00:01:37
    decided that we wanted to make
  • 00:01:39
    something new. It might have been
  • 00:01:41
    the kind of fiscally responsible,
  • 00:01:45
    decision to just, like, make a Bastion 2
  • 00:01:48
    in light of the success of the first one,
  • 00:01:50
    but we never thought of Supergiant
  • 00:01:53
    as like, the Bastion studio.
  • 00:01:55
    Bastion was just our expression of
  • 00:01:57
    the kind of game we wanted to make,
  • 00:01:59
    the kind of work we wanted to do.
  • 00:02:00
    But it was not like, oh, we must make
  • 00:02:02
    this one game, and this is our, like,
  • 00:02:04
    one great idea that we've been
  • 00:02:07
    stewing on all our lives.
  • 00:02:08
    We, like, many of this ideas of Bastion
  • 00:02:11
    just happened, you know, while we were working
  • 00:02:13
    on the game, so it's like, hey, we
  • 00:02:16
    made this thing up, and people liked it.
  • 00:02:19
    Let's see if we could do that again
  • 00:02:21
    and make another game that can assert
  • 00:02:23
    its own identity strongly, leave players with a
  • 00:02:27
    lasting and positive impression, and have
  • 00:02:29
    like a strong world-building and atmosphere,
  • 00:02:32
    and interesting gameplay, and all the pieces
  • 00:02:34
    would feel complete in their own right.
  • 00:02:36
    And yet, it would be very distinct
  • 00:02:38
    from Bastion.
  • 00:02:40
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
  • 00:02:44
    - We kind of wanted to make a sci-fi love story,
  • 00:02:46
    and we wanted a game that had more
  • 00:02:49
    tactical pleasures while still building on
  • 00:02:51
    everything we learned with Bastion.
  • 00:02:53
    Challenges of Transistor at the beginning were twofold.
  • 00:02:55
    The first thing was how do we make
  • 00:02:58
    a game now that all the team members are here?
  • 00:03:00
    'Cause now our creative process from the start
  • 00:03:02
    has to incorporate all seven members
  • 00:03:04
    of this team. And we actually decided we wanted
  • 00:03:06
    to grow our team, too. So we had to incorporate more
  • 00:03:08
    voices and visions in the room from the very
  • 00:03:10
    beginning, and we'd never done that before.
  • 00:03:12
    And so Transistor was the first time we had to
  • 00:03:14
    start a game together, and that took a really long time.
  • 00:03:16
    Pre-production for the game was like 19 or 20 months.
  • 00:03:19
    We were struggling with the world. We were struggling
  • 00:03:21
    with the main character. We were struggling with
  • 00:03:23
    the integration of voiceover, with the musical
  • 00:03:25
    voice, with the gameplay, with the meta game,
  • 00:03:28
    with the length, with the number of characters,
  • 00:03:31
    with the process. You know, we were working
  • 00:03:34
    out of an office in San Francisco now.
  • 00:03:36
    Everything was different, and how could it be so
  • 00:03:38
    different, 'cause it's all the same people
  • 00:03:40
    working on the game?
  • 00:03:41
    - Just that litany of really hard
  • 00:03:46
    to solve creative and design problems
  • 00:03:50
    all throughout that game. And part of what
  • 00:03:52
    made it hard for us is that we were
  • 00:03:54
    so concerned with Transistor asserting its
  • 00:03:59
    own strong identity that really good
  • 00:04:02
    solutions that we developed for Bastion
  • 00:04:04
    we felt were off the table.
  • 00:04:06
    We can't do that 'cause that's Bastion's thing.
  • 00:04:09
    We have to come up with another solution.
  • 00:04:11
    And Bastion was, like, our entire life experience
  • 00:04:14
    good-- Like, all the good ideas we ever had
  • 00:04:16
    we put into Bastion. And then it's like,
  • 00:04:19
    now try to come up with some more good ones
  • 00:04:21
    without using any of the ones that you did
  • 00:04:24
    on your last game.
  • 00:04:25
    AMIR: We explored, like, a bunch of different
  • 00:04:27
    camera angles, and then came to the one
  • 00:04:29
    we liked, and, you know part of that was us struggling
  • 00:04:31
    with putting a game in a city. We don't just
  • 00:04:33
    want to look at rooftops. You know, you play RTS games,
  • 00:04:35
    you only looking at ceilings. Like, we gotta get
  • 00:04:37
    more character into the city. It needs to have, like, all this
  • 00:04:40
    blah, blah, blah. We settle on a camera angle.
  • 00:04:42
    It looks almost the same as the camera
  • 00:04:44
    angle in Bastion, and that took forever.
  • 00:04:46
    You know? And I can't say, oh, that's
  • 00:04:49
    Bastion's fault. You know, that's us learning and
  • 00:04:51
    growing over time. But there was all these kinds of pressures.
  • 00:04:53
    The second thing that was very challenging about
  • 00:04:55
    Transistor is something we didn't talk about much, which is like,
  • 00:04:58
    the invisible pressure of Bastion.
  • 00:05:00
    We had made something that turned out to be
  • 00:05:02
    really, really, well liked. And now we didn't want
  • 00:05:04
    to let people down. Now we had rent
  • 00:05:06
    and health insurance. [LAUGHS]
  • 00:05:07
    And we didn't want to, like, have our company
  • 00:05:09
    just end, 'cause everything felt like
  • 00:05:11
    it should be something that could last.
  • 00:05:14
    - We never spoke about the whole
  • 00:05:16
    like, sophomore slump thing through the
  • 00:05:17
    three years of development on Transistor.
  • 00:05:20
    But I bet we were all, like, in the back of our--
  • 00:05:22
    It's part of why, it was like the elephant in the room.
  • 00:05:24
    It was like, well, don't screw this up.
  • 00:05:31
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
  • 00:05:39
    Having made a kind of very arcadey
  • 00:05:41
    like, pick up and play game in Bastion,
  • 00:05:43
    we were like, hey, let's make things a little
  • 00:05:45
    bit more deliberate, suspenseful,
  • 00:05:47
    and let's basically see if we can
  • 00:05:50
    infuse, like, a strategic component
  • 00:05:52
    into our action RPG mix,
  • 00:05:54
    almost like a tactical, turn-based tactical game.
  • 00:05:56
    You know, we were thinking about like X-COM and Advance Wars,
  • 00:05:59
    stuff like that. Can we infuse that type
  • 00:06:01
    of drama, where you, like, hit that
  • 00:06:03
    enter in button, and you're like, oh my god, am I gonna--
  • 00:06:05
    Is this going to be a total disaster? Like, get that
  • 00:06:07
    kind of drama into the moment to moment play.
  • 00:06:10
    - How can we get the feelings of turn-based
  • 00:06:13
    combat without necessarily making a turn-based
  • 00:06:15
    combat game? So that was mostly what we were
  • 00:06:17
    going for. And we tried a lot of different things.
  • 00:06:19
    And one of the hardest things for us to manage
  • 00:06:22
    in that combat style was how, like,
  • 00:06:25
    when is the enemy turn? Like, when is the enemy phase?
  • 00:06:28
    Because if you can plan out all your moves,
  • 00:06:30
    like, when does the enemy have a chance to
  • 00:06:33
    to strike, and how do you play
  • 00:06:35
    defense in a game with the ability to
  • 00:06:39
    kind of plan out your actions?
  • 00:06:40
    - The transistor itself was not a
  • 00:06:44
    factor in the story at all.
  • 00:06:46
    For a long time, the name Transistor
  • 00:06:49
    was not there. We were like, prototyping
  • 00:06:51
    the story and starting to get levels
  • 00:06:55
    up and running, and kind of--
  • 00:06:57
    But, man. It was, it was just not
  • 00:06:59
    happening. We were not feeling it.
  • 00:07:01
    We were trying to kind of concept
  • 00:07:03
    this protagonist character and this partner character.
  • 00:07:07
    - The original character was initially meant to be
  • 00:07:10
    a boxer, someone who fought with
  • 00:07:12
    his fists, which, you know, I
  • 00:07:14
    think everyone was into. Greg and I
  • 00:07:17
    were both into it. Like, we both have
  • 00:07:19
    our favorite boxer characters for, like,
  • 00:07:21
    Street Fighter, anime. There's tons of awesome dudes who
  • 00:07:24
    fight with their fist. He was a boxer
  • 00:07:28
    with a spirit friend, because, again, we had a
  • 00:07:34
    one player game in Bastion, or a single protagonist
  • 00:07:37
    game where you were kind of alone
  • 00:07:39
    in the world. And in Transistor,
  • 00:07:41
    I think we may have thought, like this was our one where we
  • 00:07:45
    could make you feel less alone.
  • 00:07:47
    - So Red was not the original protagonist of the game.
  • 00:07:49
    The transistor guy was. There is a theory that
  • 00:07:54
    maybe players were kind of slow to
  • 00:07:58
    latch onto Bastion because they may have
  • 00:08:00
    been dismissing it as like, a kids' game.
  • 00:08:03
    So there sort of was the plan with game number two
  • 00:08:07
    was like, OK, the lead is just going to
  • 00:08:09
    be, like, a badass dude, like many, many other
  • 00:08:13
    video games.
  • 00:08:13
    JEN: Red was actually the deceased
  • 00:08:15
    girlfriend of the protagonist.
  • 00:08:19
    And she was a singer and a star
  • 00:08:21
    and it was kind of like this more
  • 00:08:23
    noir-ish feeling storyline, I think.
  • 00:08:27
    You know, we spent kind of months, I think,
  • 00:08:31
    shilly shallying through those ideas.
  • 00:08:35
    And I must have drawn 30 or 40
  • 00:08:39
    iterations of the character until
  • 00:08:44
    finally Greg was like, you know,
  • 00:08:46
    do you want to try something else?
  • 00:08:49
    - We realized that we weren't really
  • 00:08:51
    into this kind of story that
  • 00:08:53
    we were telling, this character that
  • 00:08:55
    we were developing. And so we went back
  • 00:08:59
    to an idea that actually predates
  • 00:09:03
    even the release of Bastion. It was
  • 00:09:05
    from an idea that Jen Z,
  • 00:09:07
    our art director, and I talked about
  • 00:09:09
    on the drive back from E3.
  • 00:09:12
    It was going to be a fantasy game.
  • 00:09:14
    There's a woman who's just kind of like a
  • 00:09:17
    unassuming woman kind of working at, like, a fantasy tavern.
  • 00:09:21
    And one day she falls in love with
  • 00:09:25
    a traveling wizard, but one day after that,
  • 00:09:31
    some people come for this wizard and kill him
  • 00:09:37
    with a powerful kind of demonic blade.
  • 00:09:40
    But in the struggle the blade is lost.
  • 00:09:42
    And she picks up this blade and miraculously hears
  • 00:09:49
    the voice of this guy that she fell in love with
  • 00:09:53
    speaking to her from it, and proceeds
  • 00:09:55
    to have her revenge.
  • 00:09:58
    That was an idea that Jen and I were
  • 00:10:00
    excited about but was not a game that we ended up
  • 00:10:03
    making, obviously. So it's kind of like, well,
  • 00:10:05
    that was cool, but we're just shooting,
  • 00:10:10
    shooting the breeze driving home from E3.
  • 00:10:13
    So the surprise was that that idea actually
  • 00:10:16
    stuck, and we came back, when we were trying to problem solve
  • 00:10:20
    what to do with the story of Transistor, it's like,
  • 00:10:22
    god damn it, why aren't we doing that?
  • 00:10:25
    That was the story that we wanted to make.
  • 00:10:27
    But to me, I was like, Jen, like,
  • 00:10:30
    that only works because it's fantasy.
  • 00:10:34
    Because you can't have, like, a--
  • 00:10:36
    You can't have, like, a demonic
  • 00:10:39
    rune sword in a science fiction setting, right?
  • 00:10:41
    Jen is like, hold my beer.
  • 00:10:44
    - I was like, OK, I love drawing girls.
  • 00:10:46
    [LAUGHS] I got this.
  • 00:10:49
    And within, like, an hour,
  • 00:10:51
    I had reduced a couple drawings, I think,
  • 00:10:53
    a couple concepts, like very rough.
  • 00:10:55
    And immediately I think both Greg and I
  • 00:10:58
    just felt like it was so much stronger
  • 00:11:01
    and so much more exciting.
  • 00:11:03
    - And she comes back with the first
  • 00:11:05
    illustration of Red and the transistor,
  • 00:11:07
    which is very, very close to her
  • 00:11:10
    final design. She got it basically
  • 00:11:13
    95% of the way there on her first shot.
  • 00:11:16
    And it was one of those things. We, like,
  • 00:11:18
    went and showed this to the team.
  • 00:11:20
    Because everyone on the team had their different
  • 00:11:22
    feelings about where the game should be.
  • 00:11:24
    And we were looking for that visceral reaction of, like,
  • 00:11:27
    whoa, like, yes. Say no more.
  • 00:11:30
    And that's what happened.
  • 00:11:32
    - It was, like, such a eureka moment
  • 00:11:34
    when I first saw Jen's
  • 00:11:36
    concept art for Red with the transistor,
  • 00:11:40
    now just wielding it. It just made so
  • 00:11:43
    much more sense, and just clicked immediately.
  • 00:11:46
    GREG: Even though we made a really
  • 00:11:48
    dramatic change to what the story of
  • 00:11:50
    Transistor was going to be, it was still
  • 00:11:52
    working with a lot of what we had
  • 00:11:54
    developed to that point. 'Cause we were
  • 00:11:56
    still working on a story about, that always
  • 00:11:59
    was going to involve a singer who,
  • 00:12:03
    whose voice was taken from her, except
  • 00:12:05
    she was actually going to be essentially
  • 00:12:07
    dead, and you played as this other
  • 00:12:09
    guy who loved her, who was in this
  • 00:12:12
    relationship with her, who was committed to trying
  • 00:12:15
    to bring her back. We essentially
  • 00:12:17
    role reserved that story, where it was now
  • 00:12:19
    going to be about Red, and this other guy was
  • 00:12:21
    the one who was dead, and her quest
  • 00:12:25
    to bring this guy back. So when you
  • 00:12:27
    kind of go back through some of our earlier
  • 00:12:29
    concepts, it's for sure we evolved the
  • 00:12:32
    characters and other aspects of the story a great deal
  • 00:12:34
    but we didn't completely start over from that
  • 00:12:38
    perspective. So that gave us a lot of
  • 00:12:41
    our momentum back. We're like, OK,
  • 00:12:42
    This is Red's story. Got it.
  • 00:12:45
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
  • 00:12:53
    - We took a lot of iterations actually to
  • 00:12:55
    get to the point where we kind of cracked
  • 00:12:58
    what we wanted out of the game, which was
  • 00:13:01
    you know, Red could stop time at any moment,
  • 00:13:03
    plan the actions. But the actions you took
  • 00:13:05
    are the same ones you can take in real time.
  • 00:13:07
    They're not special or distinct in that way.
  • 00:13:10
    They take up a certain amount of your focus bar.
  • 00:13:12
    And once you-- or that was the development name for it,
  • 00:13:16
    the turn bar. [LAUGHING]
  • 00:13:18
    And once you're-- Once you have
  • 00:13:20
    everything planned, you can hit a button.
  • 00:13:22
    You watch her execute all the moves in
  • 00:13:24
    real time, but then there's a recovery period
  • 00:13:26
    where only, you know, one defensive
  • 00:13:30
    power is able to be used. And that recovery
  • 00:13:32
    period ended up being the enemy phase.
  • 00:13:34
    It suddenly unlocked a bunch of stuff. It meant
  • 00:13:36
    that we could actually have hyper-aggressive
  • 00:13:38
    enemies, and it felt thematically relevant
  • 00:13:41
    to that game, where Red is being hunted down by
  • 00:13:43
    the Process. They could have the kind of
  • 00:13:45
    oppressive capabilities that even the enemies
  • 00:13:47
    in Bastion couldn't really have, because you
  • 00:13:49
    always had in your back pocket the ability to
  • 00:13:51
    stop the game, plan out your actions.
  • 00:13:53
    - You know, when we're making the AI for
  • 00:13:55
    a game, if you focus usually
  • 00:13:59
    is not on just how to make it really
  • 00:14:01
    good. You know, you can make an enemy that just
  • 00:14:03
    perfectly dodges out of the way of the player
  • 00:14:06
    at the very last second every single time.
  • 00:14:08
    That's not going to be a good experience.
  • 00:14:10
    So the goal is usually to make something,
  • 00:14:13
    you know, that feels more natural and is just
  • 00:14:15
    kind of, like, fun for the player to fight against,
  • 00:14:17
    that kind of give natural openings for the player
  • 00:14:20
    to attack, and, you know, doesn't let the player
  • 00:14:22
    fall into the same pattern over and over again,
  • 00:14:24
    but without doing things that are unfair.
  • 00:14:26
    If you take a, you know, shooter, for example,
  • 00:14:29
    an easier example, like the easiest possible
  • 00:14:31
    thing is just to have, tell the AI always
  • 00:14:34
    aim directly at the center of the opponent's head.
  • 00:14:37
    That's really easy. Coming up with, like,
  • 00:14:39
    what the, you know, system or algorithm
  • 00:14:43
    or heuristic is to make them kind of like
  • 00:14:45
    you know, miss in a natural way,
  • 00:14:47
    that's actually a much more difficult problem.
  • 00:14:49
    JEN: We had talked about them
  • 00:14:51
    as being products of what we were
  • 00:14:53
    internally calling the virus. In speaking of it
  • 00:14:57
    as a virus, and especially in a world where
  • 00:15:00
    we were kind of following this more art nouveau
  • 00:15:02
    and softer look, it just kind of felt
  • 00:15:06
    appropriate to make these feel a little, like, fleshier.
  • 00:15:11
    And then the other side of it is that I--
  • 00:15:13
    As mentioned, I think a lot of the enemy
  • 00:15:17
    design in Bastion was far too intricate.
  • 00:15:21
    And in Transistor, I swore to myself
  • 00:15:24
    that I would simplify, so the enemy designs are
  • 00:15:29
    far simpler in Transistor, and I think that's for the better.
  • 00:15:36
    [WHOOSH]
  • 00:15:40
    The function system in Transistor was like a joy
  • 00:15:43
    to make because it led to a lot of discovery on team,
  • 00:15:45
    like you would put two combinations together.
  • 00:15:47
    And the discovery on team is usually like, this doesn't do anything.
  • 00:15:50
    So we have to make it do something
  • 00:15:53
    and work, so a lot of it was
  • 00:15:57
    trial and error, putting stuff together,
  • 00:15:59
    figuring stuff out. And we had a lot of people
  • 00:16:02
    on the team helping us figure those things out.
  • 00:16:04
    - The, I mean, the whole, you know, code
  • 00:16:06
    theme of that game was, of course,
  • 00:16:10
    very intentional on Greg's part.
  • 00:16:12
    Definitely throughout that project, he would, like, ask me
  • 00:16:15
    just little things, like the formatting of, like,
  • 00:16:17
    there was, like, comments on some of
  • 00:16:20
    the, you know, character inspect screens there
  • 00:16:23
    that are, you know, look like what
  • 00:16:25
    the actual comments in code look like,
  • 00:16:27
    and the name of various functions.
  • 00:16:30
    Or I think there's like a NaN,
  • 00:16:32
    a NaN in the game, which stands for
  • 00:16:35
    not a number, which is like a programming
  • 00:16:37
    term or math term for when you
  • 00:16:39
    divide by zero. So we talked about
  • 00:16:41
    that stuff, and those were a lot of fun.
  • 00:16:43
    Fun little details to add to the game.
  • 00:16:46
    - There was so many disastrous versions of this
  • 00:16:48
    system that finally culminated in
  • 00:16:50
    an idea that I believe Gavin had about
  • 00:16:54
    consolidating our powers and upgrades into a
  • 00:16:56
    single thing. And, you know, Greg brought the
  • 00:16:58
    function metaphor and helped us make sense of all of this.
  • 00:17:01
    So you would just take a power,
  • 00:17:03
    you'd put it in the slot,
  • 00:17:04
    you could put a power on top of it,
  • 00:17:05
    which would change it. And you could put a
  • 00:17:07
    power in a passive slot, which would change it.
  • 00:17:09
    And there would only be 16 things now
  • 00:17:11
    instead of like 116 things.
  • 00:17:12
    - You know, we ended up with, I believe,
  • 00:17:14
    the 16 functions that could, you know,
  • 00:17:16
    interact with each other in pretty much every different
  • 00:17:19
    combination, and just coming up with
  • 00:17:22
    you know, what happens when you put this function on this
  • 00:17:26
    function, or, you know, vice versa, or put this
  • 00:17:28
    one in a passive slot. We love when players
  • 00:17:31
    kind of have an idea of like, oh,
  • 00:17:33
    when I see these two, maybe if I combine
  • 00:17:35
    these in this way and use them against,
  • 00:17:37
    you know, this monster, then it might--
  • 00:17:39
    It might be a really cool outcome.
  • 00:17:42
    And then having them, you know, collect those
  • 00:17:44
    things, and put them together, and seeing that happen.
  • 00:17:46
    - That simplification and streamlining took a long
  • 00:17:48
    time to get to, and, you know, when you have
  • 00:17:52
    broad, ambitious, at least for our scale,
  • 00:17:58
    kinds of ideas, stuff takes longer to make.
  • 00:18:01
    It takes longer to figure out, and that was
  • 00:18:04
    just the process on Transistor. Everything was slow.
  • 00:18:07
    - Even though this idea of, like,
  • 00:18:09
    her and her sort of, like, talking sword
  • 00:18:12
    seemed very clear, at least to,
  • 00:18:14
    at least to someone like me, it turned out to be
  • 00:18:17
    a big challenge to convey that
  • 00:18:19
    in a video game, and we started testing it
  • 00:18:22
    on people, and they were like, oh,
  • 00:18:24
    you guys are doing the narration thing again.
  • 00:18:26
    And I'm like, oh my god.
  • 00:18:27
    They didn't know where the voice was coming from.
  • 00:18:30
    It was a mess. So the way we
  • 00:18:32
    where's the voice coming from is through
  • 00:18:34
    through, like, we-- An engineer, Chris Jurney,
  • 00:18:37
    who was working with us at the time, he
  • 00:18:39
    was able to get the thing going,
  • 00:18:42
    I think with help from the rest of our engineering team,
  • 00:18:45
    so that the sword would flash in sync with
  • 00:18:47
    the speech. And like, that, it actually
  • 00:18:50
    took quite a bit, but thankfully, as soon as we got
  • 00:18:52
    the sword flashing in sync with the speech, people were like,
  • 00:18:55
    oh yeah, it's the sword talking. Duh.
  • 00:18:57
    You know, and we're like, oh, thank god.
  • 00:18:59
    - I was excited about the concept.
  • 00:19:01
    But I also was like incredibly intimidated,
  • 00:19:03
    because when you think about sci-fi,
  • 00:19:07
    like I just think sci-fi worlds are
  • 00:19:09
    harder to execute because they
  • 00:19:11
    require you to kind of creatively
  • 00:19:16
    ideate around things that are more
  • 00:19:19
    modern and therefore things that people
  • 00:19:22
    have more expectations around.
  • 00:19:24
    I also hate drawing buildings.
  • 00:19:26
    But I told the guys, you know, in isometric,
  • 00:19:30
    you know, a building in the foreground is just going to obscure
  • 00:19:32
    100% of gameplay. So we need to have
  • 00:19:36
    shorter buildings. We can maybe have
  • 00:19:38
    taller buildings in the background.
  • 00:19:39
    Well, we can sell the idea of going
  • 00:19:42
    amongst really tall skyscrapers,
  • 00:19:44
    but we can't actually show it.
  • 00:19:46
    - When it comes to, like the idea of a sci-fi
  • 00:19:49
    love story, we kind of had to drill down
  • 00:19:52
    into what that meant. We realized quickly
  • 00:19:54
    that we weren't interested in the kind of
  • 00:19:56
    sci-fi that was kind of very far-flung.
  • 00:20:00
    It wasn't going to be, like, laser guns and
  • 00:20:02
    spaceships and stuff like that.
  • 00:20:03
    We were much more interested in like, kind of the
  • 00:20:05
    cyberpunk genre, something that felt very
  • 00:20:07
    grounded, and actually kind of modern.
  • 00:20:10
    In that respect, it would take on some of the
  • 00:20:12
    like, anachronistic elements of Bastion.
  • 00:20:15
    But whereas Bastion has this, like,
  • 00:20:17
    frontiersy feel to it, this would have like a
  • 00:20:20
    modern, almost like a roaring twenties,
  • 00:20:24
    20th century kind of feel,
  • 00:20:26
    but still have, like, a high-tech
  • 00:20:28
    component running through it.
  • 00:20:30
    Though, looking at cyberpunk in particular
  • 00:20:32
    we realized the aspects of it that we were
  • 00:20:36
    really interested in is like that kind of,
  • 00:20:38
    the neon lit aesthetic the kind of--
  • 00:20:41
    The beauty of it, the high society
  • 00:20:43
    kind of class of it, but less the parts
  • 00:20:46
    that are, like, really seedy and really
  • 00:20:49
    could be really gory.
  • 00:20:50
    - It was incredible that they were,
  • 00:20:53
    they were on board with this, because I think
  • 00:20:55
    it's unusual to think about cyberpunk without
  • 00:20:59
    invoking something like Bladerunner.
  • 00:21:01
    Camilo, our 3D artist, he came on a couple
  • 00:21:05
    months in. And then I think like two or three
  • 00:21:08
    months laters Josh showed up on the scene
  • 00:21:11
    and added incredible particle effects,
  • 00:21:15
    and beautiful UI and UI transitions,
  • 00:21:20
    and screen transitions to everything.
  • 00:21:22
    And I was like, oh my god.
  • 00:21:24
    This is amazing.
  • 00:21:31
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
  • 00:21:34
    TRANSISTOR (VOICEOVER): Hey. I have a favor to ask.
  • 00:21:41
    Let me go.
  • 00:21:45
    DARREN KORB: At the beginning of transistor, I would say
  • 00:21:47
    I spent, like six months prototyping the music.
  • 00:21:49
    I think for me, the tone of that game
  • 00:21:54
    and the world really crystallized when we
  • 00:21:56
    made this tone video where we had some voiceover
  • 00:22:00
    from Logan, some incredible concept art from Jen,
  • 00:22:02
    writing from Greg, and this piece of music.
  • 00:22:04
    And we put it all together in a little video.
  • 00:22:08
    And once that all came together, that was the time
  • 00:22:11
    when I was like, yeah, oh, this.
  • 00:22:13
    This is where we're going. Let's go there, and
  • 00:22:15
    go there as fast as we can.
  • 00:22:17
    TRANSISTOR (VOICEOVER): I'm going to ask them why.
  • 00:22:21
    Why you? Why the white walls?
  • 00:22:27
    Why end like this?
  • 00:22:34
    DARREN: Once it became Red, I knew the music
  • 00:22:37
    had to be her music. Red being a singer
  • 00:22:41
    and being silent, and Red's role in
  • 00:22:45
    the world of Transistor and Cloudbank
  • 00:22:47
    was a really important part of my process,
  • 00:22:50
    considering that, considering-- Figuring out what kind of
  • 00:22:54
    character Red was, what kind of music she'd make
  • 00:22:56
    what kind of lyrics she'd write, 'cause I had
  • 00:22:58
    to try and embody this character
  • 00:22:59
    while writing the lyrics, and I want to make the
  • 00:23:02
    songs sort of, in a way applicable to what's
  • 00:23:06
    happening in the story, but I wanted Red to have
  • 00:23:08
    already written these songs in advance of the
  • 00:23:10
    of the game. So it was a
  • 00:23:12
    real tightrope walk.
  • 00:23:15
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
  • 00:23:19
    - I moved to New York in 2007.
  • 00:23:22
    I had a lot of friends there who were in the
  • 00:23:24
    theater, kind of singing arena, and they introduced me
  • 00:23:28
    to Darren. I think it was his brother Dan
  • 00:23:30
    introduced us 'cause I was doing some
  • 00:23:32
    singing stuff, trying to make it in New York.
  • 00:23:35
    And he gave me a couple fun things to
  • 00:23:38
    do outside of video game stuff. And then
  • 00:23:40
    I remember when he started doing Supergiant Games,
  • 00:23:43
    he came to me, and he said, do you want to sing on a
  • 00:23:45
    video game? And I was like, sure.
  • 00:23:48
    [HUMMING]
  • 00:23:54
    We got the VGA nomination for
  • 00:23:57
    "Build That Wall," so there was a lot of, like,
  • 00:23:59
    excitement around that song in particular
  • 00:24:02
    for Bastion. So I knew that it was, like, going
  • 00:24:05
    well, but, you know, when they asked me to come back
  • 00:24:08
    and do some more stuff for Transistor,
  • 00:24:10
    I was over the moon, and so yeah. I had
  • 00:24:13
    no idea what that was going to turn into.
  • 00:24:15
    I thought it was going to be like another kind of
  • 00:24:17
    like one and done song, but it felt like they kept
  • 00:24:21
    coming, like, you know, like, we have another one.
  • 00:24:23
    We have another one, like this is where the story's going.
  • 00:24:26
    I think we did everything from Darren's apartment
  • 00:24:29
    in Brooklyn. He had like a closet.
  • 00:24:32
    It wasn't even a walk-in closet. It was just like a
  • 00:24:34
    built in closet, and he would like
  • 00:24:36
    cover it with these soundproof blanket things.
  • 00:24:41
    And then I would, like, face into all of the clothes.
  • 00:24:45
    And he would have the mic cord like
  • 00:24:48
    snaking through the other room to his living room.
  • 00:24:51
    And then he would be on the other side.
  • 00:24:54
    So we would have to, like, kick Michelle
  • 00:24:56
    and Milo, his wife and son, we'd have to
  • 00:24:58
    kick them out while we did our recording.
  • 00:25:00
    And he would just feedback to me, like, let's
  • 00:25:03
    do it again, but a little differently, you know,
  • 00:25:05
    we could see each other. It was like a very
  • 00:25:07
    hilarious setup.
  • 00:25:08
    [DANNY LAUGHS]
  • 00:25:09
    And I stared at, like, all of his graphic tees
  • 00:25:11
    and Converse. I can like, memorize
  • 00:25:13
    on the shelf. It was very funny.
  • 00:25:17
    [CRASH]
  • 00:25:20
    [HUMMING]
  • 00:25:23
    - The idea to have Red humming, for example,
  • 00:25:28
    that you could only hear when you enter turn mode,
  • 00:25:30
    was something that I knew I wanted to do
  • 00:25:32
    once we'd figure out what her deal was,
  • 00:25:35
    that she was the protagonist, that she was a singer,
  • 00:25:38
    who couldn't speak, who'd lost her voice.
  • 00:25:40
    I knew that if we're going to put you inside
  • 00:25:42
    as you're sort of planning out what you're going to do,
  • 00:25:45
    there has to be some sort of vocalization in there.
  • 00:25:48
    - Some of them are really, like, intricately weird.
  • 00:25:52
    Like it took me a long time to get the first take.
  • 00:25:54
    So I was like having to hum that was
  • 00:25:56
    definitely like a project, but I've actually heard
  • 00:26:00
    a lot of people think that, or say that
  • 00:26:02
    they want, like, the soundtrack of just
  • 00:26:05
    the humming, which is really funny.
  • 00:26:07
    But I think that that's
  • 00:26:09
    genius, like whenever I try to tell non video game
  • 00:26:12
    people like how the songs that I work on are
  • 00:26:15
    incorporated into the game, that's like, always my
  • 00:26:17
    go-to.
  • 00:26:20
    [WHOOSH]
  • 00:26:21
    - For Transistor, I think we saw that a lot of
  • 00:26:24
    people, you know, it had this broad experimental system.
  • 00:26:29
    But I would be surprised if the way a lot of people
  • 00:26:31
    play it is they find something they're comfortable with
  • 00:26:33
    and they just kind of roll with it for a long time.
  • 00:26:36
    I think that's like, pretty common kind of action RPG
  • 00:26:40
    behavior. I think that's like a standard
  • 00:26:42
    way for players to play.
  • 00:26:44
    We try to do some stuff in Transistor to push
  • 00:26:46
    their comfort zone, so like when you
  • 00:26:48
    get defeated, instead of just losing and
  • 00:26:50
    re-checkpointing, you lose your highest value,
  • 00:26:52
    highest memory value function gets
  • 00:26:54
    popped out, and you have to finish the fight with the other three,
  • 00:26:56
    then the other two, then the other one,
  • 00:26:58
    and then you have to start over.
  • 00:26:59
    so we were trying to do stuff to move people
  • 00:27:01
    off their comfort zone, and that was part of the CCG model too.
  • 00:27:04
    But honestly, a lot of that stuff comes from a point of view,
  • 00:27:08
    a very designery point of view, which is like, kind of like,
  • 00:27:11
    eat your vegetables game design. You know, it's like
  • 00:27:14
    hey, player. You always do this fun thing you like doing.
  • 00:27:18
    But there is this interesting thing you could be doing.
  • 00:27:22
    And let's get you to do that
  • 00:27:24
    interesting thing. And I think Transistor
  • 00:27:26
    struck a pretty good balance of it, but that also means
  • 00:27:28
    a lot of players found a couple combinations that really worked for them,
  • 00:27:31
    and they probably used a lot of them through the game
  • 00:27:34
    even though there are 3000 combinations
  • 00:27:36
    they could be using, you know, they were using 12.
  • 00:27:39
    But that's OK, because we didn't, we didn't
  • 00:27:43
    make a game to just feel good about the number of
  • 00:27:46
    function combinations in the game. We made a game to be a
  • 00:27:50
    full experience. And if part of their experience was
  • 00:27:52
    I'm in danger. I'm unsafe. I want to use stuff that works
  • 00:27:56
    so that Red, like, achieves her goal, that's totally OK.
  • 00:28:00
    There are enemies in the later game that basically add
  • 00:28:02
    considerations to the combat, like
  • 00:28:04
    now you need something that can burst down
  • 00:28:09
    multiple enemies, or you could turn on limiters that now add
  • 00:28:12
    a shield to all the cells that you have to pick up.
  • 00:28:15
    So you need to find a way to pop shields very easily,
  • 00:28:19
    and you can't just make a very high damage burst build.
  • 00:28:21
    So there are things that the game tries to do to put
  • 00:28:23
    you into different builds, into different setups.
  • 00:28:26
    And the limiter system in that game, which
  • 00:28:28
    like, you know, creates these multiplicative
  • 00:28:31
    sometimes strategic and sometimes just like
  • 00:28:33
    challenging considerations in the fights
  • 00:28:36
    with something, well, it's always sort of been--
  • 00:28:39
    It's been, like, our staple to have
  • 00:28:41
    these elective difficulty systems that you can layer
  • 00:28:44
    on into the game so that you can
  • 00:28:47
    tailor the way in which you want to
  • 00:28:49
    make it hard. We've always shied away
  • 00:28:53
    from sort of the traditional.
  • 00:28:55
    easy, medium, hard type stuff.
  • 00:28:58
    Especially at the beginning. If we don't think
  • 00:29:01
    the game needs it, we would prefer to kind of
  • 00:29:03
    focus on a single experience that you can
  • 00:29:05
    tailor as you go. And, you know, Bastion ended up
  • 00:29:08
    having a no sweat mode where you did have unlimited lives
  • 00:29:10
    and this type of thing, but
  • 00:29:14
    those are, those are sort of not our kind of
  • 00:29:18
    starting points for a lot of this stuff.
  • 00:29:20
    Like, if you're going to find a design
  • 00:29:22
    theme in all of our games, it's 100%, it's player failure.
  • 00:29:27
    We're thinking about player failure all the time.
  • 00:29:29
    We're thinking about ways to make the
  • 00:29:33
    failure experience interesting, or support it narratively,
  • 00:29:39
    or justify it in the game world,
  • 00:29:41
    or make it interesting to have a setback.
  • 00:29:44
    And all four of our games have something like this,
  • 00:29:47
    which is a result of dozens of hours of
  • 00:29:50
    conversation and things we've tried that end up
  • 00:29:52
    not working.
  • 00:29:53
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
  • 00:29:58
    - Before we announced that game, we collectively as a team
  • 00:30:02
    were terrified that we were going to
  • 00:30:04
    fall on the wrong side of, like, similar to Bastion.
  • 00:30:08
    There's the similar to Bastion that's like,
  • 00:30:11
    oh, awesome, it's a whole exciting new game
  • 00:30:14
    from the creators of Bastion. And there's a similar
  • 00:30:16
    to Bastion of, oh, dude, they just
  • 00:30:18
    you know, swapped the kid with a girl and kind of like
  • 00:30:22
    palette swapped all the art and called it a day.
  • 00:30:24
    We were really afraid of that assessment and of
  • 00:30:27
    people being really angry that we didn't
  • 00:30:29
    just go on to make a Bastion 2, because
  • 00:30:31
    a ton of the feedback we were getting on Bastion was
  • 00:30:33
    oh, dude, that game was so cool. When's the sequel?
  • 00:30:35
    And we're like, heh, heh, heh, yeah.
  • 00:30:37
    Even for those of us who were more
  • 00:30:39
    optimistic about how that was going to go,
  • 00:30:41
    it wildly exceeded our expectations
  • 00:30:46
    as far as the like, excitement, the raw excitement over
  • 00:30:51
    the announcement. We were, we were shocked.
  • 00:30:54
    Because just days before, we were so concerned
  • 00:30:58
    about how the announcement was going to go, that we were, like,
  • 00:31:01
    very close to just pulling the plug on it.
  • 00:31:05
    Like, we should wait. We're not done.
  • 00:31:07
    We're not ready. We need to, we need more time.
  • 00:31:09
    So Transistor came out, and unlike Bastion,
  • 00:31:12
    within a month, we knew it was going to enable us
  • 00:31:15
    to make another game. In Transistor's case,
  • 00:31:17
    you know, we self published it, so
  • 00:31:19
    you know, we know, we had to do all the little bits and pieces
  • 00:31:22
    to get it on the PS4 and get it up on Steam,
  • 00:31:25
    were the first two places that it appeared.
  • 00:31:27
    It was really incredibly good to have made a game
  • 00:31:33
    that did not necessarily
  • 00:31:37
    make everyone hate us. [LAUGHING]
  • 00:31:41
    So that is such a lukewarm way to talk about
  • 00:31:45
    Transistor's accep-- So, the reason I
  • 00:31:48
    sound like this when I talk about Transistor is 'cause
  • 00:31:50
    of how scared we were. Like we were just terrified.
  • 00:31:53
    And so everything I say about
  • 00:31:55
    Transistor, when I transport myself
  • 00:31:57
    back there, is from a completely fear-based
  • 00:32:00
    point of view, of like, oh my god, this is
  • 00:32:02
    the game that kills the company. And this is the game that
  • 00:32:05
    undoes the legacy of Bastion. And this is the game
  • 00:32:08
    that you know, all these little decisions we made,
  • 00:32:12
    maybe we made too many ones that are
  • 00:32:14
    too esoteric, and aren't for certain players, and
  • 00:32:17
    people were really kind to that game.
  • 00:32:20
    And they were even more kind to it like a year or two
  • 00:32:24
    or three years later. It's the kind of game where
  • 00:32:26
    I feel like the reception just got better
  • 00:32:28
    and better, and better, and better.
  • 00:32:29
    - Five plus years after the fact, it's actually
  • 00:32:33
    bizarre to me that I see more--
  • 00:32:35
    I see much more love for Transistor now,
  • 00:32:37
    even than Bastion. I think part of it
  • 00:32:39
    is because Bastion is just kind of old.
  • 00:32:41
    And Transistor maybe just kind of
  • 00:32:45
    reached peak nostalgia for people, so
  • 00:32:47
    people who are like, you know, maybe played it at 13, they're like
  • 00:32:51
    18, 19 now. And they're like, oh, you know.
  • 00:32:53
    So we hear from these people for whom Transistor
  • 00:32:56
    hit them at the right place at the right time.
  • 00:32:58
    - Like it turns out, what I ended up really hoping for
  • 00:33:03
    from Transistor is that it was some people's
  • 00:33:06
    favorite game of ours, and it was. And then
  • 00:33:10
    it turned out it was many people's favorite game.
  • 00:33:12
    And I'm not saying, oh, we should have been fearless.
  • 00:33:14
    It's just, you know, the best thing about Transistor
  • 00:33:17
    no matter how it would have ended up doing, is that it
  • 00:33:20
    came out, and we were done with it.
  • 00:33:22
    Because we needed to do that. We needed to
  • 00:33:25
    go through whatever that was. We needed to
  • 00:33:28
    figure out how to work together, how to start a game
  • 00:33:30
    together, how to finish another game together,
  • 00:33:32
    how to work in an office together,
  • 00:33:34
    how to make big decisions as our own publisher.
  • 00:33:37
    We needed to go through all of that in order to
  • 00:33:39
    make the next set of decisions that we were going to have to make.
  • 00:33:44
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
  • 00:33:55
    - I think "Paper Boats" actually is the
  • 00:33:58
    one that I get the most comments on.
  • 00:34:00
    Someone at a recent show who told me that it was their
  • 00:34:03
    song for their wedding, like during their first dance
  • 00:34:07
    or, oh, it's my lullaby,
  • 00:34:09
    for my baby to go to sleep, or it's my
  • 00:34:11
    alarm when I wake up. You know, it's
  • 00:34:13
    just really fun to see how it's
  • 00:34:15
    kind of gone out into the world.
  • 00:34:17
    I had just met my now-husband, so I
  • 00:34:19
    remember thinking about it as like a
  • 00:34:21
    cool song about, you know, love, partnership.
  • 00:34:25
    Two-- in my feeling, it has like two very
  • 00:34:27
    distinct parts, so it's like I liked
  • 00:34:30
    kind of going from one to the other.
  • 00:34:32
    And doing that vocally was fun.
  • 00:34:35
    SINGING: I will always find you like it's written in the stars.
  • 00:34:45
    You can run, but you can't hide.
  • 00:34:55
    Try. I will always, always find you.
  • 00:35:05
    I will always, I will always,
  • 00:35:15
    always find you, I will always.
  • 00:35:24
    I will always find you like it's written in the stars.
  • 00:35:36
    We can run, but we can't hide. Try.
  • 00:35:48
    I will always find you like it's written in the stars.
  • 00:36:01
    We can run, but we can't hide. Try.
  • 00:36:12
    I will always, always find you. I will always.
标签
  • Supergiant Games
  • Transistor
  • Bastion
  • game development
  • creative process
  • game design
  • RPG
  • sci-fi
  • narrative
  • gameplay innovation