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With Sanity hitting the
shelves soon and the big splash the NOLF Tech Demo is making, I
got ahold of Kevin Lambert from Monolith for a little interview action.
As with every single Hypothermia interview. . . there is some weird
little story that comes before the interview.
I met Kevin at this years E3
and was immediately impressed. Mainly because I got to spend damn near
the whole time I was there hanging out with his significant other,
Shelly. Since Kevin Lambert and Jason Hall both brought their ladies to
E3, but also had to WORK the show, I had the cool opportunity to
hang out with the ladies most of the show. I was also impressed with how
intelligent, level headed and down to earth Kevin was. Getting
everything together to sit down and get an interview is sometimes trick,
but with a lotta help from Kevin...... I made it.
1.)
How'd you get started in the Game Designing Biz??
*takes
a huge breath*
I’m
not exactly sure what prompted my parents to go out and buy the Pong
machine… Maybe it was the fact that they all liked Tennis and thought
it would help them play better. Whatever the reason, as soon as I got
both hands on the controls (since I had a little trouble finding people
to play at the time due to the fact that I didn’t quite comprehend the
concept of “letting your siblings win sometimes” at that age) I knew
I wanted to make video games for a living. Since then, I think there was
some school, some college or something, a job or two, y’know, stuff to
keep you busy when you aren’t playing games. Then when I graduated
from the University of Texas, I moved to Seattle to work at Monolith as
a programmer. After my first project, I slowly began to work my way into
the “Game Designing Biz” which is what I’ll most likely be doing
until I retire. *exhales, gasps for air, hyperventilates, and then
passes out on the floor*
2.)What’s
it like to WORK for Jason Hall, King of the MONSTRARS?? And What’s up
with all the Darth Vader Stuff??( heh, sorry Jace )
If
I had to use a single word to describe my relationship with Jason (both
professional and personal), it would be “interesting.” Jason often
has a unique perspective on things (sometimes referred to as Jason’s
Fantasy World) and he offers countless hours of entertainment both on
and off the Tennis court. As for the Darth Vader stuff, everyone’s
entitled to a role model, right?
3.)
People you admire in the industry.
The
people I admire most in the industry are the people who are in it for
the love of making games… not the money… wait a minute, the money?
Who am I kidding? Uh, the people I admire most are the people who can
afford to stay in this industry and have a passion for making great
games… Oh, and Shigeru Miyamoto simply because the man has proven his
ability to make the greatest games ever created.
4.)
What's the most annoying thing to deal with as a Game Designer??
Hmm…
that’d have to be when Jason comes over to my house in the 11th
hour just before we ship and during a game of Table Tennis (in which he
gets severely beaten down), tries to convince me that Sanity desperately
needs a few more features… Of course, that’s also how some of those
11th hour really cool features got into the game.
5.)
We’ve all heard Jason Hall talk about the LithTech Engine and how
great it is. . . but until you see a product as diverse as Sanity hit
the shelves, you don’t get the full impact. How is the engine to
actually work on/with??
Just
like any programmer, I hate spending an inordinate amount of time
learning something new when I feel that it could have been made simpler.
So needless to say, I was a little worried when I started on Sanity
because I knew that Sanity was going to need a totally different camera
perspective and gameplay mechanic than any other LithTech game.
Surprisingly enough, these issues didn’t even make it onto Sanity’s
top 20 toughest challenges list. So although I may be a bit biased being
in-house, I believe that LithTech is definitely one of the easiest
engines out there to pick up and learn quickly.
6.)
It seems to me that a licensee like ThirdLaw can all separate from Ion
Storm, and in a short amount of time, learn a whole new engine and
produce a game that hit the shelves within months of Daikatana. . Is the
engine that easy to work with and learn??
Sanity
was my first full LithTech title, and while I can’t speak for any of
our licensees, I can say that the learning curve was extremely small.
The Sanity team had no problem whatsoever picking up the technology and
using it to do exactly what we needed it to do. I’m sure the same
would go for any group of reasonably competent programmers.
7.)
Drink of Choice
Dr.
Pepper. (When it’s not exploding in the back of my car due to
overexposure to the sun)
8.)
Tunes of Choice
Well,
the stuff I normally write is techno, piano, and generally sappy top-40
sounding stuff, but I’ll listen to anything except country. Oh God
help you if I hear country!
9.)
Babe of Choice ( I know the answer to this one )
That would easily be my
girlfriend Shelly, who somehow managed to make her way onto your
website… Hmm… Didn’t we talk about those stalker tendencies,
Steve?
(
L to R: Kevin, Shelly, Teh King of tha Monstrars and Lisa )
10.)
Now pick another babe of choice ( if ya weren’t attached :^)
If I
weren’t attached, I’d probably go for one of my cousins or
relatives… Y’know, just so I could say I’ve done that.
11.)
Game you are most looking forward to. . . .and game you are playing now.
At
the moment, I’m looking forward to The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s
Mask on the N64, and in the meantime I’m playing Chrono Cross on the
Playstation.
12.)
You just finished up Sanity, and so far everyone seems to like it a lot.
. . . what have been your
initial responses from the community been like so far??
So
far, the reactions have all been great. Every Sanity demo review we’ve
seen so far has been extremely positive. To be honest, since Sanity
really offers a different kind of gameplay experience from any game out
there, we really don’t know what to expect from the gaming community
in the long term. Even though we all think Sanity is fun, who knows… I
mean, everyone could totally hate it (in which case we should probably
evaluate whether we know what the hell we’re doing or not).
13.)
POST Sanity has been like??
Well,
the hours are much more manageable now that we’re not in ultra-crunch
mode. I’m able to sleep without having my dreams filled with Psionic
Talents, my girlfriend is once again speaking to me, and I finally have
time to hit the gym three times a week again.
14.)
Having me each other in real life, you are super down to earth. . . no
hair, no rockstar thing going, no CliffyB
wardrobe …what’s up with that??
Oh
sure, by day maybe… but by night, I slap on my tiger skin speedo and
go o… er… I mean uh… nevermind. You’re not gonna print that,
right?
15.)
O.K. So the big man on campus is a big ( literally ) Corvette kinda guy.
. . .what do you drive?
When
I bought my new black 98 Trans-Am in February of 1998, it was only a
couple of months before Jason had to “outdo me” by buying the Vette.
The funny thing is that people have mistaken my car for Jason’s and
vice-versa on several occasions. (You might not want to bring that up
with Jace though… it’s a bit of a sore subject with the poor man. I
mean imagine spending that much more money on a car and then having
people say, “Hmm… It kinda looks a lot like Lambert’s car… and
doesn’t it perform about the same as well?”)
16.)
You’ve been around the block with Monolith, and had a few mistakes. .
. .but the whole Lithtech package is really coming together, what do you
attribute this to mostly??
That’s
easy. I attribute it to me. *wakes up* Oh, sorry about that, I think I
was daydreaming there for a sec. I would attribute it to the fact that
over the past year or two, Monolith has really strengthened its
commitment to making great games and to supporting our gaming community.
Sure, there will always be things that are beyond our control such as
the possibility of publishers forcing us to ship a game before we feel
it’s ready, but all you can really do in a case like that is make the
best game you can and keep the communication lines open with your
community.
17.)
With the top down perspective market not being what the FPS market is,
why chose that style of gameplay for Sanity??
Actually,
we chose Sanity’s gameplay style for a couple of reasons. First of
all, and not to shank on FPS games, but a lot of the Sanity team were a
little sick of the overcrowded FPS market and wanted to make something
different. Also, we wanted to show that LithTech could be used for games
other than FPS’s. Last but not least, we wanted to see if we could
incorporate the collectible and expandable aspects of our favorite
trading card games like Magic: The Gathering into the game.
18.)
O.K. I just have to throw this one in there. . . . . you’ve been
selected to celebrity DeathMatch against Jason Hall Girlfriend Lisa.
Who’d win? Why?
Uh,
Lisa would win because if she didn’t, Jason might get angry and go on
a steroid rage and break everything in sight.
19.)
Who came up with IceT as the lead character voice?? ( I’m still mad
about IceT calling me a Stalker at E3 dammit ;^)
Uh,
yeah… why don’t ya just go ahead and “disregard” my previous
stalker comment in this interview. J
The Ice-T story is actually fairly interesting in that it wasn’t
something that we had ever really planned to do. Arabian Nazel, the lead
tester on Sanity at Fox Interactive, used to perform in the rap group
N.W.A. Arabian was close friends with Ice-T and was showing him Sanity
one day. Coincidentally enough, Ice-T likes video games and thought
Sanity looked awesome. So Arabian thought Ice-T’s attitude would go
great with Cain’s character and asked Ice-T if he’d be interested in
doing the voice. To make a long story short, a few negotiations and
recording sessions later at Ice-T’s pad in Los Angeles and Ice-T was
forever immortalized as special agent Cain of the D.N.P.C.
and
the bonus question
Since
we are life long buds, and damn near neighbors. . . tell me something
really juicy I can share with my readers. .
Hmm,
I don’t know if I’ve got anything particularly “juicy” for ya,
but I can share an amusing story that is 100% true. About 3 years ago,
my girlfriend used to work at Blockbuster Video. One of the employees
there was a 19 year-old male who was about as arrogant as they come,
honestly believing himself to be God’s gift to the female species.
One
day, this guy was talking to a female customer on the phone giving her
movie recommendations for a while, and the conversation ended with the
girl saying, “Wow, you’ve been really great! And you’re so nice
and so funny! I’d love to come meet you. What’s your name? Is it
okay if I come say hi when I drop off my movie tonight?” – To which
he responded “Sure thing!”, told her his name, hung up the phone,
and started bragging to the entire store about the “chick that sounded
TOTALLY hot” who was completely into him and was gonna come visit him
later in the evening. So a few hours went by… He had already put his
name tag out in the open where everyone would be able to see it and he
was constantly eyeballing every good-looking girl who walked into the
store in the hopes that it might be “his chick.”
So
it’s pushing 11:00pm, still no sign of his girl, and the store is
starting to get empty. The hopes of meeting his sexy goddess were
starting to dwindle as all the employees were hanging out near the front
desk. Not long thereafter, a car pulled up and a “rather large” girl
got out and started walking to the door with a movie in her hand. As
everybody was looking out the door at the girl, the guy proclaimed,
“Oh dear God, please don’t let that fat cow be her!” – To which
a nearby male employee turned, scowled, and responded, “Dude, that’s
my girlfriend coming to pick me up.”
100%
true, every detail. And damn, I’d hate to be in either guy’s shoes
at that point.
Thanks a million to Kevin
for the interview. . . especially with all thats happening around
Monolith right now, and getting through "crunch mode" with
Sanity.
Wanna try out Sanity?? get it here: 
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