c.dangel.run

live the life…

In February of 2005 the freshly opened Seattle branch of Sony Online Entertainment presented me with the opportunity of a lifetime: Bring massively multiplayer gaming to a mainstream audience. We would get to invent our own IP, design our own gameplay, and build on top of an existing game engine of our choosing. How could I say no?


The project started completely from scratch. Hal Milton, the Lead Designer, got us going with a one page write up called “the Agency” and from there we had to define our feature pillars, plan out a small test level, decide on a game engine, and pitch the concept to Sony Pictures so we could get the green light to proceed. This is where terms like “live the life of an elite agent” and “fun now, no waiting” were born.

the pitch

As a life-long fan of James Bond films, the idea of making a game about super spies was exhilarating. And the first order of business, from a visual standpoint, was to distill the most iconic components of the spy lifestyle into thrilling concepts that would drive the future direction of the game. Concepts like exotic locales, jet setting, and lifestyle were essential for framing not just the highlights but the moment to moment experience of the Agency.

concept: Sam Wood	concept: Sam Wood	concept: Sam Wood

Hal coined the term Bruckheimer to best encapsulate how an over-the-top climax should conclude most, if not every, mission. Our initial 5 minute mission included an infiltration, discovery, a fire fight, the death of a comrade, and a spectacular Bruckheimer to cap it all off! Below are three key action moments from the animatic we used to guide our very first prototype in Unreal 3.

concept: Sam Wood	concept: Sam Wood	concept: Sam Wood

Characterful Characters…

With Unreal in hand our tiny team of twelve spent the next 4 months fleshing out two game play prototypes. It was during this time that the two player factions (UNITE and ParaGON) began to evolve and notions of public space and private instances came into focus. But the purpose of the initial gameplay prototypes was to prove just that: gameplay. We needed a milestone (6 weeks at the time) to just focus on character and establish a quality bar for production values. And, thus, Duncan was born.

Refining the Direction

With Duncan and Cassie as iconic spokesmodels and solid design principals established in playable prototypes, I was free to attack the remaining visual design challenges. We’d learned a lot from our quick prototypes and knew that our initial budget estimates would have to be scaled back. Because the Agency is an Action MMO with real shooter gameplay, frame rate was absolutely critical. And because players can experience the game from two perspectives, either the upscale sophisticated super spies of UNITE or the hardcore rough and tumble mercenaries of ParaGON, we needed to be very clever about designing within constraints so that players could still have the freedom of expression they are accustomed to in MMOs. This meant embracing our technical limitations and driving forward with a style that emphasized shape and color, but downplayed high frequency details. Drawing inspiration from vintage Bond posters, Danger Girl comics, and Pixar’s the Incredibles we ended up in a place where style and modern graphics capabilities intersect.

ACTION, adventure, intrigue…now in 2 flavors!

One of the things that makes the Agency really incredible is the ability to pursue a career from two different perspectives. This meant exploring each game pillar twice. Early in the process I worked with Sam Wood to visually define what it would look like to play as a team, walk into a party, get into combat, and sneak around. The results are below…

concept: Sam Wood	concept: Sam Wood
concept: Sam Wood	concept: Sam Wood
concept: Sam Wood	concept: Sam Wood
concept: Sam Wood	concept: Sam Wood

Action Moments, The Life of an Elite Agent Continues…

With those perspectives defined I thought it important to illustrate a handful of experiences we wanted to make sure players would have in our game. From the beginning we knew we needed an exciting chase scene and the beauty of concept art is you are unconstrained by technical limitations…so we set the bar high. A boat chase down a canal in Prague and a daring zip-line escape satisfied our the over-the-top quotient nicely. After that I wanted something a little more sedate…something to demonstrate the intrigue side of the Agency. So we came up with a black market purchase of biological weapons material, and a seductive infiltration to secure data and schematics for a prototype laser.

concept: Sam Wood	concept: Sam Wood
concept: Sam Wood	concept: Sam Wood

exotic locales

Bond films often feature the hero jet-setting to various exotic locations. We selected our destinations based on the most interesting sounding places that still had familiar sounding names and shared enough architecture that we could flesh out the world with a reasonable investment of resources. Sexy and intriguing nightlife, old-world Europe and Central America, and picturesque settings define the settings for the Agency.

concept: Sam Wood	concept: Sam Wood
concept: Eddie Smith	concept: Eddie Smith
concept: Eddie Smith	concept: Eddie Smith

VILLAINS

Oh boy. Now we’re getting to my favorite part. I LOVE working on Villains! Especially when I get to work with talented artists like Sam Wood and Patrick Shettlesworth and awesome designers and writers like Hal Milton and Matt Staroscik. The designers would come up with a plot line and character backgrounds and I’d look for iconic visual hooks to make the faction stand out. I got to write a fair amount, adding personality to (or outright inventing some of) the characters to help visually define a faction. Occasionally, I was even inspired to elevate what was a minor faction into a more dominant role because the visual hooks were so strong. I’d always work with design to make sure that was OK and, in the end, we were extremely pleased with our food-chain of villainy.


I created a taxonomy for villainy which gave the concept artists guidelines for what the Boss, Henchmen, Lieutenants, and Goons should look like, with special considerations for bringing attention to roles (such as combat, stealth, or support oriented bad guys). Each faction also received a unique logo and color palette. That way the look of each faction was totally unique and the production team had good guidance moving forward. I also directed an effort build as much faction clothing as possible from existing clothing components (e.g. combat fatigues, dress slacks, boots, etc), using texture and palette shifts to make the clothing items appear unique and consistent within each faction.

concept: Sam Wood	concept: Sam Wood
concept: Patrick Shettlesworth	concept: Patrick Shettlesworth
concept: Sam Wood	concept: Sam Wood
concept: Pat & Sam	concept: Sam Wood

WEAPONS

At the core of every shooter lies an arsenal of powerful weapons. We designed over 70 weapons for the game, with six unique company profiles and lines of industrial design to match. Over time, players will learn to recognize the difference between Fang PacifiCo and Rampart Arms.

concept: Sam Wood	concept: Sam Wood
concept: Sam Wood	concept: Sam Wood

OPERATIVES

James Bond has Money Penny and Q, Jack Bauer has Chloe…every super agent has a network of operatives to help him or her get through a mission. The Agency has plans for nearly 500 operatives, each one with a slightly unique personality and set of attributes. And each one is represented in-game by a collectible trading card. I worked very closely with Hal and the operatives designers to define the structure for the cards and designed the template for the card face and iconography. I also worked with the concept artists, personally providing over 40 written bios with art direction notes, to really bring to life this important portion of the game.

concept: Scott Fischer	concept: Scott Fischer
concept: Patrick Shettlesworth	concept: Sam Wood
concept: Patrick Shettlesworth	concept: Sam Wood