Like this, but with less athletic ability.

What if by some dark, unspeakable magics contractual obligations ceased to exist and every game developer in the industry was suddenly free to work with whomever he or she pleased? What if the stars aligned and money wasn’t an issue and a development “dream team” descended from the heavens? What would it look like? What would its name be? Could we even play one of Valizzard’s (working title) games without our minds exploding from the awesomenesss?

Before I begin this fantasy cast that will surely enrage more gamers than it satisfies, I would just like to state that I am fully aware of my personal biases; I tend to prefer First Person games of the immersive, ambient nature offered by studios like Valve; I’m also partial to Western titles in general, so there are many Japanese legends that didn’t find their way onto this list. It’s also terribly unrealistic to mash eighteen different visionaries together and expect anything cohesive to come out. Having said all that, this is the sort of thing that’s a lot of fun to imagine and I hope you enjoy my development team. And of course, I encourage everyone to share their own candidates in the comments.

Producer – Gabe Newell
We need someone to put the team together and make sure business goes smoothly, and I can’t think of a better person than the man behind the Half-Life, Portal, and Left 4 Dead franchises, just to name a few. Newell has an uncanny ability to spot fresh talent and nurture it (see: Portal, Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress), and he always puts the quality of the game before profit-driven deadlines. I trust him to deftly fill out all positions that aren’t detailed in this feature. I also trust him make sure that any dream games that get developed have the best marketing and distribution services available (thanks, Steam). But do I trust him to actually ever get the thing released…?

Creative Director/Lead Writer – Ken Levine
He may be young, but with titles like Thief: The Dark Project, System Shock 2, Freedom Force, SWAT 4, and of course, BioShock to his credit, there’s simply no denying Mr. Levine’s immense talents. There are precious few developers who understand the synergistic relationship of gameplay and narrative as well as he does and even fewer who are willing to tackle the thought-provoking subject matter he has made his name on in recent years. If I could pick anyone in the industry to craft a unique, artistic, and entertaining vision, I wouldn’t think twice about giving Big Daddy Ken (I sure hope that catches on) that position of authorship.

Assistant Director – Josh Weier
After recently reading Akira Kurosawa’s Something Like an Autobiography (totally recommend it), I’ve gained a special appreciation for an assistant director’s duties, even if Kurosawa’s realm is that of film. An AD is essentially a student that absorbs all of the director’s knowledge and wisdom while helping him or her with whatever needs to be done; an AD is just a director in waiting. So what young gun is capable enough to handle whatever Levine assigns him and bring his own ideas to the table in the process? Josh Weier, of course! You might not know his name, but you surely know his work. Hired by Valve in 2003, he’s worked on Half-Life 2, its episodic releases, and most recently, the Portal franchise. In fact, he just had the pleasure of experiencing his first Project Lead role–Portal 2. I’d say Weier has a bright future in front of him.

Lead Designer – Shigeru Miyamoto
And this is where things start to get weird. As Lead Designer, Miyamoto is responsible for developing fun and engaging gameplay systems within the universe established by the Creative Director. The problem is, the most influential man to ever work in video games is fundamentally different from just about everybody else on this list; he just isn’t that interested in telling mature stories. We hail his games as some of the best of all time, but they almost never come up as examples of “art in gaming.” But when we get right down to it, nobody comes close to Miyamoto in terms of designing pure fun. Since my ideal game is both thought-provoking and fun, I’m going to trust Miyamoto to come through yet again and do what he does best. His entire career has been defined by constant innovation, and I think that if he just gives a more serious setting a fair chance then he could not only develop fun game mechanics, but revitalize the bulletfests we’ve become accustomed to in “mature” games with something truly fresh. Shiggy’s the king, and there’s no denying that.

Lead Level Designer – Warren Spector
Once again showing that Miyamoto will be out of his comfort zone in this experiment, my Lead Level Designer gets picked specifically for his expertise in designing non-linear levels with objectives that can be solved in any number of ways. That Deus Ex design template couldn’t really be further from what Miyamoto traditionally does, but frankly, I don’t see much point in making a video game if the player’s unique position of agency isn’t taken advantage of. Interactivity should engage the mind and emotions as well as the reflexes, making a player’s freedom to approach any situation however he or she sees fit paramount.

Art Director – Tim Schafer
There are just a few extraordinary artists out there capable of designing distinct, lasting aesthetics, but there aren’t any as prolific as Schafer. His games might not always play like the cream of the crop, but everything he’s ever put his hands on comes to life with a sort of personality and individuality unheard of in our copy-cat medium. His work ranges from The Secret of Monkey Island to Grim Fandango to Brutal Legend (with much more in between), and if you’ve seen just one of those games, you know that Schafer can craft worlds with unparalleled creativity and originality. Now generally, those kinds of visual styles supplement silly or quirky narratives, but I have faith that the funny man will find the right balance of realism and fantasy for a more serious story.

Lead Character Artist – Yoji Shinkawa
A team of this caliber simply won’t settle for some generic space marines, so that’s why Shinkawa (of Metal Gear Solid fame) will be brought in to work with Levine and Schafer on distinct, engaging character design. A character’s appearance can reveal more about him than his dialogue in some cases, and that’s why Shinkawa’s considerable talents will be needed to truly elevate this character-driven experience.

Lead Programmer – John Carmack
The man charged with bringing Schafer’s artistic vision to life is none other than id’s John Carmack–a guy whose supernatural gift for programming has been pushing technological boundaries for over twenty years. People get real worked up over Crytek’s Crysis (and rightfully so), but pretty much every game Carmack has released in his career (Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, all of their sequels, and most recently Rage) has raised the bar for graphical fidelity. In fact, he’s even pushed into the mobile game market with great success as of late, developing an adaptation of Rage that rivals the level of detail found in this console generation’s earlier games. The best part is that you know you’ll always be getting 60 frames per second with Carmack and that all of that silky smooth action is going to look beautiful in the process. The man is a technical genius.

Lead Animator – Michael Yosh
When looking back on games that have stood the test of time visually, animations might actually hold more weight than pure graphical horsepower. In order to ensure that our game has the best animations possible, Naughty Dog’s Michael Yosh will be responsible for imbuing friends and enemies’ movements with the grace only found in Uncharted games. There just aren’t any other titles out there with such attention to detail, and consequently, few characters feel as distinctly human as Nathan Drake. In a game where Levine will surely be exploring themes of humanity, that visual connection couldn’t be more important.

AI Lead – Jeff Orkin
Ah, yes: the job that’s always overlooked by gamers and developers alike. Yet some argue that artificial intelligence is the single most important aspect of making a fun, challenging game. But because so few people share this outlook, there just aren’t many examples of AI that truly grabs gamers’ attention (well, other than bad AI). The one title I can think of in all my years of gaming that really wows me with how good the AI is is Monolith Production’s F.E.A.R.. It may have released all the way back in 2005, but it’s still used as a point of reference for AI combat behavior. At the time, enemies’ ability to take cover, flank, and even make their own cover by manipulating the environment was revolutionary; the AI is so good that it fundamentally affects the gameplay. Orkin was in charge of designing that astounding AI, and he’s the man I want on my team.

Lead Audio Designer – Stefan Strandberg
This position often goes overlooked when evaluating what makes a game great, but authentic, interesting sound effects can truly suck you into a game world more than visuals when done right. Strandberg is the head audio man at development studio DICE, a team known for the exceptional aural qualities of its Battlefield games.

Composer – Marty O’Donnell
Audio designers frequently handle a game’s score as well, but there are instances of a separate composer taking charge of that responsibility. When thinking of the most memorable and effective scores in video games, only a few names consistently come to mind; Marty O’Donnell–Bungie’s musical overlord–is one of them. The Halo games have always have exciting soundtracks that compliment and amplify the action perfectly, but it’s O’Donnell’s versatility and boldness that earn him his spot on this list. Halo 3: ODST might not have set the world on fire, but its noir-inspired compositions garnered universal praise and unquestionably establish a tone that I don’t see very often in video games. I’d love to see Marty branch out even more and mix his orchestral pieces up with some more unorthodox sounds, and I think that’s just what he’ll do as a part of this team.

Voice Actors – Nolan North, Jennifer Hale
You can have the best writing in the world, but if your voice actors can’t deliver their lines with conviction then players will want to skip every conversation in the game (take a tip, Bethesda). As much as I hate to put even more voice actors out of work by placing Nolan North in the last .01% of video games he hasn’t worked on, there just isn’t anybody with as much range or talent as Mr. North (Uncharted series, Batman: Arkham City, Assassin’s Creed series, just to name a few of his works). Mrs. Hale’s body of work is just as diverse, with the Metal Gear Solid and Mass Effect series headlining her many credits. If need be, these two could probably do every voice in the game without anybody noticing.

Cinematic Director – Hideo Kojima
Ideally, this game won’t have any cut-scenes to speak of. But at the same time, I think that games like Half-Life 2 may as well have cut-scenes if they’re going to lock you in a room with nothing to do while NPCs give exposition for five minutes. The best possible solution would be for everything to occur in-game, but to put Kojima in charge of giving those boring exposition segments some cinematic flair. I’d have no problem temporarily sacrificing control for the sake of a dramatic camera angle or something unexpected and awesome to happen. Nobody does cut-scenes better than Kojima, and he’s even begun to innovate in ways that merge cut-scene and gameplay (the split-screen segments in MGS4). I’m very interested to see what kinds of methods he will employ to garner some in-game drama between North and Hale.

Multiplayer Design Lead – Cliff Bleszinski
A lot of people are irked by Cliffy B’s dude-bro attitude and can’t stand the meat-heads of Gears of War. Too bad for them. Before Bleszinski became a megastar with Gears, he brought the ultra-fast, over-the-top Unreal Tournament series to prominence. He then promptly forged one of the most unique multiplayer experiences this generation with Gears and has refused to let other Shooters dictate his design decisions. Both franchises he’s responsible for are radically different multiplayer experiences with hardcore followings and I have no doubt that he’s up to making yet another fresh experience. But what really secures his position here is an equal attention to cooperative gameplay, as Gears‘ Horde and Beast modes have changed what we expect of multiplayer gaming. He’s a young, up-and-coming innovator that knows how to design fun multiplayer gameplay, and that’s just what he’ll do for this team.

Lead Boss Designer – Fumito Ueda
For some reason, this position simply doesn’t exist in game development–at least based on the research I’ve done. It’s no wonder then that boss fights are generally the weakest part of a game. But that won’t be the case with whatever this studio makes; there will be one expert charged with designing fun and challenging boss fights that capitalize on everything the player has learned in interesting ways. And if you’ve ever played Shadow of the Colossus, then you know that there’s nobody more expert than Ueda. But the real trick to his success is his ability to make his bosses an emotional challenge. There’s no point in writing engaging characters if their climatic moments amount to frustrating patterned confrontations that are there for the sake of being there. Ueda is capable of using epic gameplay sequences and mechanics toward effective emotional resolution. In short, he’s pretty boss at making boss fights.

Lead Tester – Bethesda…ha! Just kidding. Valve or Blizzard
Believe it or not, there aren’t a lot of individuals known for their quality assurance prowess. That’s probably because the good ones quickly advance up the ladder and into other fields of development. So let’s just assign Valve or Blizzard’s QA team as a whole to testing; the game might take longer to release, but it’ll be technically flawless when it does.

And that’s the team. There are countless other developers that I would have liked to include, but I just feel like this team represents the best of the best. Still, I’d love to see some of the following names hired on in supporting roles:

Zafer Coban (Animator), Akira Yamaoka (Composer), Casey Hudson (Designer), Goichi Suda (Designer), Hideki Kamiya (Designer), James Ohlen (Designer), Patrice Desilets (Designer), Peter Molyneux (Designer), Shinji Mikami (Designer), Todd Howard (Designer), Tyson Green (Multiplayer Designer), Robin Walker (Multiplayer Designer), Greg Zeschuk & Ray Muzyka (Producers), Tim Sweeney (Programmer), Dan Houser (Writer), Erik Wolpaw (Writer), Marc Laidlaw (Writer)

Make me Creative Director! With this team, I can finally deliver on what I promise!

I’d love to hear if I missed anybody. Go ahead and dream!

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When they first announced this little PSP game and said that it was going to be a Metal Gear Solid experience on par with its console brethren, I honestly didn’t take it seriously. But if this trailer is any indication, then Peace Walker will be a shining addition to the MGS franchise. I guess I just don’t understand why they’re putting such a full-fledged, story-driven game on a portable. But hey, the gameplay looks fun, and that’s all that matters.

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Hideo Kojima popped up out of nowhere at the Microsoft Press Conference today to announce a new Metal Gear Solid game that’s “in development” for the Xbox 360. It’s called “Metal Gear Rising” and will apparently star everybody’s favorite Metal Gear Solid character, Raiden. The short teaser for the game showed what was basically the same image seen on the Kojima Production’s teaser site along with pictures of Raiden. I remain skeptical whether a good Metal Gear game can be made that doesn’t star Snake, but the teaser did include the words “lightning bolt action”, so it can’t be all bad, right?

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So you may have heard of Hideo Kojima’s latest mystery advertisement. In classic Kojima fashion, the father of Metal Gear has the internet abuzz with speculation over an ad that features little more than a rainy field with some lightning, a countdown timer, and the letters/numbers 5, E, and 3. Hmm…wonder what that could mean? As a personal stance against announcements of announcements of announcements of announcements (I think that’s right), we here at InsaneBear haven’t devoted any digital ink to this “story.” But that won’t stop us from poking fun at it.

5.) So anybody who’s been following this charade probably knows that Kojima Productions actually used the movie Grindhouse‘s flash site as a template for its own teaser site. Officially, they’re saying that there’s no connection and that it’s an accident that anybody knows this in the first place. But let’s take a deeper look at this for a second. Grindhouse is a double feature that consists of Death Proof and Planet Terror. Planet Terror has zombies in it. Zombies are having a quite a resurgence in video games lately, what with Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty: World at War‘s zombie mode and so on. Kojima has publicly stated that he wants to experiment with more western ideas. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Kojima will be announcing the video game version of Planet Terror five hours into E3.

Kojima's take on Left 4 Dead

4.) Mr. Kojima is generally associated with his Metal Gear franchise, but is also well know for four others. Four? Plus one? FIVE! That’s right, this new ad is hyping up Kojima’s next project, a super game that combines elements of Snatcher, Policenauts, Zone of the Enders, Boktai, and of course, Metal Gear. The player will assume the role of Solid Seed, aka Leo Ingram, a former detective turned mech gladiator who is investigating the curious behavior of his fellow combatants. The player goes on a quest to discover answers and soon finds out that his peers have actually been replaced by mysterious beings known only as “snatchers”, fabled bioroids spoken of in ancestral folklore. Once the intruders learn of his probing though, they murder his wife and he goes on a quest for vengeance in his bad-ass mech suit, which is powered by sun light. Unfortunately, the snatchers come from a perpetually dark moon not too far from the artificial world of the giant space station Leo calls home, so he must conserve his solar energy for when he really needs it and exercise stealth the rest of the time. The thrill-ride search for answers culminates in a shocking nano-machine conspiracy.

It's always the nano-machines!

3.) Maybe this ad isn’t hyping a game at all. Have you ever thought of that? No? Well, you should have! Because then you’d see it coming when Kojima ascends from the E3 show floor and takes his true form, Sheogorath, the Mad God of the Shivering Isles. All of the babbling non-sense, all of the joy he derives from psychologically torturing his fans, his god-like following, it all makes sense now! Granted, Hideo is considerably less Scottish than his video game counter-part, but those Super Mutants in Fallout 3 are way off from all the Super Mutants I’ve ever seen, so I’m willing to bet that Bethesda screwed up on their interpretation of the Daedric prince.

The Mad God will grace our realm.

2.) Perhaps we’re all looking into this ad a little too much. Flashing numbers and letters in the background? Snake’s face in the clouds? Multiple timers embedded in the source code? I think we’re missing the point. It’s a rainy field with rumbling thunder and the occasional strike of lightning. Seem mundane? Well, not when you’re playing the ultimate weather simulation video game! This will be Kojima-san’s major E3 announcement, and it will revolutionize gaming whilst creating an entirely new genre. It’s heavily influenced by popular Real Time Strategy games, and will feature two playable factions–the Humans and the forces of Mother Earth. The game expands upon the innovative environmental awareness of Boktai and pits the player against the awesome forces of the weather around them in a battle to predict and exploit weather patterns. Humans will plot geographic predictions and plan energy collecting structures around that information in the hope that wind farms, hydro-dams, and solar cities can satisfy society’s needs while withstanding the constant onslaught of erosion and natural disaster. As Mother Earth, the player will be able to strategically unleash storms of incredible power in the effort to destroy modern civilization and return humanity to their natural place in the planet’s equilibrium.

Play as the humans in their futile attempt to understand weather.

1.) But really, the most likely thing behind all this, and possibly the most hilarious (or painful, I’m not sure which yet), is nothing. No, not a Seinfeld-inspired game about nothing, just Hideo Kojima’s sick sense of humor that makes his fan-base into the tests subjects of inhumane social experiments. He just loves to toy with our expectations. Don’t believe me? Just look back to the ad campaigns for Metal Gear Solid 2. And you thought you were going to be playing as Snake…tsk, tsk, tsk. You should have known that Kojima would just put Snake’s skin over Raiden in all those trailers leading up to the game’s release. He got you good! Burn! Incineration! He is the insult master! Man…this is just getting depressing now.

It's not like he hasn't fucked with us before.

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10. Halo

The Halo franchise is what has defined the Xbox since its release in 2001, and it continues to define Microsoft’s console offering today. The series was one of the first games to successfully introduce large, vehicle based gameplay to consoles. The Halo franchise has continued to set the standard for all console first person shooters. The games have also been a staple for Major League Gaming, showing just how influential its gameplay has been. Halo 2 broke records for fastest selling product in the United States when it was released, and wasn’t topped until Halo 3 was released two years later. Combined, the games have sold almost 25 million copies worldwide. Of course, Halo also introduced us to one of the most iconic video game characters in quite a while, Master Chief. With this kind of history, it’s a bit surprising that this game is number 10 on the list, but keep reading and you might see why.

9. Sonic the Hedgehog

Sonic, to me at least, is, and always will be, Sega’s Mario. His first game was developed in 1991 to directly compete with Nintendo and Mario. And for a while it worked. Sonic became the mascot of Sega and helped the company gain the status that it once had. Most of the “early” sonic games were well received and helped to sell quite a few consoles for Sega. Sadly, after the golden age of Sonic games during the 8 and 16 bit eras, the series took a turn for the worst. Many of Sonic’s forays into 3D have not been nearly as successful as his 2D games. Gamers yearn for a return to those games, but these pleas seem to fall on deaf ears as Sega release evermore 3D Sonic games that really just aren’t any good. Sonic may have defined a generation or two, but his time has come and gone.

8. Resident Evil

The series that defined the survival horror genre, Resident Evil has seen major success since the first game in the series was released in 1996. It has been defined by its use of horror elements, clever puzzles, frustrating camera angles, and horrible dialog. The success of the first game helped to spawn two sequels and multiple spin offs. The series then saw a complete reboot from the traditional gameplay that fans had come to expect. In 2005, Resident Evil 4 was released and is considered by many to be one of the best games ever made. It set the standards for modern third person shooters.

7. Metal Gear

Metal Gear!?!? Yup, Metal Gear. Not the bipedal, nuclear-armed, walking tank either; the video game series. The Metal Gear series has been revolutionizing video games since Metal Gear was released in 1987 on the MSX2. Recently at GDC, the creator of the series, Hideo Kojima, explained how he came up with the idea for a stealth game. Like most great inventions, it was technical limitations that made him come up with a creative solution. So he decided to create an elaborate game of hide and seek, and the rest is history. Today, Metal Gear is one of the best-selling and critically acclaimed video games around. Best known for its particularly confusing story, long winded dialog and cutscenes, political/social commentary, and “tactical espionage action” gameplay, video games would be a much less cinematic experience without it, and that would be a bad thing.

6. Grand Theft Auto

Revolutionary and controversial are two words that describe GTA more accurately than any other. The Grand Theft Auto series has always been an open-ended game littered with adult themes. From its first incarnations in 1997 as a 2D game with a top down view, it allowed the player to go wherever they wanted, as well as allowing them to murder whoever they chose. Rockstar then decided to revolutionize gaming once again, and bring us that omnipresent buzzword, with sandbox gaming. GTA 3 was released to much anticipation and criticism in 2001. With its shift to 3D, many were worried that the game would corrupt our youth with its accurate depiction of violence. We soon realized that those people were idiots though. GTA 3 introduced gamers to a living, breathing city that was theirs for the destroying. Ever since, GTA has been at the forefront of controversy, but has continued to push the boundaries of what we expect from our games. GTA IV broke all known sales records in 2008 when it sold 6 million copies in its first week.

Wow, look at the time, this thing’s taking longer to write than I expected. Come back tomorrow for part 2.

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There’s a feature over at Gamespot on Hideo Kojima’s GDC keynote. Follow Kojima as he recaps over two decades of development

Kojima on forging Metal Gear, teases ‘Next MGS’ [Gamespot.com]

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