Notch & Todd Howard - The One-on-One Interview

I was gonna wear that shirt hey how are you very good part of the reason we chose the release date 11-11-11 cuz they just drop the game stop playing Skyrim instead I think it's really cool we have the same release date but isn't your game out like what does it mean when that's your release date I can finally play minecraft no you can play it already that's kind of that's why I didn't really matter which state we picked because we're gonna keep selling it they're not kind of like a huge weekend right so but it's basically when we're out of beta and then we're gonna try to do like a big thing about it so get a fancy ball with are we gonna make it and stuff like that then release it and ever girls play Skyrim I said we could do like a joint bundle pack get them both together or something yeah that's a big contrast so tell me about a Minecraft on the Xbox I saw that uh briefing mothers that you just connect or know it will work without Kinect as well but Microsoft really wants Kinect on everything now so I'm reworked up in there so we're gonna do something clever do you know what that clever thing is yet I don't know if I'm supposed to say no but I don't okay do you know when that's coming out this winter I have PR guidelines for the first time in my life so that's interesting we're really used to just saying everything immediately are you doing all that development internally like with Kinect and then the Android stuff and the Android stuff we're doing internal because that's kind of similar to PC development but the console we don't understand console development then we don't have like the resources so we're getting another studio to do it freedom but we're still gonna design the game well everyone's Studios huge huge fans of Minecraft oh go home it is amazing when you do something like that and then it becomes this expression of everybody's creativity in the way games you know used to be well in many ways we try to do some of that as well yeah I had like 80 hours from a character in oblivion before you starter the main quest which is you don't get that in a lot of games it should very fun like doing the goblin caves and whatever a very very very fun yeah that's what we try to do is just have it be give the player tools and then you know let them run wild any time we try to get control back it ends up either we we do it the wrong way or it doesn't have the impact that the other things do when they can just yeah here's a bunch of tools go crazy and the you really managed to do like obviously all the questions of our kind of predetermined but really feel organic this the first time you play it which is very very fun it's not like yo you go to this guy with an exclamation point and you get like question well they do we get a question list but it's not like a cutscene and a quest in the new back into free roam after that and then like on the whole PC side releasing our tools we would love to get that on the console somehow our users are making like these awesome mods you know they're so good at it they're so creative and on the PC that I think that's what defines the PC version of our of our game yeah in many ways that makes it the superior version because becomes like this role-playing system and people just like to look at each other's stuff they've built much like Minecraft yeah absolutely and people are really starting to mob minecraft like altering the code and doing all weird oh yeah yeah all sorts of weird stuff so we're gonna have a really big like molding API was basically gonna be the entire source code but we can't do that like on consoles so it's gonna be a different game yeah they're they're starting to open that up though we've started to talk to them about it and you know if you look at forts uh where you're you know people are able to draw or do whatever they want and share that or rock band and putting songs up so it's still like it has to be more secure in some way and you know it needs to be monitored in a way that you almost don't have to on the PC so I mean we'd really like to find some way to solve that yeah in the future because I think it's it's something that we're it's a great part of the game that a lot of our audiences isn't seeing I think it's kind of a different you can expect different things so it's player because I played it Oblivion on both PC and then on the ps3 mmm so on the PC I played it for like many many hours and kind of forgot about the game then I picked it up for ps3 for some reason I wanted a game for the ps3 just sit ouch and play it got the Oblivion again and they started playing it from scratch and kind of played in a different way kind of because on the PC was really kind of like for some reason I this is really nerdy I started to like role-playing my character after a while like no boy are you in real life like you know but like no I won't use magic items so it became really difficult but yeah and also I tried using both yeah but on the ps3 it felt more like a traditional games I didn't really like care about those aspects I was just trying to like game the system then we want to guilt you into playing the main quest because I I avoided it that means well ok the game was fun I guess but also means you didn't we didn't make people care enough let the world burn come you know like but yeah in a bit you could kind of do that you know absolutely good yeah until you got to quartz with the burn watch yeah yeah then I kind of start to figure out hang on something bad is gonna happen and see what's good about dragons is we can make you not avoid it so here it comes you know yeah and they're good fun on the screen yeah who they are so what's next for you what's what's next for Minecraft yeah well we're doing it on multiple platforms none but on the PC we're trying to I'm doing the adventure update which is going to focusing more on making it feel a bit deeper or something I think the main problems are that combat is really boring at the moment so I'm really trying to make that feel more like gaming how do you find most people play the game they just play it like creation what mode and do whatever they want or they play the other most reliable stuff mostly they they build some do it in survival mode because they kind of like the challenge is kind of like the point but you find a lot less people doing the survival stuff yeah I think yeah at least what's visible like on the web and I hear from people who bill I don't know if they're people who play survival mode or less vocal or anything but seems to be a lot of people actually just building and like a multiplayer there are lots of people who just like the login to multiplayer server and they have their own house so the basically a single-player like but we'd rather play people huh that's kind of fun so iPhone version mmm started yet the figure probably gonna do it that's that's what I want him an iPhone guy yeah an Android guy perfect game to keep coming back to and just have on the go I think that we need to solve the controls though I've never been happy with like first-person controls something about the new PlayStation Vita the new PSP is GP I haven't seen it mmm there's a great demo they showed for ModNation racers yeah where the touchscreen they have a level editor and because it's touch sensitive on the bottom and the screen they on the editing they build this landscape by pushing it up from underneath and then pushing it down I think I built this landscape really quick I was like that's a level as very clever I think like for all the new fancy input devices you really just can't stick that on to old games you need to design for the games the games for the controllers yeah I play the recipe for the Wii and it kind of became a much easier game because we've added a min controller but I know we always go with that yeah we're probably going to have like you're the mini quests like you randomly generated like fetch quests basically just to have something for people to do if they need to find something to do but I don't think there's probably going to be some kind of goal like you can win the game but it's not gonna be like a story what does it mean how do you win I don't know it could be like the what we're thinking now is so you have to destroy something or kill something is a big monster but to do that you need to find like the five artifacts they're in different parts of the world so it's going to force people explore to get those and combine them and hopefully design in such a way that people can do speedruns of it I saw a speedrun wasalam the beating oblivion like seven minutes so Suffolk's yeah there's a we'll call it a feature yeah where you can jump into the the temple in it it breaks yeah it's a feature that wins you the game really fast yes yeah we're proud of that one at the office for every game we have a speedrun championship oh and the winner gets a pie of their choice nice and it's surprisingly competitive so the speed runs in your own game something like yeah no no in our game so it's when we're getting close to a going gold master in a game one of the things we do with every time we build a new version of the game we want to know okay this is the main quest to work completely that can you finish the game without cheating we need to know as quickly as possible so we have a group of guys who get really good at finishing the main quest oh yeah so there's a new bill we tell there's a new build and then you know a few hours later they're like well here are the problems or there weren't any problems and as they do that they get yeah I mean they get like formula one racer fast like they take corners and dungeons like if they Nick the corner there's you know yeah they're going to slow down and you'd be surprised how like for fallout 3 I mean there was the final two guys and an audience of people watching him speedrun it oh yeah and he was in like fallout 3 you know not cheating main quest maybe it's like an hour in five minutes right I mean fast it took me a bit longer than one hour around said yeah like for us you know the world is the main character of the game and they're going out and you know they'll go to the main quest I think you put two types people they want to be told what to do finish the main quest see the credits roll and move on in the next game if the majority of our audience is more it's their game and they want to go make the character and just just do whatever it's you know why we put so much content in it so that they feel like they have a lot a lot to do as opposed to you know go here do this so that's the common thing you know I avoided the main quest for this long and then yeah I finally felt I should see what it's about I think I kind of like a played older like console RPGs and stuff and it was kind of like the grinding element so you kind of thought that the main quest was going to be really easy to grind up but it wasn't because he already scaling okay that's got to be really difficult to balance it for both people to go for the main quest immediately I'm okay we're getting we're getting better at it I mean we we've we've done it well sometimes and uh not so well other times but fallout3 worked pretty well so go the game will end just like the other fall outs and man that people did not like that we loved it we're like no that's great won't be a problem and uh we since corrected that yeah but we won't do that again I think yeah like I love the way Red Dead Redemption ends I don't spoil it have you finished like yes that wasn't that is my favorite game ending ever I have to say like I I think it's genius the way ended it yeah i'm howard time I'm like fake ended a couple of times yeah people kept telling me no no go to the credits roll yeah okay is it over yet is it over yet yeah it was kind of why are they had elected they usually like I haven't two hours of credits and then it yeah that was a big thing I'd really like that and then they did the Samba DLC I know I didn't play it actually um I think I hadn't finished the game and it came out before I'd finished it so I waited and then I was I was on to other things yeah I love the way it ended up I don't think I'm gonna play the game anymore cuz I just that was the ending it was great I'm done I think that's kind of perhaps why did the Samba finger because they couldn't really do any good like yeah it's true it's the content like that sort of just let's just be crazy yeah if anybody watching this hasn't played or finished that game please need to finish it yes and if you think you're finish but finish it but haven't seen the M credits you haven't finished it and a lot of people work some of the guys you know they like well I found there's the stretch where it can be a bit boring yeah but I tell you I was like well that's the thing that made me feel like I was that guy yeah you know I felt like everything he was talking about with his family I was then doing that waiting for the other shoe to drop you know yeah really really well done I'm not really that much of a lucky creative right like that to make a story but I think working someone knows how to do it would be really cool yeah I want to do like a space game at some point get that guy built the enterprise in Minecraft yeah ooh we got a letter from how they do that I know lots of time I guess do they scan it some our well there are like your blueprints on the web somewhere which they don't want it to be there because they like want to have the copyright part so we actually got like a letter like say you can't use the enterprise to promote your game really yeah did you anyway we didn't at all the player is not known as YouTube so we didn't anything so it's kind of weird I don't I think that's protecting the trademarks they have we need to get somebody like doing 1111 like recreate Skyrim in Minecraft Oh actually my level designers would probably want to do that yeah that would be really awesome when minecraft first kind of hit you know we do these like every other week we show a game at lunch to the team where everyone stay calm and everyone will watch it and then we'll talk about it okay you know minecraft begin my hit and the guys were like we're gonna go everybody minecraft so they knew what it is they came to me and was like we're all playing I wouldn't know you have to show it we know we you'll be well planned okay yeah cool yeah but how long you doing that showing the game's poof for a long time yeah four years yeah that's a very cool thing we try to have like gaming Friday's for research officially so we try to play like new game so you played if you have a terraria it's a game Steam kind of inspired by minecraft it's like a 2d platformer rings the bell but not haven't played it so it's like the competition but it's a we decided to play it to see what it was and turned out to be really good so I set them to like I don't 11 p.m. or something just playing it on a Friday now we'll do it to look at like it's a good way you know a new game comes out and we'll we'll get the whole team together and schedule it and then we'll do weekly lunchtime things to look at it's a great way to look at it it's interesting like when you play a game and how you feel about it and then you sit down with a group of people and they you know hear what hear what they have to say but you're like like you know professionally um like LA noire you have you played that yes playing about you know that that's another one I think Rockstar just is executed on such a high level yes it's very interesting what what some of those expectations were versus what it is and you know what parts they like her or don't like a faction and managed to do that PR fairly well because they were very clear that it's not GTA yeah and the videos are released are great yeah have you played out in black and white mode a little bit um you know some of our guys played exclusively but I like feeling what I mean the thing I like about it best is I feel like I'm in 1940's LA yeah so I want it I want it in color like I'll just want around people's houses yeah this is like I don't know check out like you know feel like you're there actually I think I'm like you intentionally kill more civilians in LA and hard I mean GTI to get the achievement for this or the treatment there's an achievement for like racking up an hour like I'm gonna get it wrong $47,000 a property damage something Oh in one case oh wow okay yeah the major pedestrians are not supposed to be able to killed uh but you can kind of sum that which made it more fun Bridget Keller because people kept to play GTA you encourage people to kill people and I did there was no point like gameplay wise for me to do that but like in LA noire it's kind of it's so difficult to do so it's more fun yeah it's kind of weird we got to figure out who's gonna build the Minecraft Skyrim yeah that 11-11-11 bundle yeah whenever work out the the like PRS well since I'm gonna be gone for several weeks after release the game I'm kind of fine wearing the hack here because it's kind of outdoorsy but in here feels like indoors now feels weird we're in hat but I'm gonna do it anyways is this on camera it's good because you forgot to be anonymous you just removed hat

Channel: Game Informer

Views: 261,046

Keywords: 993004105001, Minecraft, elder scrolls, youtube, Todd Howard, Game Informer, YT, Skyrim

Id: dvAzPQBrKOc

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 22 2011