“Make your game easy to play, but hard to master”, explained Mike Swanson during his session at Casual Connect Europe 2015. He shared his experiences with the audience in managing game production and designs while striving to appeal to different player types on Age of Empires Online and the upcoming Game of Thrones from Bigpoint Entertainment. Ease of entry (also known as the funnel) is intrinsic in hooking a player. He states, “Keeping this funnel really crisp coming in is key. It doesn’t matter how big the game is”.
Making and experimenting with special effects was one of Mike Swanson’s favorite pastimes as a kid. He loved using his parents’ camera to mess with stop-motion and other practical effects while watching how the pros made them. In high school, he mixed art classes with business classes — with his eye particularly on advertising artwork.
Considering his love for things both technical and artistic, it should be no surprise that Mike ended up in video games, although his path to senior producer at Bigpoint is a bit of a winding one.
His childhood movies and high school classes both came in handy as he navigated work at Electronic Arts, Gas Powered Games, Relic Entertainment, and even LucasArts. “When I moved from Canada to work for LucasArts and had a chance to meet (George Lucas), that was when I knew I had exceeded all my childhood dreams,” he recalls.
Proud Moments and Pains
While meeting George Lucas may have fulfilled a childhood dream, something else holds the honor of being the proudest moment of Mike’s career so far. That honor goes to a project he worked on while at Gas Powered Games: Supreme Commander 2.
Releasing the game for both PC and Xbox on time and on budget is the highlight of his professional career. “(Former Gas Powered Games owner) Chris Taylor put a lot of trust in me during those years and let me lead the team how I wanted. It was a great experience working with the same team for over 4 years,” Mike says, adding jokingly, “and not having them kill me!”
But all his success has not come without a few growing pains. Mike recalls one project, Space Siege, that he jumped onto as a new producer. The project was already at least six months behind schedule when he hopped on board. Mike ended up halting the project mid-production and sitting down with the design team to re-work the game so it could be released on time. Surprisingly, the game didn’t turn out “too bad” — although, he notes, the multiplayer was horrible.
Mike sees every moment of his career — as he moved from artist to department management and eventually to producer positions — as adding to the knowledge and experience which helps him make critical decisions in his current role at Bigpoint.
Creativity and Self-Doubt
One of Mike’s favorite things about his job is being involved in the creativity and production of all sorts of great games.
Mike draws creative inspiration from games, movies, books and anything out in the real world. To focus that inspiration, he uses a scattershot approach — writing down as many ideas as he can and using a mind map to help refine things even more. He admits, though, that he does not have enough time or space to write down all his game ideas.
When he has the occasional creative block, he immerses himself in a wide variety of media and experiences to overcome it. However, he notes that, in a work culture that naturally keeps creative blocks at bay, experiencing self-doubt is actually more common — and the more difficult part of his job. “I usually have competing ideas swirling in my head that I have to negotiate with. Squeezing in all the amazing ideas into development timelines (and) getting it done to a high degree of quality within that timeline (is challenging)!”
Tablets and Touch
However, through self-doubt, creative blocks, and any other work obstacles, Mike continues to get the job done and enjoy the work. Currently he is overseeing the development of Game of Thrones at Bigpoint.
As for the future, Mike Swanson expects to be busy working with ever-more-powerful mobile tablets that can accommodate peripherals and augment the touch experience. “Games for tablets will grow bigger and bigger and the industry will once again have to manage ballooning budgets for yet another device!”
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