Speaking With… Rob Hewson of Dark Energy Digital

In our second edition of Speaking With… we begin to develop something of a pattern by continuing to interview the people behind of some of the best looking downloadable titles of the year. Last time we spoke with Jamie Cheng about fabulous looking cartoony brawler Shank, while this time we speak with Rob Hewson, Senior Creative Designer at Dark Energy Digital.

Dark Energy Digital’s latest title, Hydrophobia, is an ambitious title that pushes the boundaries of what it means to be a downloadable title. Hydrophpobia is the first in a series of games that more resemble a full retail released game than your typical downloadable title. Featuring unparalleled water physics, thanks to their own HydroEngine, and a thought provoking storyline revolving around global overpopulation, Hydrophobia won several awards at E3 2010, including best downloadable title from Gametrailers.com.

The story revolves around two opposing real world ideologies, Malthusian and Cornucopian. The Malthusians believe that there is only a set number of people that can possibly live on the planet before we exhaust our resources and damn everyone else; in the game the Malthusians spread their propaganda with the message ‘Save the World, Kill Yourself’. Conversely the Cornucopians believe that science and technological advancement can help get the most out of our resources and sustain any growth in population that we experience. Got it?

Now we hand over to Rob to hear more about this great looking game.

First of all can you tell us a little about Dark Energy Digital and your role in the company?

Dark Energy believes as a company that digital distribution is the future, and is committed to pushing back the boundaries of download gaming. We’re a technology driven company and want to explore new types of gameplay by introducing revolutionary tech like HydroEngine.

My role as Senior Creative Designer involves working with the wider design team on the gameplay mechanics and levels, and specifically working with the narrative team to develop the script and collectables, direct motion capture sessions and push the big picture vision of the project. I also spend a lot of time with the press and consumers promoting the game.

As a developer working in Britain how do you feel about the new Government dropping the proposed tax breaks for the UK Games Industry?

Fortunately I don’t have the burden of the financial side on my shoulders personally, but I do think it’s a shame that Britain is losing so many studios. However there’s no point in complaining about it, you have to adapt and be creative and push on regardless; there’s no better way to prove the value of the industry to the UK Government than by being successful.

On to a slightly more cheerful subject, what games have you been playing recently, and which developers do you admire?

Up until about a week ago we’ve been in serious crunch mode for Hydrophobia, and I’ve been travelling a lot to promote the game. So at the moment I’m into bite sized gaming that I can dip in and out of. I’ve completed Braid and Portal for the second time, I’m doing the Portal: Still Alive challenge maps, a bit of Peggle here and there and working through Super Mario Galaxy 2. Oh and I’ve just recently downloaded Limbo which I’ve almost completed.

Developers I admire… Valve certainly, Nintendo of course, and I’m very enthusiastic about the newer starts-ups and indies like Media Molecule en all. I think development in general is the healthiest it has been in years, if not financially then certainly in creativity terms.

As the title suggests, water plays a big part in Hydrophobia

Your latest title Hydrophobia will soon be available to download on Xbox Live Arcade. Can you provide us with a bit of background on the setting of the game?

We wanted we what call a ‘tangible future’ – a story setting based on the trends and forecasts for near future politics, science and technology. We also wanted to sidestep a lot of clichés and create something original and compelling.

The game is set in the mid 21st century when (according to UN projections) over 9 billion people will inhabit the earth and not enough resources will be available to sustain them. The result is conflict erupting over the most precious resource of all – water, and the existing ideologies of Malthusianism versus Cornucopianism are pushed to the fore.

It takes place onboard the Queen of the World; which is the largest ship ever built and the last refuge of the wealthy elite of the old capitalist world. Onboard the Five Founding Fathers, who are of the Cornucopian persuasion, pursue science and technology as a means to solving the ‘global population flood’. On the eve of the 10th Anniversary celebrations, one of the five – a nanotechnology company called NanoCell, is about to announce a breakthrough in their research into purifying seawater at the molecular level to make the desserts bloom.

At this moment Neo Malthusian terrorists attack and our reluctant heroine is caught on the flooding lower decks of the ship with only one goal – survival.

And in terms of gameplay, how would you describe it?

It’s a full on 3rd person action adventure – something which has never been done on XBLA before, and revolves around the key element of HydroEngine; the worlds first true fluid dynamics engine for games, which models flowing water as a physics simulation which behaves completely realistically.

This results in gameplay unlike anything you have played before where you can manipulate the water itself in what we call ‘flow combat’. It’s entirely dynamic, never the same twice and results in huge amount of emergent gameplay. You can use the environment to take down enemies with floating oil fires, electricity, drowning and even underwater combat if you elect to flood an area entirely.

It has been widely reported that Hydrophobia originally started life as a mutliplatform boxed retail product, what led to the decision to make it a downloadable title, and why is it currently an Xbox exclusive?

Our goal from the outset was to develop a AAA action game with a modest budget and small team. We built our own engine and editor InfiniteWorlds following a unique procedural approach, which allowed us to implement the Immediate-Edit-Play feature and Simultaneous Multi-user Editing. This was crucial for the experimentation and iterative design required to work with real water for the first time – we had lots of ideas but we had to figure out what worked in practice.

This unique approach gave us another benefit – the procedural technology resulted in a vastly reduced file size, and XBLA as a platform had evolved to the point where we realised we could deliver this as an XBLA title and redefine the boundaries for download games. Microsoft were incredibly excited about the prospect and the rest, as they say, is history.

How long has Hydrophobia been in development and in what other ways has it changed along the way?

On and off, it must be almost 5 years. I know this because I still have the original design document from September 2005. It’s changed massively – we had to let it evolve organically because in truth nobody knew what the implication of HydroEngine would be. We had to experiment and tweak and adjust – cut back on things which didn’t work and enhance the things which did. Simultaneously we kept on developing the narrative to create this deep, rich universe which is closely coupled to the gameplay and mechanics.

One good example is the characters reactions to the water. At first we implemented it completely realistically, so the character would respond to every wave and it was a struggle wade through the environments. However we discovered that this was actually very frustrating; all of the players attention was consumed simply by moving around. There was a big debate, and it was actually quite controversial in the team but we decided to tone it down for the sake of the fun factor – which always has to be priority. You can still feel all the forces acting on the character correctly, but it has been considerably dampened to allow the game to be, well, a game.

Hydrophobia is unlike any other downloadable game we've ever seen

How many episodes do you currently plan on releasing?

We don’t like the term episode – it’s doesn’t quite capture the scope of what we are doing. Hydrophobia should be thought of as a trilogy, with plenty of scope to expand deeper into the universe beyond that.

Will each instalment be a complete stand alone experience or is downloading every instalment a necessity?

Every instalment is a complete stand alone game, but you wouldn’t watch The Empire Strikes Back on its own – you need the other instalments to enjoy it to the fullest. You can certainly purchase and enjoy each individually, but there’s a wider context and bigger story arc across the whole trilogy.

What were some of the major influences on the development of Hydrophobia?

Protagonist wise we wanted to avoid the usual gaming cliché of a ‘beautiful but deadly’ female lead and have a flawed, reluctant hero who has to grow and evolve. If Ripley and John McClane had a daughter who suffered a childhood tragedy and had an engineering degree, then she’d be a lot like Kate Wilson.

In terms of games, we were probably most influenced by the atmosphere of Dead Space, the narrative elements of Half Life 2 and Bio Shock, the action of Uncharted 2… but Hydrophobia is really it’s own game. Nothing else plays like it and nothing else feels like it. We worked very hard to create a completely original experience in every sense.

Female lead characters  aren’t all that common in games, barring a few obvious examples such as Lara Croft or Faith from Mirror’s Edge, in what ways does Kate differentiate herself from the standard heroine?

Again it’s this idea of having a flawed, reluctant hero – not a kick ass sex Goddess back flipping her way through wave after wave of enemies. At the start of the game she’s just out to survive and she’s no match for the Malthusians – there’s a real sense of vulnerability about her. However she begins to realise that to survive she has to fight back and to an extent fight her own demons. The Malthusians have blocked every exit; the only routes left open are those they are using for their own objectives – which are obviously heavily guarded. So there’s inevitability about the way Kate is drawn into the fight, the politics and the responsibility of becoming the hero.

The water never behaves in the same way twice

Does the game feature a mutliplayer component? If not what have you done to increase replayability in the game?

We wanted to focus purely on a single player experience but you’re right – it has to be massively replayable. Firstly this comes naturally from HydroEngine because you never get the same battle twice – flowing water means the gameplay space is in constant flux at the whim of Sir Isaac Newton.

There’s also about 200 collectables to find, including nearly 50 medals, plus items, documents, emails and even real quotes from Malthus. There are also characters which you may have failed to save the first time, and saving them unlocks more collectables and medals, and there are areas which you might have tackled in a stealthy manor before which you can go back and flood to see how they play in underwater combat.

On top of all that we give you a challenge room when you complete the game with an entirely new, awe-inspiring mechanic – the ability to directly manipulate the water itself to launch enemies and objects, combining elements to get the most creative kills for a higher score on the leaderboards. Oh, and there are also leaderboards throughout the main campaign too.

It seems every other game these days takes place in a nuclear wasteland, after a natural disaster, or during some sort of zombie outbreak. Why do you think so many games these days are set in dystopian futures? Do you game developers know something the rest of us don’t?

Conflict = drama and destruction = gameplay (most of the time) so those kind of settings lend themselves to a game naturally. However clichés are tiresome, which is one of the reasons we went for this tangible future. We’re not imagining a dystopia; we’re dealing with the real, palpable one which is just around the corner.

If I wasn’t already convinced to buy Hydrophobia how would you persuade me to buy it in one sentence?

Hydrophobia is the beginning of a mammoth new IP, the debut of the world’s first true fluid dynamics engine which results in spectacular gameplay unlike anything you have played before, and is the most ambitious download title to date.

And finally, come clean; which side are you one – Malthusian or Cornucopian?

The reality is that both points of view are credible. Yes we should be optimistic and believe that we can solve the world’s problems through innovation and technology, but we also need to accept the fact population growth needs to be controlled. As with most things in life the rational stance resides somewhere within the blurry intersection of the two opposing viewpoints.

Before signing off do you have any sites/facebook groups/twitter feeds that you want to share with our readers?

Yes indeed! @DarkEnergyD on Twitter and Dark Energy Digital on Facebook. We always try to respond to everybody and believe that the most valuable feedback comes from the gamers themselves, so please get in touch.

Rob, thank you for your time.

Hydrophobia will be available to download on Xbox Live Arcade towards the end of September. Stay tuned to The Newb Review for our review of the game around launch time.

-Luke Mears

Tags: 360, arcade, Dark Energy Digital, interview, Luke Mears, Mightyles, physics, Rob Hewson, speaking with, UK, Water, xbox

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