Game Stop Blog Mike Wang Interview

[dragon4thQ]

Editor's Note: We recently submitted some questions to Mike Wang, Lead Gameplay Designer for NBA LIVE 10, and he was such a good sport about it that he answered every one of them, even the silly ones. Check out our exclusive Q&A session with him below.

How do you go about mimicking the playing styles and movements of the players? We picture every NBA player dropping by your offices and donning a mocap suit in front of a green screen, like when Andy Serkis played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, but that can't be how it's done, right?
That's exactly how it's done, sans the green screen. We've had the privilege of having a number of NBA players come through the studio throughout the years; so we have a pretty extensive animation library of player-specific moves. For the guys who haven't been in yet, we bring in local talent, guys who've played D-League or overseas, or ex-college players to do their best to mimic those NBA athletes.

Would Gollum make a good NBA player? He's small, but he's quick. If you told him the ball was "The Precious," would he lead in rebounds? Or would he just get one rebound and run away?
I think Gollum would struggle. He is quick and would probably be a decent ballhandler with those long arms and giant hands. But his size would be a problem defensively, and he'd probably get tossed from most games for biting people.

Andy Serkis also did the motion capture for King Kong. How would Shaq fare against Kong?
They're about evenly matched; so I could see this one going either way. In the end, I think it'd come down to free throws; so I'd have to give the edge to Kong.

How up-to-date are the stats that are brought into the game?
Thanks to our partnership with Synergy Sports Technology, our stats and tendencies are always made fresh daily through our Dynamic DNA feature. Gone are the days of having outdated information on players the day you pick up the game.

Do you run into NBA players who comment on whether or not they think you captured their personalities and movements?
All the time. Playing NBA LIVE with different NBA players is one of the most enjoyable aspects of my job. Everyone I've met so far has been really happy with how they're represented in LIVE. It's great to see their personalities come through when they play, too. Baron Davis used his virtual self to throw dime after dime. Danny Granger took just about every shot with his guy when he played the game at the launch party last year. Dwight Howard was beasting with himself in the post. Rudy Gay and Andre Iguodala were slashing to the hole like crazy. You get about half the guys playing the game like they play in real life and then the other half play the game like they wished their coaches would allow them to.

Do you cringe every time a player gets a new tattoo in the off-season?
Our art team is really on top of that stuff. It's become a bit ridiculous how detailed the visuals have become in LIVE. You can even see the chest tats on Bron peeking through the jersey.

What percentage of a consoles processing power is devoted to rendering players' neck tattoos?
There are a lot of neck tattoos. We always reserve at least 15-20% of our rendering engine power to accommodate everyone accurately.

Because NBA LIVE 10 reflects the strengths and weaknesses of actual players, does it help a gamer's performance if he or she is familiar with the real NBA?
More so this year than ever before. When we see people pick up LIVE 10 for the first time, just about everybody struggles the first couple of games adapting to the new controls and style of gameplay — especially if they try to play LIVE like they have in the past. Playing fundamental basketball is so important in this year's game, you can't expect to just run around with one player and crossover your way to the basket for the dunk on every possession like you could before. LIVE 10 really rewards sound basketball strategy and using your players' real-life strengths to succeed. But yeah, we've had several guys in our focus groups who aren't that familiar with NBA video games, but who were big basketball heads, jump right into LIVE 10 and find success early on. That's one thing I'm really proud of with this year's game. With LIVE 10, you have to think and play basketball — not video game basketball.

Can you tell us a little bit about the size-up moves and hustle plays?
The size-up moves came from a trend I was noticing when watching guys go 1-on-1 in the mocap studio. Guys don't always try to beat their defender with the first step. Sometimes they "set them up" with a few in-place dribble moves to get them off balance or to get them back on their heels so they can attack off the bounce or pull up for a jumper. This is exactly what the size-up move is intended to do. As for hustle plays, it's something that's been lacking in LIVE for a while now. Whenever the ball got knocked loose in previous ersions, guys would jog over to it nonchalantly to pick it up or just watch it roll out of bounds. In LIVE 10, they'll hit the floor and wrestle it away from each other, tip it to teammates, or attempt to save the ball out of bounds. It really adds a lot more excitement and energy to the game and really helps improve the flow. Even in watching real basketball games, people get on the edge of their seat whenever they see a hustle play develop because they know those broken 50/50 plays usually end up in big breakaway dunks. Now the same thing happens in LIVE.

The game description says NBA LIVE 10 uses “authentic team-specific playbooks from every NBA team?” How do you get your hands on those plays? Do you break into teams' offices at night? Our office is close to Dallas, and we're pretty stealthy, if you need any help with that.
NBA LIVE 10 is the FIRST NBA game to offer real, authentic team playbooks, and it's an aspect of our game that we're really excited about. Our sources at the NBA who helped us out with the playbooks wished to remain anonymous for obvious reasons. But no, we didn't have to break any laws to get them. Of course, if you want to get the official Mavs playbook for us we'll trade you for a free copy of the game.

Is it true that the Clippers playbook was written on the back of a Del Taco napkin?
The original one was… yes.

How many hours does your development team spend trying to recreate the perfection that is Adam Morison's mustache?
We devoted a team of artists to Adam Morrison's player model this year, as some guys just need that kind of attention. It took about two months to properly model the 'stache and then another month tuning the textures and lighting. It was definitely a lot of work, but we feel that the game wouldn't have been complete without the most accurate representation possible with today's technology. That being said, there's always room for improvement. As we prepare for NBA LIVE 11, we already have dedicated central team resources creating a new mustache and body hair engine that all EA sports games will be able to take advantage of in the future. It should also give us the much requested armpit hair feature as well as individually modeled nose and ear hair, which in my opinion, is clearly the future of sports games.

[RayDog253]

LOL, good read.