Postmortem: Dead Space
In space, no one can hear you conduct a postmortem with Senior Producer Chuck Beaver (real name).
1/27/2009 6:13 PM | 6 Comments | Page 4 of 5
Scott Jones
Status: Coffee makes me feel 4-percent sexier.
Crispy Gamer: That's true; it's ephemeral. And, I guess, if there's one thing I like less than being led by the nose through a game, it's being completely lost in a game.
Survival horror is a strange genre. Survival horror games are never pleasant; at least, not in a traditional this-is-so-fun kind of way. They're basically one long miserable plight that you hope to get through. Yet the net result afterward, the takeaway feeling, should be, "I had fun." As first-time developers of a survival horror game, how do you reconcile those disparate pieces?
Beaver: Most videogames are straight-up fantasy fulfillment. Look at Gears of War. It's male fantasy fulfillment. It's a high-testosterone, kick-ass world where you're supposed to be super-successful, and enjoy this great power ride.
But you're right; survival horror is strange. There are no big guns. You're not a Marine. The fantasy fulfillment in survival horror, I think, comes from being a normal person surviving. You survive as you. That's the takeaway. That's why we play them.
Crispy Gamer: The soundtrack is arguably the very best part of the game. Even when I didn't see any monsters for 10 minutes, I still had this palpable feeling that something was in the walls all around me, plotting my demise. The tension is always there; it doesn't let up thanks to the soundtrack. But the real achievement, of course, is the use of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."
Beaver: ["Twinkle"] was a total lightning-in-a-bottle moment. Glen said, "Hey, we should do a lullaby song, something really creepy." And someone immediately says, "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," and it just went from there. Everyone was so excited by that song. And there are a whole bunch of lesser-known verses that are awesome, and bizarrely applicable to what we were doing.
Crispy Gamer: Were other songs considered? "Frère Jacques?" "She'll Be Coming Around The Mountain?" "Puff the Magic Dragon?"
Beaver: [Laughs] No. We pretty much settled on "Twinkle," and that was the end of it. [Minor spoiler alert] And then the song actually made it into the game.
Aim for the rectum!
I know! I'm wandering around the ship, and suddenly it starts coming from ... somewhere. It's like those cruise ships, where no matter where you are on board, the same song is always playing from hidden speakers.
Beaver: It's so twisted.
Crispy Gamer: Review scores for the game were decent, but not exactly stellar. And sales figures for
Dead Space have been on the low end of the spectrum. As a development team, how do you guys process this news?
Beaver: We do read every review that was published. We absorb that data. We wanted to hear what people had to say. You know, honestly, we were pleasantly surprised. Most of the reviews were pretty good. We got a lot of high 80s, and some 90s. We included in some top-five and top-10 lists. We were generally happy with the critical reception the game got.
As for sales, honestly, could we have a picked a worse time to release the game? The economy is tanking. And the competition this fall was bizarrely strong. We were up against
Fallout 3,
Gears of War 2 and
Resistance 2. Those are games that gamers have to buy. So, after buying those games, I'm guessing not a lot of people had much money left over.
