Interview With Hydrophobia’s Rob Hewson
Making waves on Xbox Live Arcade
by AXIS of Reality
©2010 Alex Baldwin
With Hydrophobia, the latest in a line of retail-quality Xbox Live Arcade games hitting download servers right about now, OXCGN scored an exclusive interview with Rob Hewson, Senior Creative Designer at developer Dark Energy.
Read on for the details on why Hydrophobia transitioned from a disc release to Live Arcade, how water plays a more integral role in gameplay than any game before and the scores you have to reach to literally beat them at their own game!
The Interview:
Alex Baldwin: Thanks for speaking with us today Rob. Could you give us an overview of who you are, and what your responsibilities have been in Hydrophobia.
Rob Hewson: My names Rob Hewson, I’m Senior Creative Designer on Hydrophobia which means I overlook the high level design and narrative on the game.
AB: To start with, what is the base narrative and premise of Hydrophobia?
RH: We set out to create a tangible near future world which is a direct extension of contemporary politics, science and technology. The United Nations is currently forecasting over 9 billion people on the planet by 2050 and a very serious lack of resources to sustain them, so that’s the wider backdrop to Hydrophobia.
In that scenario a new ideological divide will arise between Malthusians; who support population control and Cornucopians who hold faith in human ingenuity and technology as a means of increasing productivity of our essential resources. Since Thomas Malthus first published his infamous ‘Essay on the Principles of Population’ in 1798 it has been the Cornucopian perspective which has held true, but many people today believe the crash Malthus predicted has merely been delayed.
In Hydrophobia the wealthy elite live onboard the Queen of the World; a colossal ship which is more like a city at sea – a stateless paradise where the Five Founding Fathers can carry out their Cornucopian research in isolation. The most precious resource of all is water, and NanoCell – one of the five, is developing technology to purify sea water at the molecular level using nanotechnology in order to make the desserts of the world bloom.
On the 10th anniversary of the Queen of the World when the whole planet is watching, NanoCell is set to announce a breakthrough. At this moment a group of Neo-Malthusians attack and take over the ship, and Kate Wilson is caught up in the chaos.
AB: At E3 this year I got the opportunity to sit down and have a play of the game, and was engrossed to the point that I almost missed my Gears of War 3 appointment.
While there are a huge number of action adventure titles out there, the titular focus on water is very intriguing. What part does water play in the story and gameplay?
RH: I hope Cliff [Bleszinski] doesn’t hold it against us! The water is powered by HydroEngine which is the first fluid dynamics engine for games. In narrative terms it provides a great deal of symbolism in for the Global Population Flood and the chaos which has erupted as a result, and more particularly it serves as a metaphor for Kate’s character arc through the game.
To begin with Kate is just out to survive and the water is the biggest threat, but as Kate evolves and learns to fight back she is able to use it as a weapon against her enemies. Ultimately she will grow to master the water itself.
In terms of the gameplay it provides a completely dynamic element to the puzzles and combat – it is entirely emergent and never repeats. The player can often choose which area to flood and the AI will react and adapt to the water. You can unleash it to wipe out enemies, direct floating oil fires towards them or use it to channel electricity or drown enemies.
AB: Can you give us an example of a way the player could use the water to their advantage on the fly?
RH: If an oil barrel randomly floats past you might decide to stick a Gel Round to it, then remotely open a door with Kate’s MAVI to send the oil barrel floating down a hallway with the Gel Round still attached. Detonate the Gel Round when it floats past an unsuspecting Malthusian and you’ll end up with a high scoring combo. You might even find he runs off on fire and sets off more environmental destruction.
AB: Other games such as Bioshock have put a heavy emphasis on water, but until now it has mainly been limited to set decoration. Why do you think no-one has tried to use water as a core gameplay mechanic until Hydrophobia?
RH: Fluid dynamics are incredibly difficult to solve and keep stable. The general wisdom in the development community was that it simply wasn’t possible on this generation of hardware. However our R&D team headed up by PhD Astro Physicist Huw Lloyd has come up with the goods – unfortunately (or fortunately) no other developer has cracked it.
AB: Were your programmers cursing every time a new water feature was proposed?
RH: Actually, no. Since HydroEngine is a real physics simulation there is absolutely no scripting, no setting up or forcing it to do things it can’t. It simply works and flows as real water does, and we can apply real forces to it and get real results out of the box. On the other hand, the task of designing a game around something as unpredictable as water was certainly challenging.
AB: Hydrophobia has had quite an interesting development process, initially starting as a full disc-based release before disappearing and reappearing as an episodic Xbox Live Arcade title. Can you give us an insight into why this change of direction occurred?
RH: We took a very unique approach with our game creation system InfiniteWorlds, which has a bespoke procedural engine to allow rapid prototyping. We needed a system which would make development more efficient and allow us to compete with bigger studios.
It was almost a side effect that this procedural tech also resulted in a massively reduced filesize, and when we showed the technology to Microsoft and told them we could do a AAA action adventure on XBLA they didn’t hesitate to sign the game up.
AB: There are obvious challenges with digital distribution in marketing a new franchise, such as the lack of retail promotion but on the other hand costs can be kept down.
Do you see any issues with even high-profile digitally distributed games such as Hydrophobia being overshadowed by large retail releases such as Halo Reach most recently?
RH: At the moment that is certainly true, but we are in this for the long game. The industry has to move with the times and digital distribution is the future. Now, thanks to InfiniteWorlds you can have all the benefits in terms of innovation and originality in the download space and still have AAA quality production values.
We’re trailblazing a new era of high quality downloads to show the world that you can have your cake and eat it too – and for $15 instead of $50 or $60.
AB: Is there anything you can tell us about Hydrophobia no-one else knows yet?…
RH: What a great question! How about this – the top leaderboard scores by Dark Energy’s QA team while testing the game, see if you can beat them come Wednessday:
AB: Thanks for your time Rob, most appreciated!
©2010 Alex Baldwin
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Filed under: 3rd Party Games, Console gaming, Editorial, Gaming Videos, Industry News, Interviews, New Xbox 360 Games, XBLA News-Reviews, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 3rd Party Games, Xbox 360 Game Previews, Xbox 360 News, XboxLive Marketplace Tagged: | Arcade game, Bioshock, Coin-Op, Dark Energy Games, E3 2010, Fluid dynamics, games, Gears of War 3, HydroEngine, hydrophobia, InfiniteWorlds, Kate Wilson, Malthusians, MAVI, Microsoft, NanoCell, Neo-Malthusians, Queen of the World, Rob Hewson, Thomas Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, United Nations, video games, Xbox Live Arcade
