AUTOPSY:

A Postmortem of CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder PC

“Postmortem” is particularly appropriate for October’s IGDA SF meeting – a joint talk with representatives from both Telltale Games and Ubisoft SF on the newest installment of the CSI series of PC games: 3 Dimensions of Murder. With 25 million viewers in the US alone, the wildly popular series’ finale for this year ranked number one, rated over American Idol, and is easily the top rated fictional network TV show.

With a standard like that to live up to, the creators of the CSI series of PC games have a great deal of normal and not-so-normal issues to resolve, with a wide array of difficult circumstances to work under, not the least of which is the atypical audience, in respect to video games: mostly women, ranging in age from 35 to 60. The dialog and portrayal of the characters must be true to the series, the content must be engaging, and the game play uncomplicated, while still delivering a quality experience. On top of this, the decision was made to move the third CSI from its previously 2D format to full 3D, allowing moving cameras and points of view. Not an easy task, by any means.

Leading off the panel was Tony Van, who began with some facts about the CSI TV series, then about the CSI PC game series. Among other points of interest were that the CSI PC series has sold roughly 2 million units worldwide, and that the initial installations were based in Macromedia Director, patterned off of the Myst series. Unfortunately, Van disclosed, the CSI series generally gets poor ratings from critics – mainly because most critics are from the more standard video game audience, a demographic which the CSI series is not aimed at.

Ratings from the actual players of the games, however, have uniformly been very high: 90% of CSI PC consumers have said that the series was good to excellent. This number takes on additional relevance when added to the fact that 72% of these same fans have played two or more games from the series, and that 80% have completed the games they’ve played; obviously, despite being in the group labeled “casual” gamers, the fans of the CSI games are quite dedicated to the series. As a result, the responses from fans of this series are a good way of gauging how well the team has designed and produced the game, more so than the often wildly-disparate opinions of other market segments.

Van then went on to explain what the target audience for the CSI PC series was looking for:

• Authenticity – as the fans of the CSI PC series are also fans of the CSI TV series, the portrayal of settings and characters must be as true to life as possible; any errors, cut corners or changed details are likely to be noticed.
• Uncomplicated User Experience – one of the easiest ways to turn off the more casual gamer is to make the game play far too complicated, both in terms of control and in terms of completing objectives to advance the plot.
• Best Experience Possible – a combination of many factors, an experience which is confusing, frustrating, or just plain boring is going to cause the target demographic to find other things to do with their spare time.

After addressing these points, Van went on to discuss the exciting changes that migrating to a 3D format allowed the design team to incorporate. Among other aspects, the presence of a movable camera allows for the cinematic essence of the CSI TV series to carry into the PC series; CSI is known for its particular cinematic feel, which the design team brought in cinematographers to recreate for their game. 3D also allows the casual viewer a closer experience to more standard first-person games, a point illustrated with an aside about watching testers leaning in closer to the screen to examine the area, which never happened in the previous 2D format. Finally, the design team was able to allow animated characters to move, show emotion and expression, gesture, and all the other factors which make for believable character depiction. Since all this could be accomplished via 3D animation, rather than the multiple-images method of 2D animation, the overall specs of the game could be kept low, on the same approximate level of those for the Sims 2.

Dan Connors, CEO/Executive Producer of Telltale Games, gave the audience some background on Telltale Games, with particular emphasis on the team’s love for telling stories in games. According to Connors, Telltale Games was particularly attracted to CSI because the first three games succeeded in reaching a relatively new market, as well as the opportunity to evolve a well-standing game into a more cinematic experience.

Connors continued on the subject of evolving the experience, and on the various balancing acts the design team had to perform between CSI: 3 being interactive entertainment or a game. Among others, issues faced by the design team were Accessibility vs. Immersion and Accessibility vs. Playability, both of which are especially important interactions for the target demographic. Connors also reinforced Van’s earlier point by reiterating the divide between the CSI series and the mainstream gaming market, stating that mainstream gamers are responsible for most critical opinion, while the audience of CSI PC games do not typically read gaming magazines or web sites, where those opinions are generally expressed.

Continuing the discussion of evolving the product, Connors spoke on the technology developed by Telltale Games for CSI: 3. Touching briefly on the dialog systems and the rules systems, he went on to speak on the creation of assets in Maya and some of the functionality of the CSI engine editor, which Greg Land then demonstrated, in real time, with an example of a familiar lab room, and by placing a character and interacting with the lights and environments via the in-game camera.

Chris Ferriter, who told the audience about the goals of the CSI: 3 development team, revealed the steps taken to achieve them.

First among the goals was “Increase Overall Quality”:

• 3D brings in new game play dynamics – as touched on by Van, Ferriter spoke on how the player can truly investigate scenes in 3D, bringing the camera in close to potential clues, much like how the CSI characters find and incorporate tiny details into their investigations.
• Cinematographers – the CSI TC series has a distinctive look, so the team brought in cinematographers, with the aid of the new 3D format, to replicate the feeling, as demonstrated by several screenshots from the upcoming CSI: 4.
• Motion capture – used to enhance the TV series’ signature recons, motion capture adds significant realism to the character animation.
• Interesting storylines – absolutely essential for games of this sort, particular attention was paid to the plotlines and case details, just as in the CSI TV series. Greg Land interjected with a comment about how the stories also offer insight into different subcultures, which many players may know little of, apparently including a murder involving a video game company.

“Efficient Developer/Publisher Relationship”:

• Open lines of communication – essential to any group endeavor, the CSI: 3 team took special care to make themselves and their progress accessible to both their own company and to the CSI TV producers.
• Set realistic expectations – as anyone in the game industry knows, having unachievable goals only guarantees failure of a project.
• Be willing to compromise – much as any design team might like to have ultimate say in a project, the nature of a title like CSI: 3 requires that the team be willing to compromise, both with each other, and with the CSI TV team.

“System Specs”:

• Aligned with Sims 2 minimum specs – due to the target demographic, the CSI: 3 team felt it essential to make their project playable on as wide a range of PCs as possible. To accomplish this, they aligned the game requirements to those of the minimum necessary to run the Sims 2.
• Leverage strengths of the Telltale engine – every game engine has strengths and weaknesses, things that each does cleaner, more efficiently, and more attractively than others. The design team devoted special attention to using the particular strengths of the Telltale engine in the final product.

“Authenticity”:

• Technical Consultant – to aid in this goal, the CSI PC team brought in a real Las Vegas CSI to insure the veracity of the details of the investigations.
• Dialog Writer – another aspect of achieving authenticity was to bring in the writer of the CSI novels to work with the dialog.
• Photo shoot – the CSI team went to the set of the current CSI series to do a photo shoot of the set to use as reference material.
• Coordinate with CBS and ACI Productions – part of maintaining communications, the design team kept in contact with the makers of the TV series throughout the development process.

Finally, fifth among the ways the goals was “Product Placement” – a subject which sparks much venom among gamers, and is often seen as “selling out”. In the case of CSI, however, product placement isn’t always bad; the series takes place in the real world, after all, and the presence of real consumer items and places adds to realism. Beyond that, the additional revenue is always useful, and building strong partnerships with various corporate entities can lead to additional promotion of the game.

With this, Ferriter wrapped up with the lessons learned by the CSI: 3 team:

• Quality benchmarks need to be defined as early as possible.
• Clearly define ownership of roles – who is responsible for what aspect of the project? Doing so avoids both situations where two groups are redundantly working on the same aspect, and situations where an element is not completed on time because everyone thought it was someone else’s responsibility.
• Play to strengths and design around weaknesses – simply put, do not assign a particular element to a person or group who cannot achieve the quality level required for the overall project.
• Localization isn’t as easy as it sounds – translation can take enormous amounts of time, for example.
• Product placement is feature creep – attempting to do product placement can lead to new situations, even entire new locales, which can radically alter the events in the storyline, which can lead to changes in the features and functionality of the finished product.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

	Tony Van has produced, designed or supervised over 60 games in over 15 years. He has made games of multiple genres and platforms for Infocom, Activision, SSI, Lucasfilm Games, Sega/SegaSoft, EA/EA.com & Ubisoft. He is currently Executive Producer at Ubisoft San Francisco.
	In 11 Years at LucasArts Dan Connors worked as a Producer and Director on titles such as Xwing Alliance, Roque Squadron, Dark Forces, Sam and Max and Many more. Founded Telltale inc with two partners in 2004 raising investment capital to seed development and publishing. Since that time Telltale has successfully launched and self published the first two episodes of the Bone Series, and completed CSI 3 Dimensions of Murder. Telltale is currently working on Sam and Max for episodic release on Gametap this fall.
	Chris Ferriter has over 12 years of game and motion picture production experience. He has produced and designed games for THQ, Midway, EA, and Ubisoft. He is currently Producer of the CSI franchise at Ubisoft San Francisco.
	Greg Land is passionate about creating new works, and has over 17 years of storytelling experience, including 8 years as a game designer and many more in freelance theatre and film.  Greg is currently the Lead Writer & Designer for the CSI franchise at Telltale.   He has a degree in directing and writing from the Film & Theatre programs at U.C. Santa Barbara.

PHOTOS FROM THE POST PRESENTATION MIXER:

THANKS TO: our guest speakers, attendees, and season sponsors (Autdesk, Backbone Entertainment, and IBM) for making our October 2006 meeting a success. Check back for details on our final meeting of the year (tentatively scheduled for early December).

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