Interviewee(s): David Braben, Executive Producer of LostWinds

Frontier Developments was not a recognizable video game developer to most Nintendo fans a couple of months ago. That unknown status, however, abruptly shifted with the release of LostWinds during WiiWare’s launch. While you can read its praises in our review, we felt the need to look more behind the scenes of the game. We recently chatted with David Braben, executive producer of LostWinds, to see how Frontier Developments created one of WiiWare's best games.

We know that LostWinds started as a "Game of the Week" idea at Frontier. What about this idea was so special that differentiates it from other ideas and made it become a WiiWare title? Finally, how did you become a launch title for WiiWare? Did Nintendo come to you or did you contact them about the title?

David Braben: Just to give some background on the Game of the Week forum at Frontier, it’s an internal discussion board that anyone in the company can use to post their own games ideas / thoughts, from a one liner to fully-fledged design document. This causes a great deal of debate, criticism and argument, with many improvements, problems being raised and solved -- we have likened the process to dangling a leg of lamb into a piranha-filled stream: the water boils for a while, but then whatever is left must be pretty tough.

The idea for LostWinds dates from the time that the Wii was first announced (when it was still called the Revolution), when we were brainstorming design ideas that made good use of the Wii controls -– it is one of many strong ideas we have built up over time, and it gathered a number of very enthusiastic internal advocates.

The LostWinds idea was all about the Wii’s controls; there was no pre-conception of how it would be delivered. The natural assumption is that it would be a disc-based game as WiiWare was not available then.

Fast forward to late 2007. Out of the blue, Nintendo invited us to a mysterious meeting in London, as it turned out, to explain their plans for WiiWare. We were delighted that it seemed as if their ideals for WiiWare were almost exactly fulfilled by LostWinds: allowing developers like us to create something innovative specifically for the Wii and, most importantly, its controller. Always trying to be prepared, we had taken a copy of the LostWinds concept document to the meeting. The timing for us was perfect -- we had some people coming free, having just finished ThrillVille: Off the Rails. The chance to shoot for being a launch title for WiiWare was too good to pass up. So we said, "Sounds great, and this is what we’d like to do.”

That was it –- it was due to the idea ultimately being in the right place at the right time.

Nintendo was scrupulously fair in the lead up to launch, and I can’t praise enough the efforts of their people in North America and Europe who worked very hard to get the service launched –- you’ll see a few of them are credited in LostWinds. We didn’t know if we were going to be a launch title until very close to the time, perhaps a week or so out. Obviously, it is what the team was working towards, and we felt we were hitting the right time window to be in with a chance, but it was a massive sense of relief and elation when we heard we had made it!

How many people worked on the title and what was the development time period? How does this differ from a retail release product?

DB: There had already been a lengthy gestation period when lots of gameplay ideas were developed and the art direction was set between the game’s inception and our meeting with Nintendo in late 2007.

Once we decided to go for the WiiWare project, we started out with a 2D prototype of the control system at the end of 2007 -– we knew that the game would live or die based on its controls. There was no fancy art, just 2D images grabbed from the design doc. Once we’d proved to ourselves that the control ideas translated well from the ‘paper’ design to a ‘real’ game...everybody went off for Christmas holidays!

As soon as the team was back in the New Year, we went straight into production. The team who worked on it are very experienced, having worked on RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 and the Thrillville series, among other games; and this, coupled with the very clear art and gameplay direction we had, meant that very little effort was wasted –- almost nothing ended up on the cutting room floor.

So the game was in production from early January and was submitted to Nintendo in mid to late April. The exact number of people on the team varied over time depending on what needed to be done, but it was around twelve people.

Did you feel restricted by the Wii’s more limited storage options when compared to Xbox 360 or PS3?

DB: No. Storage or size limits really weren’t an issue. We are always bumping up against limits when writing games –- usually graphical performance or memory -– and it is these limits that concentrate the mind to get the best out of a system. Way back in the 80s, a game I co-wrote called Elite had to fit into 22K -– the equivalent today of a small email message. Today’s restrictions are nothing in comparison!

LostWinds sports exceptional controls by using the IR functionality. Did Nintendo help you with this aspect or was everything done internally through testing and programming?

DB: Thanks! Nintendo were entirely hands off during development. What you play is entirely the result of our own design, programming, focus testing and QA.

The game also excelled in the graphical department. Honestly, with the use of bloom lighting and great art design, this looks better than most retail releases. How were you able to create such a visually stunning game with strict memory limitations?How much, graphically speaking, has been untapped by developers so far? What are the strengths and weaknesses with the system?

DB: Thank you! Visuals are only a problem if you design them out of context with the platform. While we are making sure Frontier’s art is pushing the Wii, the visual design of LostWinds understood both its limitations and its strengths.

Artists who blame a lack of quality on insufficient resources of power in the platform are actually just admitting that they’ve devised an unachievable look. It’s hardly the machine at fault.

The Wii is a solid machine, and I think many studios initially dismissed it as a Gamecube-and-a-half and ended up throwing half-hearted PS2 graphics at it. The Wii’s commercial success has forced a re-appraisal, and I think there is more to come from the Wii, visually.

While not widespread, people did report technical bugs within the game. In our review, we discuss problems with Enril’s wind and even had the game entirely freeze up. Are these problems that occur with time restrictions and meeting the launch window or simply just slipped by QA Testing?

DB: There was one deliberate feature, where time slows down as you cast a wind to help the player control Toku better, which came out of play testing, and I think some people thought it was unintentional.

The other problems were corner cases that were unfortunately simply not picked up during QA. Obviously, there is always more you can do to any game, but I think when LostWinds went out the door we were all happy that we’d done our best with it. It is always very upsetting to hear people have had problems, but I think they are pretty rare. I, myself, played the game through in its final form a few times, and didn’t see any problems, but as with all such things that does not mean they are not there.

Another problem we noticed was the omission of a map. This can lead to gamers being frustrated on their location or where to go next. Why did you not implement a map?

DB: We wanted the world of Mistralis to reward exploration, in keeping with LostWinds’ playful control system. Also, when we first designed it, we wanted to keep the controls and mechanics of the game as simple and straightforward as possible, with no sub-menus, no inventory, and yes, no map. We did test the game with people who hadn’t seen it before, and they played it through happily in between about three and four and a half hours, but from feedback we have had since, I think having a map would probably have helped some people.

Even with these small flaws, LostWinds is one of our favorite games to be released this year. What are the plans for future installments? The story alludes to the possibility for multiple games that follow Toku and Enril. In addition, you already speak of a sequel in the works on your website. Can you divulge any details on this front, such as locales or new moves?

DB: Thank you again! The enthusiasm for the game within Frontier has meant that, long before it was even certain that that game was ever going to see the light of day, the key champions of the game internally created a coherent, fabulously detailed story and world within which the game is set, and the current game is a self-contained section of that. So we certainly have an awful lot more to show and tell; so much more for the players to experience. There’s a darkness in Mistralis that is hinted at in LostWinds, and from our point of view, it would be a tragedy not to let the greater mystery unfold. But for now we don’t want to discuss details -– sorry!

The game was recently announced as the most-downloaded title in Europe. How has the title done in the Americas? Also, are there plans to bring LostWinds to Japan?

DB: We can’t share numbers with you, so I’ll just say that we are equally pleased with its performance in both Europe and the Americas. Japan is an interesting question; there are of course cultural issues to be aware of –- games that are popular in the West are not always as well received in Japan.

Do you have any plans to make games for retail release on Wii? Any other titles for WiiWare?

DB: We’ll be doing both, I hope. We view WiiWare as ‘just another way’ of getting our games ‘out there’, and we have a lot of great ideas that we want to work on so undoubtedly some will be via WiiWare, some via disc, some for other consoles (in the same way LostWinds was designed specifically for Wii, we have ideas that would suit other consoles). 2007’s ThrillVille: Off the Rails that we did with LucasArts was a disc-based title for Wii, XBox360, PS2, PSP and PC!

LostWinds is now available on WiiWare for 1000 Wii Points. Stay tuned to Nintendojo for news or information regarding any new developments from Frontier, especially considering the possibilities of LostWinds 2.

We would like to give a special thanks to David Braben for finding time to give us a more in-depth look into their game.