Xbox Director Laura Fryer Tackles Gaming’s Toughest Issues; Talks About Her Role in the Women’s Game Conference

by Louis Bedigian

 

“...The problem is, every time a game comes out that does have good voice acting, they've just set the bar for every other game.”

 

 

 

This week GameZone Online takes the spotlight and shines it on Laura Fryer, Director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group.  Not only is she helping the Women’s Game Conference come together, but she is also the reason we have Crimson Skies and Fighter Ace.  She served as leading producer on both of those games.

 

Laura helped launch MSN Zone.com.  She’s ran Xbox game developer events.  She is also one of the founders of the annual Women in Gaming sessions at the Game Developers Conference.

 

And when her game development duties have been satisfied, Laura likes to take what she refers to as “video game vacations,” an all-day marathon of great game playing.

 

“NHL Hitz, Age of Empire II, Dungeon Siege – we play a wide variety,” comments Laura, referring to one of the gaming marathons she had with her brother.

 

With many years of experience, what does this game-playing and game-developing gal have to say about the industry?

 

 

What is your role on the steering committee for the Women's Game Conference?

 

Laura Fryer: I'm one of the people that's helping to put together the agenda, and what we're gonna cover, and what types of things we hope to accomplish.

 

Thus far, game conferences haven't gotten much promotion outside of the gaming community.  How do you hope to get the word out there and make more women aware of the Women's Game Conference?

 

LF: We're doing few different things.  One, there's a lot of word of mouth obviously within the industry.  We're trying to get this out to different colleges so that they're aware of it.  And we're trying to get as many publications to talk about it as possible.  I think that's the main thing we're focusing on.  There's also a lot of colleges that are moving in this direction, of having game courses, so we want them to be aware as well.

 

What kinds of things do you plan to do at the conference?

 

LF: We're going to have a bunch of different talks.  One of the panels that we're going to cover is identifying some of the issues that women in the games industry face today.  We're gonna talk about quality of life issues in working in the games industry, and that's actually beyond just women, but I think women face a big challenge there.

 

We're going to have a couple of different panels just on content creation and programming.  Kind of technically-focused and content-focused.

 

Figuring Out How To Get Women Into The Game Industry is actually one of the panels.  How do you recruit women in, how do you keep women, that type of topic.

 

Tell us about the annual Women in Gaming sessions at the Game Developers Conference.

 

LF: That started about three years ago, and the idea there was to get everybody that works in the game industry that's a woman together for a little get together, so that they had the chance to network.  Talk to different people, find out how they got into the industry, figure out what they like about their jobs and what they don't.  [It was intended to] give people the chance to really understand what positions are available and what should I focus on?

 

A lot of college students come to the Game Developers Conference.  When we have a get together a lot of women from college show up and it gives them a real chance to [find out] what they could do if they went into this industry.

 

When I interviewed Sheri Graner Ray, she said that to be a good game developer you have to play a lot of different kinds of games (like Scrabble) and not just video games.  What games that you've played now or as a child have inspired or influenced the path you took with a game?

 

LF: I've played a lot of different card and board games.  I did play a lot of Scrabble, my Mom loves Scrabble.  I've played a lot of different card games, Bridge, you know, Crazy Eights.  I also played a lot of the early video games.  You have to really think through the mechanics of it, when you're working on a board game or a computer game.  And I think that's what it teaches you to do is think through every little thing.

 

A lot of game developers will say, "Well, this is what I wanna do."  And I'll say, "Okay, walk me through it from beginning to end," so I can play it in my head and understand how it works.  If they can't do that it usually means that they haven't done all that thinking and really thought out what they need to do.  I think that's probably what Sheri was getting at – if you have had experience with playing a lot of different games then you kind know what works and what doesn't.

 

What are your thoughts on the use of focus tests while developing a game?  Do they help or hinder a project?

 

LF: They can do both.  You have to look at focus testing and put it in its place.  It's a data point, but that doesn't mean it's a data point that's more valid than other data points.

 

We [have] had a variety of focus tests.  We had the new user experience, where we find people who like the particular genre of game, bring them in and have them play for an hour.  That kind of gives you the first user experience.

 

We also had a group of testers that all they did was play, but they weren't part of the team, so they were playing several different games every week.

 

We also had testers on the game itself.  They of course are going to be a little bit better at it than any of those other groups, but they're gonna give you more of an experienced player's view.

 

The other thing you can do is that here at Xbox we actually have a gameplay evaluation team.  What they'll do is play it and [give you an evaluation] and say, "Here's what's working, here's what you should work on changing."

 

Are focus tests ever used to decide whether or not a game should even start development?

 

LF: They are in some studios I believe.  [They] want to make sure that it's a genre or kind of game that people would be interested in.

 

In your opinion which is more effective: beta testing a game with fans long before a title is released, or doing a series of focus groups with a few select gamers?

 

LF: Both actually.  [Games are] a highly interactive medium.  The difficulty that I encounter in a game is going to be different than the difficulty you encounter, which is going to be different from somebody else's experience.  So the more people you can have play at different stages of the game and get feedback, it's going to be helpful to you.  I wouldn't say that one or the other is more effective, I would say that you want to use a variety of testing methods to find out what makes the most sense for the game.

 

Why is it that video games frequently have impeccable graphics, a spellbinding soundtrack and a compelling story, but very rarely incorporate good voice acting?  Are publishers failing to see the importance of it?

 

LF: I don't think that people are failing to see the importance of it necessarily.  I think it's that some games have really focused on making that happen, and others are just getting into that.  We went out and hired voice actors for Crimson Skies.  We had a lot of voice-overs for that, and those people had to actually play in character as well.  So I think it's more that some games decide to focus on things other than that.  I think what you're going to see in the future is that games are going to have to focus on all of it.  And all of it is going to have to be right, because the problem is, every time a game comes out that does have good voice acting, they've just set the bar for every other game.

 

As a gamer and as someone who helps design them, how do you feel about the excessive amount of storytelling that's been going on in video games lately?  It seems like every title must have a story with long movie sequences.  Sometimes these sequences can't be skipped, and all I want to do is play the game, not watch it.

 

LF: I think that the story can play a big part of games.  I think for some games it's really important, for some games it's not.  In Fighter Ace, you didn't really need a story.  It was an action game.  Let me fly up in my plane and shoot at the other guys and see how many I can get.  There was storytelling, but the storytelling itself wasn't part of the game, it was the story we told during and after.  And that's part of storytelling around games too.  That's something that I think people forget.

 

I'm with you on the whole not being able to skip some of those sequences.  That can be really frustrating for players.  When I'm working on [a game] I'm always trying to think about what annoys people, what are things that people are gonna want.

 

Some speculate that in 20 years gaming will be very different from the way it is today.  You won't have typical game consoles, you'll have virtual reality players.  What is your take on this?

 

LF: Well, I don't know about that.  I think that each different game is going to have a different appeal for different people.  We're still gonna see great card and board games.  We're still gonna see people who want to play Chess online.  We're still gonna see games like Xbox Live Arcade, where people want those casual games that they play, but aren't really for the virtual reality world.

 

The other big problem I see with virtual reality is that you can't really move around the way that you would want to.

 

Yes, it is a pain.  How can you walk forward?

 

LF: Exactly.  So they gotta solve that problem first and they really haven't done that.

 

Game delays: are they really worth it?  They allow for more development time, but they also disappoint the fans and, in some cases, cause gamers to lose interest in the title...

 

LF: Well, I think you wanna ship a game when it's ready.  One of the big problems with game development is figuring out what makes the game great and then actually shipping that in a timely fashion.  It's hard.  It's really, really hard, because by the time you've developed just the tool for creating the game...you've just started.  Not only are you trying to create this huge technical challenge, it's also a huge creative challenge.  So a lot of people are like, "Wow, why did it take so long?" or "Why didn't it come out sooner?"  A lot of it is you have to figure out what is fun about the game, and at the same time you're building all the tools, and you've got your artists trying to get on board.  Now all of a sudden you have 50-60 people on the game team and you're trying to get all of them to go in the same direction.  All of that makes it a really, really complicated endeavor.  And I think that what you're seeing is that that endeavor, especially with the content creation process, it's just taking game developers longer to get through.  I think that's another big challenge.  There's so many more people.  The artist to developer ratio right now is probably 2 to 1.  Well, that's gonna be more like 4 to 1, your teams are going to get a lot larger.

 

How do you decide then when to announce a game?

 

LF: That is so tricky.  A lot of times you think you're further along than you are.  We used to joke that the only thing you know the day you start the game is what you don't know.  You don't know exactly what's going to make it fun so you gotta go through the prototyping phase.  Then you finally figure that out and you're not quite sure what the challenge is 'cause you're developing something no one else has ever done before.  So you don't know it takes six weeks, or 10 weeks or 12 weeks, because no one's done it, and you're kind of in new territory.  So a lot of the problem is that you make the best guess because you're in brand-new territory, and then you find out that you were wrong.

 

Thank you Laura for an interesting and informative interview.

 

 

GZ Spotlight: Women in Gaming – Previous Interviews

 

Sheri Graner Ray (Game Designer, Sony Online Entertainment)

 

Ellen Beeman (Live Team Producer, The Matrix Online)