CREATE PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS People Dorian Hart Meet the numbers guy who helped create smarter shooters

Long before he was in the industry, Dorian created games for children at holiday camps: “I just liked to make up games. I had an obsession with game rules”

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EDG248.c_people.indd 118 11/7/12 4:06 PM CV orian Hart is the man who worked out Hart’s interests in stat-tweaking and storytelling URL www.cardhunter.com precisely how hard a Big Daddy should combine again in his current project: a browser- Selected Softography Ultima Underworld II, Thief, System Shock, Thief II, System Shock 2, be to kill. BioShock’s melancholy, based fusion of RPG dungeon crawling with Terra Nova, Flight Unlimited II, Freedom Force, lumbering beasts had health bars that trading card battle mechanics called Card Hunter. Freedom Force Vs The 3rd Reich, BioShock, Drequired an approach more tactical than a full- It’s being developed by Blue Manchu, a studio set Choice Of The Star Captain, Card Hunter frontal assault, and encounters with the diver-suited up by Irrational Games co-founder Jonathan Chey. protectors gave rise to the game’s most emergent But while Hart’s first contact with the game and interesting scenarios. Players would lure industry was an interview for a writer’s role with splicers into attacking the Daddy, or set trip mines the studio that became known as Looking Glass, and traps around corners before goading the he soon found himself working on level design monster into a suicidal charge. But one thing on Ultima Underworld II, System Shock and all the divergent approaches had in common is Thief. “Back in the old days, [level design] was this: Hart crunched the numbers behind them, something even a non-artistic designer could do, calibrating damage counts and hit points so that because it was just a simple tile-based editor,” he interesting choices – the thread running through all explains. There was another reason Hart’s skills the games he’s worked on – would emerge. with a fountain pen weren’t needed, however: “Often you’ll design a system,” Hart explains, conversations just didn’t work in the games “then you’ll watch people playing it, and either Looking Glass was trying to make. they’re playing it differently from how you “Intelligent NPCs were the weak link,” Hart Levine and Jonathan Chey to Irrational Games. expected, or suddenly AIs are getting caught in explains. “They were our Achilles heel, which is It was at Irrational that Hart’s knack for stat- other AIs’ blast radiuses. You absorb it all, collect why in the System Shock games they really just cut tweaking was discovered, and where he and as much hard data as you can, and figure out the Gordian knot. The decision that you were the other ex-Looking Glass staff got another chance to how to adjust the numbers to make the experience only person alive on Citadel Station in System convince players of the merits of cerebral shooters. more like what you were hoping.” Endearingly Shock was pretty much a direct result of the modest, Hart self-deprecatingly refers to his work realisation that the only way to solve the problem “BioShock was kind of a stealth as “shovelling coal”, providing the hard digital of realistic NPCs was not to have them at all.” attempt to get the shooter audience to realise there graft to bring other people’s designs into being. But even if a good conversation was hard to could be more to a shooter than just shooting,” You’ve likely never heard of Hart, but you’ve find, Ultima, System Shock and Thief still took Hart explains. “We knew we were making a certainly heard of the games he’s shovelled coal place in richly imagined worlds. These games shooter at the time, and a lot of that was a desire on. Ultima Underworld II, System Shock and its were the birth of a subgenre that placed core to have a wider audience, but we wanted to kind sequel, Thief and its sequel, and player agency into a simulated of… corrupt them a little bit.” BioShock. These aren’t just some of Characteristically, gameworld, the so-called Much of the depth to BioShock was found in the most celebrated games of the his MobyGames ‘immersive sim’. its story and themes, but it was Hart’s work as a last two decades – they’re a “We always had the hope that game and economy balancer that led to many of movement, a pantheon of profile thanks we would drive the direction of the the tactical decisions. “I finally found my niche as immersive firstperson experiences the ‘17 people [firstperson] genre,” Hart admits, a numbers guy,” he explains. “I spent a lot of time that drop players into carefully “but we ended up being a kind of with spreadsheets working on BioShock. At fashioned worlds and give them who purchased splintered niche that’s slowly grown Irrational for the last ten years, I didn’t get to do a more to do than just shoot things. [Terra Nova]’ since then. I guess you could make lot of writing, because Ken Levine does all the Not a bad CV for someone who the argument that we’ve lost the writing. I mean, Ken Levine should do all the didn’t intended on a career in game design. battle, because Call Of Duty is always going to writing, because he’s an incredible writer!” “I always wanted to be a writer,” says Hart. sell more than Dishonored, I think. But looking Talk to Hart for an hour and you’ll hear over “That’s what my schooling was working unwisely back, we did place the groundwork for a half a dozen statements like that. He’s keen to towards.” It’s an ambition he eventually fulfilled, successful and beloved subgenre.” praise others’ work, downplay his own, and recently releasing the choose-your-own-adventure Hart would soon head up his own project: the considers himself fortunate to have worked with novel Choice Of The Star Captain via interactive tactical squad-based shooter Terra Nova: Strike the colleagues he has (“Really, I’m the Forrest fiction publisher Choice Of Games. A science- Force Centauri. It was well-received critically and Gump of the game design world”). Fittingly, that fiction tale that casts the reader as spaceship pilot developed a cult following, but it wasn’t one of lack of self-importance extends to his approach to aided by an aloof, sarcastic computer, it’s a Looking Glass’s most successful projects. In a design, and sums up the ‘player first’ principle of narrative built around a statistics-based heart. characteristic touch, Hart’s profile on MobyGames the immersive sim. “I try to take each game I’m Hart’s passion for words and numbers has thanks the “17 people who purchased it”. working on and try to suss out low-level things that manifested itself outside of his career as well. “I’m The demise of Looking Glass saw the need to be done to improve it,” Hart explains. obsessed with this sort of thing,” he says.”I’m a architects of the immersive sim genre scatter across “I try to put myself in the player’s shoes. I try to pretty avid boardgamer. I record the results of all North America. Many took root at Ion Storm, approach game design from a player experience, the boardgames I play.” Austin, whereas others, like Hart, followed Ken not a philosophical, point of view.” n

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