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The two most packed conferences of GDC were rather easy to guess well before anything started. All the programmers would flock to the PSP programming lecture while all the designers would pack “Game Design Methods of ICO.” Surely enough, both degenerated into standing room only before the start of the lecture. Designers wanted to know: how did ICO become great? Perhaps there was some method designers around the world could use to shape their creations into masterpieces worth saving in the annals of videogame history.
Unfortunately, everyone’s worst fears were confirmed: ICO was great from the beginning of the development process to the end.
Now, this isn’t a bad thing, mind you; obviously, we as gamers love to see games start out strong and end with their ideals intact; however, the lecture could have focused on things slightly more interesting, such as “Game Creation Methods” rather than design.
There were things that did change in the four year process, of course. Development started on ICO as a late-generation PS1 game. The original character designs called for a horned girl and a young boy. The humanoid guards became the wispy shadows we know now sometime between the October 1999 prototype and the January 2000 European prototype delivery. (The image of a humanoid guard attacking and kidnapping a young girl was deemed too vivid when presented on the more powerful PS2, as was the image of a young boy beating on an adult guard.) For a few years, the game was expected to have a significant outside-the-castle and village portion of gameplay.
And then there was the slide. “SUBTRACTING DESIGN”
Designer Fumito Ueda said it was his decision to make the game as “simple” as possible while increasing the density of the game. Everything is focused on emotion and immersion or, as he described it, actively increasing “reality” and reducing “unreality.”
Five videos later (which we were not allowed to capture), Ueda concluded by talking about how the concept remained the same and how he used the prototype videos we saw and many others to maintain consistency in the content development team.
Q and A was, unfortunately, not too fruitful. From what we heard:
- Subtracting design is not a certain thing for future games
- No comment on sequel
- The design team went from 7 people to 7 designers, 6 programmers, 4 planners, and many in-house and contracted artists
- Group testing returned very few negative comments
- Puzzle designs were made as they went along designing the castle
- Character dialogue was unintelligible so that the puzzle is emphasized (of course the characters were talking about the puzzles themselves and providing clues in their strange language)
- There was never any variety in the enemy designs
- Facial and finger animations were important to add in the final PS2 version
…and so on. There was a lot of hrms and huhs from the crowd of designers. The press there were very happy to see all this early footage and hear the Japanese designers. The designers… sighed. Were these guys geniuses to basically get the idea right on the first try and just keep on designing the puzzles and the world as they go along?
They ended by showing a photo-realistic scene of a castle component next to a rendered “more emotional” scene by Kenji Kaido.
“He’s very good at this material… he did this in just a few hours…” the translator said over our headsets.
It seemed that many were hoping for the duo to share some insight into ICO’s design. Unfortunately, ICO happened to be more created than designed.
Vincent Diamante
was designed, not created...
[Next: We are not alone.]
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