{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zeaEfaLGjc", "page_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zeaEfaLGjc", "title": "Evil Genius-Demis Hassabis E3 2004 Interview", "show_or_channel": "Evan Hanley", "date": "2004-05-12", "duration_s": 662, "type": "interview", "speakers": ["Demis Hassabis"], "confidence": "medium", "notes": "GameSpy E3 2004 interview about Evil Genius (Elixir Studios era); fan upload of archival promo footage. (YouTube upload 2023-04-08)", "people": ["demis-hassabis"], "id": "2004-05-12_evan-hanley-evil-genius-demis-hassabis-e3-2004-inter", "audio_duration_s": 661.757125, "worker": "jc-w10", "transcribe_s": 37.2, "model": "large-v3", "segments": [{"start": 0.0, "end": 15.42, "text": "Demis Hassabis, Chairman and Creative Director of Elixir Studios, and we're here to talk about Evil Genius. Now, when everybody thinks of Evil Geniuses, they think of, you know, this game isn't out yet. Tell me about the gameplay."}, {"start": 15.42, "end": 39.63, "text": "Basically, the gameplay involves you playing the part of an evil genius. So you have your own tropical island. Yeah, absolutely. And you get to build your own kind of lair there. And then what you're ultimately trying to do is build a doomsday device. I see. And then threaten the world with it so that they bend to your will. And extract as much money out of them as possible? Absolutely. Money, everything. Power, all of it. Okay. All right. So you modeled this after..."}, {"start": 39.63, "end": 68.69, "text": "A genre that you love? A story that you like? It's a kind of combination of a lot of different influences, really. So on the game side, it's a combination of sort of XCOM-type games and Dungeon Keeper. And on the kind of film influences, I guess it's Austin Powers, James Bond films, things like Flash Gordon, Fu Manchu, anything which involves kind of evil geniuses, I suppose. Even things like Enter the Dragon. So anything which has got kind of a villain bent on world domination, which has been a lot of..."}, {"start": 68.69, "end": 95.87, "text": "Films and books about. Sure. And politicians and whatnot. Absolutely. And whatnot. All right. So how long have you been working on this game? We've been working for about two years, and we've got around three or four months left. And how big is your team? It's 25 people. 25 people. How do you split that up? Designers, or does everybody do everything? You know, it's got about, let me see, we've got four designers on the team, and we have eight programmers, and the rest are artists."}, {"start": 95.87, "end": 120.72, "text": "So we're in the LiveWire non-broadcast segment, so those of you that are listening are actually listening just on GameSpy, Arcade, and IGN Insider. That's correct. And the video is being streamed to IGN Insider as well, so if you're not seeing this, you might want to think about joining the Founders Club. It's a good time to join Insider, too, since they're running a special on it right now. Right, 1995. 1995, a year, I think. Had a date with Stacey."}, {"start": 120.72, "end": 142.45, "text": "I got some note on that this morning. Am I completely mistaken on that? Yes, completely. But if you have questions for Demis, please feel free to pop some in the chat room. This is due out, did you put a date on this already? Yeah, it's due out to end of September, start of October. But no specific date, when it's ready."}, {"start": 142.45, "end": 165.98, "text": "What do you have to do as you lead up to the release of a game? What entries are on the PERT chart that people might not be aware of? Yeah, well, you get to certain big milestones. So I guess the first one is prototype, which is the initial technology finished. And you can sort of see the parts of one level or the parts of how the game will come together. So you've done all the main features."}, {"start": 165.98, "end": 194.45, "text": "And then the next stage is probably about a year in, you get first playable, where you can really actually play it for half an hour or an hour and really get a feel for what the gameplay is going to be like. And then the stage we're at now, we've just finished, we've just passed Alpha. And Alpha really involves, it's really when the game's at a stage where you can play the whole game through from start to finish, all the features are in, and there's just polish to go. So from now until completion, we'll be polishing the interface, making the tutorial really easy, and making the pacing of the game right."}, {"start": 194.45, "end": 211.15, "text": "So this is a strategy game. How does the game actually get played? I guess the closest types of games to it are tycoon-style games. Oh, okay. So things like Rollercoaster Tycoon, that kind of game. But obviously it's a little bit more humorous than those sorts of games. Oh, I find Rollercoaster Tycoon quite humorous, especially when..."}, {"start": 211.15, "end": 240.35, "text": "I'm done finishing designing my amusement park and it's Friday. Yeah, absolutely. It started on Tuesday. It started on Tuesday, exactly. I remember I was supposed to visit my children one day. And they called and I said, I've got to add maintenance guys. People are vomiting. I've got to add maintenance guys. Don't deal with that. Exactly. So it's got that kind of addictive tycoon style play. But also on top of that, it's also got quite a lot of elements of strategy game type play like an RTS."}, {"start": 240.35, "end": 266.91, "text": "So it's kind of a combination of the two things. Cool. All right, so now can you play against the evil or are you the evil? No, you are the evil genius in this game, yeah. And super agents come in and attack you. So the more infamous you become and the more missions you complete around the world, the more dangerous agents come in. So eventually our top agents are Jet Chan and John Steele. And they come in and they're pretty much invincible until you find out their secret weakness. Those are close to the names of..."}, {"start": 266.91, "end": 292.82, "text": "Other famous superheroes. Close. But not actually. Not actually. Not actually the names. That's right. So you could have had Jackie Lee as well. I could have done. If I may, I missed this, Dennis, but what platforms are you targeting and is it a simultaneous release? We're targeting PC platform and we're looking at consoles, but it won't be simultaneous. That will be sometime afterwards. Cool. All right. Do we have any questions in the chat room? We do. We do have a couple of chat room questions right now. Rich GK wants to know,"}, {"start": 292.82, "end": 309.04, "text": "First of all, what kind of new gameplay features are in Evil Genius and are using a totally new engine for the game or is it the same engine that you used for Republic? So new gameplay features really involves this combination of direct control of your henchmen and your Evil Genius and also kind of simulation."}, {"start": 309.04, "end": 324.72, "text": "Tycoon control of all of your minions. Obviously, as an evil genius, you don't want to be bothered with the basics of running the canteen or building rooms. You want that all to be taken care of for you so you can get on with world domination. So your minions do that for you. You want to get on with it."}, {"start": 324.72, "end": 346.22, "text": "Any possibility of your minions getting uppity and thinking that they're evil geniuses as well? They can desert and they can get disloyal, but then you can just kill them. So they're expendable. And that makes the other ones fearful of you. So that's usually quite a good thing to do. So which is higher, a minion or a henchman? No, the henchmen are higher. So the henchmen are like individual characters. They're kind of like a comic book."}, {"start": 346.22, "end": 371.34, "text": "So, you know, characters like we've got a samurai warrior, we've got a kind of Samuel Jackson-like looking gangster. I will pay you $500 if you move your seat one foot forward. Another one foot forward. One foot, one whole foot. Just tuck yourself right up there. When are you going to pay me the $500? There you go, sometime. Sometime. And as to the second part of the question, which is the engine, basically it uses the same basics as the Republic engine, but with a lot of enhancements."}, {"start": 371.34, "end": 398.98, "text": "We've done lots of special effect work on reflections, explosions, things that you wouldn't need for Republic. Sure. So it's very heavily enhanced. And this takes place on Earth or on a planet that you create or what? No, it's on Earth and it's on an island of undetermined location. Of course. Of course. That's where evil geniuses live. Yeah, absolutely. They live on islands. Yeah. And somehow they get planes to fly to those islands. Absolutely. I don't understand how. Maybe it's a Delta schedule that I'm not aware of, but who knows. All right. Back to the chat room."}, {"start": 398.98, "end": 419.78, "text": "So Tazrael wants to know what sort of devices are your evil geniuses going to be able to use in the game? Sort of doomsday devices or things like that. So we allow the player to build rocket caverns and there's three different doomsday devices you can build. So one is, I'll only tell you one, I don't want to spoil all the three, but one is you can build a cloning device which when you launch it into space..."}, {"start": 419.78, "end": 446.72, "text": "Any of the names begin with Doctor?"}, {"start": 446.72, "end": 476.51, "text": "No. No? It's called Maximilian and Alexis. The last one we haven't announced yet. Okay. All right. Back to the chat. So Dork Noob actually wants to know, is this an online game at all? Is there any sort of multiplayer feature at all built into it? There's no plans for multiplayer in the initial release, but we've got plans for an add-on or a second one which would involve multiplayer with people playing or competing Evil Geniuses. Okay. It's 13 past the hour, and we've got news yesterday, of course."}, {"start": 476.51, "end": 499.81, "text": "You're developing this for Vivendi. Yesterday, of course, big news, NBC and Vivendi completed their merger. Does that affect you at all? Does it open up new possibilities for you? We haven't felt any effect of that yet. It's too early to say. But it sounds like a good thing, so we'll see. See an evil genius reality show in your future, perhaps? Could be. I'd like to see that."}, {"start": 499.81, "end": 528.93, "text": "You would? Yeah. Now, you're in the UK, yes? That's right. Where do you live in the UK? In London. In London. So they have really goofy reality games there. I was over there last year. They had something called Mystery House or Murder House or Mystery Murder House or something like that, where if you lost, if you couldn't figure out the puzzle for that week, they actually murdered you. I haven't seen that one. No, it's true. And they murder you, and then you became part of the game. People had to figure out who was murdering everybody. Now, you could only play the game once, obviously."}, {"start": 528.93, "end": 554.05, "text": "Because if you lose, you die. But yet there was no shortage of Londoners willing to play this game. They were willing to risk their lives just for the sheer joy of BBC4. Probably to get away from the runny eggs. The runny eggs, that's right. Anything to get away from that. The eggs in London. When you go to a place and have eggs. Man, I'm telling you, your chef's over there."}, {"start": 554.05, "end": 573.7, "text": "They're terrible. It's the one last... I mean, most of the food in the UK has improved dramatically. Just don't go to English restaurants. Go to French ones and Italian ones and then you're fine. I went to this pub right by Piccadilly Circus and it was great. It was like, you know, the atmosphere was great. What you expect from a typical English pub, right?"}, {"start": 573.7, "end": 602.99, "text": "And then they served this food and it was completely undecipherable. Well, you made a mistake. You just don't eat in English pubs. Everyone knows that. Do you? No. Never? No. You eat in Italian and French restaurants and you drink beer. Why do they serve food in there? Because for unsuspecting Americans. Perfect. Why didn't I know that? But you eat Smarties and Maltesers, right? Yeah, you can eat those there. That's fine. All right. So a couple more questions and then we'll wrap up. So FragmanX9 wants to know, can you hold people or cities hostage as an evil genius in this game? No, you can't. Once you become..."}, {"start": 602.99, "end": 613.39, "text": "Infamous enough, you can make your demands to the whole world. You do it from the safety of your own TV studio. Of course you do. You can build one, and then you can announce it to the governments of the world, and they'll answer back to you via video link."}, {"start": 613.39, "end": 639.86, "text": "So obviously you can't leave the base yourself because you'll be arrested. How much sound is in this? How much voice sound? Loads of it. There's hours of voice sound, yeah. Where did you do the production? Here in the States or in the UK? No, in the UK. Yeah, voice actors coming in and the sound's great actually. So you had a lot of evil genius accents. That's right. Coming in and lots of henchmen accents as well. Henchmen accents, perfect. They have what? They're more like... Like that? Those sorts of things. Yeah, those sorts of things."}, {"start": 639.86, "end": 661.76, "text": "All right, so it's due out end of September, beginning of October. You can go to elixir-studios.co.uk if you want information, but you can always go to gamespy.com, ign.com and check it out. It's called Evil Genius, and it's going to be out very soon from Vivendi. Thanks for being with us, Demis. No problem. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it very much. Demis Hassabis, who is Chairman and Creative Director of Elixir Studios."}]}