June 16, 2008

Art Director Mike Young Talks Madden 09
By Louis Bedigian

“We’re gonna focus on what’s important – what will get noticed.”

As Art Director on Madden 09 (the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 editions), Mike Young sets the vision for the visuals and presentation of the game. From the player models and stadiums to lighting and cameras, Mr. Young is in charge. But while he may be at the forefront, he doesn’t want anyone to think he’s the only one who deserves credit for making Madden a success.

“There are so many aspects that I don’t think one person could ever claim to be a master of everything,” he says. “How can somebody be great at cameras and lighting? A lot of how you set the vision for a whole team is looking for people that you trust to be an expert in their area. I don’t consider myself an expert at anatomy or some of the subtle details that make a great character. What I do is set high-level objectives to help pull the whole game together.”

What does it take for someone to prepare for a career in art direction?

Mike Young: Starting with basic education. I went to art school – more traditional, like painting and photography. I dabbled in everything. I’m kind of a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none-type thing. I graduated from a school that focused on art and technology, so I got into a little programming myself. I wanted to get into games. I was very interested in it as a way to use my art and was something I was really passionate about, and get paid. I learned the most from starting in the industry and doing simple models and textures, and starting with lighting and working with other great artists and art directors. That kind of built up to becoming an art director myself.

In what ways have you brought your own ideas to Madden or any other game that you’ve worked on?

MY: I always really get into the project. I’m a huge NFL fan, played sports my whole life. As an art director you have to understand the consumer and deliver what they expect. I was a consumer before I got on the project (this is my first year). I bought the game every year. There were a lot of things I had always wanted out of the franchise – visuals and presentation. For me it made it easier to identify with what people would want. I kind of feel like I’m the voice of the consumer. We can’t do everything. We’re gonna focus on what’s important – what will get noticed.

As a consumer and now the art director, what were some of the things you wanted to bring to Madden?

MY: One thing that always bugged me was the weather. I love snow games and I love a couple times a year where there’s a real game, like this year with the Green Bay Packers playoff game. The snow just made that game so much more of a story than maybe it would have been otherwise. There’s something about football where you’ve got… It’s considered such a tough sport and they play in all weather conditions unlike baseball or other sports where everything has to be perfect for the game to go on.

One of the focuses was how do we get the weather to be dramatic, to enhance the [game] for the user. So if you’re playing a franchise game, and you come into Cleveland and it’s a blizzard and you pull off a late victory, that’s going to feel a lot more rewarding. It creates a story around it, where it’s freezing and it feels cold. I think that’s one thing we achieved this year. I noticed a lot of the people on the development team are choosing snow instead of just letting it happen. It seems like it’s one of everyone’s favorite things – they want to play those games.

Will the weather effect how you play? Will it make the athletes move sluggishly?

MY: It does actually. What was interesting was the animation and gameplay team saw the snow and had the same response: “Wow, now we really need gameplay to change.” You’ll see players slip and slide. The game’s tuned differently – more fumbles, and it’s harder to pass. It’s a full experience, not just a pretty picture. I think once things come together and you got the visuals supporting what’s actually happening, it just makes for a better experience.

The NFL is a very specific license. When you’re designing a Madden game, you have to follow what they say. How did that mesh with the artwork aspect? How much do you have to get approved as far as the visual aspect? Were there things you wanted to do that the NFL wouldn’t allow?

MY: This being my first year, I think the team has had so much experience working with the league that we are kind of in the groove of what we can do and can’t do. I didn’t really feel like we got the point where the NFL was saying, “No, you can’t do that.”

What is the hardest part of being an art director? Or the hardest part of bringing art to a game like Madden where everything has to be realistic?

MY: There’s a fine line. I came from NBA Street Homecourt, a game where you could push the boundaries a lot further. The concept of the documentary, and we really pushed the colors far.

Madden gamers – they want what they see on TV. But it didn’t mean we couldn’t push things farther than reality. We went with the philosophy which is more hyper-real. It’s still going to feel, to the Madden consumer, like they’re watching something on TV. But it’s the best graphics they’ve ever seen. The shadows are a little bit more dramatic than they really would be. The lighting on the players might be a little amped. But it’s just making reality better.

We have a snow game where it feels frigid. We’ve color-corrected it like you would a movie to feel cooler. You watch it on TV and it won’t necessarily feel like that. But it just feels right [in Madden]. There was a very fine line when we were experimenting here in the studio. I would get e-mails flooding my in-box from people, you know, “Is the game really gonna look like this?” They were kind of worried. As you’re tuning the game, you get a feel for how far you can push things, what feels right. I’d say that’s the only kind of constraint – it’s so popular and people have such high expectations. You just gotta know where the limits are.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Do you think that it will always be that way, no matter how powerful consoles get? That when you’re making a sports video game, you have to achieve that hyper-real level or it won’t feel quite right?

MY: I an advantage of video games over TV is that we can do stuff, because we know where the players are going to be and we know where the cameras are. For instance, we can make a player look good from the gameplay camera we know we’re in. We can make choices – we can make that look unbelievable. We can tweak all that. And to me we want to do that [have hyper-real graphics] in gaming. We have that type of control.

In NBA Street Homecourt we had different lighting for the players up close and far away. That was just to enhance different things that we wanted to show off. The biggest example on Madden this year is the way we tuned the field. It’s probably more detailed than you’d actually get from that camera distance. But it just felt right. If you have that ability, why not make it a better experience rather than just real? A lot of times real is boring. Same with movies – make whatever moment feel better.

You mentioned that you were able to push boundaries with NBA Street Homecourt. Tell us more about that and the art created for the game.

MY: That was a great experience. With Madden when you’re trying to create a story, the user already has an idea of what that story is, ‘cause you’re playing different NFL teams. With NBA Street Homecourt, we were telling a different story. You were a street baller trying to put your home court on the map. We had a real hometown with NBA players. We used visuals a lot to create a mood in that game. When you were at your hometown it felt more friendly, warm, inviting and familiar. When you were in a big city like New York or LA it was more intimidating and foreboding. So using art to create [a certain mood] was something we got to do more of on that project.

What did it take to get the visual aspect just right – to make the home courts and player models look as good as you wanted?

MY: The players were based on a 3D scan. The perfect muscular [figure], that was tweaked [in the game]. One of our goals was to have the best player models. We had fewer players to work on so we spent a lot of time trying to get the key players right. I think the hair is one of the better things we did, character-wise.

We were big believers in research. We went to every [real-world] court and did extensive photo reference. We took about six hours with every court, just getting usable texture reference. We had maps of where every building was. The reference process was very ridiculous, and I think it shows in the quality of textures, environments, the realistic scale [the courts] had. Being able to use real satellite imagery… It’s as close as you can come in a game to reproducing [these courts].

Is your work on Madden complete?

MY: I’m tweaking something but we’re pretty much wrapped up.

Do you have another project lined up?

MY: I do – I think I’ll be working on the next Madden.

Any hints for the future? One of your audio directors, Aubrey Hodges, recently spoke about the three-year cycle and how you’ll have different additions planned out for each year (at least as far as audio is concerned). Is that how things are for an art director?

MY: We do throw stuff over the wall and take feedback from the fans. That does course correct us a bit. We did a new broadcast-style presentation that fans have been requesting for several years. We’re eager to get the feedback on what was successful and what wasn’t. That’ll definitely help shape where we go. But we do have our own ideas of what the project needs to be. This year we feel we completed a lot of our major goals. The three-year plan is more of a general guide.

Thank you for your time.

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