Q&A: Blitz Games' Andrew Oliver

What sort of TV does Invincible Tiger 3D require?
The TVs are new high-end 120Hz plasma screens - how traditional are they? They’re not widely available, although this TV [points to Invincible Tiger demo] is available on the high street. This Samsung plasma is, I believe, the only [stereoscopic] TV you can buy ‘by accident’ in this country. What all TV companies have just started to do is put [3D] in as a feature and they’re not promoting it because there’s no 3D content yet. They worked out they could do it and the movies are going to come soon. These were on sale a year ago in America and they sold about 2 million – we think there’s a bit of a market there, but it’s a market that’s going to blow wide open as soon as films come out. If your TV can do 3D, why not games?

What spurred your interest in doing stereoscopic games?
People said it was impossible and that’s the reason we did some tests a year or so ago, and found that we could do it – but it was a bit tough. We went around publishers saying ‘hey you’ve got a 3D movie do you want a 3D game?’ and people said ‘what, there’s no such thing, it’ll never work’. So we went ahead to prove we could do it. We had demos but nobody really believed we could do a full game. So we’ve done one - Invincible Tiger will be on XBL and PSN in August.

Tell us more about the game…
I appreciate only one or two per cent of the people that get this will be able to play it in true 3D, but it’s a really good game in it’s own right. It’s not just a technology demo, yes we are show it to push the technology, but we’re a games maker, we want to make something playable. We also want to open people’s eyes to this new, cool technology. And we want to be seen as cutting edge – we’re licensing our own engine, and we want to make the point that it’s more powerful than anyone else’s on the market.

Presumably you can play it in 2D?
You can turn [the 3D] on and off. There’s all sorts of confusion in the 3D marketplace. One of the problems is that there’s no standard format for transmitting 3D pictures. So no one has worked out how you’re going to get it from your Sky box or Freeview, whether it’s going to be on Blu-ray. They haven’t worked out the format, but Samsung and Mitsubishi have started producing TVs with their own formats, as well as other companies. At the moment we stand at about six different 3D formats – but as software writers, we’ve just written different drivers [for each] underneath, so you just go into a 3D selection mode and choose which TV you’ve got. We cover all the 3D TVs and monitors out at the moment, but as soon as new ones come out they’ll probably use another different bloody format! We’ll just patch the game and try and keep up with it.

Are you keeping an eye on the film industry to see how a single 3D standard will evolve?
Absolutely. We’re quite close to people making 3D films, got good contact with all the TV companies, and Sony, Microsoft and stuff – everyone is starting to look at this. Next month I’m going to Siggraph, a big CG conference – it’s got 30,000 members, it’s bigger than E3 and it’s all about CG films. Last year was all about 3D, this year I’ve been told it’s just going to be blown wide open with 3D. We’re rendering the same way as 3D movies render, so we can do the same tricks. There are loads of new tricks you can do in 3D.

What other similarities are there to 3D films?
A film like Monsters Vs. Aliens shows what can be done. We can do the same techniques, although obviously they have offline rendering. We’ve got to render this stuff [in real time]. Although there are a few formats there are some rules – [content] has to be 1080p, 60 fps and have a left and a right view. So when we went into this we picked a simpler game – I’ll be the first to admit it, but we wanted to prove our technology and make sure the engine was capable of rendering all the stuff, and learn all the tricks. We picked a game with a simpler camera because 3D cameras are more complicated. So we made sure we got it all running and gave people a comfortable view and that everything was working perfectly. But we’ve done so much work on this now, we’re ready to do a full-on game. We’re just finishing Dead To Rights, which is a hardcore game up there with the best. It’s not 3D, because we’ve nearly finished it but we’re confident we could do any game in 3D.

Are there any uses of 3D we might see in games but not films?
There’s a lot tricks we can do in games that you couldn’t do in films because films are all pre-rendered, and there are certain assumptions they have to make. Whereas in games we can do a lot of interesting tricks you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. One of the obvious things would be if you started mixing this with Natal, you’d get absolutely unbelievable 3D. Which we are working on! [laughs]

It’s been suggested that 3D TVs will come in two different generations - the first with glasses, and the second without…
Without a doubt. There’s a little bit of a barrier to entry – people don’t want to wear glasses, but it’s here and now, the glasses work, and people will just get used to it. They’ll go to the movies, watch Corraline…they’ll watch Avatar, that’ll be the big mind-blowing experience. They won’t care about wearing glasses. TV manufacturers are all looking into how to do it without glasses but there’s some fundamental problems with that.

Did you see the Avatar game in 3D at E3?
I certainly did. It’s very nice – it’s a big, full-on boxed product. I’m very excited that someone else is doing it! We’re first, but they’re the ones with the big game to follow it up. I’m busy trying to promote 3D, telling developers ‘we should be looking at this stuff’. This Christmas is going to be so big with Avatar, probably more the film – it’ll just blow people’s minds. Then the Consumer Electronics Show in January will just have every TV manufacturer rolling out 3D TVs. We’re going to get [3D] so let’s exploit it as games developers and do some really cool stuff with it.