Through the 3D stereoscopic looking glass

Clearly; we're clearly carrying on into other stuff, yes. Big stuff, big games. If it works. I mean, we're doing Dead to Rights...

Er, no. It doesn't really suit it and the game's nearly done, so we're not putting it into that, but we are looking at putting it into other games we're doing.

And we're not alone; we may be first.

Ubisoft are putting a lot into it with Avatar. We get the first game out that will tease people and they'll come out with the big product, which will look really, really nice.

I have actually. But I'm not supposed to have seen it, but I did.

I thought it was really nice. How does it compare? It's interesting, actually, and I think that's the thing with a new artform: they've taken it in a different way to us. Theirs looks significantly different, even though it's 3D. They're trying to render a jungle and jungles look pretty cool in 3D. It's different is all I'm going to say.

It's like looking at 3D films. Compare Coraline to a CG movie: one is stop-motion and one is CG. I suppose it's that kind of difference.

It does it now.

There are some developers but I'd rather not go into who. I think everyone's a bit nervous.

Yeah, I mean, that's the problem: there's only one or two per cent of the market that will actually see it and frankly it's hard work - the amount of work you have to do to get 3D working. And cameras in games are tricky at the best of times, but 3D cameras add an extra layer of complexity.

We're saying to publishers when they ask us that we're probably adding 10 to 15 per cent to the budget to make it 3D. You can easily say that at one per cent of the market being able to play it that it's not worth it, and so that's why there's been a reticence. But when you see the game and think, "Oh that is cool, that is worth buying," in a way that's worth it. Rather than be the same as every other game, suddenly we're bringing something completely new to the field.

I'm absolutely convinced it's the future, so we just want to be in it at the beginning, learn the lessons - I mean we've already learned quite a lot of lessons in the last year doing a small game, that we're now ready to take on a big game that will be really, really good. OK, so that's going to be out in a year-or-so's time, by which time there may be five per cent of people that have those [3D] TVs. And it will slowly grow.

At some point they will announce Blu-ray 3D, they will have Sky 3D, and suddenly the floodgates will open and our games will be there.

I would like to think it is of similar scale, in a way. But can you imagine Project Natal with 3D? Jesus! And you might not have to imagine it soon [laughs]...

Not saying anything!

I went to a CG conference and the whole of the CG community is all over 3D. All of the lectures were about new techniques people have found to make things look really good. So I lapped that up, I've done a lot of research on the internet and we've obviously experienced a lot of things ourselves when writing our game about what works and doesn't work - a whole load of lessons.

But, for instance, in games, we billboard things. We put a flat tree in the distance because you can't tell: it's a flat TV. The moment you put that into 3D you say, "What's that flat tree doing over there?!" Immediately you realise you can't get halfway through a project and decide to do it in 3D because you would have to redo all your assets. We found that bump-mapping doesn't work because in 3D it's just a flat-looking thing - you actually have to build geometry because you will render from two different camera angles. So there are certain techniques you will have to wave goodbye to, as they won't work any more, those tricks you used to use. That does change how you build your world. We know those lessons now so when we build our next [game] like we are now, we're building under new rules.

Another interesting thing we found is that because it's fooling the brain into believing it's 3D, you have to be really careful with lighting and shadows. We've put lighting and shadow in for years because it makes it feel like a character and objects are in the scene. It was really funny because we had shadows in our game, but as soon as we start putting it into 3D and putting the glasses on, we're looking at it going, "Those shadows are miles out!" Your brain is picking up more information about lighting and shadow and you immediately have these glaring things that are out of place. So we actually now fix things like shadows in 3D and put the image back in 2D. So it actually makes 2D games look slightly more realistic, but you couldn't tell before.

Well it would be easier to write games that weren't 3D - I can't deny it. But that is a really interesting question, because once you see a 3D movie, if there's another movie that comes out and you have the choice to see it in 2D or 3D, I absolutely guarantee that every time you will ask to see it in 3D. Why would I see it in 2D? Coraline, which is a 3D movie, has a ratio of 6:1 in the takings of 3D cinemas against 2D ones. Everyone wants to see it in 3D because it was made as a 3D film. But one-out-of-six: the chances are they just didn't realise how cool it would look in 3D, or their cinema just didn't run it. But once you've seen it and you appreciate how good 3D looks, then you never want to go back. It's like giving someone a colour TV and going, "You can watch it in black and white if you like."

But I guarantee that anyone who sees our game will want to play it in 3D. I don't think anyone who has seen it can deny that it doesn't add a lot to it. We then get the problem of people going, "Yeah, but hardly anyone's got the TV," or, "Oh it's really difficult to do," or, "Oh it's going to be more expensive." Yes, yes, yes it is all of those things, and it would be easier to go back and make normal games. But we don't want to.