Bag Runners

Mirror’s edge is finally getting some well deserved attention despite the mountain of holiday releases in 2008  — but what’s it like to be working on a new IP as unique as this one over at DICE?

We recently spoke with DICE Software Engineer, Mikael Lagré, who was able to shed some light on the creative process behind Mirror’s Edge.

What were you responsible for in the making of Mirror’s Edge?

My main responsibility and area of expertise on Mirror’s Edge was the control and gameplay for Faith and the first person animation systems. This includes coding a lot of the movement and physics and making sure we trigger the correct animations for Faith.

What would you consider to be the best part about working on this game?

There are so many great things about working on this game! I feel lucky to be part of a game that truly is original. I feel we have a great main character that I can relate to and seeing the progress we have made on first person movement makes you work that extra hours knowing you’re doing something special. We have a great team at DICE working on ME. There are a lot of talented people here at DICE sharing the same vision - to create something unique that shines quality.

Can you tell us a bit about your background, and how you started working on Videogames?

ME is my first game project. I’m 26 years old and like many other people I started playing games when I was a little kid. Mostly NES and some games on my PC 286… During my teenage years I sat at home creating small games in various programming languages while my friends where outside chasing girls. Eventually I studied game development at university for 3 years and ended up at a company in northern Sweden doing some graphics programming in Java. Half a year later I started working at DICE for “a new and exciting IP”.

Is there anything interesting about working at Dice that’s unique from other jobs?

Working with games is such a creative job and I wouldn’t want to work with anything else. I’m not sure how other game companies work but something I believe is unique to DICE is the culture here that we all have input on every aspect of the game. Even if you are a programmer you can discuss with design, sound and artist on what is best for the game.

Same goes for the artists and design they come to programmers and we all solve a specific problem together. I’ve had numerous conversations directly to our producer or our lead animator on how to solve certain movement of Faith. Maybe it’s not unique to other jobs but it certainly helps aiming for an awesome game here at DICE.

Other than that we have a great office here in Stockholm with a game-room where you can relax and play some pool or play some rock band, we have a lot of game corners with nice sofas to relax and play some games. We have a game store to buy games from and a personal favorite of mine is the nice breakfast we get every Friday.

What does your typical day look like?

There’s not a typical day at all - sometimes there is a lot of meetings during the day to discuss some areas of the game, other days you sit with the same bug for days without progress and some days you actually write code that eventually becomes what some people would call … a game. At least every day usually involves a lot of coffee.

Since my boss might be reading this I should mention that we do have a timeline to follow and it’s not only fun and play - timeline is usually certain tasks you need to finish during a 2 week period - so a typical day for myself as a software engineer would be:

Getting up and running to work (making sure I take the shortest path doing parkour-moves). Reading all new emails (Typical topics are: ‘game crashes when I…’ and ‘has someone seen my…’ etc). Continue working with the code you didn’t finish yesterday - writing some new code trying some new ideas - testing them on consoles/pc. Talking to design and artists about new features and how we should implement them. Reading the timeline for your tasks and getting nervous. Drinking some more coffee and really starting to get some results. Coding some more and eventually going home a tiny bit too late than I should only to dream about jumping and wallrunning…

What are your top 5 favorite games?

Kingdom Hearts, Psychonauts, FFXII, GTA IV and Rallisport Challenge 2.

What would you consider to be your most prominent inspirations for Mirror’s Edge?

Out of games I personally looked at Metroid Prime and Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay for the first person movement and how they show their characters animations. Other than games I got a lot of inspirations from watching people doing crazy parkour moves on youtube. Again these are my personal inspirations.

Who, in the gaming industry, would you say has had the biggest influence on you?

Actually to be honest DICE had a big influence on me before I started working here since I was a huge fan of Rallisport Challenge 2 when that game came out. I enjoyed ICO when it came out on the PS2 but one of the greatest games that really shows that the team creating it had a lot of fun is Psychonauts (PS2, Xbox). If you haven’t played it stop reading this and go buy it!

Who do you think will enjoy Mirror’s Edge most?

Anyone that is looking for something new and fresh to play! I believe that a lot of people that enjoy playing 3rd person platform games will love playing Mirror’s Edge. I hope so.

Would you like to share anything else with readers of BagRunners.com?

At lot of people at DICE and in the ME-team are reading comments from users on various blogs, forums etc. Even though we cannot comment or engage in all discussions (we are too busy creating the games you are discussing) … most of us, myself included, read a lot of user feedbacks in forums and blogs so keep posting you opinions! We actually care.

Thank you for reading.

Mirror’s Edge will be in stores Nov. 13th, 2008.

Tags: interview, Mikael Lagré, mirror's edge