SDCC 08: DC Universe Online Super-Scoop[/b]]
We ask famed comic artist Jim Lee if this game sucks.
by Greg Miller

  July 23, 2008 - Cue the Super Friends starwipe and read the following with your best booming announcer voice: "Meanwhile, below the streets of San Diego, a famed comic book artist and Sony Online Entertainment plotted their San Diego Comic-Con assault."

Yes, just a few hours before the official start of Comic-Con, SOE and Jim Lee -- you know, the dude's who's cranked out defining images of Superman and Batman -- took over a San Diego bar to talk shop about DC Universe Online, an MMO the group is working on and Lee is executive creative director of.

Now, it was just last week that we brought you a Q&A sit down with SOE's John Blakely, but Lee, whose team of Wildstorm artists have been working on all of the game's concept art, has a bit of different perspective on things. Even the Q&A panel leading into our one-on-one time with Lee was full of brand new information such as clarification on just how you'll build your character.

If you've been following IGN's coverage of DCUO, then you already know that the game has you create a hero or a villain that will interact with the characters already established as comic book canon. It turns out that when you sit down to create your man or woman in tights, you'll be able to go the full MMO route and customize his or her power base (fire, ice, mental, etc.) and choose how he or she will move, but if you're new to the genre and a bit lazy, you can simply click on the icon of an established hero and get a similar base to build from. Click on the bat symbol, you'll get a martial artist.

As you build your character, you're obviously moving toward joining the Justice League of America or the Legion of Doom. It turns out that the story you'll be playing through will actually be anchored in these organizations coming to terms with the fact that there has been this influx of talent on the scene. You figure, when this game goes live, the DC Universe is suddenly going to get more crowded. Your story will involve that fact.

Although SOE wasn't dishing any specifics on the story, the reps did say that you'll be able to pause your own affairs and jump up into what they called an "Instant Action Match." This event could be something like a satellite crashing to Earth and you having to fight for it, or a bank heist. One example the team talked about was a battle between a set of heroes and a set of villains in the Tomb of Isis. The foes were at each other's throats until Black Adam showed up -- then, the two warring sides joined up to try and survive Captain Marvel's crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrazy man in black. Another example from the heat of battle came from when the game was being tested. Chris Cao, one of the producers on the game, hurled an ice ball at an opponent; the opponent caught it, charged it with electricity, and hurled it back to knock out the developer.

"This isn't rolling dice to see if you can hit the other guy," Cao said. "This is skill."

Even Ambush Bug is in the game.

But that's enough of that, right? You came to see what Jim Lee had to say, right? Well, before he sat down with us, Lee said that the game is going to do its best to tie into the current events of the DC Universe. World changing events will become part of the game, and DC Head Honcho Dan Dido has even assembled a list with Lee of characters in need of a kick in the pants -- those updated heroes and villains might make their debut in DCUO.

It sounds awesome, but what does Jim Lee have to say about all of this...

IGN: Jim, thank you for sitting down with us. Is this game going to suck?

Jim Lee: [Laughing] No. Definitely not. I've played it, and I can verify that it's awesome.

IGN: Why do you think it's awesome? I mean, you guys are definitely marching into territory that means so much to so many people, like myself.

Jim Lee: Well, because we have some amazing people working on the game -- and they're not just like ordinary amazing: these are the writers involved, the artists involved, they're all intimately familiar with the DC Universe and want the DC Universe to come to life. I think we've nailed it.

IGN: You say some interesting people --

Jim Lee: I can't say who! I can't say all the other cool interesting people we have involved.

IGN: But you're a huge name. I remember when the game was first announced -- "Jim Lee's getting into videogames, what's that all about?!" Why make the jump and do this?

Jim Lee: I've always been a big gamer and so it was more like how do they prevent me from working on this game, because when I heard they were going to make this MMO, I was like "Dude" -- this is my boss -- "Dude, you got to let me be involved in this game." So, I basically clawed my way into the project, and it's been awesome so far. I've just always been a big gamer, and to me, I wanted the game to reflect the DC Universe, and I think that's what we've accomplished.

IGN: What are the games you like to play?

Jim Lee: Right now, I like a lot of first-person shooter games like Call of Duty 4; EverQuest; EverQuest II; Mario Brawl [sic], I play that with my kids.

IGN: What are you pulling from them for this game?

Jim Lee: It's interesting. I'm play testing it over in Miramar, and there are a lot of Brawl-like elements where it's just throw right, you're not quite sure what you're doing but you know you're laying down some damage, bouncing around all over the place and, more importantly though, you're able to pick up items and chuck them at other people. It's just a very action-packed, dynamic game. If you think about being a superhero, you're dealing with characters that can move almost at the speed of light -- we don't have that in the game, but we have characters that run super-fast -- having that in the game, it really replicates what you think a superhero experience would be.

IGN: What's your typical day? How does this work into your schedule? You're really hands-on from everyone I talk to.

Jim Lee: Hours of interviews in the morning, I take a shower. [Laughter] Basically, I get up, probably spend like an hour or two doing e-mails, then I go in the office and deal with Wildstorm stuff, try to draw some pages, but I usually set aside like six hours of the day to just work on the videogame stuff during the day. Then, I do a little bit more at night. Most of that is actually approving things that people are working on or tweaking things that people have built. So, you can do this awesome concept art and it goes to a 3D modeler and they have to interpret it -- everyone has their own, unique style. It comes back to me, and I try to make sure that all of these different pieces that are being put together by different people match and look similar.

IGN: Is this your first foray into doing that -- having a 2D piece of art turn into this 3D -- ?

Jim Lee: I did a little bit on other games, but it was almost always at the last minute like "Hey, we want to introduce a new character. We've already got the game figured out; can you just take this character and we'll do a 3D turnaround on it." This is the first game where I've worked from the ground up. When I say the ground up, I'm talking about gameplay -- when you were saying like why this game's going to not suck: those were the kind of questions that were addressed before any concept art was drawn. That's the stuff I was really involved with. In fact, I went to Austin for a week for a mini-videogame boot camp and tried to learn a little of the lingo, some of the terminology and the tech that goes into it. It's like another foreign language.

IGN: Did any of it stick?

Jim Lee: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Honestly after every time I see these guys, I pick up a little bit more. Sometimes they're talking about stuff and you're like "What the hell are they talking about?" But a lot of that is like server-side technology and all that stuff. But in terms of gameplay -- having played a lot of these games and when you play these games and you're really into it you're always thinking like "Hey, they should do something like this in a superhero-type MMO" and [we've] tried to bring a lot of that stuff into this game.

IGN: From the play sessions that you've been able to have, can you give me examples of what's stood out?

Jim Lee: One of the coolest things that we just introduced is being able to run up the side of buildings. If you're a speedster, the way it's setup -- obviously you can't move so fast as to screw up the game balance between different kinds of characters -- but you do feel you're running through the cities really fast. You control it; you hit the wall; you go up the wall, dude; you go over the roof and come back down -- it's cool. I just wanted to do that for a while and all these NPCs were attacking me and I was like "Get away!" I just wanted to run around and explore, but that was not the case. Lex Luthor found me and killed me. That's the kind of stuff, and then flying around? Being able to fly to the top of these skyscrapers, land on the top and look around? It's really cool. It's just stuff that you don't really think about when you're drawing comic books. It definitely gives me a deeper appreciation of the world that we create in 2D.

IGN: How hard has this world right now been to create -- I mean, as far as integrating the DC Universe? There's such a long history.

Jim Lee: It's harder than you think. You think like, "Oh, Daily Planet." Well, what Daily Planet do we put in? The one from the comic book? Do the one with the holographic Daily Planet globe or do you one that's more copper-based? Do we do the one from the movies? Do we do the one from animation? There are all these different versions of all these characters -- even from the costumes. Does Batman have the pouches on his utility belt or does he have something more that looks like something from the '70s? Those are the decisions you have to make, and a lot of times it's easy because I've worked on these characters, but a lot of times it's hard because, like, I've never drawn Metamorpho before. "Hmm, what kind of texture is his leg going to be? How do we represent that in textures? How do we represent it in 3D?" So, there's a lot of stuff where decisions I would make if I was drawing that character in the book, I have to do that for the game's space but at a faster pace because we're producing so much of it.

IGN: When's the game coming out?

Jim Lee: When it's ready.

IGN: Gargh! I was hoping I could get you!

Jim Lee: I was so close to giving you a month and a year. Y'know what? We haven't been cutting any corners on this and it literally is a work of love for me. I specifically renewed my contract at DC to work on this game. I wanted the challenge. I wanted to do something really new. This has been all that and more. To me, I don't want to release a game that sucks, like you said. The goal is to make sure it's fun and that it reflects the DC Universe. That takes time.

IGN: What's your final rallying cry to fans? I mean, this is their first chance to play it at Comic-Con.

Jim Lee: Wow. Gosh. Try the speedster. Try all the different body types. We spent an inordinate of time trying to do all of these different silhouettes. When you see it, you're like "Ehh?," but a lot of time went into it and we're still even fine tuning it now. Years later. It is a tricky thing because we want to give people the variety of body types and everything, powers. We want it to be true to the DC Universe. It's tricky. It's a tricky process. It's been a great learning experience -- fun experience.

IGN: Jim, thank you so much.

Jim Lee: Hey, you're welcome, man. Thank you.