Sumo's Millard: Constraints 'Tax Creativity More Than A Blank Canvas'

"Game designers are kind of a funny lot. It's not really quantifiable what a game designer does, in the same way it's hard to quantify an artist's work." That's according to Sean Millard of Sheffield, UK developer Sumo Digital, the studio behind games including Outrun Online Arcade, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing and Dr. Who: The Adventure Games. He's been with the Foundation 9-owned studio since 2003. Millard told Gamasutra in a phone interview that he recently moved up from his position as creative evangelist at Sumo to a creative director – he'll now manage designers, act as a liaison to publishing partners and, most notably, become a formal member of the studio's management team. Because it can be difficult for more business-minded management to quantify or judge a game designer's work or ideas, Sumo and Millard found that it would be beneficial to have someone within the studio act as sort of a translator for the company's creative types, a group that he still closely aligns with, Millard said. "I understand … the psychology of designers, and how to be able to interact around a board table with upper management," he explained. Designers need to have a proponent that knows how to "sell" ideas to management, Millard said. "Otherwise, ideas don't get due consideration. They get washed over as 'creative fluff.'" "In order to sell an idea, you have to be really passionate about your idea. … It's a funny kind of position where you have to appear to be an egomaniac but actually you can't afford to have any sort of ego whatsoever," said Millard. "It's a weird position." The idea of having a creative voice within upper management isn't necessarily new at Sumo, Millard said, but the formal establishment of such a position means that designers can also be held answerable for games' successes -- and shortfalls. Injecting A Creative Voice Into Management "My role is to evangelize the design point of view, but also [gives] little bit more responsibility to the studios," he explained. "It's about being accountable for those [design] decisions rather than just waxing on in the corner about the creative point of view." "I think I've reached a level of maturity in my career where I can look at it from a practical point of view" rather than a purely "fantastical" point of view, Millard said. The new job involves him being "fantastical with my feet on the ground, if you like." As a creative director at Sumo, Millard is overseeing a portfolio made up of games largely based on licensed properties. He's passionate about what he called the "underestimated" work and creativity that goes into developing licensed games. "I think that it's really easy for people to assume that the biggest creative opportunities come from a blank canvas," he argued. "I really don't agree with that at all. I think it's a great opportunity to work on your own IP, but actually working within properties that really mean something to people … offers way more of a creative challenge and tests the mettle of designers … because you have to make it creative, surprising and anything else that goes into design, but you also have a set of rules." "Embrace Restraints" One of the studio's current projects is a series of adventure games based on the BBC's Dr. Who television series. Sumo and the BBC are working together to make the recently-commissioned second series of the game tie in closely with the television adaptation. The first three publicly-funded Doctor Who: The Adventure Games episodes attracted 1.6 million downloads from the BBC website. The Dr. Who franchise has been around since 1963, said Millard. "There's a hell of a lot of history to consider, and that taxes the creativity more than a blank canvas. … My mission in life creatively is to make people realize that there is a lot more creativity that goes on in licensed properties than people say. … What we do is sometimes underestimated creatively, I think." "You have to embrace restraints," he said, adding that companies working on licensed properties must find out why people are attached to a certain property, and focus on that attachment when designing a game. It's a challenging process, he said. Asked if the development teams share his enthusiasm for working on licensed properties, he laughed. "Yeah, sometimes they need to be reminded [of the advantages]." Millard said that Sumo entertains ideas based on new IP, but "the grass is always greener," he said. Launching a new original property, from a publishing and marketing standpoint, is a huge undertaking, the creative director explained. "With an established franchise, people get what it is immediately, and we can get behind it. … Something that's established has much more chance at success than trying to establish it yourself."