(calm music)
- [Host] Hello and welcome to Noclip,
the podcast about video games and the people who make them.
On today's episode, we pay a much needed visit
to the video game doctor, as we celebrate
the return of a PC cult classic.
Bullfrog are synonymous with a wonderful period in time
for games development in the United Kingdom.
Producing many cult classics including Populus,
Dungeon Keeper, Syndicate, and Theme Park.
But to me, the jewel in Bullfrog's crown
has always been their lesser-known follow up
to the theme park management game.
While becoming an instant classic in the UK,
Theme Hospital is much lesser known
here in the United States.
So it was quite the surprise to me when,
on a date with an American, the girl
across the table from me mentioned it
as one of her favorite games ever.
I think that was the moment I decided
I wanted to marry you, was when you mentioned
you liked Theme Hospital.
- [Lindsay] Oh yeah, that's, like,
an important aspect of our relationship.
- [Host] Yeah, what do you remember about that game?
- [Lindsay] I remember all the little
goofy components of it, like how the people look,
and how you can pop heads, and how you can deal
with a million Elvis' and the helicopter comes in
and has a thousand people on it,
and the fancy man comes around with his top hat.
- [Host] Oh yeah, I forgot about the VIP.
- [Lindsay] The fancy man. - [Host] Yeah.
And you had to make sure that he didn't, like--
- [Lindsay] See all your rats and shit, like--
(laughs)
So you be, like, "This way, Sir."
- [Host] Or somebody would get sick right in front of him.
He kind of looked like the Monopoly man.
- [Lindsay] Yeah, he was so fancy.
And he, remember when he stopped by all the wards
and looked in all the windows, he peaked in.
He'd be like, "Oops, not that one,
"no one works in there."
- [Host] I wonder how much it mattered.
Because when he was walking around,
I always thought, oh, I better make sure that
wherever he walks we have fire extinguishers.
- [Lindsay] Totally.
- [Host] But I bet it was just, like--
- [Lindsay] It was predetermined before he even landed
on his helicopter or however he got there.
- [Host] I think this might be the first time
I've ever worked on a Noclip project which is a game
that you care about? Is that true?
I guess Rocket League you liked.
- [Lindsay] Rocket League I liked for a few minutes.
None of the other video games you've ever done a podcast on,
I mean done a documentary on, I've ever even heard of.
- [Host] Yeah. You're not a final fan of C14 fan?
- [Lindsay] I've heard of Final Fantasy.
I didn't know there were 14 of them, but--
- [Host] (laughs) There's way more than 14 of them.
- [Lindsay] I've heard of it.
Oh, really? - [Host] Yeah.
And since it is the first time I've kind of worked on
something that you actually have a deep knowledge of--
- [Lindsay] Oh, I'm excited.
- [Host] If you had any questions, let me be those sort of
the translator between you and the developers.
What would you ask if you had any questions?
- [Lindsay] Well my big question is
when they are going to make a sequel.
Because as fun as it is to play
that pixelly thing, they better make a sequel.
My real questions are about the silly things,
like how the handyman could smell cabbage
or just little silly components that they put in there.
- [Host] It's the doctors, isn't it,
it smells faintly of cabbage.
- [Lindsay] It smells faintly of cabbage, yeah.
- [Host] When you were hiring them.
Oh yeah, I guess the handyman, too.
- [Lindsay] Anybody could smell like cabbage in real life.
Anyone could smell like cabbage.
So I had that question, and also about shooting rats.
Like, what that's about and sometimes you could
unlock that secret level where it was just rat shooting.
And that was really cool.
- [Host] It was kind of random, though.
- [Lindsay] Yeah yeah, it was just like--
- [Host] Like, why does this happen?
- [Lindsay] Right, I have some experience in hospitals
and I've never once shot a rat,
but they thought it was important
that we have that component.
- [Host] I can answer the first question.
- [Lindsay] Oh, when the sequel's coming out?
- [Host] Yeah, so I decided I wanted
to do this a while back, and it took a while
for me to hunt down the two main dudes
who worked on Theme Hospital.
It turns out both of them ended up having
really prolific careers and getting
to the top of Lionhead Studios,
who made a bunch of games.
- [Lindsay] The Movies.
- [Host] They made The movies,
I remember you love, which is so funny,
you love The Movies because it's probably
Lionhead's most obscure game.
- [Lindsay] The Movies was really hard.
I've never made any progress at all in that game.
I think I'm doing something wrong, actually.
- [Host] And the guys who, I think both of them actually
worked on The Movies as well.
- [Lindsay] Well then I have further questions for them
of how you achieve anything in that game.
- [Host] We'll have to leave that for another podcast.
- [Host] But I ended up finding them
because they're working on a spiritual successor.
So after, I think it's been eight, 19 years?
Around two decades, and finally you can play a new
hospital management game, it's coming out really soon,
so-- - [Lindsay] Yes.
- [Host] Let me ask the questions and
I'll get back to you. - [Lindsay] Report back.
- [Host] Like report back to you--
- [Lindsay] Thank you. - [Host] On the condition
of our patient. - [Lindsay] Of our fair game.
- [Host] Yeah. (laughs)
(soft playful music)
- [Mark] Yeah, I'm Mark Webley,
I'm one of the founders and I guess
I'm game director at Two Point Studios.
- [Gary] I'm Gary Carr, I'm also a founder
and I'm creative director at Two Point Studios.
- [Mark] I kind of heard about Bullfrog,
I didn't really know that much about them until
I saw this EA poster, a friend of mine worked at EA,
and it was a poster with all their games on,
it kind of looked like interesting games.
You saw this one in the middle, which is,
looks incredible, I said, "What the hell was that?"
And it was Populus, and I thought,
wow that just looks insane, I mean,
you kind of looked back at it and you might not see it,
but at the time it was, in my view,
whoa that looks so different and cool.
- [Gary] I think I started a couple years before Mark,
I think I started in 89.
- [Mark] Yeah, you were definitely before me.
- [Gary] So I done my first game at Bullfrog
was Powermonger, I was there at the back in the Populus
and I did a little bit on the data disks
but not very much if I'm honest.
I did a little bit actually on Syndicate,
but it was called Cyber Assault when I worked on it.
- [Mark] I thought it was called Quaz at one point.
- [Gary] It was called Bub as well.
- [Mark] Bub? Yeah. Just something easy to type.
- [Gary] That's the game that we could never
actually decide what it was going to be.
It was in production forever.
(soft twirly music)
- [Host] Back in the early 90's,
the team at Bullfrog was only around eight people
led by the excitable hand of a man called Peter Molyneux.
The studio operated out of a makeshift office
crammed into an attic above a stereo shop
and a flat occupied by a chain-smoking old lady.
Peter had used his charm to persuade Commodore
to lend them a suite of Amiga's
and it was on these computers that the team
worked on games, games like Powermonger,
Syndicate, Magic Carpet, Flood, and Dungeon Keeper.
Gary, an artist, left for a time after
they had completed the iconic Theme Park.
He went to work at famed UK developers
the Bitmap Brothers for a number of years
before being tempted back to Bullfrog
by a devilish dungeon keeper.
- [Gary] Yeah, Peter has got a great way of,
kind of, sort of making people believe that these things
are going to be what they want them to be
and he's brilliant at that and I loved the guy for it.
But I wanted to come back and do something
that wasn't Theme, so I kept saying,
"Could the game idea possibly be a dungeon-y game?"
And he sort of said, "Could be."
What he meant was it could be, but it's not.
(laughs) So I came back,
but actually it was the best decision of my life,
it really was because it was great to work with Mark.
We're very different people, and we both have
sort of different things we bring together
and we had-- - [Mark] We argue a lot.
- [Gary] We argue a lot and we had total freedom.
I mean, back then there was only about three or four people
that had the luxury to sort of take an idea
and own it, and we were one of those few.
So it was a great time in our careers,
we were at the right time, I think, to sort of
build a team together and make that game.
(soft twirly music)
When Mark and I were probably at similar age
and different types of experience,
I'd had a bit more games experience at the time,
Mark had had a lot more management experience at the time.
- [Mark] But I was a lot smarter.
- [Gary] Yeah, I think so. But at this point in time,
I think it was when Bullfrog was splitting up into
creating teams within Bullfrog because
we'd gotten a little bit bigger.
So Mark kicked off what was called Pluto, believe it or not,
which was the design and series team that was gonna do
all the theme games and I was brought in
to sort of partner with Mark on this game,
we had no idea what was going to be coming
and it ended up being Theme Hospital.
(audience chatter)
- [Mark] Well at that time, it was just
me and you to start with, it was just, I mean, the team
at its maximum size was probably about five or six.
So it was pretty small teams, there's no producer,
there's no designer, so I was programming,
Gary as doing the art and--
- [Gary] And we were kind of making it up as we went along
so that process kind of carried on for a while
and I think that kind of originally
it was a game about a hospital, a game about a theme park
was kind of great, you got rides and exciting things
and lots of fun just without even having
to go outside the box. - [Gary] Try too hard.
- [Mark] And then afterwards it was different.
We kind of thought about the flow of the game
the patient, the diagnosis, and the treatment
of patients, but the sticking point was after.
In fact, we were on the research back in Gilford,
it's right next to the hospital, so we'd often
spend out lunchtime walk around Dart U
we'd probably get choked out now.
- [Gary] Trying to get inspiration, weren't we?
- [Mark] Yeah, just walking around the corridors,
and just kind of seeing what's in the hospital.
We're going to have lunch in the cafeteria
and it was, it came to a point where I think you just,
you said, "This is it, isn't it.
"There's nothing more, it's just
"boring corridors and plain walls."
- [Gary] They're all very similar, it doesn't matter
if it's the US or the UK, I think hospitals share,
they always have the same floor tiles.
(laughs) They have these slightly
curved floors where obviously they're easy
to wash in up corners so the floors slightly curve,
they have this kind of shiny, painted up to
about waist-high where I think
that can be washed down as well.
- [Mark] Hosed down.
- [Gary] Hosed down. And they have a few machines
with little screens on them and they all sort of
makeshift beds that seems to be
some sort of crash unit near it.
And that's it, and we just suddenly thought,
Oh my God, how does this compete with things like
roller coasters, and water fluids,
and all that kind of color?
And we got really scared and we also spent about,
and this has been said many times,
but we spent about a month in different
hospitals trying to do some research,
trying to find a game out of all that.
- [Mark] Integrate on the street.
- [Gary] On the street, we went to Brimley and Rolsory,
and we just spent time in all these hospitals
and we just kind of got so weary.
- [Mark] Gary even got circumcised.
- [Gary] No, I didn't. (laughs)
We viewed operations, we were invited
to go and look around the morgue
and we went into business meetings
about how one hospital could strategically
beat another hospital to people that have been in injuries.
And it just sounds like, oh god this is so grim.
- [Mark] We were setting up the ambulance.
- [Gary] That's right. Do you remember that?
- [Mark] Yeah yeah.
- [Gary] And then we sort of went
for lunch and again in the canteen
that looked very much like a real canteen,
they have lots of really unhealthy food.
And, uh, we just suddenly I think just landed on this idea
at the same time to sort of just let's just make it up.
Because we actually knew nothing about hospitals,
we didn't know how they really worked.
(audience chatter)
- [Host] Mark and Gary did their game design due diligence
and visited hospitals all around the Greater London Area.
They were kicked out of an operation
for distracting a surgeon once,
and almost visited a morgue before losing their nerve.
It was these experiences that brought the boys
to the conclusion that they were better off
distancing themselves from the grim reality
of hospitals as much as they could.
They knew that the subject matter
wasn't really the focus of the gameplay experience.
It wasn't like people who played Theme Park
all wanted to run Theme Parks,
and the same could be true here.
Through their experience they understood that
the drive of this game came from the problems
players would encounter and the ways
in which they would solve them.
So they didn't have to make a game about
running a real hospital, they just
had to make a game that was fun and challenging.
It was around this time that Bullfrog
was acquired by Electronic Arts.
And when their new bosses turned up to see
what the team was working on, they were, a bit confused.
(soft upbeat music)
- [Gary] And when they'd come to the studio
and have a look at all the games,
it's kind of like, a hospital game?
No, I don't get it.
It's like, oh, think about ER and things,
we were trying to jazz it up.
It's actually a really popular, exciting show.
They'd say, "But this isn't like ER, is it."
- [Mark] I guess that's the problem.
I think everybody probably would assume
science fiction or fantasy--
- [Gary] Or killing or blowing up.
- [Mark] Making some sim game around that would be
the best possible subject matter,
but I think coming up with, if we stay in
kind of reality, and relatable subject,
but then you twist that into something else is,
makes it way more interesting.
- [Host] EA was right. It wasn't really ER.
For one, Theme Hospital didn't have any real illnesses.
The people in this world suffered from conditions
like Slack Tongue, Bloaty Head,
Kidney Beans and Third Degree Sideburns.
One condition originally called Elvitus
had to be changed when Elvis' estate got wind of it.
The character art, which did look a lot like Elvis,
was slightly changed, and the condition
was renamed King Complex.
Another legal faux-pas came with the original box-art
of Theme Hospital, which carried a red cross.
The Red Cross wasn't too happy about that,
so they changed it to a green star.
The guys were starting to warm up
so I figured it was probably about the time
to ask Lindsay's questions.
First of all, what was with all the doctors
that smelled faintly of cabbage?
Who wrote this stuff?
And why did Theme Hospital have a rat shooting mini game?
- [Gary] One thing I think Lionhead and Bullfrog
haven't probably promoted enough
is the great writers who have actually made
us look even, well, made us look way better
than we actually are.
Because it's actually, it's interesting,
there wasn't that many visual illnesses
in Theme Hospital, but a lot of people remember
the wonderful names and they paint their own pictures.
- [Mark] Yeah, and the descriptions
of how they're contracted, so.
- [Gary] So I think, but the writing
was really important to us.
- [Mark] There was a guy called James Leech.
- [Gary] But James Leech did the original,
but James also worked with a guy called Mark Hill
throughout, on and off through the Lionhead days,
and that was something we wanted to bring,
keep that consistency of writing.
So, it was probably Mark, probably is, he's really strong.
- [Mark] Yeah, if you've got enough,
if you've shot enough rats in a level,
you could unlock a secret in between levels, you rat shoot.
And it was basically just a lot of rats.
You had a certain amount of time
to kill as many as you can,
and if you kind of chain them together,
if you've got enough, if you've got a streak as it were,
you could level up your weapons.
- [Gary] That's right. - [Mark] And they were really
difficult, I think the rat was two by one pixels,
you know it was some of my best work,
and you had to get a headshot.
So you literally had to be almost pixel perfect,
certainly in the harder levels.
- [Gary] It was hard, yeah.
- [Mark] And it's weird, things like that used to happen
because we didn't have design documents.
We didn't have, you know, we weren't scheduled to do,
this week we're on this, next week we're on that.
So, you know, this is just when developers
just start dicking about really.
- [Voiceover] Could people please
try not to be sick in the corridors.
(soft mysterious music)
- [Host] Theme Hospital was a critical
and commercial success, but once they were done
post-acquisition Bullfrog saw an exodus of developers
as Peter Molyneux left to form a new studio, Lionhead.
Mark followed his old boss to Lionhead
while Gary was part of another group
that founded the studio Mucky Foot.
There, he worked on the art
for Urban Chaos, Startopia, and Blade 2,
and left once the studio closed in 2003
whereupon he joined Lionhead to work on The Movies.
By this stage the two friends found themselves
in lead positions at the company.
They shepherded many games through the studio
during this time including Black and White,
Fable, Kinect Sports, and unreleased projects
such as Project Milo and "BC".
They worked together at Lionhead for a decade,
but as time passed the job became less
like the good old days.
Microsoft had acquired Lionhead in 2006
and the now 200 person studio
had run into financial difficulty.
So as the years wore on, the influence
of their parent company was having
an erosive effect on the team's creativity.
Gary found it especially difficult to get his ideas
to gain traction, and so he decided to leave.
- [Gary] I guess the thing I enjoyed most
of the Bullfrog era was definitely Theme Hospital.
It just was, because it was a point when I was ready
to do more than just the artwork on a game.
So I felt I was much more stepping into being
a kind of a co-creating role rather than
just making things look as pretty as I could.
Then, I enjoyed my period with Mucky Foot,
which was a company I sort of helped formulate,
and we had some great years there.
Lionhead, I guess the challenges were always
working with Peter on such ambitious ideas
because Peter would, I was in a team that wasn't Fable,
so my part of that was Peter would throw some
incredibly outlandish ideas around
and it was kind of my job to get
a little group of people together
to try and realize that ambition.
And it was really exciting, I mean,
we literally went from making things on Kinect
or things like Milo and Cabige,
which was a bit nice for a while,
it was just weird and wonderful opportunities
to try and make a difference and do
something strange and interesting,
so I enjoyed that, too.
- [Host] By the time Mark's tenure was coming to a close,
Peter Molyneux had long left the company
and Mark was creative director of Lionhead.
His final act at the studio was to help get
Fable: Anniversary out the door,
and it was then that he stepped away from a job
where he'd spent most of his adult life.
- [Mark] Yeah, I mean, I was there from the beginning,
and my tenure was 15 to 16 years.
- [Gary] It was 16 nearly, I think.
- [Mark] Yeah, I left in the beginning of 2013.
But it was a long and anxious period
that I was kind of working through.
I mean things had changed, obviously Peter had gone,
and the kind of vision for Lionhead was,
well, a vision for the Europe Microsoft was
free to play console stuff and it wasn't really,
I wasn't really enjoying it anymore.
I think that's the best thing to say.
You know, I kind of, if I was going to do it again,
I wanted to fall back in love with making games and--
- [Gary] You're quite an emotional person,
if you don't like something, you let people know about it.
- [Mark] And I sulk about it. (laughs)
- [Host] Mark and Gary were free agents
and worked odd jobs here and there for old friends.
They enjoyed the easier workload after years of grind
at the top of one of the UK's largest developers.
Perhaps it was then, given the benefit of hindsight,
that the two remembered just how much fun they had
had working on those old games together.
So it was then, one evening, when Mark was picking up pizza,
Gary pitched him an idea about starting
a small, independent studio, and working on games
sort of like they used to, in a cramped old flat
stuck above a stereo shop and a chain-smoking old lady.
- [Gary] Yeah, I kind of didn't think.
I thought, well who'd be interested in,
you know, revisiting-- - [Mark] Two old farts
you know, making old games, who's interested in it?
And I think that was kind of--
- [Gary] We had to go on a journey of discovery.
And actually it was when we started sort of talking
to some people when we were still trying
to find a partner to make this,
we certainly realized there was a lot of interest.
- [Mark] We did a tour, didn't we?
- [Gary] We did a tour, we sort of went on the roads,
and met up with a bunch of either,
we were looking to either sell publish,
initially, maybe do a kickstarter,
or partner with a small publisher.
We didn't know, you know, who would go for this.
So we just sort of started looking into it.
And we just literally got in the car,
booked into a sort of cheap hotel, motel-type places,
and just knocked on doors and that's how we started.
Which was great fun because this was
a couple of 50 year old guys,
basically in a band back together again.
- [Mark] And going on tour, so we just,
our wives probably thought, look at them,
they're pathetic. (laughs)
What do they think right now?
- [Host] Mark and Gary thought there might
still be a thirst for their old sim games.
The classic Bullfrog titles were still
selling well over on GOG and new games
like Prison Architect and City Skylines
were creating a whole new generation of fans.
They had considered crowdfunding the project at one point,
but they were warned away by some of the developers
they talked to during their road-trip.
So, they wrote a pitch for a new hospital game
that would evolve the ideas of a game
they had made almost two decades earlier.
They knew they needed financial help.
The guys were experienced and understood
the type of game they wanted to create
would require more money and time than they personally had.
They shot the pitch around to publishers,
and while some were receptive, there was one in particular
that seemed very keen: SEGA.
They negotiated terms with SEGA from the end of 2015
right up to the summer of 2016.
And as it happens, right as the deal was signed,
news broke that Microsoft would be closing Lionhead Studios.
So, somewhat ahead of schedule, Gary and Mark
rushed to hire their new team.
(soft music)
- [Gary] We kind of imagined we'd take them
over a period of time, but Lionhead closed,
and it was suddenly these brilliant people
were out of work.
- [Mark] Tons of brilliant people.
- [Gary] And they weren't around for long.
- [Mark] No, we were going to lose them.
- [Gary] Companies were coming to Gilford
doing presentations just going,
"You should come work for us."
And we, you know, we had to kind of promise--
- [Mark] That was a risky thing to do.
Because obviously we had to sort of lay out
a huge amount of our expenditure earlier
than we would ordinarily do it,
but the point thing is we made a huge advancement
in the development in the game and also this team,
I wouldn't swap them for the world.
They're amazing bunch of people.
- [Gary] Some of them have worked with us
for over twenty years.
But Alan, who's sat behind Mark right now,
I think he was your best mate at school, wasn't he?
- [Mark] Pretty much. I mean Pram,
Pram reminds me of Chris.
Pram literally knocked on the door,
and one of the guys we've worked with for over twenty years,
I hired him out of college.
And now he's absolutely integral to this team.
So that's the kind of things we like to do.
It's to build those relationships.
- [Host] Mark and Gary founded Two Point Studios,
and over the coming years built a team
of 16 people to help make this game.
Some were old friends and colleagues,
others new kids on the block.
Their game was going to be called Two Point Hospital.
The spiritual successor to a Bullfrog classic.
But it wouldn't be enough to simply re-make an old game.
For one, Theme Hospital was a 2D game.
When Edge Magazine came to visit the studio
in the mid 90's, they barely took notice of it,
as gamers were far more interested in
3D screenshots of games like Dungeon Keeper.
But time would prove to be kinder to Theme Hospital.
While those early 3D games aged quickly
as 3D technology improved, 2D games have a sort
of timeless, inviting quality to them.
Plus, to create these sophisticated sandbox
they were aiming for, Two Point Hospital
would have to be in 3D.
- [Gary] We knew how Theme Hospital had done better
over 20 years and some of it's contemporary.
- [Mark] So we needed to come up with a style
which incorporated something that felt like it was fresh
and up-to-date, but we felt if the game does have legs,
if people do love this game and we can keep it
around for long enough, won't look out of sorts in
two, three, four years time.
So, we went for something quite organic feeling,
it doesn't feel like it's rendered,
it feels more like it's made of clay or plasticine,
and it feels drawn rather than engineered,
- [Gary] And I think also that that art style
back then was, with was certainly Theme Park
and Theme Hospital had, we had quite a big proportion
of female players, which back then was certainly
unheard of for our types of games.
Obviously something like the sims, which came later,
it just blew their market wide open.
But I think we didn't have an art style that was--
- [Mark] Exact not footing.
- [Gary] Yeah, it kind of, it was accessible,
I'm not going to be patronizing and suggest that,
you know, we made something that was appealing to girls,
Because I wouldn't even have a clue how that would,
you know-- - [Mark] I think
it felt accessible, it felt like it wasn't
aimed at any particular type of gamer.
- [Gary] Because you're looking at the game
not from a fixed angle, you could be above
or sort of, like, low down, you could kind of
twist the camera.
So a lot of these kind of considerations were kind of
worked through and then,
- [Mark] And then the US, is it Where's Wilbur in the US?
Where's Wally?
- [Host] Oh yeah, Waldo they say over here.
- [Gary] Waldo, that's it.
And we, you know, to make something readable
when you've got so much on screen,
and I don't know if you need a screenshot
with some of the later levels where you've got
absolutely vast marks with hundreds of people on screen.
To get a clean read and not get it to look noisy
and kind of, I don't know, slightly put you on edge
because everything's moving and they've been shimmering
because everything's trying to fight for your attention
was a real consideration for us.
In fact, I've seen some footage that's just
gone out last night, and the guy's captured
all his footage top down. - [Host] Right.
- [Gary] Imagine being a designer or an artist
trying to design a game that looks good
from anything possible conceivable angle.
It's really difficult.
(soft eerie music)
- [Host] Theme Hospital was accessible,
not just with both men and women,
but with gamers and non-gamers, and young and old too.
It was one of those games that was effortless to pick up.
But after the first few missions,
Theme Hospital's rough edges began to show.
First of all the game got rather hard really quickly.
And secondly, there just wasn't any interesting progression.
Each level in Theme Hospital was almost
identical to the previous one.
So to combat this, the team created a world
where each hospital takes places in a unique region
with its own biome and its own unique needs.
- [Gary] Because the regions are very different,
the people in that area are very different,
some are rich, some are poor regions,
and some of the challenges are different.
In some cases, you may be running a hospital
that's actually funded rather than you get paid
for curing people from the individuals, they don't pay,
you just get a budget at the beginning of the level.
And that just makes the plagues spin completely different,
so we wanted to kind of make it
stay fresh as much as possible.
And also give people the opportunity to circle back
and go back and do things that they probably
struggled earlier on and keep that fresh by
putting new challenges in there.
- [Mark] And you have the ability to progress
through the county reasonably easy.
But if you really want to max out the game,
you can kind of return to earlier hospitals,
you can unlock things in later levels,
you can do research, maybe unlock certain qualifications,
come back to one of the earlier hospitals
and train the staff in those things, upgrade those machines.
- [Gary] So the game doesn't have that pinch point,
which the original game had where
it just got too hard for me,
I think I got to about level seven
and would find it a real struggle.
And we didn't want to do that again.
- [Host] When I ask the guys about the features
that excite them most, there's one
that immediately stands out.
Two Point Hospital features characters
with a variety of personality traits
that are not only affected by the world around them,
but also by the people around them.
They want you to care a lot more
about your employees in this game,
but more than that, this system has the ability
to create wonderful emergent moments
as doctors and patients clash with both each other,
and the rules of the world.
M This is what's real new cutting edge stuff
is we've got this, the brains the little people now,
is they've got these traits and of course
they also have the conditions they're under
combined to make quite unique animation blends,
which means they do things, they react almost uniquely.
It doesn't feel like it's pre-canned.
You see somebody walk up to somebody
and they'll respond completely different to the next person
based on how those two people feel about each other.
- [Host] Could you give an example?
Like is it, if two doctors don't like each other,
or if they have a tough patient,
or how does that sort of manifest?
- [Gary] It's just patient is a good example,
I mean, they as well as the personality traits,
the things that are going on,
if doctors has just treated a patient
and they die, that has an effect on their happiness,
they go on a break to the staff room,
and that could end up in an argument with another doctor,
and then just that argument could just--
- [Mark] And it's not all emotional,
sometimes it's just that the habitual things,
like you have a fantastic doctor
who may just never wash his hands
when he goes to the toilet. (laughs)
- [Gary] Right, now that has an impact on the game.
It's not just funny, it actually has an impact
and in fact, there was somebody who was showing the game to
in San Francisco the other week,
and this person has an amazing hospital, doing really well,
but when you put the filter on to look at hygiene,
the hospital is really clean, but all the staff
are really filthy, and I mean you couldn't work it out,
and she'd built this massive facility with a toilet
which only had two cubicles and she put no sinks in it
and no hand dryers and put no sanitizer units
anywhere in the hospital.
So all these doctors were working
on all these patients, filthy.
And we put this kind of filter over it
and showed her all the instants of filth trails in the game,
and Mark just went, I can see your problem.
He said, "Do you ever wash your hands
"when you go to the toilet?"
And this girl was just so embarrassed
and immediately went and put this bathroom,
a sink into the bathroom, to the toilet.
And all the staff just ran to cure,
to wash their hands, it's that stuff.
- [Mark] Everything in the game affects something else
so the people, the machines, the way and the sick,
and everything in your world is important.
- [Gary] If you have a brilliant surgeon
but he's an angry man or woman, right,
your job is to try and work out how to
diffuse that situation to get them to do even better.
And that's kind of the fun depth that the game has.
Maybe this person just needs more caffeine in their life.
Maybe this person needs more weird
executive toys in the office.
Those kind of things, it's just you getting
that extra ten percent out of their performance
which is the real depth I think this game supports.
(soft music)
- [Host] As Gary just said in Two Point Hospital
you can have an angry surgeon, man or woman.
Another evolution from games past that shows
not only just how far games have come
in terms of representation, but also in terms of technology.
If there's one thing I keep hearing
when I interview designers today,
it's that technology provides, it provides answers.
Many design problems that used to exist in the past
have been rendered moot by the advancement of technology.
And Two Point's character variety is
a perfect example of this.
The original Theme Hospital had four main character types:
A nurse who was a women, a doctor who was a man,
a receptionist who was a woman, and a janitor
who was a dusty-looking old man.
So I asked Mike and Gary, why?
- [Mark] It covered respective times
people have said that we made a sexist game,
but we had to make the game run in four megabytes.
I mean, it was a time and memory,
and it wasn't a question of, like, well
doctors are just men and nurses are just women,
it was just a question of like,
we had to make a call with it,
and I think you had new, you had different heads,
but it was pretty much the same body,
different jackets and stuff, and we couldn't have made--
- [Gary] I was really keen on skin tone was important.
I did not want to have a particular skin tone,
but we just did not have the time
or the memory, mainly the memory.
- [Mark] The character variation was
important to us back then, and it was only
21 years ago but you very rarely got very
different clothing variations and we did manage
to get an element of that in.
But the basic model of the man and the woman,
that was the huge memory part of this.
You know, so rightly or wrongly,
I could have made a male nurse and a female doctor,
I could have made a young janitor,
I could have made a male reception administration staff.
All of those things are absolutely true.
You know, 20 odd years down the line
it just seems critically incorrect
but it wasn't our intention,
I'd like to think we're quite right on.
But the decision was made that the doctors were male
and the nurses were female, rightly or wrongly,
it was a call I made but I certainly
didn't mean the offend anybody.
- [Host] But it sounds like that's something
that's been changed for Two Point?
- [Mark] Totally. - [Gary] Absolutely.
I mean, you know, that would have, that's absolutely
goes without saying, he's not trying to correct anything,
it's just that we had no choice back then
to make a decision, rightly or wrongly,
but it was just never going to be a situation.
I mean, we've got so many more other types now
of staff anyway, and what they do is very different.
I mean, and thank God our initiative stuff in this game
do all sorts of things, they're not just manning,
I mean the little bit of footage you've probably seen,
it may look like, oh look, there's somebody
on the reception desk again.
They do all sorts of different roles.
- [Mark] Yeah so we've got a marketing department
which you open up later in the game,
so the assistants can work, if they have the qualification,
they can work in marketing,
- [Gary] They're kind of civil-servant-y
type people, aren't they.
They do a cross of different things,
but the other things is we've taken a variation
to a ridiculous level now.
You can have hundreds of people,
in fact, somebody took a fantastic screenshot
within the studio, it's on our Twitter feed,
and it's just about three hundred people
just jammed into section and no two,
they're all completely different characters.
We've got this amazing modular system
which puts on things such as steam goggles if it wants to,
you know, boots, every component can be different
and it just randomly generates them.
So you really are lucky if you see
two characters that look vaguely similar.
Certainly more similar people in Yorkshire
than there are in our game. (laughs)
- [Host] What excites me most about Two Point Hospital
isn't replaying a style of game that I enjoyed in my youth,
it's that this game seems to be free
of the technological restrictions of its predecessor.
It's full of neat little features
like teaching janitors to vacuum up ghosts.
So even that old dog has a new trick.
The guys are busy finalizing the game
so I didn't want to take too much more of their time.
But before they left, I had to ask them
the most important question:
What new illnesses could we look forward to
treating in Two Point Hospital?
- [Mark] Turtle Head is an affliction where
the head shrinks down to a very small
and it has to be a, I'm only saying that
because I know it's on our website.
- [Gary] There's another one where the guy's foot
is like a camel's foot (laughs)
and it's called Camel Toe and that has to be,
that's not in there, it's just hardly been--
- [Mark] That was one of my favorites ones.
I thought you liked it.
- [Gary] Mark, he's trying to get that in the game.
I have to say as well--
- [Mark] I say we've talked about it
now in the press, so we have to put it in.
- [Host] Lads, you sound like you're having a great laugh.
This sounds like a very professionally exciting
period in your lives. Is that fair to say?
- [Mark] I mean, 21 years ago, releasing Theme Hospital,
that was an amazing time.
We had such good time, and just kind of starting a studio
and going "Wouldn't it be cool to be able to
"recapture some of that kind of--"
- [Gary] Actually we started our families.
I mean, we both got married, you might have been before me.
Side having your family at the beginning, I think--
- [Mark] Yeah, I hear you, Sam was born just as we started.
- [Gary] There's a story: Sam actually worked with us here.
Sam's Mark's firstborn, was born right at the beginning.
- [Mark] Pretty much as we started.
- [Gary] As we started, and he's one of the
engineers and creatives on this, it's very odd,
it's very strange, but that's what makes it fun,
right, because we got to a stage in our careers
where we just want to actually enjoy coming into work,
not have to be some, the problem with games is
you get promoted, that's the problem with games.
And when you get promoted, you stop making games.
You start becoming that person nobody likes.
You have to get a game done,
and it has to be done like this,
and nobody likes people telling people what to do.
So we've basically set up this company
so nobody, we don't have to tell people what to do
and no one tells us what to do
and yeah, it's great fun coming into work everyday.
I don't think we've had one day where I haven't felt
this is the best thing I've done in my life.
(soft music)
- [Host] Two Point Hospital should be available to purchase
on PC, Mac, and Linux around the time you hear this podcast.
You can learn more about the game at twopointhospital.com.
If you're interested in playing the original Theme Hospital
and you should be, it's really good,
it's available on GOG.com.
If fact, if you're a fan of GOG,
you should check out our documentary on the company
and their game preservation efforts
over on our YouTube channel: YouTube.com/Noclipvideo.
I'd also like to recommend a patch for that game: Corsix TH.
It's a tremendous community-created wrapper
that updates the GOG version of Theme Hospital
to work with modern resolutions
with sharper graphics and updated menus.
A wonderful testament to the fan passion
that has surrounded this game for 19 years.
As ever thanks to our Patrons for supporting our work.
You can support our documentaries, this podcast,
and more by joining up at Patreon.com/Noclip.
You'll also get access to this podcast early
via a special RSS feed.
Thanks so much to Gary and Mark for their time,
Lauran Carter over at SEGA for setting the whole thing up,
and my wonderful wife for chatting to me
about one of our favorite games.
Sorry for the delay in getting this episode number two out.
It was supposed to be up about six weeks ago,
But then my baby girl decided to
come a couple of weeks early.
So we've been rather busy here in the O'Dwyer household.
We have a bunch of fun podcasts planned
for between now and the end of the year,
so of course, keep this feed running.
Until then, play some games. We'll talk again soon.
(soft music fading out)
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