(upbeat music)

Oh hi.

On this episode of Game|Life

we are going on a field trip.

(screeching tires)

(bus honks)

Hey pop quiz hot shot!

What is the biggest money-making

video game so far in 2012?

Is it Call of Duty? No.

Is it Madden?

Not even close.

Biggest game of this year so far is Skylanders.

Activision's combination of action figures

and video games have captivated kids

and have sold tons and tons of copies of the game

as well as figures.

We visited the developer Toys for Bob here in California

and expected to find, well,

some sort of assembly line cranking out

the latest version, Skylander's Giants.

What we found were hackers and craftsmen.

And a small team of guys who were in love

with the game that they were making.

And they all work together in an

enchanted tiki room.

(joyful guitar music)

I design the characters for Skylanders

but I'm really just a tinker.

Initially we have a lot of different concept artists

and a lot of artists in general just wanting

to define and design Skylanders.

'Cause in the beginning of the project

no one knew what it looked like.

And so we had a lot of people going in different directions

and for whatever reason Paul and I

just kinda melted together

and we just started making the whole world.

So to design a new Skylander it always comes

from the toy first.

I always put myself in the position of a kid.

Looking at toy shelves and going,

Oh I really want that!

And that's always first

regardless of the game.

So the beginning stages of designing a character

involves mostly just me drawing.

For the most part it comes from just doodling.

We knew that there's these different elements

and sometimes we knew it was gonna be a Giant

so it's obviously a big guy.

That kind of thing.

So that kinda helps define what this thing is.

But I explore a lot of different things.

It's many iterations of drawings

until we finally get tied down to like

okay color and then the very little details.

It's mostly just tons and tons of doodles.

And the second stage of the design becomes--

we start modeling in super high-res.

And have amazing modelers are making it high-res.

At the same time we start down rising it for the game.

Something that could be run in the game

and the animators are rigging it up

so we can pose the characters for the toy.

So once we have a super high-res model that's rigged

and then we can pose it in different ways.

I sit there and pose it and tryin' to figure out--

it has to fit in the package.

So we have the physical constraint.

And it has to--

we have to able to fit multiple Giant characters

especially on the portal at the same time.

So they have some pose constraints

but for the most part we try out

a bunch of different things.

Three or four different poses.

We get it 3-D printed out in color

and then at point we can hold it in our hand

and go, Okay that one.

That's the cool toy.

So no matter how high-res it is

in 3-D and like computer

it's a different experience when you actually

hold it in your hand.

At the same time, they also glow.

As a toy they glow.

And we also have regular-sized Skylanders

we call light cord characters

that also glow when you put in on the portal.

And the closer you get to the portal the more it glows.

And there's no, there's no--

it's magic.

It really is just magic.

There is no batteries involved.

It's crazy.

I've been working on this for a long time now.

Every time it's still magic for me

when you put this thing on.

(joyful music)

Recently when we started the Skylanders project

they needed a device to interface the toys with the game.

And I was like, Well, I think I can do that.

And some new open-source hardware stuff

had started happening.

The Arduino project was a big influence on us.

And one thing sort of rolled into another

and I started moving some of the gear I collected at home.

A lot of the--

some of the original stuff was actually

down in my basement of my house.

And we moved more and more of the gear in here

including my old Heathkit

training brain board test kit.

And it sort of snowballed and so I've kind of done

lists and lists programming and more and more electronics.

The portal power is a USB device that plugs through--

plugs into the computer or the console.

It's basically a RFID reader with a LED for lighting.

We use the RFID tags in the base of the toys

and we read and write to those tags

so we can store information about the toys' progression.

How much experience its earned,

how much money the toy has earned

are all stored on the toy.

And we also store the name of toy on the toy

which seems like an amazing thing to do.

So that when you take your toy to your friend's place

it also reads there the same way.

And it's really quite simple. So simple.

We did the first one using an Arduino.

This is the board that plugs

into an Arduino which sits here.

This went inside a box that sat on

Dan Gustin's desk while he scripted

the first versions of the game

to put the characters in.

And I have to say the open-source hardware stuff

really helped us a lot.

It was tremendously helpful to be able

to do internet research.

Find pieces that people had done.

It's been a blast.

Fortunately we had the staff here

to do sculpting and the electronics

and the game design.

And our experience with Dungeons and Dragons

and fantasy role-playing,

as well as our experience making high-quality kids games,

really came together and allow us to make Skylanders.

One of the things that we've heard from parents,

particularly gamer parents,

is that this is a game they actually want their kids to play

because it's the kind of game they like to play.

Right you know?

If you really love Diablo or Skyrim

or any other great fantasy adventure game

you love to see your kid playing age appropriate

fantasy adventure game.

And we love fantasy or old role-players.

So we made sure that even though

this is appropriate for kids

it's got that heart of adventure.

And a sort of heroic exploration.

[Swarm] Sweet!

Arthur C. Clarke said,

and I'm paraphrasing here,

Any sufficiently advanced technology

is indistinguishable from magic.

So at Toys for Bob the way we make magic

is with the application of a sufficiently

advanced technology.

(upbeat music)