MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Noted game developer Warren Spector has a long list of things that game designers can do to improve storytelling in video games. But one of those the force behind Deus Ex and Epic Mickey wants is to improve the quality of non-combat artificial intelligence characters.

These computer-controlled characters are just too dumb, especially in comparison to the more refined and flexible combat A.I. characters that try to kill you as the player. Once the non-combat characters are fixed, game designers will be able to make big leaps toward better stories in games, and that could lead to a wider audience — and a less bored community of hardcore gamers.

Spector spoke at an interactive storytelling conference at the Computer History Museum. The event was sponsored by the Center for Games and Playable Media at the University of California at Santa Cruz. The aim is to guide the next generation of video game creators. Spector’s annoyance with non-combat AI is a pet peeve.

“Can we please start working on non-combat A.I.?” he said in his keynote speech. “We spend all of our cycles in each new hardware generation to create graphics people expect. But how do we make characters act better?”

If you’re a male character and you walk into the women’s bathroom, the characters around you should be smart enough to react to that. If you spill a drink, and it splashes on another character, that character should react, Spector said. More difficult still are tasks like creating A.I. characters who act like spurned lovers or would-be lovers. (The AI experts are working on this).

Creating better stories in games might seem like a solved problem, given the success of titles like Heavy Rain, The Walking Dead, and BioShock Infinite. These have been huge commercial successes.

“If that was enough, I would not be here wasting your time,” he said.

But these are still the exceptions. Spector spent most of his time talking about what game designers can learn from other media such as movies, TV shows, comic books, and tabletop role-playing games — and how they should avoid the pitfalls of those media and truly exploit what is unique and different about video games.

Borrowing from other media has its dangers. He said that cinematic games remove the control of the story from the player and place it in the hands of the game designer. Sometimes it works, like in Heavy Rain, but often it bores the player and fails to exploit one of the advantages of video games: the notion that every player can create or experience their own version of the story.

“When you [as gamer designer] take control of the story, you remove control from the player,” he said.

He noted that David Cage’s Heavy Rain had enough story in it for the equivalent of five movies. Games tend to have six or more hours of game play, requiring a lot more story material than two-hour movies.

Games depart from movies in offering players choices. They can branch in different directions and deliver consequences for the choices. Players can learn a lot about themselves that way.

“Games offer the chance for players to find themselves,” Spector said. “Why would we deny them that? I tell designers is your job is to get yourselves off the stage so players can get on it.”

Spector recently stirred a controversy when he said that there was no need for Bethesda to create another first-person shooter game based on Wolfenstein. He didn’t repeat that notion, and in fact he clarified those remarks later.

But he said, “I am saying there is more we can do. Janet Murray observes that games include more building blocks of storytelling than any single medium has ever offered us. How can we not use it?”

Those building blocks include words, images, sound, space, skill, thought, and choice.

Here’s some of Spector’s other suggestions for improving storytelling:

• Characters have to be better. He had high praise for Elizabeth, your constant companion in BioShock Infinite, but he says mainstream media still views a lot of game characters as flat.
• Create worlds, not sets. Spector said, “Games are about telling a story through the exploration of space.”
• Create the equivalent of a virtual dungeon master. Much like in Dungeons & Dragons games, where you had a smart human game master, stories should be changed on the fly and adapt to the player’s level of success. To make a game feel real, the game has to change in response to a player’s choices and progress.
• Tell deeper stories. “Stories should be more than just what happens on the surface,” he said. There should be a subtext, or something below the surface. “Don’t waste my time as a player,” he said. “In Deus Ex, it is about what do you want the world to be like.”
• Games can transport players to other worlds. You can immerse the player in those worlds, respond to the player choices, and repeat the actions in different ways in real time.
• Ask questions. Game developers can raise questions for gamers to answer. Spector said, “The question is how much authorship do you share with players? How much creativity do you set aside to let the players express theirs?” Game designers don’t, however, have to answer questions in the same ways that movies or TV shows do with their story plots.
• Make games about more than skill. Older players won’t be the best at mastering game controls. If you reduce the skill required to play a game, you can reach more people.
• Game stories can vary from the roller-coaster game (where you feel like you are on rails, restricted from moving off a linear path) to sandboxes, (like Civilization), where you can do anything you want. A hybrid of the two can work, where the game designer defines the end points to Act I, II, III, etc., and then lets the player figure out how to get to those end points so they can progress to the next part of the story.

To inspire game designers, Spector said, “We are living through the birth of a new form of storytelling,” quoting Jonathan Gottschall, a literary scholar.

“Video games have been around for 40 years, but you have a chance to drive it and change it as a medium,” Spector said. “That chance comes along once or twice a century.”

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Earlier this morning, publisher Bethesda Softworks revealed a new entry in the Wolfenstein series of first-person shooters. The trailer for the game has a hero with a cigarette-scarred voice talking over dark images of Nazi robots — and at least one other developer thinks it looks a little bit tired.

On his Facebook page, Deus Ex and Epic Mickey developer Warren Spector voiced his displeasure with Wolfenstein: The New Order.

“Did the world really need another Wolfenstein game? Did we need a generically dark, monochromatic, FPS, kill-the-Nazi-giant-robot game? Uh. No. The world did not. I am so tired of stuff like this,” wrote Spector.

We’ve reached out to Machine Games and Bethesda to ask for their response to Spector. We will update with their comment.

Wolfenstein: The New Order is a modern reimagining of the class franchise. The first trailer didn’t reveal any gameplay, but it did set a dark and monochromatic tone. We won’t know if that will carry through to the final release, due out later this year, until Bethesda and developer Machine Games reveals the title in action.

“Oh, and could we all just agree we’ll never use the generic gravelly whisper trailer voice guy ever again,” Spector asked. “And one more thing: Please stop using Jimi Hendrix to promote your adolescent male power fantasies. Thank you. I’m done.”

Hendrix’s version of “All Along the Watchtower” plays on the soundtrack throughout the teaser for The New Order.

Spector is best known for the beloved 2000 release Deus Ex, which is a futuristic role-playing shooter. Most recently, he produced 2010′s Epic Mickey and 2012′s Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two. Critics greeted both of those games with mixed reviews.

At 57, Warren Spector is a famous and unemployed game developer. At last week’s DICE Summit, Spector gave a talk about his art form and acknowledged the “elephant in the room.” Disney had just shut down his video game company, Junction Point Studios, the maker of the Epic Mickey series.

He isn’t talking about exactly why that happened, but it’s no secret that the studio’s second release, Epic Mickey: The Power of Two, didn’t sell well. Spector made a lot of comments about how he felt like the oldest game designer, though he noted the presence of many “gray beards” in the room listening to his talk. Spector was understandably downbeat during his presentation, and he intimated that he felt like he was the oldest person still making games. But he found some silver lining in his tired but wise message.

“I worked with an amazing team on amazing projects,” he said. “I got to visit Disneyland as a contributor to the company.”

Quoting inventor Alexander Graham Bell, Spector said, “When one door closes, another opens. Another aphorism is more relevant. ‘Chaos is a friend of mine.’ Bob Dylan said it in 1965, and it is still true today. I have seen so much chaos in the last 35 years, you wouldn’t believe it.”

Being unemployed has given Spector a chance to reflect on the past. Lots of console-game developers are closing now. But Spector remembers how people thought gaming had no future when arcades died out. When the PC supplanted the Apple II, fans thought that was the end of games as well. Massively multiplayer online titles were going to put an end to single-player releases. Spector has heard it all, yet the interactive-entertainment industry continues to grow and spread out in all directions.

After Junction Point shut down, a programmer asked Spector if he wanted to retire. But Spector knew he wouldn’t.

“I still have stuff I want to make,” he said. “It was an eye-opening question. I am close to an end of a career. I’m not ready to retire yet.”

Spector believes, like Quantic Dream’s David Cage, that developers should grow up and figure out how to reach wider audiences with more diverse content. But he disagreed with every solution that Cage recommended in his own DICE talk, such as creating games with meaning.

Showing a slide of a violent scene, Spector said, “Some games should not be made.” He acknowledged that a time existed when he was young where a title only needed “transgressive adrenaline rush and spectacle.” Now he wants content that is relevant to him today, with intellectual offerings like Cage’s Heavy Rain and Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead.

Spector said, “I have no interest in guys who wear armor and swing big swords. I really don’t need to go there anymore. I want content that is relevant to my life. That is set in the real world.”

“If we are going to reach a broader audience, we have to think beyond teen boys and girls, about things that are relevant to normal humans,” he said.

Right now, games appeal to people who have a lot of time and the ability to master skills best done by 16-year-olds.

In his 50s, Spector feels confident in his abilities and doesn’t give a damn what others think. Emotionally, he’s in a good place. But he recognizes that time is scarce.

“You don’t have time to make mistakes anymore. You value passion over analytics,” he said.

He said that it’s OK to rely on others and slow down. It’s OK for him to think about helping others accomplish their goals and give back.

“Know thyself but be careful,” he said. Spector explained that you don’t want to work on a certain kind of game for 30 years because that is your habit. You have to think about what else you can do.

“You should push aside those geekish things quicker than I did because you don’t have as much time as you think,” he said.

And he has come to appreciate the importance of the word “legacy.”

He said, “Leave something behind. Most people who are working for 30 years. You are creating something new and different the world has never seen. Think of your legacy.”

What will he do when he is in his 60s?

“I cannot wait to find out,” he said.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The dreaded portable spin-off is the bane of many a gamer. You know what I’m talking about. When a major console release is coming up, a publisher often finds some second-rate developer to put together a sloppy portable version of the game that can launch on the same day. This is how we get things like Call of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified.

So I could forgive you if you’ve ignored Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, a Nintendo 3DS game launching Sunday, the same day that Disney releases Epic Mickey 2 for consoles. But I will not tolerate your ignorance any longer! Power of Illusion is a game worth noticing — especially for fans of Disney and 2D platformers.

What you’ll like

Old school platforming with new school tricks
Despite the Epic Mickey branding, Power of Illusion takes most of its inspiration from Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, a 2D platformer for the Sega Genesis. Just like in that 1990 sidescroller, when you push the jump button again in the air, Mickey preps his mousey tush to bounce off his enemies. Time the attack right before contact and you’ll jet higher into the air, letting you access hard-to-reach areas that usually contain the best rewards. It’s satisfying when you properly butt-bounce your way through a level. I’m also immature, so the fact that I’m butt-bouncing constantly amuses me.

Power of Illusion also takes some cues from the Epic Mickey console games, notably with the ink-and-thinner mechanic. In the original Epic Mickey for the Wii, Mickey uses a magic brush to paint or erase objects in the world. You can do the same here, but instead of aiming and shooting a stream of paint, you tap on certain objects or characters outlined on the system’s bottom screen. You then use your stylus to draw or erase whatever is shown.

Having a hard time avoiding a cannon’s fire? Just erase it. Can’t reach the nearest edge? Then you can probably draw a moving platform to help you get there. You can use this system for some creative techniques, like removing a net hanging from the top of the screen so a canon ball can fall on top of Captain Hook. Also, it actually matters how well you draw. For example, if you only do an OK job painting a box into existence, then the game will cover half of it with spikes. It’s a delightfully clever use of the system’s touch screen.

You can also use paint and thinner for ranged attacks. Enemies that succumb to paint are more likely to drop health while thinner more often rewards you with tickets, which you can use to buy upgrades.

These diverse tricks give you plenty of options for passing through the levels, and you’ll likely need every last one of them for some of the more challenging stages at the end. More importantly, they’re all incredibly fun to use.

Expertly designed
Developer DreamRift created stages that offer fantastic playgrounds for bouncing, painting, and thinning. Levels often branch into multiple paths, with the harder-to-reach areas offering more difficult challenges but also more prizes. I never experienced a cheap death — you know, like a cannon shooting me into an inescapable hole.

Not that you won’t die. Power of Illusion has an appropriate difficulty curve (something of a rarity these days). It becomes more difficult the further you progress, encouraging you to spend some time collecting tickets so you can upgrade your abilities. You’ll only get one checkpoint during a level, so you can’t just willy-nilly your way through a stage on autopilot. If you die, you’ll have some ground to make up, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. This forces you to actually play smart and learn from your mistakes.

Power of Illusion also looks gorgeous, with colorful character sprites and vibrant backgrounds. The music is also delightful and offers a few homages of its own to Castle of Illusion.

The gang’s all here
Disney characters litter the levels, ranging from old school guys like Donald Duck to new folk like Rapunzel. When you find one, he heads back to the “fortress,” where you can then go to talk, complete quests, and ultimately receive rewards. One of the first characters you find is Beast from Beauty and the Beast. When you first visit his room in the fortress, he wants you to paint his rose back into existence. Then, he tasks you with rescuing his friends from one of the levels. In exchange, you receive more tickets or upgrades for things like your attack power and health.

Some toons give you stamps, which let you draw a certain object (like a block) anytime you want or summon a character. The best is Uncle Scrooge, who bounces around the screen on his cane in a brilliant homage to Duck Tales for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Disney nerds like me will love seeing Mickey interact with this large cast of all-stars, and the substantial rewards make the effort of finding these characters and completing their tasks more than worthwhile.

What you won’t like

Length
Sadly, Power of Illusion isn’t a long adventure. It took me about five hours to beat the game. It does give you reason to go back through old levels to find more characters and retrieve items for quests, but I was really wishing for more worlds to explore.

Only three movies serve as inspiration for the game’s stages: Peter Pan, Aladdin, and The Little Mermaid. This also means you’ll fight only three bosses, which is a shame since these are some of the best moments. I would have liked to have seen more variety.

Conclusion

OK, so I wanted more, but I really don’t have any complaints with what I played. Power of Illusion is a delightful, engaging, and clever tribute to one of Mickey’s greatest games. In many ways, it surpasses the original Castle of Illusion. In fact, this is the best title starring Mickey in years.

Ah, the hell with that. This is one the best 2D platformers I’ve played in a long time. Yes, that includes any with game with “Mario” in the title.

Score:  88/100

Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion comes out on Nov. 18 for the Nintendo 3DS. The publisher provided GamesBeat with a copy of the game for the purpose of this review.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, GamesBeat prepares for the Wii U launch Sunday with all the guides and reviews you’ll ever need, Call of Duty: Black Ops II goes on sale and gets reviewed, and Xbox Live turns 10.

You’ll also find reviews for When Vikings Attack, Angry Birds Star Wars, and a Threeview of Halo 4.

News:

• Sony’s PlayStation 3 hits 70M sold, good enough for third place
• YouTube rolls out new Wii app just in time for the Wii U launch
• Second Quest raises $70K to reimagine Zelda and games through art
• Gogamingo’s startup idea: Compete in tournaments, win real stuff
• Console-quality gaming without the console: OnLive is live in some LG TVs
• Valve cofounder Gabe Newell going to be a hall of famer
• This week in the Nintendo Download: Epic Mickey, Myst, and Hotel Transylvania
• Over 1 million players completed Halo 4′s campaign in the first five days
• Badgeville simplifies gamification for developers
• Rumble Entertainment seeks triple-A quality with Nightmare Guardians tablet game
• After a decade of service, Xbox Live usage hits an all-time high
• ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Bane signs on as Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell film
• Major League Gaming: Serving 11.7 million viewers in 2012
• ChangYou new free-to-play portal targets midcore and hardcore gamers
• New Grand Theft Auto V trailer balances comedy, drama, and skydiving out of jeeps (video)
• THQ says it is in talks about extending its credit line with bank
• Zynga juggles leadership team as CFO departs for Facebook
• Star Citizen Kickstarter reveals early piloting gameplay
• Sony launches ‘augmented reality’ title Wonderbook: Book of Spells from Harry Potter author
• No second chances: Treyarch will ban anyone caught hacking Call of Duty: Black Ops II
• Here’s what a $99.99 box of Tomb Raider stuff looks like
• PlayStation Plus launches on PS Vita next week
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II’s unlikely cameo: Former CIA chief David Petraeus
• Halo 4 sold a record-breaking $220M in its first 24 hours
• BioWare Montreal using the Battlefield 3 engine for the next Mass Effect
• Notch: Minecraft PC sales just passed 8 million

Mobile news:

• Glu Mobile lays off employees at two offices, closes a third
• Zynga brings its match-three gem game to mobile
• Mobile developer Intellijoy partners with YogiPlay to improve its educational apps (exclusive)
• Mobile game startup Pocket Gems appoints No. 2 exec as CEO
• After 400 million downloads, Storm8 releases new puzzle game to continue customer engagement
• Kixeye: Zynga is ‘desperate’ to get hands on its secrets
• New Kiip expands beyond mobile game rewards to other apps and platforms
• PlayHaven rounds up $8 million to finance international expansion
• Tapjoy runs into new drama over its app download incentives
• Time to get a bit fit: Fitbit One activity tracker now shipping
• Mobile-and-social app analytics firm Swrve raises $6.25M (exclusive)

Wii U:

• 10 things you don’t know about the Nintendo Wii U
• Wii U players could get an unfair advantage in Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer
• Wii U shortage will be severe during holidays, but new console may not outsell Wii in long run
• GamesBeat’s Wii U roundup: Everything you ever wanted to know
• Here is the Wii U menu music (and more)
• Nintendo’s Scott Moffitt gives us the latest on the Wii U launch (interview)

Reviews:

• Donuts and penguins are weapons of war When Vikings Attack (review)
• Nintendo Land: Where the amusement sometimes ends (review)
• New Super Mario Bros. U is far from new (review)
• What’s in the Box?! Call of Duty: Black Ops II Care Package edition (review)
• Breaking down the four different games in Call of Duty: Black Ops II (review)
• Threeview: Halo 4 reviewed by a critic, an analyst, and an academic
• Angry Birds Star Wars plays off of both franchise’s strengths (review)

Pieces of flair:

• New Skyrim: Dragonborn screens reveal expansion’s inner Morrowind (gallery)
• If Halo’s Master Chief had a dating site profile
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II debuts at midnight openings around the world (photo gallery)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer unlock guide
• All-new screenshots for Call of Duty: Black Ops II
• 2D game characters break into the real world

In 1990, Sega created Castle of Illusion, a platformer starring Mickey Mouse, for its Genesis system. Now, more than twenty years later, Disney Interactive Studios is using that title as the inspiration for a new 2D sidescroller for the Nintendo 3DS.

Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion sees the Castle of Illusion reappear in the Wasteland, a world where forgotten characters, rides, and now video games from Disney’s history go that was first shown in 2010′s Epic Mickey, an action-adventure playformer for the Wii. I had a chance to sit down with Peter Ong, the title’s director, to play through some of Mickey’s new adventure at the Electronic Entertainment Expo.

The castle is littered with a cast of characters from every era of Disney’s history, from Minnie Mouse (who debuted in the 1928 cartoon short Steamboat Willie alongside Mickey) to Rapunzel (the star of the 2010 computer animated film Tangled). Once the famous mascot rescues someone, they go to the Sanctuary, a safe part of the castle. Even villains, like Peter Pan’s Captain Hook and Aladdin’s Jafar, will take up shop at the Sanctuary after you defeat them and break the spell that the tittle’s main adversary, Mizrabel, cast on them.

You can visit rescued characters at the Sanctuary in-between levels. They can send Mickey on quests that will reward him with useful items. For example, after rescuing Scrooge McDuck, most famously known as the star of the Duck Tales cartoon show, he sent me to find his lost lucky dime. After discovering it in the middle of a level and returning it to the richest duck in the world, he gave me the ability to summon a treasure chest that shoots out various goodies.

You can also upgrade the areas these characters reside in, which adds more detail and new opportunities for rewards. Sticking with the Scrooge example (I’m kind of a big fan of the bespectacled mallard, so I spent a lot of time in his area of the castle), his room goes from an empty area with a lone desk to a full, decked-out office, complete with the iconic door to his money bin.

The platformer borrows most of its mechanics from Castle of Illusion. Your main defense against the title’s many monsters is to jump on them. Unlike in Super Mario Bros., you need to be holding down a button before landing on your target, or else you’ll take damage. Timing the button press right before you hit an enemy will cause you to bounce much higher off of them, helping you reach out-of-the-way areas.

Power of Illusion also takes plenty of inspiration from Epic Mickey. Just like in that title, Mickey has access to paint and thinner, allowing him to create and destroy objects in the world. At certain points, a blank outline on the map on the bottom screen will indicate when you can draw an item into the castle. For instance, a canon that’ll shoot you to a high platform. The bottom screen will also show objects and characters that you can erase, like a spiky block that drops from the ceiling.

You also have stamp abilities, which you can draw into the world whenever you want (as long as you have them equipped), like Mickey’s sorcerer’s hat, which grants him momentary invisibility. Characters you rescue can also become stamps. Once he realized how much of a Scrooge fan I was, Ong told me he wants to add one for Donald’s rich uncle, who would bounce around on his cane like a pogo stick in a nod to the popular Duck Tales game for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

You can also shoot projectiles of paint and thinner, each with their own effects. Shooting a barrel that a monster threw at you with paint will send that barrel back the other way, while thinner would simply pass through the barrel and damage the enemy directly. Both of these abilities can run out, but are replenished by items that frequently drop from defeated foes.

Power of Illusion is looking to be a charming, fun title for Disney and platforming fans alike. While the game is a clear love letter to Castle of Illusion, it easily stands on its own as a clever 2D sidescroller thanks to the new and clever touchscreen mechanics that developer Dreamrift is adding to the mix.

Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion will launch on the Nintendo 3DS on November 18, 2012.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The game is inspired by the early years of Mickey’s 80-year history, when he was a more mischievous character. Created by the Junction Point studio founded by Warren Spector (pictured), the game blends different genres of games: action adventure, role-playing, and platform gaming. The game, due for launch on the Nintendo Wii this fall, is a calculated move to make an old icon more relevant in an age of edgy video games. In this game, Mickey gets to star in a tale that is as epic as the Legend of Zelda games that inspired it.

“We want to make Mickey Mouse as big a hero in video games as he is in other media,” Spector said. “Mickey Mouse deserves no less.”

Epic Mickey is part of a series of games that Disney has undertaken with its internally owned studios to show that it is a real player in the video game business. Disney Interactive Studios is several years into a long-term plan to become a major player in video games, said Graham Hopper, executive vice president in charge of the studios. Like its rival movie maker Warner Bros., Disney has been buying game studios left and right, including Spector’s studio.

This year, Disney is also launching big titles such as the racing game Split Second, Toy Story 3, Tron Evolution, Guilty Party and Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned. I’ve gotten a good look at them all, and Disney has definitely improved its production values so that its games are much more in the same class as its movies.

They’re family friendly for the most part, but they all reflect a certain edginess that helps make Disney more relevant to modern game audiences. Toy Story 3 went through an elaborate pitch process in conjunction with Pixar’s movie producers that resulted in a much more ambitious movie game than might ordinarily have been done. Armada of the Damned is an action role-playing game set in an open world of the Caribbean. You can choose different actions in that game that make you either loved or hated. Tron Evolution is a bridge between the 1982 film Tron and its sequel, Tron Legacy, coming out this year.

But Disney Epic Mickey is perhaps the flagship title coming out of Disney’s game business. It’s an unusual title for Spector to tackle, as he is known for hardcore Ultima fantasy games and sci-fi titles such as System Shock and Deux Ex. The common thread in those games, Spector says, is that whatever the player does matters in the outcome of the game. You can change what happens in the world. The goal is to make you feel like you’re inside a cartoon.

It’s hard to predict how well this will do, based on what I’ve seen of this cartoon game. You play Mickey and use a paintbrush to create things in the environment of the game to help you get through different kinds of puzzles. You can also use “thinner” to erase things. So if you need to get past a wall, you can use thinner to punch a hole in it. Or if you need to create a bridge, you can paint it. It’s a very physical game, where you’re always swinging your hands around to get something done. It’s cool that the world is dynamic, which is a pretty cool effect for a Wii game. But it’s not always easy to do simple things, from what I saw. With more polish, I think it could be a very good title.

Spector says he wants to find the core of Mickey Mouse as a character and bring that out. Inside the game, we see snippets of old Mickey Mouse cartoons that remind us of what he was like in the old days. Mickey is mischievous and gets himself into trouble. As the player, you have to get him out of it. It’s clever thinking, and I hope the game turns out to the way that Spector envisions.

Here’s our interview with Spector below.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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