Yesterday (May 29) we gave you our impressions of 2K Sports’ upcoming boxing sim, Don King Presents: Prizefighter, and promised at the end of that we’d share with you the thoughts of executive producer, Matthew Seymour (pictured left), who was kind enough to sit down with AusGamers and relay his passion for the game (and believe me, he’s passionate, just look at the length of his answers). And for all you boxing fans out there, we also had a few minutes with the only Aussie represented in the game, Vic Darchinyan (see box out).

So check out how a game branding the infamous name of Don King came about and plans on not only being successful, but also attempting to rewrite the boxing videogame rulebook.

AusGamers: You’re obviously very passionate about this game – tell us how the process began, how did you get involved, where did it start?

Matthew Seymour: Sure. So we have Venom, which is a wholly owned 2K studio, who made Rocky and Rocky Legends. Then we have Don King. So obviously those two came together and then I came in because I’m really good at working with licenses, and people like Don King; I did the first Top Spin and worked with all those pros and that kind of stuff and so we had this triad of Venom, Don King and myself.

Obviously we sat with Don and heard all these stories that he had to tell, not only about boxing, but about his life being an African American, becoming this huge promoter and invariably becoming one of the richest African Americans in the world.

The great thing about this was sitting around with him and his team and hearing all these different stories about girlfriends and broadcasters and what it’s like to fight with a broken hand or when a judge favours another opponent. And so we took all of these and put them into a pot and essentially pulled out the ones we thought would work in a game and that’s what adds sort of texture and the drama and the immersion to Prizefighter; it’s the fact you don’t just go and fight say oh cool I win, it’s that you gotta go into a fight knowing a judge is going to favour an opponent and so you ask yourself what do I need to do? The answer is you gotta knock the guy out, because if it comes down to decision, you’re probably gonna be on the losing side. Or you might have hurt your hand, you know, how do you deal with that?

We also borrowed from Sonny Liston and the Ali myth that supposedly Liston put something on his gloves that smeared in Ali’s eyes, the same thing Michael Mann touched on in his movie, so we do that in the game as well.

So, as I mentioned, at the beginning we had this triad, and I being the executive producer said to everyone, let’s try to rewrite the boxing narrative genre - boy that was a stupid idea - but I always want to look outside the box; everyone always loves the boxing movies, the Rockys, the Million Dollar Babies, all of that, and to reinvent that, you know Sylvester Stallone was a genius when it comes to that narrative (some other movies not so much), it was virtually impossible and there’s also the question of why – why try and reinvent it? We obviously wanted to bring a new audience to this game, but how do we do that without losing the old, you know, the people who don’t want that narrative style changed and so we looked at what we already had and we looked at what Don could bring to the game and thought the best way to show we have Don is to show Don. And so that’s when the live action idea came into it, you could have Pixar doing a CG Don and it still wouldn’t be Don so we ran with this documentary style approach with live action, because if you look at all the cool sports documentaries out there, they tell this amazing narrative, and there are some really cool ones out right now like Murder Ball, Riding Giants and Dogtown and Z Boys and so we kind of had this epiphany of let’s kind of mash all of this together and tell our story like that.

Now, being a professional athlete is not just about being in the ring; all of us hear about the stories outside the ring, the parties these guys are going to, the ones that are on the straight-and-narrow, the ones that are falling into the dark, evil side of things, you know, getting messed up with dog fighting… all of these kinds of crazy things and I think the future of sports games are going to incorporate much more of that; trying to deal with maintaining a balance between what happens on the field, off the field, in the ring and outside the ring, and so that’s what we’ve done here.

AusGamers: How difficult was it for you then to balance this? Obviously boxing has a massively storied history of good, ugly, bad, great, triumphant, not so triumphant, and it’s no secret Don King is definitely right in the middle there somewhere, so how hard was it for you to come to a path that was right for boxing, right for the game, compelling enough for players but equally sustainable enough as a product that wouldn’t get parents and anti lobbyists all up in arms?

Matthew Seymour: Well the thing is, this is Don’t past and there’s definitely some dark. But the great thing about this dark is he [Don] openly talks about it. He doesn’t hide away and he’s very forthcoming and so of course, he and I were talking and he said “I’ve gotta write my own book, all these unauthorised biographies and movies and stuff, I’ve gotta do it myself” to which I told him he’d better do it quick. Not because he has one foot in the grave, the guy has more energy than I’ve ever seen, but he is 78.

But back to the balance, you know, being a professional athlete, you make your money on the field, in the ring, and if you mess that up then you can lose everything. And we touch on that. And actually, we’re kind of telling a moral lesson; if you go too far [in the game] you’re not gonna succeed where it’s all about. And so if that balance goes off, everything that got you this money and notoriety or makes you this great athlete could easily go away and snap.

Of course I wanted a T-rating (M here) on this game and that was intentional, because boxing is sort of niche already and I want to expand it. So we’re trying to do that through the story by bringing more to boxing than just getting in the ring and beating people up, so yeah, the whole thing was about this balance and not going too dark but at the same time I didn’t wanna do a fluff-piece - boxing is dark and you gotta have that in there. It’s bloody and it’s hard and for us it’s about telling a whole story of boxing but not going extreme one way or another. I think we have a pretty nice balance, there are some dark subjects we touch on, for example somebody dies in the ring. That’s heavy man. If you talk or read stories of people who have every witnessed that, it’s chilling.

So I think there’s a way to tell a story with some dark subject matter but still be interesting and not turn people off.

AusGamers: With that said, obviously, as you mentioned, this is the first time anything like this has been done in a videogame, how difficult was it then for you to take all the elements you’ve mentioned, put them in the game, but also have the documentary dynamically reflect your actions? Is it open or more linear as a result?

Matthew Seymour: Great question. What we do there is the gameplay is not linear, but the narrative is. To use that term [“linear”] and unfortunately in this industry it’s a derogatory term, but as I’ve said, if you wanna have this branching story, you tend to lose focus and you’re not quite sure where you are and the boxing narrative is pretty straight-forward, and so…

AusGamers: It’s a necessary evil.

Matthew Seymour: That’s right, it is. And I love branching stories, I love Mass Effect, I love the Star Wars stuff you know, but that takes years and years to do that. But where we offer the non-linear stuff; the choices and where you have variety, is actually in the gameplay and how you play the game.

So, do you want to be a media whore where it’s all about being famous and notoriety and sacrificing training to be more of a showboat? Or you can be a hardcore completist gamer where you go for the best win/loss record, the highest money earner and so on. Casual gamers don’t need to do that, they can come in and just finish the game and that’s it. So that’s where we offer non-linear – do you wanna be Tyson who was all about training and in the ring, or do you wanna be Ali who was about balance or do you wanna be a new kind of guy who’s all about showboating who, despite lack of training because of his media whoring, can get in the ring, have the crowd behind him and throw the big signature moves (haymakers) we’ve added to the game?

AusGamers: Last question Matthew, but you touched a moment ago on Tyson, yet he’s not in the game… what gives?

Matthew Seymour: No. Unfortunately the timing was bad. We did talk to him but he was going through some serious personal issues and, I mean if you look it up… I don’t wanna… yeah alright, I’ll talk about it. You know, Tyson got popped for the cocaine thing and the driving thing (laughs) and all of that and he was going into rehab which was about the time we wanted him, and you know, bless him I hope he does better and gets better, and I mean, he’s an amazing, amazing fighter and we all loved him in his heyday and we all hope he gets better, but right when were trying to secure him he was going through some deep, personal issues. But you know, we have plenty of great boxers and to be able to relive a classic fight like the one between Ken Norton and Larry Holmes, 1978 at Caesar’s Palace in our game is pretty cool.

AusGamers: Matthew, thanks so much for your time.

Matthew Seymour: It’s my pleasure, I hope you enjoy the game.