Toby Gard is a computer game character designer and consultant. His biggest breakthrough in the video game industry was when he created Lara Croft for Core Design's Tomb Raider. Gard left Core Design during the development of Tomb Raider II, because he was opposed to the idea and marketing of Lara's sex appeal, and felt he had little creative ...
(His comment on how Lara Croft was portrayed in the sequels) I just wish that when she was taken out of my hands they hadn't made her boobs so big.
2
People are only interested in playing sequels if they haven't had enough of the first one or if they haven't played the first one and hope that the sequel will be better. In order to keep both audiences happy you can't stray too far from the original concept but at the same time you have to add enough freshness to keep people from saying that it's just a rehash. Which I'm sure you can appreciate is a difficult balance to obtain. As for what I would have done with the sequels? I think I would have concentrated on fixing some of the game play problems that we never had time to address in the first one.
3
It was never the intention to create some kind of 'page 3' girl to star in Tomb Raider. The idea was to create a female character who was a heroine, you know, cool, collected, in control, that sort of thing. The problem with those other games is that the female characters are actually there for purely exploitative purposes. I know you could argue that Lara with her comic book style over-the top figure is exploitative, but I don't agree. I think it's ridiculous to say that portraying stylized people is degrading. You can represent an over the top hero figure by augmenting characteristics like a jutting jaw, wide shoulders, thin waist etc. and that is not degrading to men. It may well be a stereotype, but it seems to me that people are over analyzing this whole thing. It's pretty simple, if women in a game are only there to be the equivalent of quiz show floozies then they are being portrayed in a sexist way. When it comes to Galleon there are all sorts of women in the Galleon world, just as there are all sorts of men.
4
(When asked why he included endangered animals being hunted in the original Tomb Radier game) Errr... yeah. I'll give you that one. Well the explanation's dead simple really. I wanted the game to start of with enemies that were reasonably realistic so that the player could begin to believe in the Tomb Raider world and hopefully be more surprised when it all went weird at the end. The problem was that we knew it would be really hard to put in lots of believable human characters because they'd be so immobile in comparison to Lara. I'm also not keen on just mindlessly killing humans in games anyway. So it had to be dangerous animals. The problem is that any animal that's dangerous to humans we've already hunted to near extinction. Maybe we should have use non-endangered, harmless animals. Then you'd be asking me, "Why was Lara shooting all those nice Bunnies and Squirrels?" You just can't win can you?
5
(When asked why he left Core Design) Paul and I left Core Design because we wanted to do something new. Partly it was a wish for more extensive control over marketing and PR decisions and partly it was because we felt that we were no longer being given the creative freedom at Core that we had enjoyed while making Tomb Raider. I enjoyed my time at Core Design and I was sad to leave, but it just felt like a good time to go it alone. I don't regret that decision at all.
6
Putting together the right team is the most difficult thing we had to do. It took us almost a year to gather the team of 7 we have now. Luckily we have an incredibly talented and dedicated team. When it comes to ego clashes it's all a matter of being reasonable at the end of the day. There's nothing wrong with a good logical argument over game elements as long as the people involved are mature enough not to get into a strop, lose their temper or storm out.
7
(When asked if Tomb Raider has became more popular than him) I can't say that it does bother me to be honest. After all, who is more famous Bob Kane or Batman? At the end of the day we're creating entertainment and hopefully entertainment that people will really enjoy. I think I'd be a lot more upset if no one had liked Tomb Raider enough to really get into Lara's character.
8
The Dreamcast is exceptionally good, and if Sony doesn't do something about it fairly swiftly then they deserve to be utterly trounced by Sega.
$7 Million
