Join Playback‘s staff writer and proud resident nerd Emily Claire Afan as she explores the latest and greatest from the gaming and digital worlds.

If there’s one thing that property creators and creatives can learn from legendary video game designer Warren Spector (Deux Ex, Wing Commander), it’s that holding on to your IPs – no matter how god-awful or embarrassing they may seem at the time – can prove to be valuable in the long run.

Even entertainment giants like Disney have vaults chock full of rejected ideas that they thought would never see the light of day. Then along came Spector, who was pitching games to a number of publishers, one of which was Disney Interactive Studios. Together, they created a world where characters including the long-forgotten Oswald the Lucky Rabbit have found a place to thrive.

That world of rejected film characters is called the Wasteland, and you can find it in the upcoming video game Disney Epic Mickey.

Mickey in the Wasteland

“Think of what that says about film culture,” Spector tells Playback’s Nerdscreen during a Toronto stop on Monday. “Oswald hasn’t been seen in 82 years – and now he’s coming back in a video game.

“Ten years ago, that would have never happened.”
And before dismissing Spector as Just Another Game Geek, you should know that the Austin, Texas-based developer got his start in the film world before he transitioned to the gaming industry.

“I taught film and film history, I worked in film archives, I used to go into work and hug Vivien Leigh’s dress from Gone with the Wind,” he recalls.

A self-professed animation junkie, Spector was in heaven when Disney opened up its entire archive to the Junction Point team, including more than 3,000 films and TV books with every piece of rejected art available at their fingertips.

Of course, having such a vast wealth of assets provides its own set of challenges in terms of figuring out what to include in the final product. So Spector made it simple: he started with material from 1928 when the classic Steamboat Willie short was released and went all the way up to 1967 with inspiration from The Jungle Book. He felt that was an appropriate range, as The Jungle Book was also the last film that Walt Disney himself worked on.

During the game’s development, Spector also had a Mickey Creative Council, which included folks from all divisions from the Mouse House, from Disney Consumer Products to Disney Interactive Studios “to figure out what’s too far and what’s not far enough.”

Junction Point also pays homage to the film source material, including actual clips from shorts like Steamboat Willie and little touches like seeing the perforated edges of film stock of some levels during gameplay.

“I hope it’ll almost be a painless history lesson,” he says with a laugh. “I hope it inspires people to look back and rediscover all these characters,” reiterating the notion that you can still breathe life into a seemingly dead IP.

Disney Epic Mickey is a Nintendo Wii exclusive game and is slated for a November 30 launch.