The new Skylanders game will let you 3D print your own Skylander (if you're lucky)
We speak to Toys For Bob about letting players have physical products (like 3D prints, T-shirts and cards) made featuring Skylanders they make in the upcoming Skylanders Imaginators.
When it was announced earlier this year that character creation would be introduced for the first time ever in a Skylanders game with the upcoming Skylanders Imaginators, I don't think I was alone in thinking that 3D printing of player-created characters was the obvious next step. It seems all of our hunches were right, with Activision today confirming that 3D printing will indeed be made available for Skylanders Imaginators, although the supply will be limited.
While Activision did confirm that some players will be able to buy 3D prints of the Skylanders they make within Imaginators, they didn't specify how many would be available outside saying numbers would be "limited." How people will even get the opportunity to buy a 3D print is also unclear as of now, but Activision did say it would be running promotions and competitions during the game's launch.
But it won't just be 3D printing of player-created characters. Players will also be able to order a credit-card sized item that will have all of their characters' details (and can be used on a portal in lieu of a real, 3D printed character), as well as T-shirts. I spoke with Toys for Bob co-founder Paul Reiche about why the Skylanders franchise finally went down the 3D printing route, and what challenges they faced in making this feature.
GameSpot: The idea of physical products based on the Skylanders people create in Imaginators must have obviously come very close to the start of production, is that right?
Paul Reiche: It did. It was one of the most aggressive parts of the plan. No one has ever done this where, from a console game you create a playable character, you bring a physical realization out of it, and then that's playable back in the game. We're making toys-to-life even more toys-to-life and life-to-toys because you get to think about something, create it virtually, and then generate a physical incarnation.
We've had to pioneer some technology and software here because a character in a 3D game has no physicality. If you want to make an infinitely thin wing, you can. If you want to have some armor floating on the surface, that works out fine in a video game. When you print it, it all falls apart. We don't want to compromise how the characters look in-game, so there's a translation process when they become printable.
What are your expectations for take-up for this? It seems like a lot of folks who play Imaginators will probably want their own 3D printing.
The world is not quite ready to do 3D printing in the millions, which is what we would love to do. What we're doing is making sure that we do it well and that we're starting this process. I believe in 3D printing. I believe that having a reflection of what you like in your own imagination in Skylanders and in Imaginators and in other things is the way of the future. We're the pioneers in this, in many ways. I believe that there's [a] great future to this and we want to make sure that we do it right in a limited sense first, get that sorted out, and then see where we go from here.