A Good Wiseguy Is Hard to Find: Mafia 2’s Jack Scalici on Narrative, Casting Gangsters, and Godfather 2 (the Game and the Movie)

2K's Director of Creative Production, Jack Scalici, is quite a talker when it comes to Mafia 2, a game that he wrote and rewrote until it was pitch perfect to his Italian-American ear. But he's the best kind of talker, because he's got interesting things to say. Such as, ″Who wants their mother to lecture them A), in real life, and B), in a fucking video game?″ or, about main character Vito's partner in crime, Joe, ″He's my motivation to keep playing, because the shit that comes out of his mouth is just crazy.″

Or, about Mafia 2's version of open-worldness, ″You can't just go jerk off on the other end of the city.″

And so in this lengthy interview I conducted along with Bitmob's Omri Petitte, we let him loose.

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Bitmob: What do you do at 2K, and on Mafia 2 specifically? And…go!

Jack Scalici: I oversee stuff like script doctoring, story progression, overall narrative of every game, dialogue — making sure the dialogue sounds like it's from real people, not some video game character, or even worse, comic book character. Overall, writing is a big focus of what we do. Music supervision and music licensing — making sure each game has an awesome licensed soundtrack if the narrative calls for it, which it did in this case. Anything a developer can't do within their own building but they need to create the game they set out to make, it's my job to make sure they have the help to get it.

With Mafia 2, it needed everything. We tried outsourcing, we tried hiring consultants; it just didn't work, because of how specific this game is, to a specific ethnic group, in a specific part of the world, in a very, very specific culture, where if you deviate from the path, you die. It wasn't space marines. Anyone can do space marines.

Our developer is in the Czech Republic; it's very difficult for someone coming from that culture to come over here and understand everything. And that's what they did, they came over here, the artists took photos, they looked at stuff and did a lot of research, a lot of reading, but at the end of the day they're still Czech. They said, ″We're a bunch of Czech guys, we need someone who speaks the language, who is native to this culture, who grew up around there.″ Well, here I am.

"A lot of people ask me, what movie did you completely rip off, because you guys are game developers and that's all game developers do is rip off movies for their crappy stories and their crappy games."

Like I said, we tried to outsource this stuff — didn't work. Everything was half-assed. They'd run it by me and be like, what do you think? This is not how we talk, this is not how we act….

It's also very easy to veer into stereotypes for this kind of stuff. I lined 10 people up that were not from New York, or not Italian-Americans, and I said, ″OK, what does the mob mean to you? Give me some words, let's put them up on the board here.″ And it was family, honor, respect, suits, cigars…so there's none of that in the game. I threw it all out. Because that's what everyone's expecting.

A lot of people ask me, what movie did you completely rip off, because you guys are game developers and that's all game developers do is rip off movies for their crappy stories and their crappy games, what did you do for this? It was an original story, actually, from one of the writers at 2K Czech — [we] didn't really rip anything off.

It's my job to kind of evolve that story and evolve the characters, but my direction to the team of what we ended up with with the final script…we said if you're gonna compare two movies, let's take the two best mob movies. That's The Godfather and Goodfellas. It is not [like] Godfather, it is [like] Goodfellas. Goodfellas is a story about real people on the street, doing what they do. It has absolutely nothing to do with being Italian whatsoever. It has nothing to do with the whole fantasy of the godfather, which is an old man in a tuxedo sitting behind a desk with his cigar or whatever, and his cat, with people kissing his ass all day and him making very important decisions. Running the empire. It's not about that at all.

That's Hollywood's romantic version of what the mafia is. Maybe it does exist somewhere, but most of the wiseguys you meet — if you go out to certain places, it's really easy to find them, especially where I grew up — it's not them. They're a lot more like the guys from Goodfellas. So we said this is more a story about guys on the street level doing street-level stuff.

If you think about gameplay-wise, too, what's more fun, making decisions in a mafia simulator or grabbing a gun and jumping in a convertible, going to shoot some guy and put him in the trunk? That's where the gameplay aspect of it comes in. That's what we did with the game — we made sure everything Vito and Joe do is driven by the fact that they are wiseguys, and it's driven by their story. 

Bitmob: So you made sure the game ″felt″ right — can you get into some of the specific things you had to tweak?

JS: Daniel Vavra, the original writer at 2K Czech before he left the company, he wrote this story in about 2002, right after Mafia 1 shipped. It was designed as a PS2 game because that's what was big back then. And early on when you start writing, you write stuff that is not your best work. Over the years with the technical changes that the game required, because we hit another console generation…we can do a hundred times more than we could. Now the game design has to evolve, and his style as a writer also evolved.

So it went through several revisions, and once they got something that they were reasonably happy with, it had to go to the publisher…they sent me the script, and it had been translated from the original Czech into English, and over there they learn British English. So it was in Czechlish, basically, we call it. Czechlish is my favorite thing about Mafia 2 — Czech guys writing in English often sounds humorous when you're trying to do mob stuff, when you have wiseguys speaking like my Czech friends do in English.

"We don't all walk around saying it [forgetaboutit] all the time like you think we do in a fucking Prego commercial or something."

We had the characters there, and I kind of just helped the writer adjust the relationships between the characters to fit more with what the mob would do. I'm like, look, if he spoke to this guy like this, he'd be dead the next day. So we adjusted the dialogue, and then I rewrote all the dialogue to what you hear today; hopefully the dialogue sounds pretty legit.

And then I hired actors who could pull off the dialogue, which is a really, really, hard thing to do. I didn't realize how hard it was going to be until I heard a lot of the L.A.-based actors auditioning. It got to the point where I was just like, OK, look, if you weren't born within 50 miles of New York City, don't even try. Because it's embarrassing, it's annoying. The word ″forgetaboutit,″ I kept telling them, that wasn't around in the 50s. And we don't all walk around saying it all the time like you think we do in a fucking Prego commercial or something, so please don't say it. And every audition you get some jackass who's like, ″Eh, forgetaboutit, my name's like, forgetaboutit.″ You sound like an asshole. Goodbye.

But then I finally found the guy who matched each character. Joe [the wingman] was, by far, my favorite character to work on. When I found Bobby Costanzo, I was like, holy shit this guy is Joe. He's been in over 200 movies, he's played a similar character, not quite to this level, but he's played supporting characters in all these movies. I handed him the script and he was like, ″Hey, this is good writing, all right,″ while everyone else who got the script was mispronouncing the words — especially all the Italian and Sicilian words he has to say. When I found him it was great.

Bitmob: Got some outtakes we could have?

JS: Oh god, I have four years of outtakes. I don't know what we're going to do with them — right now they're my private collection of outtakes. I have some pretty ridiculous stories, and we recorded some audio that would never, ever have made it into the final game. But we saved it, just because it was…wow, that's never going to happen again as long as I live, let's just keep this.

Every game developer starts off with placeholder voice for animation and timing purposes, so they did it [at 2K Czech] speaking English. So we actually have it where Vito and Joe are speaking Czechlish.

 

Bitmob: Mafia 2 takes place in an open world, but it's also very narrative-driven — what about side missions? Love interests?

JS: We said to the designers, OK, what else can we do besides Vito makes money, saves his family, works his way up in the mob and has a grand downfall, like you see in every great story. They came up with all sorts of ideas, and we looked at them — narrative drives this game, story drives this game, you're a mobster, you're not some thug on the streets. You're not an immigrant — well, you are an immigrant, but you grew up in America, so you're an American wiseguy, and you must behave a certain way. So delivering pizzas? That's out. Driving a taxi? That's out. Saving a little old lady's cat caught in a tree? That's out.

"Women complicate things. Just like in real life, in video games, women really, really complicate things."

What we ended up with, stuff that Vito would actually do if Vito were a real person, was wiseguy stuff. It fit with his character, it fit with the story, and then if we were to make those optional side missions, you'd miss a big part of who Vito is, so we made it all mandatory.

There's a couple little optional things, like if you remember — this is in an early demo from Gamescom I think, a year and a half ago — there's a car accident with Joe's girlfriend, she gets into an accident with a greaser. Vito's walking by and he can stop and intervene, and use the fact that this guy's fucking with his best friend's girlfriend to beat the living shit out of the guy, which is something that Vito would do, or he could just walk right by.

Women complicate things. Just like in real life, in video games, women really, really complicate things. It's difficult to make a player fall in love with a character. If they don't fall in love with the character and the actress playing the character, it's melodrama, it's not drama. If you're thinking to yourself, ″Oh, I see where they're going with this,″ instead of saying, ″Whoa, I'm in love with that girl,″ then the developer has failed.

Certain games do it masterfully. They find the right actress, the character model is perfect, they have her behave like a real woman. They introduce her and then she grows with you during the story, and you get attached to this person like a friend, girlfriend, whatever. But I look at all the games that have done it well and they've all been RPGs. Because you're constantly adventuring with this female character, you can interact with her at certain points.

"Joe's the guy that you want at your party, but you know there's gonna be a fight if you invite him. He's that guy — he's the life of the party but also the death of the party."

In Vito's story, Vito doesn't really have time for women as far as relationships go. There's always a ticking clock — that's something that's in every movie, the studio will look at it and say, well, OK, what are the stakes right now for this guy, what does he have to do, when does he have to do it by? What is the urgency, what are we waiting to find out. With Mafia, it's the same thing: Vito always has shit to do. If he meets a girl, the player is just going to want to hang out with that girl all the time. You meet a girl, you forget about your friends, forget about your job, and you just focus on that girl until you get that girl, and then whatever. That just didn't work with Vito's story. There's always a ticking clock, there's always something that would prevent him from getting into a relationship, and sustaining a relationship.

Pretty much the main two female characters in the game are Vito's mother and his sister. When he says ″family″ that's what he means. He never once refers to — or maybe once, I don't know — never really refers to the mafia as his family, or ″the family.″ We had it where his mom and his sister were lecturing him, that he should be a better person and all this stuff, and then I looked at it and I was like, who wants their mother to lecture them A), in real life, and B), in a fucking video game? So Momma doesn't lecture him, his sister lectures him for five minutes before he's like, ″Shut the fuck up. I did it to save you so stop lecturing me already.″ He says what you would want to say in that situation.

So that is the extent of his interaction with females in this game, because like I said, if we were to create a character it would have to be more than just a girlfriend you go out on dates with, it would have to be someone who fits into the narrative. And if you look at every mafia story, other than Karen Hill in Goodfellas, I mean there's no place for women in this world.

Women are…it's either your wife or your whore. The wife would've been great to do, but it would've been really complicated, and it really wouldn't have fit in with what Vito starts as or what he becomes. And whores are just there to be whores, so why have sex in a game unless you're actually going to make it meaningful? Enough people talk about, oh, you have Playboy, there's boobies. Yeah, it's fucking great, but it's about story. It's about Vito's story, it's not about women. Women are objects to these people, possessions to be coveted. It's cars, suits, respect, money, and then women. You find the one you're going to marry, and you marry her, and you make kids and you have your real thing, then you find the ones you're going to fuck around with on the side. That's what these guys do.

That's the long version of why there are no love interests for Mr. Vito. Joe bangs hookers nonstop, which is just hilarious. To see Joe's interaction with women and how he considers women — Joe will eventually get a girlfriend. You won't actually meet her, because that would've complicated things further, but Joe eventually decides he wants to start settling down. It's a funny progression. Women do figure into the story, but not anywhere close to a major character.

"If you look at every mafia story, other than Karen Hill in Goodfellas, I mean there's no place for women in this world."

Bitmob: Are you concerned that gamers will have problems playing a bad guy, considering the game is more about the narrative rather than raising hell in an open world?

JS: I think he's a good guy. He has noble motivations. He only gets into it because his mom and sister need money — he gets into it to save his family. It's just like any of us, if we had to make a lot of money quick and there was this really, really easy way to do it, and then you start doing it for a while, and then all of a sudden I say, OK, you've done what you've wanted to do, you've made the money to pay off this, your college loans, whatever the hell it is, now you're gonna go back to working at McDonalds because that's what you're qualified to do. Are you going to want to do it? Most people would identify with Vito, we think, and say no, let's just stay in.

And then something happens which isn't apparent right now, it's kind of a secret — something will happen to Vito that will push him towards this life. His main motivation is to not end up like his dad. Not end up [as] some drunk who works at the dock for peanuts and just drinks and gets into debt, and leaves his family basically fucked. He's a bad guy with good guy motivations. He's a good guy in a bad world, put it that way. He actively chooses to enter into that bad world, and he pays the price in the end. It's not like he becomes the don, the fat guy in the tuxedo with people kissing his ring. You'll see what happens in the end — it's not all fun and games.

Bitmob: Will all the critical story missions involve you and Joe?

JS: No. Most of them, yes. Joe's the guy that you want at your party, but you know there's gonna be a fight if you invite him. He's that guy — he's the life of the party but also the death of the party.

Joe gets you into the mob, and Joe helps you move up in the mob, Joe also, because he's not the brightest bulb on the tree, will get you into all the situations that you need to get out of. Vito, as you can probably tell, is the smart one. That's how their partnership started on the streets when they were like six, seven-years old. Joe was the big, tough, chubby bully that everyone was afraid of, but he wasn't smart enough to figure out how to make money. Vito was smart enough to make money, but he was the little skinny kid.

So this how these guys became who they are, and really defined their relationship. He's with you for most of it, and for me he's my motivation to keep playing, because the shit that comes out of his mouth is just crazy. His view of the world is like a wiseguy's view of the world. That's as deep as we go with the mob fiction. We don't expect you to know about the mob or anything like that, but you learn it just by listening to Joe. What he considers right and wrong is just like, ho-ly shit. What is wrong with this guy?

But he's a product of his environment. If you go to Brooklyn, you'll meet guys like Joe. Bobby's from Brooklyn, and Bobby [Costanzo], if he wasn't such a good actor and a gentleman, he would be Joe. He knows a lot of people like Joe. He [said], ″Ah, this is like the sandwich guy at the deli around the corner from my house where I grew up,″ or ″This is like the guy in the garbage truck.″ You've met people like this, and they're not bad people, it's just that they're products of their environment.

 

Bitmob: You mentioned that there's a downfall coming — is there a future for these characters?

JS: There might be. I won't give it away. Mafia 1, what Illusion [Softworks] did — Illusion being 2K Czech before we bought them — they kind of closed the door on everything in that story. We didn't want to do that with Mafia 2. I won't reveal who lives and who dies and who goes to jail and who doesn't or anything like that, but it would be nice to see these guys again. Especially because I think we really nailed some of these characters and you're really going to care about them.

I would love to bring them back in future games, and Mafia's one of those things that can go on forever. There's a million different mob stories and crime is crime, you don't have to be in the Italian mafia, it could be anything, it could be Triads, any one of a million different criminal organizations that we can go with with Mafia. Maybe one of these characters will live on and show up in subsequent games. Without giving too much away, we don't completely close the door on everything.

In other words, the main character doesn't die and everyone else goes to jail like in Mafia 1. That was awesome when it happened in Mafia 1, but we don't want to make that a staple of Mafia, you know.

"…The Godfather is art. It's a romanticized Hollywood version of the mafia, and it's art. I would not have touched that as a game."

Bitmob: What successes or failures in other open-world games did you look at for inspiration — or for what not to do?

JS: There are a lot of games out there that did a lot of stuff right, and when we were looking at Mafia 2, there's a temptation to do things differently just to be different, but if it's something that everyone's used to, and it worked really well in these other games, why would we do it differently just to be different?

The core difference is really the story. Like I said earlier, you're a wiseguy. You can't go drive a taxi and make 50 bucks a day — you have to make a lot more than that, and that involves violence, and fun, and driving, and shooting, all that stuff. You can't just go jerk off on the other end of the city. You have stuff to do. You do this, you take care of me, I take care of you, and that's it, that's how you move up. And if you deviate from that you get killed.

Bitmob: How'd you like Godfather 2, the game?

JS: Hmm. To me, I think the safest way to say it is The Godfather is art. It's a romanticized Hollywood version of the mafia, and it's art. I would not have touched that as a game. I think it's really difficult to make a game that's going to come close to what that movie did. We can do a lot as far as storytelling goes in games, but I don't think we can get to that level just yet.

I remember seeing some interview where they [the Godfather game developers] talked about what the mob was, and they created like a Magic: The Gathering card game out of it. If you're turning the mob into Magic: The Gathering, that's fine; I'm not too worried about your game.

That was part of my role, to make sure we didn't get too geeky with anything. We didn't overly simplify and stereotype anything like, OK, you're in this family and you will go do this to this family over here, and we must take over their territory. There's none of that thinking in [Mafia 2], it's just ″Aw fuck I gotta kill this fucking guy now, because [this other guy] told me to do it, and that guy was a dick to me 10 years ago.″ That's what it's about, it's not about, ″We need to seize the territory from the Tattaglias,″ or whatever the fuck it was in that game.

It's not really my cup of tea, that kind of stuff. If you're going to tell an epic story, you have no shot if you're basing it on the movie that was the most epic of epic stories of mob stuff. You're never going to get to where you need to get, especially within a two-year development cycle or whatever that we demand these days. It's kind of like handicapping yourself. That's why we didn't try to license Goodfellas for this, we didn't try to license Scarface, we didn't try to license anything, other than the music and some of the imagery you see, some of the art, it's the only thing we took from the real world.

Everything else was inspired by the real world and these stories, but it wasn't a license because you can never ever, ever, get to where you need to be, when you're talking about this very specific genre. If it was space marines, you license Aliens and you make a great Aliens game. But with mafia stuff, if you're basing it on the story, everyone's going to know what happens in that story unless you tell them one that's even better. I think Godfather 2 is better than Godfather 1 as far as the story goes, because you're so intrigued by Vito Corleone and where he came from, and at the same time they told it side by side with the story of where the family went after that. It's incredible.