DSF: Let's be frank: games based on licenses, particularly film licenses, aren't always the best out there. Conners: This is mainly because developers and publishers in the past tried to squeeze a game out of a license – often on really short deadlines – without regard to its individual characteristics. Griptonite's goal is to erase the stigma of licensed games, even if it's only one game at a time.
DSF: How difficult is it to strike a balance between a good game and a game that stays true to the source material?
Conners: I think publishers have gotten better at identifying films that make great games. Certainly, it's easier to make a solid Lord of the Rings game than it is one for A Room With a View. Regardless, Griptonite really tries to focus on core mechanics early on in development and prototype them quickly. We love sharing early builds with our publishing partners to figure out the best mechanics for a film license. Regardless, film titles tend to have short schedules, so you have to get things right the first or second time. Our staff here at Griptonite is used to working really fast to prove out a gameplay mechanic.
DSF: When it comes to characters like Spyro and Crash Bandicoot, who've been around a long time, but get lost in today's space-marine-riddled market, was it difficult to make them relevant again? How did you approach those titles?
Conners: Both our Spyro and Crash teams approached those titles by looking at what had been done really well in the past by those mascots. In the case of Crash, the team played a ton of the older games and combined some of their best old-school elements with modern sensibilities. I think the DS game felt more like a "true" Crash game than some of the more recent console versions. The Spyro team took a similar approach. Here, they had a cool little dragon – who is one of those aspiring creatures that everybody wants to control – and really emphasized that element. Just having Spyro run around and flapping up and down walls is really fun. Once we identified the core elements that make these characters classic, the team went wild adding in new creative features and innovations that complemented the license without hampering the gameplay.
DSF: With Disney Friends, did you purposely set out to try to best Nintendogs in some aspects, or was that just a happy accident?
Conners: Certainly, all of our teams play other DS games constantly, and Nintendogs was a great example to look at when it comes to a "companion" game. But I think the team felt that Nintendogs was too punishing for users, and they set out to bring a sense of carefree fun to Disney Friends that Nintendogs lacked. Everyone on the team was big Disney fans, and they really focused on getting all those characters to look and feel right. Playing with Simba really needed to feel very different from hanging out with Pooh, so it was a big design challenge to tackle all these characters in the final product. We're really proud of Disney Friends.
DSF: We're all big fans of the GBA version of The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night. Any chance we'll see a future title with similar gameplay?Conners: Check out the gameplay in the upcoming Spider-Man: Web of Shadows DS game. The team really improved on what they learned from Spyro, and certainly Spider-Man's natural agility lends itself extremely well to that kind of game. Activision and Marvel did a great job inventing a cool, dark back story for the game. Combine that with our gameplay, and it's really very different from previous Spidey titles.
DSF: While we recover from the sheer excitement that statement inspires, can you walk us through a typical day in the studio?
Conners: Griptonite's a busy place! We have over a hundred people on staff now and usually 8 to 10 titles in development at once. This means our space is filled with artists, coders, and designers huddling about various game mechanics, testers buzzing showing off bugs they've found, and producers trying to keep track of it all. There's a ton of energy in the place. Everyone's here to make great handheld games, which you can tell as soon as you walk into the building.
Thanks for taking the time to let us have a look in!
