Escape from Butcher Bay is taken directly from that. I had this conversation about how the names of the Riddick games have all been based on '70s cult movies; Escape from Alcatraz and Assault on Precinct 13. So it is like taking that naming convention and sort of putting it in the game. I keep saying the next one has got to be like The Taking of ... but anyway, it is sort of like trying to find those interesting stories that you are inspired by and making the your own, and having them fit into this world with all these so called restrictions.
There are games made by developers that, when you are playing it you are like, "Did nobody ever say, are we serious? This is the most retarded thing in the world!" I won't name the games, but we have played some games where it is like these developers, there is no sort of filter and it is just like they lacked a producer to say, "No! This is stupid! This is the dumbest concept ever for a game and we are going full bore!"
It pains me to play those games. I would much rather play a licensed product in a cool world that I really like. I think games get a really shitty rep for being based on movies, but there have also been a ton of amazing products, from GoldenEye, to King Kong, to Jedi games made by Raven where using a lightsaber was as good of an experience as I have ever had in any game, period!
I said earlier that even today a lot of games don't get enough credit. Like Star Wars Lego, Indiana Jones Lego, or Batman Lego; all the Lego games do a great job. All of those games are immediately must buys for my nieces and nephews. I love when they play that stuff or they go home and are like, "Pete! Play with us! We want to unlock these characters!" My niece is six and she is like jamming! She is so good. It makes her uncle proud.
You began by making sports titles. It seems like these days that EA kind of has a lock on the sports market, but do you ever see yourself working on a sports game again?
I think I would absolutely love to at some point go back and do it. When I stopped doing it at the N64, PSX, Playstation 1 level, I felt like we had reached our limit with what we going to do. I think the last few All-Star Baseballs, for me, were as good of a baseball game as I was going to be able to make at that time. Certainly the guys at Iguana went on to make one or two more after I had left. But I just felt like those games were really good, and if we were going to do more that online had to be a bigger element to it.
I joked about playing a sports game and everyone is playing their own position. It seems like we are close to that point. |
Obviously I went to Universal from that, so there weren't a lot of opportunities to do sports games. I felt at the end I had moved on. I was doing Alien Trilogy and South Park, and I was doing some other sports games as well. I was experimenting with some other areas of games and game play. But I miss it. I still love sports games. I still play them. We had an old RBI for the NES that somebody had at their desk in the office. I was like, "We should totally do a league play."
I remember playing in college, RBI. I still love sports games. I still play sports games. MLB: The Show last year, I think got robbed. I know that the Hockey Version won for the interactive award, but for me, MLB: The Show was awesome. And the new one with my boy Dustin Pedroia on the cover; I am all in. I can't wait. I already have it pre-ordered.
Even the fact that they have the new Take 2 Managerial one; now that Wanted is done, I play to jump on that and play that the next big long trip I take. I mean, I love sports games. I would love the opportunity to go do that. I also think that I really want NBA Jam to come back as well. I think that style of game, without all the other stuff, without all the trick moves ... they just went so trick crazy. It is like, "Have you ever played basketball? It is not about the tricks. It is about the game!"
NBA Jam, for all of its crazy, high flying moves, never lost track that the most important thing is getting two points in or three points in. It is like it didn't change the dynamics of basketball. I think people went sort of crazy for a while with all that trick play, and I never thought that was as much fun as the original.
There is a reason why the king is still NBA Jam. Nobody has ever sold more units of a sports title than that. It is still the number one all time best selling sports game; the two best selling sports games, because they had NBA Jam and NBA Jam TE. Nobody has even come close to equaling them, except Madden. But Madden doesn't do that kind of numbers.
By the way, Madden is still a phenomenal experience, but I still miss the Visual Concepts football. Even after we stopped working on those games, we are still playing them all the time. I am a big fan of sports games. I am sorry for the longest winded answer ever. But yes, I still love playing them and I would love to go back and make them. Hell, I would even be happy just making a PSP one, because I think what you could do online with the PSP; what they are doing is so cool. We just came back from the [xx] Playstation that was clearly a focus for Sony and I just think that stuff looks awesome. I am really happy I own a PSP right now.
You have mentioned a couple of titles you play. I know you are busy getting a big title out of the door, but what do you play in your free time?
We are just sort of back now to playing games. We do a lot of pass the controller. I grew up playing pass the controller. I had an older brother and a cousin. For me, being the youngest, having to get the controller was a battle in itself. But still I end up playing games like, "Oh, you died. It is no longer your turn. You go."
But I think where that really helps out is when you make games, you not only understand how it feels to play it, but what it looks like. You can observe ... I have done this. I have whipped out my iPhone and started taking notes on somebody else's game about ideas and thoughts. It can help you sort of come up with better ideas for the next game you do.
So much of game stuff is taking and stealing other people's ideas. You see something and do a new riff on it. You want to try to constantly better your own stuff, so playing other people's stuff is like research. As soon as I was done with Wanted I went immediately back and finished GTAIV, which is, in my opinion, game of the year. I think it was neck and neck between GTAIV and Left 4Dead.
At the end of the day, I think GTAIV wins largely because that world may be the single greatest world created for a game. It is just so fucking amazing.
Well now you have got the new content, The Lost and Damned.
We beat GTAIV the night before we left for DICE. That morning, I woke up and got all my stuff packed, and before I left the house, I downloaded The Lost and Damned and then took off.
So you haven't been able to play it.
I have not been able to play it because we were in Arizona all week this week. I will probably go right into The Lost and Damned, but maybe I will take a little bit of a break. At the Spike awards when they had those 10 games being launched, the one of the games that sort of blew me away was The Lost and Damned. I was like, "Holy Shit. Are they going to get game of the year this year too?"
It is like almost not even fair that Rockstar has that ability to crank out awesome stuff. I know there is a lot of negativity in the industry about Rockstar. A lot of people are really jealous. That sucks. It would be nice if we could just recognize those guys for the fact that they are fucking amazing and they do unbelievable stuff.
The fact that LittleBigPlanet dominated the interactive achievement awards ... don't get me wrong. LittleBigPlanet is an awesome game. I played a lot of it. It is one of the few games I was actually able to take some time here and there to play when I was working on Wanted.
GTAIV won the Spike awards. This year, I think that the Spike awards really got it right. But I was really disappointed that the game makers didn't acknowledge GTAIV even more. I think a lot of that is just sort of jealousy. Either that or they played so much LittleBigPlanet with their girlfriends or their kids that that became an obsession for them. Don't get me wrong. LittleBigPlanet is an awesome game. Those guys are amazing and it has an amazing story. We need more of those kinds of stories, but GTAIV, for me, was game of the year.
Games are like books. If you only play the first levels, that is like reading the first chapters and putting the book down. |
And the other thing that I saw at the Spike awards was the new Mafia game. The original Mafia; I played it on PC. It is probably the best soundtrack in the history of gaming; that jazz music. I have never played a game where driving 40 miles per hour felt like 90. You are driving like 40 and you felt like you were going, "Holy shit! I'm really booking!" They did an awesome job. The story is just stellar.
It is amazing that like here is this sort of European game developer, and they do as good a job as anybody about sort of capturing what that feels like to be a criminal in the 1930's or whatever years that game took place in. But they just do an awesome job. Those are two games I am looking forward to coming next year as well.
What about you professionally? What are you on to after this? Do you already have some things slotted up?
We do. We have one title that is a single SKU title that will be done the end of this year. We have started pre-production on several new games, but they are all 2011, 2012, and 2013, or somewhere in that timeline. One of them doesn't even have a finish date on it yet, so it is just getting pre-production.
A lot of the stuff that you can do to make games great is doing really healthy pre-production cycles and that is what we will concentrate on. But really trying to go take the next set of games to be not just, "Hey, this is a great game based on a movie," but we want to do, "Hey, that is a game [xx]." Do best in show overall, not just based on a film.
So the single SKU title for this year, is it a movie-based one?
It is. Everything is. All but one. It is based on a license that is kind of movie-based. It is hard to explain without giving it away.
