[Interview] Dana Jan, Game Director at Ready at Dawn
We sat down with God of War: Ghost of Sparta's game director to talk about his career, the future of Ready at Dawn, the PSP2, Kevin Butler, motion controls, 3D, and, of course, Ready at Dawn's upcoming game.
Published: October 30, 2010
TPS: What do you think of Sony's decision to release the PSP Go and have a system out there that's solely based on downloadable games?
DJ: I personally like it a lot. I have a regular PSP and I don't own a Go yet, but I want to have a Go. Just because I don't want to carry around UMD discs. It's different for a home console to have discs because they're all in a stack or on a shelf. You know - you're not going to take them all somewhere. But when you want to be portable, I don't want to play the same game, having it all on a hard drive or storage medium that's digital like that is really, really advantageous. So I really like that aspect of it. But not having a Go, I don't know how that experience works really... in terms of: is it easy to get them onto the system? I've heard some people say it's not that big of a deal. You can download on your PS3 and then USB it to the PSP. But what if you don't have a PS3? That sounds like that might be difficult.
I don't know. It's all about infrastructure, right? If it's easy to buy a game digitally, download it and get it on there, then I think it will be successful. But if that's the hard part, then it won't be. Because that's what's nice about iTunes and stuff. I just want it... I just go click and it's like (sound effect) and it's done, right? So it's because they've created a really simple way of finding what you want. Clicking it - it's really easy to just say, "BOOM there goes $0.99 – I just got a song." And it's done, it's in your library and it goes on all your iPods and all that stuff. It's just brilliantly easy. I hope that this is going to be the same way. I just don't know yet because I don't have any experience with it. My hope would be that, that would be successful. Because I think that that ultimately frees you up from having to carry that big bag of games.
TPS: What would be your dream specs for the PSP2? Or the real specs!
DJ: Dream specs, uh...[pauses]
TPS: Or the real specs!
DJ: I would hope it would have at least comparable processing graphics power to a, uh....
Eric Levine, Public Relations Manager, Sony PlayStation: If such a thing exists you mean?
DJ: Come on, eventually there's gonna be a...there has got to be... there has to be something else.
EL: Sure...
DJ: I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't made a handheld gaming system yet. But if they're going to make another one of these I would hope that it would have at least the same kind of power as a PS2-and-a-half maybe. I always call this a PS1-and-a-half because it has some things that are PS2-like and some things that are PS1-like.
I would hope that it would be more like in between a PS2 and PS3 in terms of power. Because I think one of the things we're running into is to make people feel like games are at least current generation - they feel like they have to look like a PS3 game. All of a sudden, graphically, you're just like, "That game looks old." That's kind of sad because I think we're starting to judge games by how they look maybe a little bit too much. But... whatever... it's part of videogames. Every videogame magazine review I remember from the very first days at EGM... the very first score I ever looked at: Graphics. Did it get like a 9 or a 10? Yes!? That's like half the battle. Cool game! Even if the game was trash I was like, "it looks sooo good!" So that was important. Clearly the Nintendo systems have shown us that the power of the machine isn't the most important thing. It's having clever games. Things that make sense for that handheld, so that you have gaming that you can play in small bites and then close it up and put it away. They're really, really clever about that.
But it seems like, as far as Sony goes, that it's a different type of device and it seems like this thing has mostly tried to showcase games like Metal Gear and stuff where you're trying to get a handheld experience that is similar or as good as the console. Which is what we've done with God of War. But maybe in the future we'll have... maybe we'll have improved specs in terms of processing graphics... a better screen maybe. I wish it was just a bigger screen personally. I know that people want to put this in their pocket. But for me, working on it all day and wanting to play it, if it was just a little bit bigger maybe... I have an iPhone. I can only play games for so long on that before my eyes start to get tired. I dunno... Another analog stick. That's huge to me. That would be very nice. Put them in a better place too. Not the Go actually. The Go has it up here and you can reach it better. Here I think has always been uncomfortable the way you have to bend your thumb now. [He shows us on the PSP 3000 that's sitting on the table] So that would be good placement-wise.
And rumble. That's my number one thing. This system doesn't have any force feedback. So when I get hit by a guy... you don't feel it. So one of the things we do in this game a lot, in Ghost of Sparta, is we worked on getting good, tight camera shakes in there for hits and stuff. We try to do tricks like that and have good solid audio for hits and try to "sell them" in your ears too. But man, just having them get a little cell phone quality vibration in one of these things would be awesome.
DJ: I personally like it a lot. I have a regular PSP and I don't own a Go yet, but I want to have a Go. Just because I don't want to carry around UMD discs. It's different for a home console to have discs because they're all in a stack or on a shelf. You know - you're not going to take them all somewhere. But when you want to be portable, I don't want to play the same game, having it all on a hard drive or storage medium that's digital like that is really, really advantageous. So I really like that aspect of it. But not having a Go, I don't know how that experience works really... in terms of: is it easy to get them onto the system? I've heard some people say it's not that big of a deal. You can download on your PS3 and then USB it to the PSP. But what if you don't have a PS3? That sounds like that might be difficult.
I don't know. It's all about infrastructure, right? If it's easy to buy a game digitally, download it and get it on there, then I think it will be successful. But if that's the hard part, then it won't be. Because that's what's nice about iTunes and stuff. I just want it... I just go click and it's like (sound effect) and it's done, right? So it's because they've created a really simple way of finding what you want. Clicking it - it's really easy to just say, "BOOM there goes $0.99 – I just got a song." And it's done, it's in your library and it goes on all your iPods and all that stuff. It's just brilliantly easy. I hope that this is going to be the same way. I just don't know yet because I don't have any experience with it. My hope would be that, that would be successful. Because I think that that ultimately frees you up from having to carry that big bag of games.
TPS: What would be your dream specs for the PSP2? Or the real specs!
DJ: Dream specs, uh...[pauses]
TPS: Or the real specs!
DJ: I would hope it would have at least comparable processing graphics power to a, uh....
Eric Levine, Public Relations Manager, Sony PlayStation: If such a thing exists you mean?
DJ: Come on, eventually there's gonna be a...there has got to be... there has to be something else.
EL: Sure...
DJ: I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't made a handheld gaming system yet. But if they're going to make another one of these I would hope that it would have at least the same kind of power as a PS2-and-a-half maybe. I always call this a PS1-and-a-half because it has some things that are PS2-like and some things that are PS1-like.
I would hope that it would be more like in between a PS2 and PS3 in terms of power. Because I think one of the things we're running into is to make people feel like games are at least current generation - they feel like they have to look like a PS3 game. All of a sudden, graphically, you're just like, "That game looks old." That's kind of sad because I think we're starting to judge games by how they look maybe a little bit too much. But... whatever... it's part of videogames. Every videogame magazine review I remember from the very first days at EGM... the very first score I ever looked at: Graphics. Did it get like a 9 or a 10? Yes!? That's like half the battle. Cool game! Even if the game was trash I was like, "it looks sooo good!" So that was important. Clearly the Nintendo systems have shown us that the power of the machine isn't the most important thing. It's having clever games. Things that make sense for that handheld, so that you have gaming that you can play in small bites and then close it up and put it away. They're really, really clever about that.
But it seems like, as far as Sony goes, that it's a different type of device and it seems like this thing has mostly tried to showcase games like Metal Gear and stuff where you're trying to get a handheld experience that is similar or as good as the console. Which is what we've done with God of War. But maybe in the future we'll have... maybe we'll have improved specs in terms of processing graphics... a better screen maybe. I wish it was just a bigger screen personally. I know that people want to put this in their pocket. But for me, working on it all day and wanting to play it, if it was just a little bit bigger maybe... I have an iPhone. I can only play games for so long on that before my eyes start to get tired. I dunno... Another analog stick. That's huge to me. That would be very nice. Put them in a better place too. Not the Go actually. The Go has it up here and you can reach it better. Here I think has always been uncomfortable the way you have to bend your thumb now. [He shows us on the PSP 3000 that's sitting on the table] So that would be good placement-wise.
And rumble. That's my number one thing. This system doesn't have any force feedback. So when I get hit by a guy... you don't feel it. So one of the things we do in this game a lot, in Ghost of Sparta, is we worked on getting good, tight camera shakes in there for hits and stuff. We try to do tricks like that and have good solid audio for hits and try to "sell them" in your ears too. But man, just having them get a little cell phone quality vibration in one of these things would be awesome.
