Jak & Daxter Interview

Last week i was lucky enough to be involved in an interview about the re-development of Jak & Daxter for the PS3. Mass Media, the company i work for was charged with the difficult task of taking what is probably the most technically accomplished title from the PS2 and put it onto the PS3. Meanwhile keep all the gameplay and feel of those games exactly like their originals. No easy task i can tell ya.

Well i won't go into details about the conversion/translation here. Instead i want to mention briefly about the interview.

I am not too shy a person, so i was really looking forward to the interview. In fact i have so much to say about the job that i was busting at the seems to know what kind of questions they were going to ask me, and i was worried my answers were all going to be way too long for video. I did try hard to keep them short, but not sure i succeeded. After all i was interviewed for approximately 1.5 hours, and then when the guys had finished interviewing several other co-workers I also got to chat to them some more as I showed them some of the games and also some of the tech that went into creating the PS3 version.

The interview was done by a group called '2 Player Productions' . a group of acomplished documentarians. They are currently doing several things i am sure, but one of the subjects they are working on is a biggie about minecraft, which was kickstarter funded, cool stuff. Check it out here Kickstarter.

The interview went well, we were holed up in the companies conference room. To be honest i felt a bit stiff and awkward, as i was in a seat that did not have a lot of room around it. I also felt i shouldn't move too much. Which is difficult for me when i get excited. And i was excited haha. So I will be very interested in seeing how stiff i look on camera. :O  I was asked several questions that were all quite interesting and deep, not those crappy yes/no asnwer type ones at all. These guys know their stuff it appeared to me. Which is good of course. They interviewed in total 4 people from Mass Media, from the director to the creative director and technical director, oh and me the Lead. We all had plenty to say I am sure, even if I was the one in their the longest.... by far.

The answers i gave tended to be quite long and i think informative. I am not great at analogies so i am sure i sucked at those, maybe they will just cut that crap out, sure hope so. But i did give a lot of inside information about the technical side of this game development. I sure hope that makes it into the piece. 2 Player Productions were going to be spending the next day with Naughty Dog to get the other side of the interview process and story. I hope they say nice things about what we achieved. We are all very proud of what we accomplished, and also hope the public that buys this game likes what we have done.

It is a faithful reproduction in so many ways and yet also looks a whole lot better, but does not look out of place i think in current PS3 titles.

In the end 2 Player productions was at Mass Media for approximately 6 hours interviewing and taking video of various things. I look forward to posting their final video, which i think they are terming a retrospective.

Laters
Da Voodoochief