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Q&A: Death, Jr. developer Chris Charla
What does it take to jump aboard the PSP bandwagon? Backbone's senior producer talks about life after Death, Jr.--and shows some exclusive art as well.
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Fourteen years ago, Digital Eclipse opened its doors on a nondescript, factory-filled street in Emeryville, California. Today, the once-industrial neighborhood is on the rise. Work-live condos, improvements to once-train-track-laced streets, and the smell of fresh-brewed cappuccino is now the norm rather than the exception. Of course, it doesn't hurt to have the high-flyers at Pixar as neighbors. The animation studio's campus, with its 700-plus workforce, has helped revitalize the small municipality wedged between Berkeley and Oakland.
With 70 games on 11 platforms to its credit, the studio formerly known as Digital Eclipse is itself on the uptick. Following its recent merger with ImaginEngine, it has been reborn as Backbone Entertainment.
While new, Backbone has already made a splash. At last month's Game Developers Conference, Senior Producer Chris Charla took the stage at the San Jose Civic Auditorium and displayed footage from Death, Jr., the first game for Sony's forthcoming PSP portable. He showed a one-minute gameplay video, spoke about the platform's robust processing and graphics capabilities, and generally evangelized the heck out of the PSP to the packed hall.
GameSpot spoke with Charla recently to find out what it's like to be on the leading edge of a new game platform.
GameSpot: First of all, what happened to the Digital Eclipse brand? Where did Backbone come from?
Chris Charla: Backbone Entertainment is the result of a merger between Digital Eclipse and ImaginEngine. Both companies were more than 10 years old when they merged. Digital Eclipse's background is in emulation technology (notably seen in the Midway and Atari arcade collections for PCs and consoles) and handheld gaming, and ImaginEngine was best known for its work with kids' software, although ImaginEngine has also done both toy designs and board games.
GS: On to the PSP
What's the decision-making process behind committing to a new platform?
CC: For us, it just made sense from the start. We have a huge amount of experience in handheld game design, and we also have a robust, proprietary cross-platform 3D engine as well. From the first announcement at E3 last year, it was clear to us that PSP was going to be powerful enough to support our engine.
GS: What sort of research took place before you jumped on the PSP bandwagon?
CC: We did a ton of research. When the specs first came out, we put together a really thorough white paper--really just breaking down the specs--trying to get a really strong hand on what kind of real-world performance we could expect from [the] PSP so we could start development even before we got an emulator or hardware. It was a little harder than it sounds, because, for instance, there was never a PC that had comparable specs to the PSP. You can kind of build an imaginary PC with those specs, but the video processor and CPU are kind of from different generations. Also, the PSP has some advanced video modes, which complicate matters a little. So, doing the research, I think, really enabled us to anticipate some of the surprises better than we could from just seeing the specs.
GS: What are the costs associated with shifting development to a new platform?
CC: They're definitely significant, especially for us, because we work very hard to keep everything running on our engine as "cross-platform" as possible. In our case, we needed to port the platform-specific layers of our engine to [the] PSP, add PSP support to the tool chain, and, of course, add support for all the PSP-specific hardware features. And then we needed to add support for all our other platforms, such as [the] PC, so they don't crash when you're trying to play a game that supports them. So, if you run Death, Jr. on the PC version of the engine and walk him past some flowers, they may jump from one state to another instead of morphing, but the game won't crash.
GS: What support do you get from the platform owner/Sony?
CC: Sony has been really, really awesome. I think they've been somewhat frustrated that they haven't been able to get us information faster, but, honestly, the level of support there has been great. Anytime we've had a question, they've had an answer. Sometimes the answer is "Ask us in three weeks." but even that is OK, because it lets you, as a developer, kind of schedule what you should be working on and when. Sony's gotten some mixed press recently, in terms of developer support, but that's just kind of unfathomable to us, because we definitely haven't seen anything but great support from them.
GS: How did you decide on game number one's content?
CC: We've been working on our original IP (intellectual property), Death, Jr., for a little more than a year, [and we're] really using it to test and develop the engine, as well as [using it as] a place to prototype gameplay ideas. The reality is that it's much easier to launch a new character with a new platform, so that, combined with the great fit between DJ's gameplay and the PSP's unique features--such as morphing--made it a pretty easy decision for us to focus on PSP exclusively for Death, Jr.
GS: What does PSP commitment mean for Digital Eclipse? Do you stop creating games for other platforms?
CC: Not at all. We've always said we want to develop on all viable platforms. I really don't think anyone was kidding when they--both Sony and Nintendo--said they don't see the two platforms as competing. We certainly don't. GBA is awesome, and, obviously, there are a lot of other great platforms to be developing on right now.
GS: Who do you see as the PSP gamer?
CC: Personally, we see it as college age and up--the classic 18-34 demographic that isn't afraid to buy new gadgets but requires style. In the same way DVD support really helped out adoption rates of the PS2, I think the movie playback potential of the PSP is going to really help it out. I'm definitely looking forward to playing games on the system, but I'm also really looking forward to not having to lug my laptop around if I want to watch a movie on a plane.
GS: How does development for the PSP differ from GBA development?
CC: It's pretty different. It's basically the same as developing for any other console (the PS2, Xbox, GameCube, etc.), in terms of the development process.
GS: Ain't it lonely to be out there at the front of the pack, going where no one's been before?
CC: No, we're used to it, and we like it out here! Our guys are very comfortable exploring at the edges of a space. I think it's where they get to exercise their hacker muscles. We're pretty strict and structured about the way we construct our engine, so our engineers really like to get creative when they're exploring new systems.
[Ed. note: Death, Jr. and the Death, Jr. character are trademarks of Backbone Entertainment. All rights reserved.]
By Curt Feldman -- GameSpot
Quelle: gamespot
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