Q-Games and Sony Computer Entertainment America's PixelJunk Monsters

Does reading Level Up sometimes feel like drinking water from a fire hose? Or surfing a tsunami? Does it ever give you the sensation that you've been buried under an avalanche of words, words, words? Yes, we know that the dizzying length of certain Level Up posts can read more like a manifesto or a jeremiad than a blog entry. For you, we offer the occasional feature "Things You May Have Missed," which will cull compelling excerpts from our more voluminous posts.

While reading the newest issue of Game Informer (the one with Double Fine's Brutal Legend on the cover), we came across a story on upcoming downloadable titles published by Sony for its Playstation Network service. One of the featured games was PixelJunk Monsters, a tower defense-style game from Q-Games, the studio behind the already-released slot-racing game PixelJunk Racers. What caught our eye, however, was the following sentence from the preview: "The game holds true to the studio's goal of making titles that fit on one screen; there is no scrolling around to different key points on the map, and all of the action is always visible." That's one of the pluses offered by certain 2-D perspective games, and reminded us of an exchange from the September 17th-20th edition of our Vs. Mode exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, wherein we talked about the games BioShock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. During our email conversation, our back-and-forth over the merits of the 2-D Metroid titles vs. the 3-D Metroid Prime series led us to discuss the topic of what was lost in the transition from 2-D gaming to 3-D gaming. Read on, then share your thoughts these issues in the comments section below.

To read our summary, click on the link below.

From Washington, D.C. to Foster City, California, the word of the day is, apparently, "relevant." An embattled President Bush used the R-word yesterday morning during a press conference to explain why he decided to veto a children's health insurance bill supported by both Republicans and Democrats. That's why it echoed in our minds during a conversation yesterday afternoon with Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton, wherein he used the word "relevant" ten times in just 12 minutes while referring to the similarly besieged Playstation 3 and its predecessor. Was this a confident recitation of the facts or merely a wishful talking point? We'll let you be the judge. But based on what our sources are telling us, if the PS3 had a power animal, the September sales gap between the Sony's flagship console and those of its two competitors would see the PS3 represented by a duck—one as lame as the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Nevertheless, the purpose of Tretton's call was to give us an advance briefing about two bits of news intended to finally make the PS3, um, relevant. First, the 40 gigabyte Playstation 3 that had been announced two weeks ago in Europe will be available in North America on November 2nd, bundled with a free "Spider-Man 3" Blu-Ray disc, for $399. Second, effective immediately, the price of the existing 80 gigabyte model will drop from $599 to $499. Having already received a draft version of the press release, we cut to the chase and asked Tretton a series of questions about how and why Sony decided to remove PS2 backwards compatibility entirely from the new $399 model, a decision that we strongly criticized in a recent post. We also inquired about the current state of various unfinished aspects of the PS3 platform, as well as Tretton's thoughts about the PS3's prospects going forward. Here's what he had to say.

When was the decision made to remove backwards compatibility entirely and why?

Well, I think we have long consternated over the issue of bringing tremendous technology to the consumer, something that's really going to be ahead of its time and carry this industry for the next decade, and the challenge that presented in terms of the retail price point we had to offer. So the goal was trying to reduce the price point of the Playstation 3, but keep all the features that we thought were incredibly relevant to the future going forward. We feel like we've been able to accomplish both at $399. We've got a price point that I think can finally attract the masses, and we've kept all of the features that we think are incredibly relevant to the Playstation 3 in there.

Does Sony plan to keep manufacturing the 80 gigabyte version of the PS3 that has the combination of software and hardware backwards compatibility?

In this industry long-term plans are six months out, but we intend to keep the Playstation 3 80 gigabyte model actively available and incredibly relevant for the North American consumer for the foreseeable future.

You only sort of answered the question. Are you saying that you've manufactured a lot of the 80 gigabyte models, and you're going to sell them as long as there's demand, or is it in fact still being manufactured?

Eat Sleep Play co-founder David Jaffe during his Sony days

In Part I of our three-part interview with Eat Sleep Play co-founder David Jaffe, conducted in July, he revealed the thought process that led to his departure from Sony. In Part II, he discussed his concerns about how people who create but do not own original IP are compensated by the publishers who employ. In today's third and final installment, Jaffe shares the lessons he learned while developing the Playstation Network download title Calling All Cars, his ambitions to create downloadable games that can compete with their $60 brethren, and explains why we shouldn't hold our collective breath waiting for him to make epic games again—even on the PSP. Read on.

What were the main lessons you learned from working on Calling All Cars that you're bringing to the new company?

Well, a couple of really good ones. I wouldn't say the biggest, but one of the biggest ones—I'm actually doing a post-mortem on my blog next week about this, because I've really been thinking about "What did I learn from that experience?" And one of the things I learned was that you have to design your game—and that includes mechanics and thematic—to speak to the audience that owns the system. I had made this assumption, which was an incorrect assumption, that because the game was $10 people would be like, "Ah, it's cartoony. I usually buy military hardcore stuff, but you know what? I'm going to give it a try. It's just ten bucks." It would be an impulse buy.

The reality of it is—and I know that this happened with a number of people who bought the game—but nowhere near as many people were able to get over the thematic hump being unappealing to them, because they're looking for games that are testosterone-fueled. The number of people who got over the hump because the price was so low was significantly lower than the number of people who responded to that game in exact same way they would if it had been a $60 game, which was "Thematically this just doesn't appeal to me."

That was a really big lesson that we're carrying forward. Even though we're in the less expensive game space from a development and a selling standpoint, we have to continue to be very respectful of who our main audience just like we've been on the $60 titles. We did that from a gameplay standpoint on Calling All Cars, but from a thematic standpoint we definitely did not. The other lesson from a gameplay standpoint was that $10 is still a lot of money. You're not forgiven for the fact that it's only $10. There are expectations even if you do a lot of things really right. Anything you put out there, even though it's $10, gets judged like it's $60.

Got it.

1. TKO...Skate better than Tony Hawk's Proving Ground, asserted
2. ESC...apist's Zero Punctuation tackles The Orange Box, profanely 
3. MP3...Lessons of the music industry's collapse, considered
4. WIN...The UK Games Media Awards, critiqued, drunkenly
5. CAN...adian game development study released, eh?
6. Wii...Nintendo's Donkey Kong Barrel Blast, eviscerated
7. Wii...Mario & Sonic at the Olympics PR blasts, rejected
8. MTV...Games' upcoming Rock Band drum kit, assembled
9. RED...Ring of Death condolence cards, hand-crafted
10. RND...Journalist bullied by Rush Limbaugh, exposed?