Insomniac: Ratchet Success Came From Failure
Original concept of 'girl with stick' didn't fly.
Ratchet & Clank is considered to be one of the PlayStation's biggest exclusives, and it probably has something to do with its family-friendly approach to madcap platforming action. But if developers Insomniac hadn't made a dramatic design U-turn, we'd have seen a completely different series today. Maybe not even a series at all.
In a recent interview, studio president Tim Price recalled the first form of what became Ratchet & Clank, in a discussion that covered the dramatic changes in development to other games such as Alan Wake and Borderlands. As a result of his experience, Price agreed that successes can sometimes come out of failures.
"It started out as as a game about a girl with a stick running around this Mayan-influenced environment and was probably going to be rated M [mature] if it had ever been released," Price explained. "Not because of the girl but because it was a fairly dark game."
Six months was spent with the 'girl and stick' design, largely due to Price's insistence with keeping it despite his team agreeing that it wasn't going to work. Then, the exec decided to let it go following a meeting with Sony. "I kept pushing it because I felt at the time 'hey, you have to finish what you started' and I hadn't really learned that lesson that 'hey, it's okay to kill your babies.'"
"When we showed it to Sony, who was our publisher, they said 'look, we'll support you with this, if you wanna release it, it's cool, but we don't think it's gonna do well in the market.' And that was a real wakeup call for me and I had to admit that we needed to kill this one and start over."
That 'start over' happened to be Ratchet & Clank, pitched just two weeks later by chief creative officer Brian Hastings - a pitch that brought the whole team back after "straying from our expertise." And now the series is one of the headliners of the PlayStation 3. For that, we're all thankful.
In a recent interview, studio president Tim Price recalled the first form of what became Ratchet & Clank, in a discussion that covered the dramatic changes in development to other games such as Alan Wake and Borderlands. As a result of his experience, Price agreed that successes can sometimes come out of failures.
"It started out as as a game about a girl with a stick running around this Mayan-influenced environment and was probably going to be rated M [mature] if it had ever been released," Price explained. "Not because of the girl but because it was a fairly dark game."
Six months was spent with the 'girl and stick' design, largely due to Price's insistence with keeping it despite his team agreeing that it wasn't going to work. Then, the exec decided to let it go following a meeting with Sony. "I kept pushing it because I felt at the time 'hey, you have to finish what you started' and I hadn't really learned that lesson that 'hey, it's okay to kill your babies.'"
"When we showed it to Sony, who was our publisher, they said 'look, we'll support you with this, if you wanna release it, it's cool, but we don't think it's gonna do well in the market.' And that was a real wakeup call for me and I had to admit that we needed to kill this one and start over."
That 'start over' happened to be Ratchet & Clank, pitched just two weeks later by chief creative officer Brian Hastings - a pitch that brought the whole team back after "straying from our expertise." And now the series is one of the headliners of the PlayStation 3. For that, we're all thankful.
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