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Interview: A Chat with Ex-Naughty Dog Jason Rubin

Gamedaily.Biz writes: "Back at GDC we had the pleasure of sitting down with Naughty Dog co-founders Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin to discuss Rubin's possible re-entry into gaming, the state of the industry, his comic book property Iron and the Maiden and much more.

GameDaily BIZ: Let's start by talking about your comic book series Iron and the Maiden. How has that been doing sales wise?

Jason Rubin: It's certainly no Crash Bandicoot. The comic book industry is a very different industry than the video game industry. It's not the kind of industry you [enter] to make lot of money and to create a hit franchise, because there aren't a lot of comic book readers even if you're wildly successful. And you really can't be wildly successful unless you're a Batman, an X-Men, a Spider-Man, one of the classic characters that have been around forever, and they still do very well. And unless you're the top artists on a top book, your sales basically cover the cost of making the book. So my goal of getting into comics wasn't to be wildly successful or to get a million readers. It doesn't happen for anybody, even for the big books. It was more to explore intellectual property. It had been in my head for years; I wanted to get it out. And it's a very economical and efficient way to flesh out a world without creating a team of a half dozen people and getting an engine and getting going like you have to do in games."
Cyrus365 - contributor
Published: 589 days 19 hours ago | Interview | PlayStation 3 | Xbox 360 | Wii | Gaming | Industry News
 
 

Showing: 1 - 6 of 6 Comments
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Condoleezza Rice - 589 days 19 hours ago
1 - "If I knew the PS3 and 360 were going to have their current hardware for 10 years, I'd say the PS3 is absolutely the way to go from a design standpoint."
I'd say he's right ^

I sincerely hope he can patch things up with Sony and do business again.
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ceee227 - 589 days 17 hours ago
1.1 - Don't take it out of context Condy
"
BIZ: Uncharted was one of the first games, along with Ratchet & Clank, that finally really showed off the PS3's power. Some developers have talked about the challenge of working with the PS3 and the Cell processor. What are your thoughts?

JR: Neither of us has worked on the PS3 of course, but Andy can speak to the theoretical differences.

Andy: It's a very complicated beast. The hardware model isn't very similar to the traditional computing model, sort of the single-threaded model. So you have to fit how you design your program to it very differently and spend a lot of effort getting the most out of it. ... You have to invest very specific manpower on each little subtask to make it get the most out of the hardware.

JR: So once it's done, and you've done your particle system for Uncharted 1, assuming they do an Uncharted 2, you can spend your time and effort elsewhere. So games should continually move further and further from the competitive hardware's quality level because you get better and better and more specially coded things. Having said that, the question is: is that a good idea or a bad idea from a hardware release standpoint? If it takes five years to finally get to the point where a good number of things are done in these special coded cases, and then the next hardware comes out, I don't know that it's better than making it simple and letting people put average games out earlier. That remains to be seen. If I knew the PS3 and 360 were going to have their current hardware for 10 years, I'd say the PS3 is absolutely the way to go from a design standpoint.

BIZ: Sony would say it is going to be 10 years.

JR: If you believe that, then it's right. But if you don't believe that and time shows us that it's not, then [designing on PS3] is a very complicated way of making things work. Naughty Dog has always been a one-year from launch company, put your best coders on things and make it look as good as possible and stun people and I think Uncharted did that.

"

EDIT: Good interview, I recommend reading it.
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Condoleezza Rice - 589 days 16 hours ago
1.2 - Not meant to be taken out of context ^
Just a sentence I fully agree with.
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madness - 589 days 19 hours ago
2 -
hey look! it is Drake from Uncharted!
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Adamalicious - 589 days 8 hours ago
2.1 -
Haha - yeah, I think everyone who knows of Jason must've thought that when they first saw Nathan Drake. He look more like him than the actor that played him!
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Enigma_2099 - 589 days 9 hours ago
3 - come back, Jason
I know Crash Bandicoot misses you...
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