Prince Of Persia Movie

I just saw today on Joystiq that latinoreview.com has gotten their hands on a preliminary draft of the Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time script.

They seem really pleased with what they've read, calling it 'almost perfect, giving it an A- grade and saying

Disney has got a monster hit and another potential blockbuster franchise on their hands. Prince of Persia can be as fun as Pirates of the Caribbean.

Their review of the script is long so as way of an executive summary, here are some choice quotes:

One of the producers said in the trades that Prince of Persia is a 9th century Indiana Jones and it reads and feels like one.

One noticeable change from the SOT trilogy I worked on is that The Prince is named (Dastan) and the Farah character (ie: The Prince's love interest) has been replaced with someone named Tamina.

This line clearly points out that they'll bring back the 'rewind' power from SOT:

THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE WRAPS! Time slows to a stop and REWINDS!

Finally, to whet all of our appetites:

Prince of Persia is one hell of an action adventure script which will be sure to thrill general audiences and fans of the game. I can’t wait.

A final point of note is the image that LatinoReview uses here in the form of a movie poster. My memory is a little hazy but it seems to draw a huge amount from The Two Thrones and various promotional images used for that game around the world (note the 'Daggertail' chain -- the weapon of the Dark Prince -- wrapping around the image). For those of you hoping this was a first peek into what the SOT movie was going to look like I'd suggest you don't get your hopes up.

IGN Love

It was very hard to concentrate yesterday because IGN US and UK went live with their POP reviews of 9.3 and 9.4 respectively. It is hard to contain my excitement.

This quote from Hilary Goldstein (the US reviewer) almost made me cry:

In every console generation there are one or two games that, regardless of any flaws, hold tight in my memory even years later. I can still picture scenes from Chrono Trigger on the Super Nintendo System as if I just played it the other day. Despite a flurry of great games released in the past year, I still get the itch from time to time to play Jet Set Radio Future on the Dreamcast. Your beloved games may be different, but I’m certain most long-time gamers have a few titles they treasure – the games they can never trade in. Ubisoft’s relaunch of Prince of Persia may just be such a game for me from this generation.

It’s not the best game ever released on PC, PS3 or Xbox 360; it’s not even the best game released this year. And yet Prince of Persia is that rare game that has managed to tap into that part of me that would die defending Chrono Trigger or JSRF. It has its shortcomings, but I already sense that Prince of Persia will be one of the few games from this generation that I carry with me for the next decade.

He just got our game so fundamentally. Yes we made mistakes, yes there are parts that are weaker then others, but when you sit back and let the experience wash over you while you play, there is magic there. I still get caught up in it when I play - three years in.

Passionate response from reviewers is so incredibly rewarding. After giving this game my all - my life - for the last three years, to see people talk about it in ways I only dreamed about when we first started development is incredible.

Prince Of Persia: Rival Swords

Both the PSP and Wii versions of Prince Of Persia: Rival Swords have been out for a little over a week now and a few reviews have popped up for both. So far on this blog I've only talked about my work on POP games once and it seemed to generate some interest, so I thought some of you might like to read my take on the reviews I've read so far and a little sneak peek behind the development of the titles.

Rival Swords on the Wii

The Wii controls worked for some and not for others but I think IGN was the harshest with their critique of our camera system:

As a result, Ubi has been forced to sloppily map camera controls to the motion-tilt on the Wii remote; twist it in a turn-key motion and the camera will swing left; twist it right to go in the opposite direction. It doesn't feel good and the response time on the camera is imprecise, so you may sometimes overshoot your desired camera view

IGN

I'm surprised, really, because the camera control system tested very well during development. Allowing a player to control movement with the analog stick on the Nunchuck while tilting the remote to change camera angles created, we thought, a physical manifestation to the act of looking around that people usually adopted very quickly to. We had wanted to map the vertical camera access to the up/down tilt on the remote too, but doing so caused complications in combat given that we used this movement for sword swings. Ultimately by biggest regret about the camera control is that we couldn't find a way to make vertical and horizontal panning consistent.

The game is currently averaging 75% (down from around 84% for The Two Thrones) which is right about what I was expecting given the lack of new content. I still feel that the Wii controls add a huge amount to the game and very much consider the project a success, if for no other reason then to have validated the potential of the franchise in a motion sensitive controller environment. Ubisoft can now safely argue all the way up the management chain that the gameplay of a POP game can translate well onto a Wii (or potentially SixAxis) control system. If Rival Swords at least breaks even in sales we could potentially convince executives to invest in the development of a POP title from scratch that makes even greater use of the unique control systems.

Rival Swords on the PSP

Unlike the Wii version, Rival Swords for the PSP featured a significant new amount of content: Nine new levels integrated into the story (three long levels, three short, and three that were really just upgrade rooms); three all-new chariot races; and an asynchronous ad-hoc multi-player race mode (that is, you have to be in the same room as your opponent and you don't actually see their avatar during your race but rather you are impacted by their actions, and vice versa).

One thing I'm pleasantly surprised about is that reviewers aren't being harder on us given the difference in content between the PSP and Wii versions considering they share the same name. I had expected people to develop expectations re: Wii functionality based off of the PSP feature set and then be very frustrated at its lack. Clearly there is a desire for more unique content in the Wii version but exact feature parity between the two doesn't seem to be important - this is an interesting lesson for me.

The new single player levels were ignored completely by some reviewers, but Gamespot, at least, thought enough of them to offer the following:

Much of Two Thrones/Rival Swords is spent navigating to and then knocking out sand portals to disrupt the Vizier's supply lines. Instead of giving you the free ride you got in other versions of the game, the PSP version has you delving inside these portals to implode them. The challenge here ranges from maliciously difficult to overly simplistic, though they all provide more background on the story.

Gamespot

We made a lot of tweaks to the difficulty of these levels to try and keep a good flow and in the end I thought we did a good job considering the team that developed this version (Pipeworks software) hadn't been involved at all in The Two Thrones and therefore had an extraordinary challenge in trying to create and inject levels that fit in properly in our difficulty curve.

The biggest complaint about RS on the PSP (pretty much across the board) are audio bugs and a general down-grading of texture quality in some areas.

The audio has its problems as well. The soundtrack offers strong orchestrations and decent voice-work, but can sometimes be out of sync with the on-screen action.

GameDaily

The Two Thrones had a huge amount of data (both art and audio) and so the fact that we managed to fit it all onto a UMD without cutting levels or creating abhorrent loading times was a feat of significant engineering. I think it is still a toss-up whether or not the reviewers would have been harder on us had we made more drastic cuts to ensure less noticeable bugs (ie: cut music payback during dialog) given the fact that we were starting from a well known experience (ie: The Two Thrones).

Ultimately I think both versions will probably settle around the 75% mark. They both have their fair share of problems but, I think, both also have some unique value for fans of the franchise and particularly those who didn't get around to playing The Two Thrones.

Prince Of Persia Classic

I've been itching to talk about this title so I'm very happy that Ubisoft finally announced it. Sometime this summer (hopefully sooner rather then later) a Ubisoft/Gameloft production (Ubi publishing, Gameloft developer) entitled 'Prince Of Persia Classic' will hit XBLA.

The most credit I can take for this excellent title is of development broker and part-time consultant so when you play it and love it, I'm sorry to say I won't be able to accept your heaps of praise. :)

Watching this game be developed made me really miss my team back at Gameloft Montreal as it was a wonder to see (1) how quickly they managed to get something functional (especially given that they created all the technology from scratch and had never developed for the 360 prior) and (2) how far they were able to push the signature 'Gameloft Polish'. There are a few little touches (more evident in the high-quality version) that are a real treat for me to see given my involvement on POP: The Two Thrones. For example, notice that in that wonderful scene when The Prince sees himself in the mirror and jumps through, releasing his evil counterpart, said doppleganger has been 're-imagined' to be The Dark Prince from T2T. I love it.

'Classic' titles are going to continue to find a home on XBLA because (1) publishers have the large back catalogues of titles they'd love to re-monetize and (2) consumers seem anxious to play favorite titles from their past. Given this, though, I really like the way we treated this title with the upgraded graphics and small (mostly cosmetic) gameplay tweaks. Fans who would cry foul if we changed the original too much should be very happy while those who never experienced the Jordan Mechner classic will play something that stands on par with the level of graphical polish and experience they would demand of a modern ('casual') title.

I'm not supposed to, but I'm chomping at the bit to buy up as many shares as simExchange will allow me to. I have high hopes for the sales of this game.

Prince Of Persia

So first a huge apology. It has been ages since I have posted anything here. Needless to say, I've been busy.

For a couple of years now I've been coyly alluding to the fact that I'm working on an action adventure game for Ubisoft. Some of you who cared enough to dig might have put two and two together and guessed what title I'm working on. For those who didn't (and yet care) I can now officially announce it.

Coming out this holiday season on 360, PS3 and PC is the next-gen Prince Of Persia. I'm really really proud of how this game is shaping up and am exstatic that the first magazines have finally come out covering it! Now I can finally tell the world. ;)

I won't link to the magazine articles (for obvious reasons) but if you're interested I encourage you to find a copy of Edge magazine for May 2008 (english) or Joypad (french). Both magazines did excellent articles about the game, really helping to validate (for me) all of the hard work myself and the team have invested in this game over the last two and a half years.

I won't be using this blog to talk about any specific POP features or items not already reported elsewhere, but I may on occasion use it to draw attention to articles etc that I find particularily interesting. If you're a fan of the game and want to get an occasional idea of what I think of the press and coverage, hopefully you'll find something interesting here in the coming months.

Hollywood and Games summit

Next week I am likely going to participate in the Hollywood and Games summit on a panel entitled:

"How Talent Can Successfully Cross the Digital Divide"

• Kim Libreri, Vice President Advanced Strategy, Digital Domain
• Yuri Lowenthal, Actor, Afro Samurai, Gilmore Girls, Prince of Persia
• Susan O’Connor, Game Writer, Gears of War
• Moderated by Jordan Mechner, Creator, Prince of Persia

If film, television, animation, and games are converging on a production, marketing, and retail level, where does that leave the individual creative talent that make these industries work? A film and game director moderates this discussion between a TV voice actor, a film visual effects artist, and a game writer.

I figured some of you reading this might have a thought or two on on this subject and I'd be interested to hear your comments as I prepare myself.

Jordan Mechner Interview

Gamasutra has a nice interview up with Jordan Mechner, the creator of the Prince of Persia franchise.

As you can probably tell (I've been involved in three POP games in the last two years: The Two Thrones, Rival Swords, and Classic) I have a vested interest in all things Price Of Persia so I found it a real pleasure and honor to have the opprotunity to speak on the panel with Jordan Mechner while at the Hollywood & Games summit. It was very kind of Jordan to name-drop me in this interview of his with Gamasutra.

Thanks Jordan! ;)

POP Difficulty Controvery

So - first off - apologies for only ever blogging about Prince Of Persia these days. I do indeed plan to one day return to more general gaming subjects but - understandably (I hope) - I've still got POP on the mind.

Being a frequent visitor to Game|Life I waited anxiously to see what Chris Kohler et co would have to say about my game. I was a little disappointed that we failed to capture Chris' imagination, but found his arguments against the game well expressed. Those who simply dismiss the game as a casual PopCap wannabe because you 'can't die' have always frustrated me too much to respond to, but Chris' statement of 'because I don't feel the lows, I can't feel the highs' (paraphrased) makes sense to me.

I was very interested today to find a video feature on Game|Life comparing two of 2008's more controversial titles - POP and Mirror's Edge. Chris Kohler takes the side of Mirror's Edge and Chris Baker argues for POP (the embedded video is included below).

One thing CBaker said that really made me smile was (paraphrasing again) that even though he found the game easy, he still felt a sense of disappointment in himself when he needed Elika to save him - effectively that he internalized the sense of failure. He did not need the game to remind him he failed.

This was something we talked about a lot internally when trying to convince ourselves that the Save-Me mechanic would not be universally despised by the hardcore gaming set. Our rational, simply put, is that people who play a lot of videogames are good at them and generally don't fail a given sequence very often. When they do fail, they likely punish themselves for said failure ("oh you lame n00b! This game is so easy, why can't you pass this one stupid level! dj00 suxjirz") and would likely prefer to not have to see a loading screen upon each failure (I don't think anyone can argue that loading screens add to the enjoyment of a game).

The fact of the matter is very few people can win POP without failing (we have an achievement for those who manage to win without having to have Elika save you too often, and our stats are showing us that very few people have gotten this on a first play through). People fail in POP all the time - those who are able to take something from that failure seem to be the ones who enjoy the game the most. Those who can't feel a sense of failure without a dripping blood-red 'game over, you suck' screen - less so.

The reviews are in, let the controversy begin

I'm glad most of the big reviews are out of the way and plenty happy with the ~85 we META-ed at.

Now the real interesting part starts - the debates. I've read some very thoughtful arguments for and against the 'accessibility' of the game but thought I would start off tonight with one that particularly grabbed my attention.

TheGameReviews.com isn't a site I usually frequent, but their 'analysis' (not a review) of the 'easiness' of Prince Of Persia was very well put - I could hardly have argued the case better myself...but that doesn't mean I won't try. ;)

I'm still enjoying the sun in Florida on vacation but when I'm back in Montreal I expect I'll be drawn to some of the POP discussion and offering my own thoughts on the matter.

If nothing else I love the fact that people seem to be playing the game all the way through to the end.

Still Alive

*...that was a joke, ha ha, fat chance...*

So I've decided that I want to start blogging again. A lot has happened in the last year (shipped POP, had a baby girl, started a new project) that has kept me distracted and away from the blog, but things seem to be settling into a rhythm again that should allow me to spend a little more time thinking and a little less time jumping from fire to fire - a prerequisite to writing anything worth reading, in my opinion.

Likely the most interesting news for the majority of people who visit here is that my new project is not in the Prince Of Persia universe. After four years and four POP games (The Two Thrones, Rival Swords Wii, Rival Swords PSP, and the latest POP) I've decided its time for new challenges and new themes. Myself and a small core team (made up almost entirely of my favorite guys from POP) have started work on a new IP.

Of course I can't say anything about it yet (and won't be able to do so for a long time) but I can say that I love the new challenge so far. Ubisoft is a company that embraces and rewards innovation within its production team and they are encouraging us (and all teams really) to really try and push the limits of what people have seen in games from a combined technical/creative standpoint - to literally do something that no one has seen before and that competitors will find themselves scrambling to copy once we set the new trend. Its a pretty exciting mandate and one my team is embracing with arms wide open.

In thinking about what subject (of substance) I should blog about next I'm currently leaning towards a question I'm asked often: how does one go about getting a job as a game producer. I've got a few points on this matter that I've repeated often enough at conferences etc that I figure it might be worth noting it all down here. Anyone out there have any specific questions on the subject? I could try and answer them in my post.