A couple of weeks ago we brought you our hands-on report of the Toy Story 3 video game and now we have an exclusive interview with the producer of said game, Jon Warner.
What’s the first thing you see when you load up the game? How are you introduced?
If it’s a brand-new, fresh game, we put you into the first level of Story Mode, which is Train Rescue and that kind of serves as our tutorial. If you’ve completed the train level, you’re taken to the board game interface which serves as your launching point to either Story or Toy Box mode.
What was the day-to-day development of the game like? How did you go from seeing the storyboards at Pixar to coming up with the sandbox, Toy Box idea?
The movie prompted the idea: as you’ve probably seen from the trailers, in the movie the premise is that Andy is grown up and going off to college – what’s he going to do with his toys? The movie grapples with those issues and that sparked us to think ‘man, it’d be cool, as long Andy’s going off to college, if he gave his toys to me’. That’s where the idea came from.
How similar is the Story Mode’s plot to the movie?
It definitely follows the high points of the movie. We’re making the assumption that the majority of people who are playing the game have seen the movie, so we kind of tell it in a retrospective way, like a reminiscence. It’s narrated by Hamm and Rex. We picked eight levels that thought suited the game play and expanded those out.
Did Pixar have a great deal of involvement in the plotting and the story?
Absolutely. We came up with the idea as doing it as a reminiscence and they reviewed our scripts and picked and chose what felt right for their characters, they were very closely involved with all of that.
Previous video game adaptations of films have always been hit and miss. From what we’ve seen today, with both the linear Story Mode and the sandbox features, it seems like you’ve made a real conscious effort to defy the cliché of poor tie-in games – was that a goal from day one?
Absolutely. We wanted to make a game that we enjoyed playing and we play a lot of games and a lot of licensed games and movie-based games aren’t great, because they’re not given a budget or they’re not given the time or the design isn’t great or whatever. We definitely wanted to do something special with this, to raise the bar a little. Hopefully we’re in the right ball park here.
How does the Wii version differ from the Xbox and Playstation 3 iterations of the game?
The Wii’s really a different animal, right? We wanted to deliver the same calibre of experience with something the Wii hardware could handle. We customised the Story Mode to suit the Wii’s controls and for Toy Box mode we changed the experience a bit, we had to press it down and change the graphics to be Wii-friendly, but it’s the same basic premise and experience of coming into a western town, Woody’s Roundup, and being able to play with Andy’s toys. It’s still an open world. It’s got a comparable amount of collectables and such, but just the sheer horsepower of the Playstation and Xbox allow us to pack a lot more content in.
What can you tell us about the handheld iterations of the game?
They’re cool, we didn’t develop those at Avalanche, but they kind of follow the same spirit of the magic of play. In our Story Mode there are two types of levels, ones set in the real world and ones set in the imagination. Both of the handhelds embrace that same concept of being a six-inch toy getting around in the real world and in the imaginary worlds, being Buzz Lightyear and having a working jetpack and a laser – you’re awesome.
What kind of maps is used to navigate the game worlds?
There’s no mini-map but when you select a mission a compass pointer on screen will guide you to it.
What kind of age group were testing the game with?
We cast our net pretty wide. The Toy Story demographic is big. It’s you and me, it’s little kids. We tested sixty groups from as low as age six and to as high as age twenty. I think the sweet spot really are tweens, ten to twelve year olds just dig it, they go crazy, you have to pull them away from it. But hopefully we’ve made something that’s going to tap into a pretty wide group.
I guess that younger kids might be playing with their parents.
Exactly, in co-op mode if there’s younger sibling, older sibling situation you can help each other out, if you’re playing with friends, there’ll be horseplay.
What are your future projects after this? Are you looking at Microsoft’s Kinect and Playstation Move?
Absolutely. Sony asked us to do some Move content for Toy Story so we did. It’s a downloadable game that uses the new controller. We’re definitely interested in doing stuff with the motion control and with Kinect. We don’t want it to be a gimmick or anything tacked on, so when the design is right for it and it feels right and it serves the game, it’s definitely what we want to do.
What exactly does the being the producer on a video game involve?
I had a team of programmers and animators, artists and designers and I make sure everything happens and happens on time. It’s also my job to hold the ‘vision’ of the game and make sure the execution is going in the right direction.
Would you mind if I asked a question about you personally? I think our readers would be interested to find out how one gets into the video game industry, what was your route in?
I got into video games through a strange route; I was in the army first, for eight years, in intelligence. That’s not the direct route! I needed money for college. When I got out of the army I had technical skills, so I went back to school, got my degree in history and political science and I got a job as a software engineer, I was an interface designer. I was okay, but all of our jobs got outsourced to India so I found myself out of work. I had a friend who was a test manager at Microsoft and he said I’ve got a temporary job, why don’t you come and test games? I said sure, I’d love to – and that’s how I got in. Once I started working in games, I knew then: this was the job for me.
Finally, who is your favourite Toy Story character?
Oh it’s so hard! I really like Buzz, but I think Woody’s got to be my favourite. He’s great – he’s a good guy!
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