QJ Interview: We Talk To Ready At Dawn, The Guys Behind Daxter

We managed to get a few minutes with Didier Malenfant, President and Co-founder of Ready At Dawn Studios, he shares his thoughts on homebrew, the Ready at Dawn engine and even hints at what’s next on the table for the venerable new studio.

Read the full interview after the jump!

We managed to get a few minutes with Didier Malenfant, President and Co-founder of Ready At Dawn Studios, he shares his thoughts on homebrew, the Ready at Dawn engine and even hints at what’s next on the table for the venerable new studio.

QJ: Where does the name “Ready at Dawn” come from?
 
D: The name is actually made from the initials of the 3 founders: Ru Weerasuriya, Andrea Pessino and Didier Malenfant. It’s also a little joke on the work hours our industry inflicts on people.

QJ: Most of us know that you used working at Naughty Dog, and that Ru and Andrea were at Blizzard previously, but how did you  guys get together and what made you suddenly decide to got start your own development company. Was it a scary process?
 
D: We were introduced through mutual friends, for example I met Ru Snowboarding in the local mountains. Both Ru and Andrea had worked together in the past but the 3 of of us never worked together before which I think worked out to our advantage in the end. We started talking about our vision of what a cool game company should be, what kind of games we’d want to work on, etc… There wasn’t any AAA console game developers here in Orange County so we decided to fill that gap. I guess looking back it was kinda scary but we were completely oblivious to that at the time. It’s what of lot of entrepreneurs have in common actually, that kind of naive lack of fear 🙂

QJ: Did you notice a difference in design philosophies or workflows between you, coming from Naughty Dog and Ru and Andrea from Blizzard, and has RAD adopted it’s own unique design philosophies as a result?
 
D: We consider Ready At Dawn to be a mix between both our previous employers in terms of company culture and production values. Of course the 3 of us and the guys here have shaped it to our image over time but some constants remain. First and foremost is what I call the “give a sh*t” factor which is why everyone here won’t let one of our game get released if we’re not happy with it. Everyone feels really strongly about this and I think it shows in Daxter. Then most of our company culture is based on a very simple principle: “No BS”. We don’t tolerate internal politics and we tell it like it is with everyone on the team. This is also something that attracts a lot of people to come and work here, most of them are tired of dealing with stuff like that at other companies.

QJ: How has the team grown over the past year and a half?
 
D: We grown to over 30 people over the course of our first game and we’ll probably have close to 40 by the time we ship our second game. It’s already a pretty hard growth to manage, even though the fact that our games so far have been on PSP made it easier for us to start small as opposed to if we would have started with a next-gen product for example.

QJ: You’ve mentioned that you don’t believe developers should compromise their products to get them on the PSP, you proved a fully featured AAA 3D platformer can be done on the PSP, will this philosophy carry over to future RAD projects?
 
D: Definitely. We’ll never let the platform feel like a limitation to us, or use it as an excuse in any way, shape or form. That’s why we like console games so much. It’s not just because we like the type of games on consoles but also because everyone is on equal footing when it comes to the platform itself. It’s up to individual teams to then try to make the most of the hardware. It’s a fun challenge. I think people were quite shocked to see what we pulled off on the PSP so far and our next game is already lightyears away from what Daxter achieved in terms of performance.

QJ: What else have you seen on the PSP that’s impressed you, either from a technical perspective or from a creative viewpoint.
 
D: From a technical point of view I would say Syphon Filter as those guys were some of the few that used the PSP to its potential. From a creative point of view, I’m currently addicted to Loco Roco. That game rocks in how simple yet addictive it is. I think the downloadable content that Sony is setting up for PSP could be a great platform for this type of games in the future. I’d definitely be first in line to buy and download them.

QJ: Have you had a chance to check out the PSP homebrew scene? What are your thoughts on some of the things that have been achieved in that arena?

D: I learned to program when I was part of the Amiga demo-scene in Europe so I’m very familiar with the type of ‘tinkering’ instinct that drive those guys. I barely have time to play regular games these days so unfortunately I’ve never tried or seen any of the stuff that’s out there. I’ve only heard about some of the various emulators and such and it sounds like fun. Maybe some of those guys should send us their resume and start using their skills to make a living 🙂

QJ: What kinds of things do you think we’ll be able to see with the PSP’s clock running at full spec that are currently not practical on the hardware?

D: Nothing groundbreaking really, just more stuff on screen or smoother frame-rate. Daxter, for example, can run at 60fps with the higher clock-rate. It’s pretty sweet to see it even more fluid than it already is. It would just give people more CPU time to play with, they could us it any way they want really.

QJ: There have been a number of recent upgrades to the PSP firmware that have enhanced its functionality, one of these upgrades has added the ability to download and play demos off the internet directly from the PSP memory stick. A recent demo for Loco Roco was released to the joy of many PSP owners, has RAD considered this delivery method as a possibility for future demo’s and has there been any push from Sony to adopt this delivery method?

D: It’s something that we’re looking at very seriously because I think it’s great way to get the word out and get people to try your game. Sony typically doesn’t tend to push us to do one thing rather than another, but in this case it’s something we think it is really interesting.

QJ: We know RAD is an independent third party developer but we’d like to know if you Wil be taking advantage of SCE’s World Wide Studios initiative?

D: Ready At Dawn is actually first party developer with Sony but SCEWS doesn’t really affect us directly since we’re not owned by Sony. This is more about internal organisation for them, finding ways to make sure all the different studios communicate and collaborate as best as possible (and let me tell you, it’s hard enough inside a single studio :). I have a lot of respect for Phil Harisson, having known him from the early PSX days, and I know that he’s already doing a great job out there.

QJ: Are there plans to license the game engine you developed for Daxter to other PSP developers, and um… what’s the engine called?

D: People started asking us to license the engine ever since we showed Daxter at E3 for the first time. At the time our priority was to finish Daxter, after all we wouldn’t be comfortable licensing an engine that’s never even shipped a real game. But now that Daxter is out the door, we’ve signed up to become official middleware providers for the PSP and have started licensing the engine to third parties. The response has been awesome so far, especially when the developers realize that the best part about it is not just the rendering engine but the complete content creation pipeline that we provide with it. We’re calling it the “Ready At Dawn Engine”.

QJ: You’ve mentioned in previous interviews you’d be curious to see what Ready At Dawn could do with next generation hardware, have you had a chance to dabble in that at all, and what do you think of the three next generation offerings from Sony, Microsoft  and Nintendo?

D: Not yet, we’ve been pretty busy with our next game (which is also a PSP title). We’re always excited by new hardware though, it means new toys to play with and new ways to implement our ideas. As I mentioned before, we’re not the kind of developer to complain about the features of this platform rather than that one. They all have their quirks and their advantages and that’s what makes working on new platforms fun to us.

QJ: What’s next for RAD, will you be working on an original IP next, or continuing an established franchise? If you can’t tell us what’s next, could you at least give us a hint as to when we might hear more from you?

D: As I mentionned above we’re working on a new PSP game which is using a licensed property. Just like Daxter, it’s a project we pitched to the people who owned the rights to the property as opposed to having a publisher come to us with an idea. Just like Daxter, it’s our very own take on the license and I’d be very surprised if this doesn’t become one of the most anticipated PSP games when it’s announced. We’re going to push the limits once again with this game and I’m very excited about this.