IG: Uncharted and Uncharted 2 are both very cinematic games, and a sign of increasing convergence with Hollywood. Some studios, like Ubisoft with Assassin's Creed for example, are making actual short films to expand the universe and help promote their games. Would you be interested in doing something like that, perhaps make it available for download on PSN?
AH: There's no right or wrong way to do any of this; there are lots of ways to tell stories within franchises. I actually hate it when people get really dogmatic about because I think it's silly. I think what we're finding is that there's maybe more pressure now to expand your IP with ancillary stuff. For instance, we released a motion comic [on PSN] that has a little backstory vignette of Drake, and of course we're working with Arad Productions and Columbia on the movie... But I don't know that we would ever do little standalone live-action shorts or anything like that; we'd probably stay within our medium, and maybe do some episodic stuff with our game engine, just so the look would be more consistent. But in terms of that melding of Hollywood and games, which I think we're even more aware of being here in LA than some other developers would be, where that's affected us has more to do with how we work with our actors and the approach we take with our production processes.
IG: Speaking of the actors, one thing that seems to really make a huge difference in the games you've worked on is voice acting. The Legacy of Kain and Soul Reaver titles had amazing performances. And Uncharted does as well. What's your thought on how far acting in games has come today?
AH: It's definitely improving; I think we keep raising the bar for each other in the industry. One of the things we tried to do back on the Legacy of Kain series, which we carried forward with Uncharted as well is that we always have the actors working together. That's one of those things which unfortunately is much rarer than you would think in our industry. To step back for a second, everything has to start with the writing. You have to take the story seriously and it has to be one of the pillars of your production; it can't be an afterthought. You have to look at it the same way as if you were making a film or TV series... it has to be a character driven story. I think that's why maybe we have a greater demographic appeal than some other games, because we do take it seriously. Despite all of the spectacle and visceral excitement in the game... we're pulling the player through by making them care about the characters underneath. I think that doesn't happen enough in games.
Thinking about it from an actor's perspective, they say acting is reacting, but for most games the way they record dialogue is the actor is all alone in front of a mic, they read it, and they have no idea why it's relevant to the story, who they're talking to, and they're not talking to the other actor. Just taking that one step of having the actors together makes a huge difference because now they can follow a rhythm and react. And for Uncharted, what we're doing is unique because the process is much more like we're working on a TV series. We have the actors working with us over the entire course of the production on a regular basis. We do table reads, we rewrite together, all the actors perform together on the mo-cap stage... so we pick up all of that organic stuff, improvisations, ad-libs that would never occur otherwise.
IG: I was amazed when I read last month that Naughty Dog doesn't have any management or producers. That's pretty unusual. How did that come to be and how does the team stay on track?
AH: Well, we call it organized chaos. This is something that started with Naughty Dog culturally when it was just a handful of people and we've managed to maintain it as the company's grown to its current size, which is closer to 100 people. When I say we have no producers, obviously we do have producers at Sony and I don't want to make it sound like they're not part of the picture, but they're very hands-off; they're there to make sure we have what we need financially, resource-wise, that we're getting advocated back up into the company, all that kind of stuff. In terms of day-to-day management, people are shocked because we don't really have meetings, we don't have schedules per se... we have some spreadsheets where we chart out some macro goals. Everything's just done a little bit ad hoc. What that requires is we all act as managers. We have to be self-managing but we do have leads and directors in the different departments. It's very flat though – not a vertical structure in terms of hierarchy. We expect that any person in the company can kick up a concern or idea to anybody else. These meetings might happen in the hallway spontaneously, and that's where some of the best stuff in the game comes from. What that means is we have to be real smart and only hire experienced people who are self-managing, outspoken and communicative. ... We've made some pretty good games and never slipped a date, so something's going right. It's voodoo I guess. [laughs]
IG: Uncharted 2 is arguably the system-selling title for PS3 this holiday season. Did you feel that pressure from Sony to really show what the PS3 is capable of?
AH: No, although it's possible that Evan [Wells] and Christophe [Balestra] felt pressures that they didn't let trickle down to the rest of us. I think the thing is that I'm not sure anybody knew just how good the game was going to turn out. Sometimes you don't know when you're working on it and it isn't until the eleventh hour and all the pieces come together and you're like “Wow, this is really coming together.” And that would go for us internally and for Sony, so it's hard to hang your hopes on something too far back and say “We're projecting this is going to be our tent-pole for the year.” I think it was more a gradual realization that the stars were going to align – the new hardware and the price cut and the fact that some other titles were slipping into next year and that our game was just coming together so well. It was sort of just serendipity... So it was great timing, and from the initial numbers we've seen it does seem to be turning into a system seller, which is great. We're just blown away – it's surreal for us to see the reaction the game's getting.
IG: We heard from one of our sources who indicated Naughty Dog hasn't necessarily been thrilled with SCEA's marketing efforts for Uncharted 2, that Sony could have done even more to push the title out there. Are you pleased with the marketing?
AH: I think it's really come together. There were some concerns on the previous game I think. To be honest, I think it was a little bit of enigma for people. It's not a very typical game. Even though we're coming from this action-adventure tradition, I think people were looking at the game and wondering, “What's the hook?” We're looking at Drake in a t-shirt and jeans... how do we sell this guy? He's not Kratos and he's not a space marine, so how do you communicate this somewhat ambiguous message that if you buy this game you'll be playing a summer blockbuster? I think it took us a while, both internally and at Sony, to figure out how to get that message across. I feel like we've done a much better job on Uncharted 2. It was a gradual thing to engender enough support and faith that even without that iconic hook that we could communicate this message and people would latch onto it. Thankfully, the response, both critically and in terms of sales, I think has confirmed that. You don't have to have some one-word hook or costumed hero... I think you can market a game like you market a film, and there can be some nuance to it and people will respond. In a way, I don't think it was until we came out of E3 that any of us realized what kind of momentum that game already had. That helped light a fire under all of us.
It's a tough time also, because of the economy nobody in the industry can pour ridiculous amounts into marketing anything right now; we have to be a little conservative. That's what's so nice to see – regardless of that, our game seems to have this great word of mouth, and when you've got that kind of fan support that's even more gratifying than thinking some multi-million dollar ad campaign is selling a bunch of games. That people are evangelizing it to each other is way more flattering.
