• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Postmortem - Insight into Ratchet & Clank 2016's development.

Shaun McCabe & Chad Dezern (game director & creative director) wrote a very interesting article about the development of the recently released Ratchet & Clank game. Here are some quotes.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/272694/Ratchet__Clank_2016_postmortem.php

"We needed to make a big game that blew away our previous efforts. It needed to sync up with the just-getting-started film. And we needed to ship it in 10 months to line up with the movie release."

A compressed schedule, a new platform and our first cross-studio collaboration – any single one of these challenges suggested we were in for challenging production. And yet, Ratchet & Clank PS4 turned out to be among the smoothest productions in Insomniac history. Eerily smooth. We still expect to wake up and discover that it was all a dream…

The compressed schedule limited the number of new features we could add to our engine. So instead of the usual laundry list of engine requests we compile at the start of a project, Ratchet & Clank PS4 had only a couple: “PS4 support” and, well, “fur rendering” (cuz Ratchet). And while this meant a number of “wants” had to wait for the future, it also meant avoiding the sort of large-scale changes that end up slowing down production.

We knew that Ratchet & Clank would be the first console game for many kids. If all goes well, we thought, it’ll be a formative memory—the beginning of a lifetime of healthy game playing habits.

We took this responsibility seriously. SCEA’s well-appointed usability test lab and its excellent staff were a godsend; we tested the game early and often with 7-9 year olds, even during pre-production. Our first test used greybox geometry to make sure that we were on the right track with the new Clank gameplay. We were encouraged to see that kids could articulate solutions to the puzzles, even if they didn’t understand all of the component pieces. We didn’t need to make the puzzles any easier, we just needed to clean up some of our messaging.

Later tests revealed that very young players tended to ignore the right analog stick; they didn’t quite grasp the benefit of moving the camera, and weren’t quite coordinated enough to move two sticks at once. So we designed levels with as few sharp turns as possible. And we created a casual control mode that allowed for movement with the d-pad. This broadened our potential audience, with no negative consequences for the other difficulty modes.

We like to start projects with a small preproduction team, grow for production and then roll people off as we hit Alpha, Beta and then Gold. The extra time on Ratchet & Clank PS4, however, really threw a wrench into the gears (knew we’d do that at least once, right?).

In order to make it work, we rolled the majority of people off at our original Gold (which became Alpha) and finished the game with a small polish team.

This is awesome because at a certain point, you can just get more done with fewer people (our project manager would certainly agree). But it also meant that we had to take the work of an entire, full-scope Ratchet & Clank game and spread it among just a handful of people. We had only two programmers responsible and for the last few months, only one designer.

Our tiny postproduction team were champions. They took on a monster of a challenge and delivered as polished a Ratchet & Clank experience as we’ve ever done. In the future, however, we’d like to stick to a gradual rolloff that scales the team size with the work remaining.

A lot more at the link.

Edit: Wanted to add this in too

WHERE DOES THE RATCHET & CLANK SERIES GO FROM HERE?
At this moment, we have no idea. We’re walking around with VR headsets strapped to our faces.

But we’re delighted by the reaction to the game, amazed and humbled that there’s still an appetite for Lombax and robot adventures after three console generations. For all of our initial hand wringing, we’re proud of it. The lessons we learned during development helped us improve our cross-studio coordination, plan our cinematics with more detail, and move through production cycles more gracefully.

So who knows?

What we do know is that Ratchet & Clank games are incredibly fun to make. There is intense passion at Insomniac for the universe and its characters. There are stories to tell, weapons to design, creatures to sculpt, planets to explore. And most significantly, there is a team of talented people here who have come through time and again to deliver games that are full of life and ambition. Above all, that’s why the series endures.
 
My friend's 7 yr old daughter tried to play this game at my house. She liked it but could not wrap her head around camera control with the right stick. I feel like they should take the Nintendo approach and automate that for any future titles.
 

NOLA_Gaffer

Banned
"We needed to make a big game that blew away our previous efforts. It needed to sync up with the just-getting-started film. And we needed to ship it in 10 months to line up with the movie release."

The movie was completed in roughly 10 months? Well that's extremely telling.
 

Guymelef

Member
My friend's 7 yr old daughter tried to play this game at my house. She liked it but could not wrap her head around camera control with the right stick. I feel like they should take the Nintendo approach and automate that for any future titles.

No.
 
Not surprised to hear they spent a lot of time testing the game out with younger kids. I could not believe how quickly my 9-year old took to this 3D shooting/platforming franchise I have been playing since well before she was born. She's never played a game like this before but she's close to beating it.

And I love it too! That's the amazing thing. It is such a great game.
 

5taquitos

Member
My friend's 7 yr old daughter tried to play this game at my house. She liked it but could not wrap her head around camera control with the right stick. I feel like they should take the Nintendo approach and automate that for any future titles.

Oh god no, Ratchet without camera control would be terrible
 

Pancake Mix

Copied someone else's pancake recipe
My friend's 7 yr old daughter tried to play this game at my house. She liked it but could not wrap her head around camera control with the right stick. I feel like they should take the Nintendo approach and automate that for any future titles.

Please no, please please no, she'll understand in probably a year or two, so ruining the controls for everyone else would suck. It's also weird to call that the Nintendo approach when most of their 3D action titles don't seem to do that. I'm speaking outside of 3DS where it was a necessity without the Circle Pad Pro or N3DS c-stick, so games on that platform weren't built around the second stick, generally.

Ratchet without camera control would ruin the game for everyone else.
 
Yeah game is great and pretty polished but definitely on the short side. It really doesn't feel that way because of NG+ with the upgraded weapons.

I'm ready for a more varied, fleshed out Ratchet game, I never played a crack in time so I hope they use that as the inspiration for the next one.
 

Zukkoyaki

Member
So if I'm understanding this article correctly, the full game was made in maybe 12-14 months?
That's my takeaway as well. I know a good chunk of it had already been laid out since it's a reimaging of the original but that is still absolutely remarkable given its quality and polish.
 

Espada

Member
Damn, this is really encouraging for the possibility of future entries. It seems like they had a really smooth going with this one, even if by the end they had a really small crew working on it (damn 2 programmers and a designer? Wow). Insomniac is doing a good job of being awesome.

Nirolak said:
So if I'm understanding this article correctly, the full game was made in maybe 12-14 months?
That's what it sounds like, which makes the remake that much more impressive. Games at that level of quality usually take 18+ months.
 

Henkka

Banned
My friend's 7 yr old daughter tried to play this game at my house. She liked it but could not wrap her head around camera control with the right stick. I feel like they should take the Nintendo approach and automate that for any future titles.

Or maybe your friend's daughter just needs to git gud
 

msdstc

Incredibly Naive
A game geared towards "healthy gaming habits" for kids that glorifies the hell out of guns lol. Kind of a strange combination.
 
A short, painless development cycle that yielded positive results, both commercially and critically. Insomniac must've scored some major brownie points with Sony due to this game.
 
Oh god no, Ratchet without camera control would be terrible

Please no, please please no, she'll understand in probably a year or two, so ruining the controls for everyone else would suck. It's also weird to call that the Nintendo approach when most of their 3D action titles don't seem to do that. I'm speaking outside of 3DS where it was a necessity without the Circle Pad Pro or N3DS c-stick, so games on that platform weren't built around the second stick, generally.

Ratchet without camera control would ruin the game for everyone else.


lol well maybe as an option then. The game can get pretty crazy with you having to dodge stuff from all around you. I don't know many kids who could beat this game.
 
The lack of content and generally safe design choices makes more sense given their short development schedule. I can't fault them too much for that but I hope this game's success will let Insomniac take the franchise to new highs.
 

Bebpo

Banned
So if I'm understanding this article correctly, the full game was made in maybe 12-14 months?

Yeah, that's crazy impressive in today's AAA 3-5 year dev cycle.

Otoh, it helps the game did nothing new for the franchise so they knew what they were doing and could just make it smoothly.
 

Alienous

Member
Playing Sunset Overdrive it really came across that Insomniac are a smooth game-making machine. They just make incredibly solid experiences. They've honed their skill as a studio to that point.

The projects they juggle while still being able to produce quality games is nothing less than impressive.
 
Aren't R&C development cycles usually about this short? Doesn't sound too off from the norm. Tools of Destruction had the longest development cycle I believe.

Edit: I mean time in full production, rather than including pre-production.
 

Brazil

Living in the shadow of Amaz
That was a fun read. Thanks for the link, OP!

I really hope the next Ratchet & Clank includes stuff from A Crack in Time, like the space battles and Clank time puzzles.
 
My friend's 7 yr old daughter tried to play this game at my house. She liked it but could not wrap her head around camera control with the right stick. I feel like they should take the Nintendo approach and automate that for any future titles.
You didn't just scoff at her and tell her to 'Git Gud'?
 

Tuck

Member
So if I'm understanding this article correctly, the full game was made in maybe 12-14 months?

With a reduced number of staff?

Thats crazy impressive if true.

My friend's 7 yr old daughter tried to play this game at my house. She liked it but could not wrap her head around camera control with the right stick. I feel like they should take the Nintendo approach and automate that for any future titles.

Get out.
 

Sir TapTap

Member
My friend's 7 yr old daughter tried to play this game at my house. She liked it but could not wrap her head around camera control with the right stick. I feel like they should take the Nintendo approach and automate that for any future titles.

Perhaps I'm thinking of another game, but doesn't the game let you set how significantly the camera is pulled along in the direction of your character? Uncharted does it for sure. Just set it all the way up and you're always facing the same direction as the camera (annoying as that is).

Uncharted even turns it on by default in the lowest difficulty, I though Ratchet did something similar.
 
I wonder if the 10 months includes pre production. If pre-production is separate, R&C 16 would have been in development for 13 months, plus the extra 10 or so months of a small team polishing it.
 

LordofPwn

Member
man i'd love to see how much this game has made. a fantastic entry, and well deserved praise for the people over at insomniac.

10 month cycle sounds about right for a ratchet title. From 2002 to 2005 the released 4 games on the PS2.
 
How did this sell? Do we know?
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1218318&highlight=npd+april

“Ratchet & Clank had the best launch of any game in the Ratchet & Clank franchise when adjusting for the number of days sold in the data month, with sales recapturing success not seen for the franchise since the height of the PlayStation 2 era,” said Callahan.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1214285&highlight=pal+ratchet+clank

"Ratchet Reborn

25/Apr/2016

Sony and Insomniac make a triumphant return with a first outing on PS4 for ‘Ratchet & Clank’, the first in the series to debut at No1.

The game debuts just a few days before the movie (UK release date is 29th April). The game series began back in week 45, 2002 on PS2 with ‘Ratchet and Clank’ having held the previous best week 1 for All Formats chart postion (No15). In terms of week 1 sales units the record was held by 2009’s PS3 ‘Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time’, but the current release beats this by a factor of 3."

Jstevenson (Insomniac Dev) also says the digital ratio is really good.
 

hawk2025

Member
Playing Sunset Overdrive it really came across that Insomniac are a smooth game-making machine. They just make incredibly solid experiences. They've honed their skill as a studio to that point.

The projects they juggle while still being able to produce quality games is nothing less than impressive.

Huh, I felt like Sunset Overdrive showed them flailing precisely on that: It had features that had no business being in the game and that surely inflated the budget.

1) The "real time", updated videos on the screens added nothing to the game
2) The multiplayer was messy and didn't highlight the good things of the gameplay
3) Connected to the multiplayer design, the tower defense-style Chaos sections weren't very fun


I think the small areas where SO failed (to be clear, the game is by **no** means a failure, it's great) are exactly where they faltered from their focus on having streamlined games.
 
I wonder if the 10 months includes pre production. If pre-production is separate, R&C 16 would have been in development for 13 months, plus the extra 10 or so months of a small team polishing it.

For comparison, Crack in Time had about 3-4 months of pre production, and about 12 of full production, according to this.
 

Vinc

Member
This was such a good read. Really interesting how they didn't start using software like perfoce until PS3 development.
 

RK128

Member
So this game was made in a year/about an year? Considering how fast they pumped out the PS2 games and reports of one year development cycles and development starting right as a game when gold, hearing that the PS4 game had a smooth and short development cycle isn't much of a surprise.

Insomniac Games are master game makers with years of experience, so them having a smooth and natural time making the PS4 Ratchet isn't a surprised but I somewhat expected that being the case.

The game being such a success for the studio should hopefully help get more Sony-funded projects started and hopefully more Ratchet games coming out in the future. Hearing that the game was playtested for children and they had little issue with the camera (never touching the right stick) was interesting and something I never considered.

But due to the game being aimed at young kids (more so compared to other titles in the series), that is interesting to hear.

Happy this was a success and great hearing the insight and background to this games development.
 

Gitaroo

Member
Next should be ratchet ps3 HD remaster honestly, skip those all 4 one spin offs. Ps2 game didnt age really well graphically and those ps3 games are technically sequals to the reboot. They can do true sequal after.
 
I think the original R&C games are some of the better aging PS2 games as far as the visuals go.

I do hope they at least get the rest of the games on PS Now.
 
fun read about the development process. Not surpirsed by how smooth the whole production went, they used to crack these bad boys out like once a year, and the years they didnt was only because they had another big game to release like the Resistance trilogy.

NH6uRWA.png


I always said R&C was my favorite new franchise of the '00-09 decade. Its nice to have a big, quality game again for current-gen consoles, and its great that its been so well-received.
 

Nesther

Member
Had so much fun with the game, amazing it only took that long!

I just remembered I have an unopened copy of a Crack in Time, how hard will it be going baxk from RnC2016?
 
My friend's 7 yr old daughter tried to play this game at my house. She liked it but could not wrap her head around camera control with the right stick. I feel like they should take the Nintendo approach and automate that for any future titles.

Is this what it feels like to be out of touch to the kids of today? Asking since I played the original three R&C games when I was 7-9 without issue.
 

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
Budget around this must have been ridiculously tight. Incoming check from Sony for a sequel incoming.
 
Top Bottom