Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer over
Speaker 1: at How Stuff Works, and I love things that are
Speaker 1: technologically oriented. I'm the technology guy. Fun story. The reason
Speaker 1: I'm the tech guy is because many years ago at
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works, we had decided that all the writers
Speaker 1: were going to specialize in different fields, and we're all
Speaker 1: liberal arts graduates, and it turned out I was the
Speaker 1: one guy who wasn't afraid of technology. That's how I
Speaker 1: landed this gig. Actually, I argue that I had the
Speaker 1: best gig out of everybody, because technology either works or
Speaker 1: it doesn't. Everything else is a lot more fuzzy. Today,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about a topic that gets a little
Speaker 1: fuzzy at times. Uh, We're gonna talk about a video
Speaker 1: game company. Now. A few years ago, this particular video
Speaker 1: game studio got started by two teenage boys, and just
Speaker 1: a just a couple of years ago, it hit its
Speaker 1: thirtieth anniversary. If you had picked up the first couple
Speaker 1: of games that that studio produce, you probably would not
Speaker 1: have predicted that the company would go on to create
Speaker 1: some of the most popular games for Sony's PlayStation consoles,
Speaker 1: which makes sense because at that time PlayStation didn't even exist,
Speaker 1: So how could you predict this? But the studio was
Speaker 1: Naughty Dog, and this is its story, and the story
Speaker 1: is so big, so epic, and I'm not making that
Speaker 1: up that this is going to be a two parter.
Speaker 1: So in this first part we're going to focus on
Speaker 1: the formation of Naughty Dog and how it grew into
Speaker 1: a big studio. Now that those two teenage founders were
Speaker 1: actually not even teenagers when they first met one another.
Speaker 1: Their names are Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin. They met
Speaker 1: when they were twelve years old. They were attending Hebrew
Speaker 1: school and preparing for their individual bar mitzvahs. Now, Ruby
Speaker 1: and Gavin shared a common passion which was video games.
Speaker 1: Actually it was a little broader than that. It was
Speaker 1: computers and video games. Both of them had a fascination
Speaker 1: with them and had each worked independently to learn how
Speaker 1: to program computers and build their own video games. Now
Speaker 1: they each had Apple two computers, and they had been
Speaker 1: building these little programs using those computers. Gavin had actually
Speaker 1: gone to the trouble of learning assembly language programming. Rubin
Speaker 1: largely programmed in Apple Basic, and they, along with a
Speaker 1: couple of other classmates at Hebrew School, would have these
Speaker 1: little quick conversations about games and programming, and they focused
Speaker 1: on that a little bit more than they were their
Speaker 1: actual studies in preparation for their apartments, because they found
Speaker 1: it really fascinating and fun and they were passionate about it,
Speaker 1: and Gavin and Rubin soon discovered that their individual skills
Speaker 1: would complement the others, where one person might not be
Speaker 1: as strong the one was, and so they ended up
Speaker 1: realizing that they could form together to create a sort
Speaker 1: of computer vultron Andy Gavin was the better programmer of
Speaker 1: the two, and his games would typically run pretty well
Speaker 1: with very few bugs or glitches, but he was not
Speaker 1: a very strong artist. He had not developed artistic skills,
Speaker 1: and so his games often didn't look like much. Jason Rubin,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, was a very gifted artist, but
Speaker 1: his code wasn't the tightest and his games would often
Speaker 1: crash or run slowly. So the two decided that it
Speaker 1: made the most sense to work together and have Reuben
Speaker 1: concentrate on graphic design and Gavin would focus on game
Speaker 1: engine and mechanic design. Now, this was in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. Now that was a time when it was
Speaker 1: possible for maybe one or two people to make a
Speaker 1: full game from start to finish. So games like the
Speaker 1: early Ultimate Titles were proof of this. That was the
Speaker 1: work of Richard Garriott, primarily in the first few games.
Speaker 1: It took some imagination and skill to create a compelling game,
Speaker 1: but the relatively low bar for technical requirements meant that
Speaker 1: things were not yet so complicated that it would require
Speaker 1: specialized talent to pull it off. The machines that were
Speaker 1: running these games were fairly primitive, especially by today's standards.
Speaker 1: They they're more primitive than the most basic version of
Speaker 1: a smartphone out there. So being that simple, comparatively speaking,
Speaker 1: was a benefit for anyone who wanted to make content.
Speaker 1: You had restrictions you had to work within, and you
Speaker 1: couldn't try and tackle a game that was too complicated
Speaker 1: because there literally weren't any machines that could run those games,
Speaker 1: so you could be a generalist and find success. This
Speaker 1: was an era before the World Wide Web. The Internet
Speaker 1: itself did technically exist, but it was very young and
Speaker 1: limited to eggheads and research facilities and universities. Jason Reuben
Speaker 1: and Andy Gavin didn't even have the benefit of a
Speaker 1: large library of computer programming books to pull from, because
Speaker 1: it was still a pretty young yield. There were books
Speaker 1: on programming, but they were few and far between and
Speaker 1: they weren't necessarily easy to find, so they did their best.
Speaker 1: They worked together. They read a magazine called Bite Magazine
Speaker 1: that had a lot of programming tips inside of it,
Speaker 1: and they would occasionally consult with other people on computer
Speaker 1: forums that were on bulletin board systems and things like
Speaker 1: that in order to get a little more information. Uh
Speaker 1: Reuben would refer to them as Gandolf's. There would be
Speaker 1: someone who would have at least a little more information
Speaker 1: than you did, and they were happy to share it.
Speaker 1: And they learned largely through this process and through teaching themselves.
Speaker 1: Their first real collaboration was a faithful port of an
Speaker 1: existing game. That game was Nintendo's Punch Out. It took
Speaker 1: them somewhere between a year and a year and a
Speaker 1: half to make this game. They did a really good
Speaker 1: job of copying the game. They painstakingly studied every single
Speaker 1: frame of animation so that they could recreate it in
Speaker 1: their own version, but then reality popped in to give
Speaker 1: the two boys their first lesson. Jason's father was a
Speaker 1: lawyer who specialized in intellectual property law, and he told
Speaker 1: the boys that copying someone else's game might be a
Speaker 1: good way to practice programming, but you couldn't actually legally
Speaker 1: sell it because you'd be infringing on copyright. Now, initially
Speaker 1: that did not actually stop them from working on the game,
Speaker 1: but then fate stepped in and forced them to change
Speaker 1: because while making a backup copy of a working, almost
Speaker 1: perfect part of the game, they accidentally erased it. They
Speaker 1: erased the whole game. See, in those days, we would
Speaker 1: store these games on floppy disks, external floppy disks. You'd
Speaker 1: put one in the disk drive. You would save your
Speaker 1: work to the floppy disk and it would exist there.
Speaker 1: And apparently what happened was they accidentally copied a blank
Speaker 1: disc over top of their master disc holding the code
Speaker 1: for the game, and they erased it. It overwrote the data.
Speaker 1: If you listen to my episode about the process of deleting,
Speaker 1: you know, one to overwrite data on a on a
Speaker 1: piece of media, it's gone. And that's what happened. They
Speaker 1: got rid of the source code for their game. And
Speaker 1: erased all of that work that had taken more than
Speaker 1: a year to put together, and so the teenagers went
Speaker 1: back to the drawing board. Their goal was to create
Speaker 1: a game that they could potentially sell to someone. So
Speaker 1: they worked on another game for the Apple two, and
Speaker 1: they had our working game ready to go in night five.
Speaker 1: It was an educational title and it was called math Jam,
Speaker 1: and they had also come up with a name for
Speaker 1: their company they incorporated in four. Actually that name was
Speaker 1: JAM Software. Jam was an acronym that stood for Jason
Speaker 1: and Andy's Magic. They self published this game, math Jam.
Speaker 1: That meant at the time that you would create a game,
Speaker 1: you would put it on a floppy disc, you would
Speaker 1: make copies onto other floppy disks, you'd throw those copies
Speaker 1: into ziplock bags, put a cop a photo copy sheet
Speaker 1: of instructions in the bag with the game, and then
Speaker 1: you would try and sell it to various customers. Typically
Speaker 1: it was a computer store, but sometimes it was something else.
Speaker 1: And because it was educational, they were hoping to see
Speaker 1: if they could get the game accepted into school curricula
Speaker 1: and sell it to school systems. They figured that was
Speaker 1: a big market, that it was a pretty sure thing.
Speaker 1: But while they did not count on is that schools
Speaker 1: have typically a pretty bureaucratic organization with layers of approval
Speaker 1: that were necessary for any game to be accepted into
Speaker 1: the school system. And rather than try and navigate that,
Speaker 1: the two boys decided that they would cut their losses
Speaker 1: and walk away from math Jam and create something else.
Speaker 1: They wanted to regroup and create a different title. Now
Speaker 1: this time, they wanted to create an original title, something
Speaker 1: that wasn't a copy of an existing game, and they
Speaker 1: wanted to just be a game first and foremost not
Speaker 1: necessarily an educational title, because it would mean that they
Speaker 1: would work on something that they both loved and there
Speaker 1: wouldn't be any bureaucratic roadblocks in the way. There's no
Speaker 1: approval process, or at least there wasn't at the time
Speaker 1: to get a game that you created out to market
Speaker 1: if it was just for a general audience. Now, Ruben
Speaker 1: had an earlier project he had been working on that
Speaker 1: he was inspired to create after his family went on
Speaker 1: a ski trip, and the original title for this project
Speaker 1: was Ski stud It featured the enlightened plot of a
Speaker 1: skier who's going down a mountain slope and your job
Speaker 1: is to get to the bottom and then relax in
Speaker 1: a hot tub with a couple of really attractive women.
Speaker 1: That was the concept behind the game, so you know,
Speaker 1: teenage fantasy stuff. Gavin suggested that they revisit Ruben's game
Speaker 1: idea and punch it up. So Gavin took Reuben's original game,
Speaker 1: which had been programmed in Basic, and he said, this
Speaker 1: is too slow. The game is not very fun to
Speaker 1: play because everything's moving at a crawling speed because you've
Speaker 1: you've programmed it in Basic. So he took the idea
Speaker 1: and he reprogrammed it in Assembly language, which had the
Speaker 1: benefit of speeding everything up and making the game feel
Speaker 1: more like you know, a game now. Reuben had used
Speaker 1: a few tools to create the art for this game.
Speaker 1: One of them was a tool setiment for a totally
Speaker 1: different type of game. It was called Pinball Construction Set
Speaker 1: and it was published by Electronic Arts. Ruben used a
Speaker 1: tablet device to input changes to art, so it was
Speaker 1: directly connected to his computer and he would try and
Speaker 1: draw things on this tablet. It was not as precise
Speaker 1: as he would like. There was like a three pixel
Speaker 1: in precision there, so if you're trying to do some
Speaker 1: fine detail it was very easy for a pixel next
Speaker 1: to the one you wanted to create to pop up,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of racing and trying again, and
Speaker 1: racing and trying against very slow process. Also, to make
Speaker 1: it more challenging, there was no native solution to exporting
Speaker 1: the art to incorporate it into their game because it
Speaker 1: wasn't meant to be used to create art for other games.
Speaker 1: So in order for him to get his art off
Speaker 1: this tool set and to import it into the game,
Speaker 1: he would actually have to do a hard reset on
Speaker 1: his Apple two computer. So in other words, he had
Speaker 1: to turn his computer off, turn it back on, and
Speaker 1: then the art he had created would be stored in
Speaker 1: the cash memory of the computer, so before he could
Speaker 1: do anything else, he would pull that data off of
Speaker 1: his machine. Which is a pretty janggie way of creating
Speaker 1: graphics for your computer game, but it was really one
Speaker 1: of the few options that they had. The other tool
Speaker 1: they were using came from a Michigan based company called
Speaker 1: Baudeville b a U d V I l l E.
Speaker 1: That company had a policy which was if you wanted
Speaker 1: to use their their tools to create a game, you could,
Speaker 1: but in order to publish that game. You had to
Speaker 1: get permission from Baudeville, and you had to pay a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollar licensing fee, essentially, So the two
Speaker 1: submitted the game their Ski Game to bod Bill, and
Speaker 1: Bobyville's response was, hey, nice game. Tell you what, We
Speaker 1: can publish this game for you, So we'll take over
Speaker 1: the publishing, which the boys thoughts sound like a great idea.
Speaker 1: All the hard work of copying the game onto disks
Speaker 1: and getting that distributed to different stores would be on
Speaker 1: the publisher side and not on their shoulders. In return,
Speaker 1: Bodeville offered jam Software the princely sum of two hundred
Speaker 1: fifty dollars for the game, plus a two dollar royalty
Speaker 1: for every copy sold, and they jumped at this opportunity.
Speaker 1: They were over the moon when the game came out
Speaker 1: because it was in a box and everything. It was
Speaker 1: like a real game. And these are two teenagers. Remember
Speaker 1: they're like fourteen fifteen years old at this point. There
Speaker 1: are no zip block bags. It was actually a legit product.
Speaker 1: The game sold around one thousand, five hundred copies, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, laughable these days, you would call that a
Speaker 1: colossal failure in to day's days, day's numbers rather, but
Speaker 1: Gavin Rubin felt like they had the jackpot. They got
Speaker 1: two dollars out of every copy sold in fifteen copies
Speaker 1: meant three grand is fifteen hundred dollars apiece. When you're
Speaker 1: fourteen or fifteen years old. Fifteen hundred dollars is a
Speaker 1: heck of a lot of money. So they were able
Speaker 1: to actually take that money and reinvested into their company.
Speaker 1: They bought new computers when they needed them. Uh, and
Speaker 1: they felt like they were rolling in it. They were like,
Speaker 1: this is this is real success. What's more, Bodeville was
Speaker 1: open to publishing more of their games so they could
Speaker 1: create another one for the same company. Their next title
Speaker 1: was one called dream Zone. This one would release in
Speaker 1: n seven, and this was the only other game that
Speaker 1: the two made under the company name JAM Software. It
Speaker 1: was the last one, and this was an adventure game
Speaker 1: in which the player would control a character who has
Speaker 1: been trapped within his own dream. The title got some
Speaker 1: critical praise from early computer gaming magazines and propelled the
Speaker 1: sales to ten thousand units, which meant the two game
Speaker 1: developers made about fifteen thousand dollars from their work, not
Speaker 1: bad at all when you're a teenager. But they weren't
Speaker 1: satisfied with stopping there. They were just getting started and
Speaker 1: they had a big idea that probably should not have worked,
Speaker 1: but it totally worked. They made a cold call to
Speaker 1: the front desk of Electronic Arts. Now that means they
Speaker 1: didn't know anyone at e A. They just called the
Speaker 1: reception desk and they said, hey, we would like to
Speaker 1: make games for you, and so e A, for their part, said,
Speaker 1: tell you what, fed access a couple of your games.
Speaker 1: Let us see what you've made so far, and we'll
Speaker 1: get back to you. So they did. They sent copies
Speaker 1: of their games to the offices of EA, and then
Speaker 1: they received a call a little bit later that said,
Speaker 1: we want you to make games for us. We're ready
Speaker 1: to sell to to get a contract between us and you.
Speaker 1: You can make games for us for real money. They
Speaker 1: were offering a deal that was fifteen thousand dollars plus
Speaker 1: ten percent of the revenue of the next game they
Speaker 1: would make, which the two thought wasn't amazingly awesome. My
Speaker 1: idea was fantastic. They were gonna guaranteed fifteen grand the
Speaker 1: amount they had made on their previous game, plus ten
Speaker 1: percent royalty fees and That's how they hit the big time.
Speaker 1: But e A did have one condition. The company had
Speaker 1: to change its name because, as it turns out, there
Speaker 1: was already another company called Jam Software, so they had
Speaker 1: to come up with something different, and they began to brainstorm.
Speaker 1: Now sadly, the origins of the name Naughty Dog are
Speaker 1: lost to time, because neither Reuben nor Gavin can remember
Speaker 1: who came up with the name or why. They do
Speaker 1: remember that they had essentially twenty four hours to create
Speaker 1: a new name for their company because e A wanted
Speaker 1: that contract signed right away. I wish I could say
Speaker 1: there was a cool story about a dog eating a
Speaker 1: floppy disc containing the next game, but we'll just have
Speaker 1: to accept that at some point during those twenty four
Speaker 1: hours one of the two of them wrote down Naughty
Speaker 1: Dog as a possibility, and they decided in the end
Speaker 1: to go with it, and thus Naughty Dog was officially born.
Speaker 1: The first game they made for e A was called
Speaker 1: Keith the Thief. There's a role playing game that came
Speaker 1: out for the Apple to gs, the Amiga, and the
Speaker 1: PC systems. The Apple version in particular got a really
Speaker 1: nasty review. In fact, it got a do not recommend
Speaker 1: buying review not because of the game itself, but because
Speaker 1: e A had put on some copy protection on top
Speaker 1: of the game that the reviewers felt essentially broke the
Speaker 1: experience of trying to play it. Anyone who has dealt
Speaker 1: with draconian copy protection strategies knows what this is like,
Speaker 1: where the protection for the game actually impedes your ability
Speaker 1: to play the game and can sometimes encourage people to
Speaker 1: seek out pirate id and broken copies of the game,
Speaker 1: things where people have broken the encryption around the game
Speaker 1: just so that you can play the game you want
Speaker 1: to play. It's one of the reasons why pirates will
Speaker 1: point to game studios and say they brought this on themselves.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's necessarily a fair statement. However, I
Speaker 1: don't blame people for going out and seeking a version
Speaker 1: of a game that is actually playable. If I bought
Speaker 1: one of these games and I found that the copy
Speaker 1: protection was making it impossible to play, I imagine I
Speaker 1: too would look for a different solution, one that perhaps
Speaker 1: had already had the copy protection broken. So I totally
Speaker 1: get it. And anyway, they encountered this and that really
Speaker 1: kind of hurt their sales figures. They didn't do too
Speaker 1: well with Keith the Thief. However, that was just the
Speaker 1: first game for e A and largely was kind of
Speaker 1: swept under the rug. Their next one was A Friend Story.
Speaker 1: Their second game was the most ambitious of theirs to date,
Speaker 1: and it was also their entry into the world of consoles.
Speaker 1: So by now we're getting up to nineteen. The two
Speaker 1: friends were going off to college, and it was two
Speaker 1: different colleges in two different states. Jason Rubin would attend
Speaker 1: the University of Michigan. Andy Gavin got accepted into the
Speaker 1: Haverford College in Pennsylvania. They collaborated over the phone and
Speaker 1: they used dial up modems to send information back and forth,
Speaker 1: but it was a very slow process and to make
Speaker 1: matters more challenging, they had picked an ambitious project as
Speaker 1: their next pitch to e A. Originally was going to
Speaker 1: be a computer game, a PC game, and it was
Speaker 1: going to be a complex role playing game called Rings
Speaker 1: of Power. But they had a meeting over at Electronic
Speaker 1: Arts and when they were at this meeting, Andy Gavin
Speaker 1: looks over and he sees something interesting. He sees this
Speaker 1: weird shiny box with a whole bunch of wires coming
Speaker 1: out of it and it was seeming to run a
Speaker 1: game from a console system, and he asked the people
Speaker 1: that e A said, is that A reverse engineered Sega Genesis. Immediately,
Speaker 1: according to Andy Gavins, some e A officials swept them
Speaker 1: into an office and said, yeah, we're gonna need you
Speaker 1: to sign an inn d A, a non disclosure agreement
Speaker 1: so that you don't tell people that you saw this here,
Speaker 1: because this is not something that we're ready to talk
Speaker 1: about yet. So then Gavin says, does this mean we
Speaker 1: should start developing games for the Sega Genesis? And the
Speaker 1: guys that e A said, that would be an excellent idea.
Speaker 1: The second best idea you could have right now. The
Speaker 1: best idea you could have right now is to sign
Speaker 1: the in d A. So they did and only talked
Speaker 1: about it years and years later when no one really cares.
Speaker 1: But they decided, well, maybe we should develop Rings of
Speaker 1: Power for the Genesis, not for the PC, and they
Speaker 1: decided to switch gears. It took some time to at
Speaker 1: the game together since they were living in different states
Speaker 1: and also had schoolwork to attend to, although Andy Gavin
Speaker 1: said he was spending maybe two or three hours a
Speaker 1: day on his schoolwork and the rest of the time
Speaker 1: he was working on developing games. But in the end
Speaker 1: they produced a game that was one of the most
Speaker 1: robust console based RPGs of its time, and it was
Speaker 1: largely Andy Gavin's project. It was an idea he was
Speaker 1: really excited about, and Jason Rubin did a lot of
Speaker 1: work on it. It's not like he didn't contribute, but
Speaker 1: it was kind of Andy Gavin's pet project, the one
Speaker 1: he really wanted to do. It went gold in and
Speaker 1: it did really well. It sold like a hundred thousand copies.
Speaker 1: That's not anything to sneeze at, and it had the
Speaker 1: potential to sell a whole lot more. It was getting
Speaker 1: great reviews, and then the two hit a problem that
Speaker 1: almost made them walk away from developing games entirely. What happened, well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you, but first let's take quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. All Right, So why would Ruben and
Speaker 1: Gavin leave game development if they were doing such a
Speaker 1: great job with Rings of Power? What would make them
Speaker 1: walk away? The issue came down to a lack of
Speaker 1: control with politics and economics. Sega Genesis games were on cartridges,
Speaker 1: so making a cartridge is a hardware manufacturing process. The
Speaker 1: games are hard coded onto the cartridge itself, so if
Speaker 1: you contrast that with games on floppy disks or c
Speaker 1: d s, those are just blank media. You can write
Speaker 1: to them directly. It doesn't take any special equipment. You're
Speaker 1: not creating a circuit board, but a cartridge. Essentially that
Speaker 1: is a circuit board. Then the circuit board, the physical
Speaker 1: circuit board itself, represents the game. So every cartridge is
Speaker 1: unique to the specific game. You can't override a cartridge
Speaker 1: and put a different game on it. So it takes
Speaker 1: time and resources to put together cartridges, and that limits
Speaker 1: how many you can make. It's all based on your
Speaker 1: capacity of your manufacturing facility. You're physically limited by that fact. Now,
Speaker 1: if Rings of Power had been the only major game
Speaker 1: coming out that season, Sega probably could have put more
Speaker 1: manufacturing power behind it and turned it into a colossal hit.
Speaker 1: But there was another game that was coming out at
Speaker 1: that same time and it was an even bigger sensation.
Speaker 1: That game was Madden. It was an American football game. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's part of an incredibly popular franchise that has gone
Speaker 1: across multiple platforms and spanned decades. So there's an incredible
Speaker 1: call for Madden Games. There's a guaranteed audience that's going
Speaker 1: to buy Madden year over year, so that game was
Speaker 1: pretty much guaranteed to sell out. The company had to
Speaker 1: make a choice. Do you go with the game that's
Speaker 1: essentially guaranteed to sell out, or do you try and
Speaker 1: push a game that's doing well but doesn't have a
Speaker 1: built in audience, And they went with the easy money decision.
Speaker 1: As any company would, they went with Madden. Ruben and
Speaker 1: Gavin were discouraged by this decision because they had worked
Speaker 1: really hard to create what they thought was an extremely
Speaker 1: good role playing game, and they felt that only a
Speaker 1: fraction of their potential audience was ever going to get
Speaker 1: a chance to play it because they literally wouldn't have
Speaker 1: enough copies of it made to meet the demand. So
Speaker 1: they were ready to focus on their schoolwork and call
Speaker 1: it quits. They had already achieved a great deal of
Speaker 1: success in the gaming world, so they felt like it
Speaker 1: wasn't a shame to walk away from it. So any
Speaker 1: Gavin went and enrolled in graduate school at m i T.
Speaker 1: He was studying computer science and artificial intelligence. Jason Rubin
Speaker 1: moved out to California and he had a goal of
Speaker 1: getting into the special effects industry while picking up a
Speaker 1: new skill set that would be surfing, and they figured
Speaker 1: they had retired from making games and that retirement would
Speaker 1: last about half a year. In nine they got a
Speaker 1: phone call from a guy named William Murray Hawkins, the
Speaker 1: third better known as Trip Hawkins. Now, Ruby and Gavin
Speaker 1: have described Trip as a phenomenal salesman who has sort
Speaker 1: of the reality distortion field, similar to what people would
Speaker 1: say Steve Jobs was capable of doing. Tripp had founded
Speaker 1: Electronic Arts way back in nine two, but he had
Speaker 1: left e A in n to create a new video
Speaker 1: game console company, and that console company was called three
Speaker 1: d O. The console itself was coming out in nine
Speaker 1: and it was at that time the most powerful console
Speaker 1: on the market. But Hawkins needed developers to create games
Speaker 1: for this new platform, and he felt that Naughty Dog
Speaker 1: was the right studio to create a killer game. Now,
Speaker 1: despite feeling like they had been burned on their previous title,
Speaker 1: the two agreed that they would develop a game for
Speaker 1: the three d Oh system. And one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that they decided this, you know, they had just been
Speaker 1: burned by e A, so they didn't really want to
Speaker 1: do it. But what changed their mind was that Hawkins said, Hey,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. We're not using cartridges. You're not going
Speaker 1: to have a rings of power situation here. We're using
Speaker 1: compact discs, so we can write information to those discs easily.
Speaker 1: The manufacturing process is a breeze compared to creating cartridges,
Speaker 1: so you're never going to run into that situation where
Speaker 1: a company is going to make one game more than
Speaker 1: another game because of manufacturing issues. That's just not a
Speaker 1: problem here. So with that in mind, the two accepted
Speaker 1: a developer machine for the three D O and they
Speaker 1: got to work. Now, developer machines are machines upon which
Speaker 1: you can program your games tested on there because it
Speaker 1: will run the hard the software just as the consumer
Speaker 1: hardware would, but it has more capabilities than a consumer
Speaker 1: version of the three D O. They looked around and
Speaker 1: what was popular in arcades, and they saw that fighting
Speaker 1: games were breaking all the records. Games like Mortal Kombat
Speaker 1: and Street Fighter were gobbling up quarters left and right.
Speaker 1: But the two felt that no one had really nailed
Speaker 1: it for the home on soul market, and they noticed
Speaker 1: that no one had signed up to create such a
Speaker 1: game for the three d OH. There was no Mortal
Speaker 1: Kombat that was on its way to the three d O,
Speaker 1: no Street Fighter, so there was opportunity there, and they
Speaker 1: got to work immediately on a new piece of intellectual
Speaker 1: property called Way of the Warrior. And if you look
Speaker 1: at Way of the Warrior, you could immediately say this
Speaker 1: was obviously influenced by Mortal Kombat. By influence, I mean
Speaker 1: you could argue that it's a distant cousin to Mortal Kombat,
Speaker 1: complete with finishing moves that look a lot like Fatalities, uh,
Speaker 1: cast of characters that resemble that sort of Mortal Kombat approach,
Speaker 1: and those characters all had backstories and unique move sets
Speaker 1: so similar in many ways to Mortal Kombat. Initially, they
Speaker 1: had no publisher for that game. Ruben and Gavin self
Speaker 1: funded the development using the money they had earned from
Speaker 1: Rings of Power. It took them about a year and
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars of their own money to make
Speaker 1: the game. The characters are actually modeled after their friends.
Speaker 1: A lot of Andy Gavin's classmates are characters in Way
Speaker 1: of the Warrior. One of his professors, a guy who
Speaker 1: was a leading expert on robotics, is a character in
Speaker 1: the game. Another person who became an expert in protein
Speaker 1: folding and was a candidate for the Nobel Prize is
Speaker 1: one of the characters in the game. It's one of
Speaker 1: the most illustrious fighting rosters I've ever seen, but only
Speaker 1: if you count the people playing the characters, not the
Speaker 1: characters themselves. As for the production of the game, they
Speaker 1: really made the most out of their situation. Andy Gavin
Speaker 1: was renting an apartment in Boston and Jason Rubin would
Speaker 1: go there and work out of that same apartment. They
Speaker 1: had their friends dress up in ridiculous costumes that were
Speaker 1: made with whatever stuff they happened to have nearby, including
Speaker 1: and I am not making this up, hello, cases and
Speaker 1: containers from fast food restaurants. They made costume pieces out
Speaker 1: of all of this stuff, and that's what the characters
Speaker 1: in the game are wearing now. To the credit of
Speaker 1: the game. It doesn't look as cheesy as I'm making
Speaker 1: it sound, but they were really just kind of making
Speaker 1: all this stuff up as they were going along while
Speaker 1: trying to build out the game. I think of it
Speaker 1: as being really kind of cool and dorky at the
Speaker 1: same time. I totally approve of it. By the way,
Speaker 1: now they had no publisher, so they had no one
Speaker 1: they had to answer to. But eventually they were going
Speaker 1: to need a publisher because they're going to need someone
Speaker 1: to take over the production side of actually making and
Speaker 1: shipping copies of the game. So it's gonna be for
Speaker 1: the three d O, but they needed to partner with
Speaker 1: somebody to produce it for the three d O. They
Speaker 1: ended up attending a trade show and they began to
Speaker 1: shop their game around. They essentially got an eight ft
Speaker 1: by eight foot square of the three d O booth
Speaker 1: at E three and they demonstrated their game. Now, publishers
Speaker 1: would come up and ask them, Hey, who's publishing this game,
Speaker 1: and they said, no one yet, we're actually looking for
Speaker 1: a publisher. And this was something very different rent from
Speaker 1: the typical way that things would work at trade shows. Generally,
Speaker 1: publishers get pitches from established teams that have an idea,
Speaker 1: but they have not actually started a game, or they
Speaker 1: certainly haven't finished one, so this was a brand new experience.
Speaker 1: They ended up creating something of a bidding war between
Speaker 1: publishers because here was a game that was fully finished.
Speaker 1: Publishers didn't have to wonder how it was going to
Speaker 1: turn out. They could see the game, and they started
Speaker 1: to you know, court Naughty Dog, saying, hey, come over here,
Speaker 1: we'll publish the game for you. The winner of that
Speaker 1: bidding war was the Universal Studios, as in the movie
Speaker 1: production company. Universal was deciding they wanted to get into
Speaker 1: the video game business and they started to acquire smaller
Speaker 1: companies to create the Universal Interactive brand of computer games,
Speaker 1: and they gave the two an offer they couldn't refuse.
Speaker 1: The studio would actually provide office space for Naughty Dog.
Speaker 1: They would also provide support staff, and all of that
Speaker 1: would be on Universal's dime. It wouldn't be a charge
Speaker 1: to Naughty Dog at all. They would get free studio
Speaker 1: space in Hollywood, California, on the Universal Studio's lot, right
Speaker 1: next door to the office of a certain Mr. Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 1: So they agreed now to take this opportunity. Andy Gavin
Speaker 1: actually had to drop out of graduate school. He had
Speaker 1: been working towards his master's degree, and this was not
Speaker 1: an easy or light decision. His dad was reportedly very
Speaker 1: much against this idea, but ultimately he figured this was
Speaker 1: a way he could chase his dream job. As part
Speaker 1: of this agreement, the two were signed to create a
Speaker 1: few games for Universal. Gavin and Ruben would take a
Speaker 1: cross country road trip from Boston to Hollywood with all
Speaker 1: of their possessions either in their car or in a
Speaker 1: truck that was following along behind the car. Along the way,
Speaker 1: the two brainstormed ideas for what their next game would be,
Speaker 1: and they toss around several possibilities, such as another fighting
Speaker 1: game that would take advantage of the three D capabilities
Speaker 1: that consoles now could support, because suddenly, with consoles like
Speaker 1: the three D O and the next generation of consoles,
Speaker 1: you could incorporate three dimensional aspects into your game when
Speaker 1: before it was all too D. That opened up a
Speaker 1: world of opportunities. But ultimately they decided to put all
Speaker 1: these other ideas on the back shelf and they started
Speaker 1: talking about platformers that had traditionally been side scrolling games,
Speaker 1: games like Super Mario Brothers or Donkey Kong Country from Nintendo.
Speaker 1: They both loved Donkey Kong Country. They loved the art style,
Speaker 1: they loved the gameplay, and they got to thinking about
Speaker 1: the possibility of creating that style of game but using
Speaker 1: the capability of going in three dimensions with it adding
Speaker 1: real depth to the game, like, what if instead of
Speaker 1: running left to right, the character was running forward from
Speaker 1: your perspective or towards you. That suddenly opened up new
Speaker 1: sabilities for game playing, new challenges, and that got them
Speaker 1: really excited. By the time they finally reached California, they
Speaker 1: knew their next project was going to be a three
Speaker 1: D based platform er, and they even had a general
Speaker 1: idea of what the story and setting we're going to be,
Speaker 1: but that's about all they knew at that point. Now
Speaker 1: they jokingly referred to the game as Sonics Ass was
Speaker 1: named after Sonic the Hedgehog. The reason they called it
Speaker 1: this is they imagine that the game was going to
Speaker 1: be where the player controlled the character, where their back
Speaker 1: was going to be to the player's perspective, so you're
Speaker 1: always looking at the backside of your protagonist. And it
Speaker 1: turns out that that side scroller going to a front
Speaker 1: or back scroller would mean this, and since you'd be
Speaker 1: looking at the rear end as of this as yet
Speaker 1: unnamed character, they chose sonics Ass as a quick descriptor.
Speaker 1: At this stage, they had no idea what form this
Speaker 1: character was going to take or what its name might
Speaker 1: eventually be, but they did have those big ideas, they
Speaker 1: only knew that they wanted to have a heavily story
Speaker 1: driven game with lots of cut scenes and plot details
Speaker 1: interwoven into the experience. Now, ultimately a lot of their
Speaker 1: ideas would end up on the cutting room floor, not
Speaker 1: because they thought they weren't good ideas, but because the
Speaker 1: consoles they were working on ultimately could not really support
Speaker 1: that level of detail or that level of memory requirements.
Speaker 1: So just from a technological standpoint, they had to cut back,
Speaker 1: but it was a starting point. Universal was putting an
Speaker 1: executive team in place to oversee the game development division,
Speaker 1: which was not just Naughty Dog and included other divisions
Speaker 1: as well other other former companies that were brought on
Speaker 1: under a Universal. So Naughty Dog had an executive producer
Speaker 1: from Universal named Mark Sarney, who was tuned into what
Speaker 1: was going on in the business of video games. He
Speaker 1: was a very smart guy, and he worked very closely
Speaker 1: with Ruben and Gavin to figure out where the team
Speaker 1: would go next. Now, as Reuben would relate later on,
Speaker 1: Way of the Warrior became the last of the garage
Speaker 1: games produced by Naughty Dog, the last game that just
Speaker 1: the two of them would work on independently, sort of
Speaker 1: as a scrappy little company that could to take the
Speaker 1: next step, they needed to put a team together and
Speaker 1: expand beyond this two man operation. It was suddenly too
Speaker 1: much work for just two people to do on any
Speaker 1: you know, reasonable time frame. By the time you would
Speaker 1: produce a game with just two people, the console you're
Speaker 1: developing for would be out of date. So with Serny,
Speaker 1: they set out to find a good team. At this point,
Speaker 1: Ruben and Gavin were twenty four years old and they
Speaker 1: had never hired anyone before. Their interview process was perhaps,
Speaker 1: let's say, a little casual. One of the first employees
Speaker 1: was a guy Andy Gavin had met in grad school
Speaker 1: at M I. T. His name was Dave Baggett, and
Speaker 1: he joined the programming team. Taylor Kurosaki was a universal
Speaker 1: visual effects artist. He worked in an office a floor
Speaker 1: below Naughty Dog, and he would visit Naughty Dogs offices frequently.
Speaker 1: He was big into games and really interested in what
Speaker 1: they had to do, and he also admired the computers
Speaker 1: and software that Naughty Dog had at its access. And
Speaker 1: they had some of the most cutting edge computers and
Speaker 1: software available at the time, and he really wanted a
Speaker 1: chance to work on that type of machinery and that
Speaker 1: type of software. It was the sort of stuff that
Speaker 1: was used in ground bake breaking visual effects for movies
Speaker 1: like Jurassic Park. So eventually Jason Rubin just said, hey,
Speaker 1: why don't you just come over here and work for us,
Speaker 1: and then you can use these machines all the time.
Speaker 1: He said, okay. They also approached an artist named Bob Rothe,
Speaker 1: who was being courted by Sega at the time. Rothe
Speaker 1: was actually looking at several potential job opportunities, but he
Speaker 1: said that Ruben and Gavin had such a bootstrap approach
Speaker 1: and a good attitude that he chose to join Naughty
Speaker 1: Dog rather than what could have been a more lucrative
Speaker 1: starting position at a different company. They also went on
Speaker 1: who contract higher two animators, Charles Simbillis and Joe Pearson.
Speaker 1: They had worked on major cartoons like an American Tale,
Speaker 1: you know, the five Old movies. The artists and programmers
Speaker 1: got to work. They started to figure out what the
Speaker 1: game would be and who the protagonist should be. Ruben
Speaker 1: and Gavin had already worked out a lot of those
Speaker 1: story elements, including thoughts on the setting and the villain,
Speaker 1: but they still had not yet nailed down what the
Speaker 1: hero was going to be. Around the same time, Naughty
Speaker 1: Dog was looking to see which console they'd ultimately developed
Speaker 1: the game for. The three d O despite Trip Hawkins
Speaker 1: work was not taking off. It just wasn't doing well
Speaker 1: in the market place. It might have been a little
Speaker 1: bit ahead of its time. The best known variant of
Speaker 1: the three d O was made by Panasonic, but in
Speaker 1: fact the console was a platform that could be licensed
Speaker 1: out to different manufacturing companies, so there were competing versions
Speaker 1: of the three d O on the market. You could
Speaker 1: get a Panasonic three d OH, but there were other
Speaker 1: companies that were also making licensed three d O consoles,
Speaker 1: and that maybe confused the marketplace a little bit. It
Speaker 1: was also an expensive system, and while it predated the PlayStation,
Speaker 1: it couldn't gain enough traction in the market to be
Speaker 1: a real contender, despite the fact that clearly was more
Speaker 1: powerful than other consoles that were out at the same time.
Speaker 1: A little bit later, in nineteen ninety six, the three
Speaker 1: d O would go dark for good, but in Sony
Speaker 1: was gearing up to become a new leader in the
Speaker 1: industry and rest control away from Nintendo and to a
Speaker 1: lesser degree, from Sega. Naughty Dog in Universal turned their
Speaker 1: attention to this newly emerging console, which would be known
Speaker 1: as the PlayStation, and Naughty Dog employees got an early
Speaker 1: look at the console at E three and nine, so
Speaker 1: they knew which console was going to be home to
Speaker 1: their game. Although originally they were hoping to make it
Speaker 1: a multi platform game and sell it across multiple platforms
Speaker 1: like consoles and computers, they were eventually convinced to go
Speaker 1: PlayStation exclusive in exchange for a really good deal with Sony.
Speaker 1: Ruben and Gavin were determined that whatever character they made
Speaker 1: would be so compelling that Sony would start to think
Speaker 1: of it as a mascot for the PlayStation because Nintendo
Speaker 1: had Mario, Sega had Sonic, but without a mascot, the
Speaker 1: PlayStation was bound to launch without an iconic character. So
Speaker 1: they knew they needed a hero. They needed Willie the Wombat.
Speaker 1: Are you folks out there who know your video games
Speaker 1: are probably thinking of making a joke, But no, The
Speaker 1: original character that would have inhabited this transformational Naughty Dog
Speaker 1: game was called Willie, and he was a wombat. The
Speaker 1: designers have been flipping through a book about native species
Speaker 1: of Tasmania, and they had Tasmanian tigers, Tasmanian wolves, Tasmanian
Speaker 1: all sorts of things, including bandicoots and wombats. Joe Pearson
Speaker 1: created the initial design of Willie, who looked kind of
Speaker 1: like a weasel wearing a bandit mask. Pearson described the
Speaker 1: character as zoro like. The model wasn't that different from
Speaker 1: what the ultimate character who spoiler alert is crash Bandicoot
Speaker 1: would look like, but with a ninja mask on rather
Speaker 1: than an uncovered head. Charles Zimbella's took that lanky design
Speaker 1: that Pearson and created and gave him sort of a
Speaker 1: hunched over, somewhat manic approach, animating him in a way
Speaker 1: that made him look a little crazy. The combination created
Speaker 1: an unusual effect that hadn't really been done in video games.
Speaker 1: It felt right and a little weird. But something else
Speaker 1: that the team felt was weird was the name, or
Speaker 1: rather they felt it wasn't weird or memorable enough. Now
Speaker 1: there's some memory based confusion over who came up with
Speaker 1: the whole thing, but Karasaki said later that he was
Speaker 1: pretty sure that he and Dave Baggett came up with
Speaker 1: the name Crash, So there may have even been a
Speaker 1: brief moment where the character would have been Crash Wombat.
Speaker 1: That obviously didn't stick, and so they ultimately decided to
Speaker 1: change the character species as well as his name, and
Speaker 1: that's when we got Crash Bandicoot. Now, I've got a
Speaker 1: lot more to say about the development of Crash Bandicoot,
Speaker 1: but before I go on, let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: and thank our sponsor. Well. Pearson and Zimbellis were important
Speaker 1: in the creation of the world and the characters for
Speaker 1: Crash Bandicoot. They were worked for higher employees. They were
Speaker 1: not official members of the Naughty Dog team. They also
Speaker 1: would later lament their deal that they made, stating that
Speaker 1: they agreed to do the work for far less money
Speaker 1: than what it was worth. But they also say that's
Speaker 1: on us. We agreed to the terms, but we should
Speaker 1: have really tried to negotiate for a better deal. After
Speaker 1: this early development of character design, Naughty Dog braun a
Speaker 1: few more employees to join their team. They included a
Speaker 1: sound engineer named Dan call Morgan. He left a steady
Speaker 1: gig at a company called Laser Graphics in order to
Speaker 1: join the Naughty Dog team. They also hired Charlotte Francis,
Speaker 1: who came from the movie industry. She joined the team
Speaker 1: as the seventh member of Naughty Dog and the first
Speaker 1: woman employee of the company. She became a texture artist
Speaker 1: for the game, and that it didn't stop there. They
Speaker 1: actually added one more person, a guy named Justin Monast
Speaker 1: who had applied to work at Universal Interactive as an
Speaker 1: associate producer for Mark Sarney, the executive producer that worked
Speaker 1: with Naughty Dog. He did not land that gig, but
Speaker 1: while he was applying, he found out that Naughty Dog
Speaker 1: was seeking an I T professional to join their team,
Speaker 1: and he decided to apply for that and he was
Speaker 1: hired on. Meanwhile, they also had to line up Sony
Speaker 1: as their customer to get this exclusive relationship going, so
Speaker 1: they put together a demo reel of the work they
Speaker 1: had done on the game so far to make a
Speaker 1: real kind of sizzle reel for Sony executives. Karasaki was
Speaker 1: actually able to secure some of the editing bays a
Speaker 1: Universal's lot to make it look really slick, so this
Speaker 1: was a a full fledged production here. They got the
Speaker 1: tape to Sony executives, who immediately saw the appeal of
Speaker 1: this style of game, and E three was coming up,
Speaker 1: and Sony needed a character that could be an iconic
Speaker 1: representation of the brand, and that's how Crash Banditoo Bandicoot
Speaker 1: became the unofficial mascot for the PlayStation. Sony would end
Speaker 1: up doing a big pr campaign in which a person
Speaker 1: would actually dress up as Crash Bandicoot. Really more like
Speaker 1: a person inside a Crash Bandicoot mascot outfit, because you
Speaker 1: could see the guy's face inside Crash, his mouth and everything.
Speaker 1: He would stand outside of places like Nintendo US headquarters
Speaker 1: and he would hold a bullhorn and he would heckle
Speaker 1: the company. Sony was leveraging this irreverent attitude of the
Speaker 1: character to create buzz for the Sony PlayStation. So Crash
Speaker 1: was a video game character with attitude, not some cartoonish
Speaker 1: figure for little kids. And I'm saying that in a
Speaker 1: little bit of a tongue in cheek way. Kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me of a Pucci from The Simpsons. He's a
Speaker 1: dog with attitude. Well, Crash Bandicoot had an interesting approach
Speaker 1: to game level design and had a limited three D implementation.
Speaker 1: It was on rails, which meant the segments where he
Speaker 1: controlled Crash where he was either running away from you
Speaker 1: or running toward you. Were set. You could not just
Speaker 1: run freely. You had to either run forward toward the
Speaker 1: camera or away from the camera. You could not wander
Speaker 1: out into a fully three dimensional world. Now you contrast
Speaker 1: that was something like Super Mario sixty four, which debuted
Speaker 1: at the same E three that Crash Bandicoot first made
Speaker 1: his public appearance, and you see that there's a big
Speaker 1: difference there. In Mario sixty four, you can control your
Speaker 1: character and run freely through all the environments, but this
Speaker 1: creates a very different type of game experience. So Naughty
Speaker 1: Dog had this real philosophical debate early on in the process.
Speaker 1: They were concerned that if they did not keep the
Speaker 1: game on rails, the amount of work they would need
Speaker 1: to complete the game would be too much for the
Speaker 1: small team that they had in place, and they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to deliver a good aiming experience, so it
Speaker 1: would be a failure on all accounts. So they chose
Speaker 1: to put some restrictions in place to help guide not
Speaker 1: only the player through the course of the game, but
Speaker 1: the actual process of game development itself. The team learned
Speaker 1: a lot from this experience. They had to do much
Speaker 1: of their work as pioneers, and that included level design.
Speaker 1: Kurasaki would later say one of his biggest regrets was
Speaker 1: how difficult the game turned out to be. He said
Speaker 1: that he made the levels way too hard in that
Speaker 1: first Crash game, pushing the difficulty up further with every level.
Speaker 1: He would amend that in the sequels to the game.
Speaker 1: Another thing they learned was how to work within the
Speaker 1: constrictions of the platform they were designing for. So the
Speaker 1: PlayStation was capable of supporting a game containing about three
Speaker 1: thousand polygons, individual little shapes out of which you would
Speaker 1: create larger figures. So Crash was made up of about
Speaker 1: five thirty two polygons. Everything on the screen was created
Speaker 1: with polygons, so it became important to be as conservative
Speaker 1: as possible. That's why they decided to create crates in Crash.
Speaker 1: They needed to have some sort of interactive element in
Speaker 1: the environment to make the game more fun. They found
Speaker 1: that the game without the crates just wasn't quite having
Speaker 1: the impact they wanted, so they had to come up
Speaker 1: with something. Well, that's one of the simplest polygonal shapes
Speaker 1: you can make. It's also why many of the creatures
Speaker 1: in the original game are relatively simple or primitive in design. Now,
Speaker 1: much of the development went relatively quickly. Andy Gavin described
Speaker 1: the process of implementing those crates in the game as
Speaker 1: being particularly fun and easy, with most of the functionality
Speaker 1: created with just one or two days of work, which
Speaker 1: is phenomenal to think about how something so central to
Speaker 1: the gameplay of the whole title series just came about
Speaker 1: in forty eight hours. The crates created a new aspect
Speaker 1: of the game, allowing them to create puzzles within levels,
Speaker 1: So according to Dave Baggett, it was this development that
Speaker 1: turned the game from functional three D platform or into
Speaker 1: something that was legitimately fun to play. One challenge they
Speaker 1: overcame presented itself with a secondary problem they did not anticipate.
Speaker 1: So the PlayStation had about two megs of RAM, but
Speaker 1: Andy Gavin had to come up with a way to
Speaker 1: make levels much larger than what that amount of memory
Speaker 1: would allow, and the way he did it was he
Speaker 1: would have the console reference the c D more frequently.
Speaker 1: Usually a PlayStation would just load whatever information was needed
Speaker 1: for a level before referencing the c D again, so
Speaker 1: it would spin up the c D, pull the data
Speaker 1: and then stop and just allow the player to play
Speaker 1: the game till the CD needed to spin up again.
Speaker 1: That meant all the levels had to be relatively small
Speaker 1: or not take up too much memory. Gavin had created
Speaker 1: a system in which the console would frequently reference the
Speaker 1: c D, reading it so that it could load in
Speaker 1: the images for the levels throughout gameplay, over and over.
Speaker 1: But there in lines a problem. Kelly Flock, and executive
Speaker 1: with Sony, pointed out that here's the issue. The PlayStation
Speaker 1: was rated for four hundred thousand reads. That meant the
Speaker 1: console was not intended to spin a c D so
Speaker 1: many times over the course of one game. Mechanical parts
Speaker 1: you see we'll wear out over time, and when designing
Speaker 1: the console, Sony had determined that four hundred thousand reads
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand times that this CD ROM would spin
Speaker 1: a c D was a decent number to shoot for
Speaker 1: before a system might fail from whear and tear. But
Speaker 1: with Crash Bandicoot, the system would engage the CD drive
Speaker 1: far more frequently throughout play, to the point that Andy
Speaker 1: Gavin estimated the average gamer would hit four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: reads within about three weeks and Sony was not crazy
Speaker 1: about a game that could potentially break their console after
Speaker 1: just three weeks of play, As the game neared completion,
Speaker 1: Naughty Dog signed a contract with Josh Mansell and mark
Speaker 1: Mother's Ball. Mother's Ball, by the way, was in one
Speaker 1: of my favorite bands from the nineteen eighties. It's called Devo,
Speaker 1: and if you're not familiar with them, you need to
Speaker 1: listen to Are We Not Men? We Are Devo? That's
Speaker 1: their first album. Anyway, they came on board to create
Speaker 1: the video game's musical score, and voice actor Brendan O'Brien
Speaker 1: came on board to become the voice for Crash Bandicoot,
Speaker 1: as well as Dr Neo Cortex and a few other characters. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: they discovered, to their great success, that the estimates that
Speaker 1: have been made on how many times the PlayStation could
Speaker 1: reference the CD ROM was way on the conservative side.
Speaker 1: So their game did stress the console beyond what Sony intended,
Speaker 1: but there didn't seem to be any sort of outbreak
Speaker 1: of console failures across the customer base. If there had been,
Speaker 1: the story of Naughty Dog might have ended at this
Speaker 1: first big game. Well. The team had been working long
Speaker 1: hours to get the game finished fixing hundreds of bugs
Speaker 1: day after day play testing the game extensively. According to interviews,
Speaker 1: their average days would last sixteen to eighteen hours at
Speaker 1: the office with no days off including holidays. So it
Speaker 1: was a really tough, grueling schedule, but the small team
Speaker 1: was determined to create a really good game. They launched
Speaker 1: it on September nine, and it received positive reviews for
Speaker 1: its graphics and level and character design. Some pointed out
Speaker 1: that the difficulty was being a little bit of a barrier,
Speaker 1: so kind of what others had already said about the
Speaker 1: level design. It would go on to become one of
Speaker 1: the best selling PlayStation titles of all time, with more
Speaker 1: than six and a half million units sold. It spent
Speaker 1: a couple of years on the Top twenty games chart
Speaker 1: for PlayStation games before it finally dropped off in Crash
Speaker 1: Bandicoot spun off two direct sequels as well as a
Speaker 1: racing game. The development grew with every single game, and
Speaker 1: they would add on more and more employees over at
Speaker 1: Naughty Dog every single year. I'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that in Part two of this series, as
Speaker 1: well as how Naughty Dog ventured into uncharted territory and
Speaker 1: how the company dealt with a massive shakedown as the
Speaker 1: two founders stepped down while sell the company off to Sony.
Speaker 1: All of that and more will be covered in Part two,
Speaker 1: so be sure to check that out when it goes live. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: if you guys have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
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