Local studio's game for PlayStation 3 is a superheroic effort

The first exclusive game for Sony's PlayStation 3 from a Seattle game studio is a doozy.

Called "inFamous," it's a modern superhero action game — gritty, thrilling and laced with ethical dilemmas.

It's also been a monstrous project for Bellevue's Sucker Punch Productions, a company started in 1997 by a group of friends at Microsoft who wanted to build games.

"Eventually we kind of got tired of it and wanted to do something different," said Chris Zimmerman, Sucker Punch co-founder and development director.

The company's first game was for the Nintendo 64 system. Then Sucker Punch created the successful "Sly Cooper" series for Sony's PlayStation 2, before starting work on "inFamous" three years ago.

At a Capitol Hill cocktail party Sony threw last week, showing off "inFamous" to dozens of game journalists flown in from around the world, Zimmerman talked about the game, competition in the business and being a Sony developer in Microsoft's backyard.

Here's an edited transcript of the conversation:

Q: Do you ever get grief, being a Sony shop in Microsoft country?

A: We have good friends at Microsoft — friends in positions of authority at Microsoft now. They've actually been really good sports about the whole thing. When we started, Microsoft wasn't really an option; our first game was an N64 game. We were really excited about doing PlayStation 2 stuff. That was before Xbox really got off the ground. And I think they understand. There's a little bit of good-natured ribbing that goes along with that.

Q: Do you think Sony has to be bold because it's in last place among the current consoles?

A: You could make that argument, but I wouldn't because they've been consistent. They had exactly the same strategy with PlayStation 1, where they had dominant market share. PlayStation 2, same strategy, dominant market share. This time it's been more of a scuffle, obviously. But it's the same strategy.

Q: Has Seattle benefited from Sony's quest for new ideas, because it's out of range, off in the corner of the country?

A: I don't know. It's a very technical city. We've got the UW here. It's a place where lots of people want to live; I think that helps. And then I think there are just network effects. You've got an area with a lot of technical talent, companies will start up there — whether they're spinoffs, startups or new companies or old companies getting bigger, there's going to be a positive feedback loop.

Q: With the economic situation, could we be in the twilight of big-budget, triple-A game development here?

A: Oh no. I think it's just a bi-level market right now, meaning that there are lots of games that are getting built cheaply. More power to them; those are fun games to play. Then there are games like "inFamous" that are just inherently big-budget games. The thing that seems to have disappeared are midrange games.

Q: You have to spend $25 million or $30 million?

A: You have to push the budget up. The thing that's really fun about being a producer of games is that it's a global game, it's a global business. When people are buying your game, they've got hundreds of choices. They can buy whatever they want when they walk into the game store. The fact that they bought yours is a pretty gratifying thing.

The flip side of that is you've really got to keep up with everybody else because if you're not as good as those other games — if you're not better than those other games — no one's going to buy your game.

Q: How did you push the envelope with "inFamous"?

A: What we tried to do here that was a little bit different was take an open-world game — where you can go anywhere and do anything anytime — and provide content that had the quality of a linear game.

Linear games are a lot easier to do, in some ways. You know the player's going to be walking down a series of rooms, through this corridor, coming around this corner. You've got control over the whole experience.

A lot of open-world games have devolved into what we call walk-and-adopt missions, where it's like, go to this other part of the world and throw a brick through a window. And that's the mission. Is it fun? Well, yeah, usually it's pretty fun to go through the game.

But that's not what we did with "inFamous." We pushed the envelope, saying we want to have the same rich scripted experience, but in an open-world environment where we're really not controlling what the player does.

Q: Is "inFamous" good enough that people will go out and buy a PS3 to play it?

A: There certainly are people telling me that tonight, so let's hope. I think that's why Sony has spent so much time and effort on these original titles; each game is going to be the straw that broke the camel's back for someone, right? It's not like everyone is going to say, 'Oh my gosh, I've got to play this game, I'm going to buy the PS3.' I know some people are, and if we keep doing games like that, I think we're going to sell more and more PS3s.

Q: It seems like "inFamous" could be a comic book or graphic novel.

A: That was a big influence on us. We grew up reading comic books; we love superhero stories. Comics, graphic novels are very different than they were 20 years ago. We tried to be contemporary in what we're doing ...

Our goal with the game was to say, What would you do if suddenly you woke up and you had superpowers? How would you react? That was our touchstone question when we were building the game. ...

Brier Dudley's column appears Mondays. Reach him at 206-515-5687 or bdudley@seattletimes.com.