If you ask any ten people what the best series on Playstation 3 is, odds are that eight of them will say the Uncharted games by the Naughty Dog development house. The first game starring wise-cracking treasure hunter Nathan Drake was the exemplar of the kind of stunning visuals that the PS3 could deliver. The second game–Uncharted 2: Among Thieves–cranked up the action-movie aesthetic even more and won universal acclaim, cleaning up during the 2009-2010 video game awards season.
But Naughty Dog’s no new jack to creating awesome Playstation games. Their Crash Bandicoot games gave the PS1 its first mascot and the Jak & Daxter franchise earned a place in the hearts of PS2 and PSP owners everywhere. Like his peers David Jaffe and Ted Price, Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells has been closely tied to Playstation at every stage of its iteration. To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Playstation California native spoke to me about the lucky coincidence that jumpstarted his game career, the friendly rivalry with Insomniac and more.
So, David Jaffe and Ted Price have already told me that they’ve been gamers since their single-digit years. Is there anything different about your early days as a gamer?
Well, I’ve been playing games since I could hold a controller, all the way back to the Atari and arcade machines, and before that, pinball machines. I am one of the unfortunate few game developers that don’t have that really great story they can tell where they say, you’re parents were saying, you’re wasting your time playing those games, you’ll never get anywhere with that, and you make a career out of it, and you can throw that in their face. My parents were sort of feeding my addiction early on and taking me to the arcades, and filling my pocket with quarters. So I definitely was encouraged to play games from the start. My dad was into games and he bought the Atari for himself, but I ended up playing it more than he did.
That’s awesome.
Yeah. So, definitely lucked out there. As I progressed through the years, of course, I bought a Nintendo Entertainment System. I worked all summer long banging nails into a deck at my neighbor’s house so I could earn enough money to buy a Nintendo when I heard that was coming out.
Did you get paid per nail?
Yes I did. I got paid per nail. You’re right.
That’s insane.
Then I got the Nintendo, and, of course, that was my gaming console for quite a number of years. I took it to college with me. I got the Super Nintendo my freshman year in college. While I was at college, I would play as many games as I could. Just sit down and tear through them, and rent them at Blockbuster, and return them the next day. I was playing on my friend’s Sega Genesis. ToeJam & Earl was a big favorite.
Great game.
Yeah. Great game. I finished it. And in the credits I saw the programmer’s name was Mark Voorsanger. I was like, Mark Voorsanger? Voorsanger? That’s a really uncommon name. I’ve got a teammate whose name is Conrad Voorsanger. So I asked him, do you have a brother named Mark who makes games? Sure enough, he did. And this was the summer of my sophomore year and I was looking for a summer job. So I drove up to Nevada from Palo Alto, and they gave me a job and took a chance on me. I was studying computer science. I was a total video game nut. And they were working on the sequel to ToeJam & Earl, and needed somebody to do some level design. So I was super fortunate that they were willing to give me my first gig. And, from there, I met some people at Crystal Dynamics and everything went from there.
Now, when they hired you for level design, did you even know what that meant at that time?
I barely did. I was under some false preconception when I was in high school, that all games are made in Japan. And that wasn’t really going be a great option for me. [Laughter] And as I got into computer science I realized, hey, actually, maybe I could make games for a living. Yeah. When I got there, and they showed me how games were built, it was sort of a revelation. I just sort of took to it.
You were at Crystal Dynamics at that point?
No, that was stillToeJam & Earl. Actually they were just a two-man company back in the day when….
When you could do that.
Yeah, could make a game. But they had offices right next door to Toys for Bob–who were the guys who made Star Control–and they were working with Crystal Dynamics on The Horde for the 3DO at the time. And I believe they also ported Star Control 2 to the 3DO in that same period of time. So I was having lunch with those guys all the time because we were right next door. My summer job was up after we shipped ToeJam & Earl 2, and they were like, oh, you should talk to the guys at Crystal, and see if there’s a job for you there.
Crystal Dynamics is literally right across the street from my school. So it was a perfect fit. I got a job there and actually worked full-time all through my senior year. And then just kept working there after that. And it was about four years of working at Crystal before I came down to Naughty Dog. And I have been here every since.
When you were at Crystal and I guess at Naughty, what were the challenges of programming for the hardware at the time. This would be what? SNES era, 3DO?
It was 3DO, yeah. So when I was at Crystal, the 3DO had just come out. Making games in 3D was just a brand new thing. All games had been 2D before that. So, yeah, it was a real struggle to figure out how to apply the principles of 2D game design to 3D. I got to work with some really talented people at Crystal Dynamics over the years, and we, through trial and error, discovered how to build games in 3D, and it was also a great opportunity to start getting into making games on a CD format. It was a little sneak peek into what Playstation was going to launch on the mainstream. Getting to actually use CD quality music and completely hear speech from actors and using real voice talent and stuff, as opposed to everything being synthesized like in the SNES days. So it was a great training ground.