May 17, 2007

I’ll Have My Ratatouille To Go – THQ Wireless Talks About the Game’s Mobile Outing
by Louis Bedigian 

“One of our goals here has been not necessarily to re-create a console experience as much an added experience to the whole gaming environment.” 

Every year millions of moviegoers count on Pixar to deliver the best entertainment in big-screen animation. At the same time, millions of gamers count on THQ to deliver fun and exciting video game adaptations of Pixar’s hit movies. Last year’s Cars game was an excellent example of what happens when inspired developers are given a remarkable license. 

This year THQ is taking on Ratatouille, a new animated property from Brad Bird, the writer and director of The Incredibles. It looks hilarious and will soon be transformed into a video game for nearly every platform available, including wireless phones. We spoke to THQ Wireless President Doug Clemmer to learn more. 

“The user plays as one of the movie’s primary characters, which is Linguini,” he revealed. “You try to navigate a variety of food orders and whatnot that come into the French kitchen, in which the player is situated. The challenge of the game resides in the player's ability to swiftly move around the kitchen cooking station, have the required ingredients for every order, and then cook each order according to the meal requirements. As the player progresses menu orders can become more complex.” 

What are the challenges in bringing a big movie like Ratatouille to a mobile phone? With consoles you have constantly evolving technology, but with mobile phones the technology is evolving at a much slower rate. 

Doug Clemmer: One of our goals here has been not necessarily to re-create a console experience as much an added experience to the whole gaming environment. We don't want it to be like the console game as much as we want someone who has played the console game to say, "Hey, this is kind of neat," and somewhat like the console game. 

Is it difficult designing something that has to be played on multiple phones with different screens and button functionality? 

DC: Unquestionably. We have to have a high, medium, and low-end build. We have to write [code] for a multitude of devices. The high-end build is going to be the best. You'll play that on the high-end phones. The low-end build will be played on the low-end phones. That changes the experience. We try to get as much gameplay experience [out of each phone], that's really our mantra here. It's obviously harder to navigate on a small keyboard [when you don't have all the buttons]. 

Do mobile games remind you of the 8-bit consoles? Back when we had the NES, developers had to work really hard to create something unique and innovative. 

DC: Unquestionably. I think we're a little past 8-bit [with mobile phones]. 'Cause trust me, I grew up with 8-bit [laughs]. It looks a little better than 8-bit. But you're right, we have to do an awfully lot in an awfully little space, even in the bigger phones.  

How does Disney go about all this? Is THQ Wireless in constant communication with them? What do they expect from THQ? Do they send you artwork and say we want the characters to look exactly like this or that? 

DC: Yes and no. We really have worked closely with Disney and Pixar. They've been very involved throughout the development and were helpful in guiding us to put together a game. But they never came to us and said it has to be this or it has to be that. We come up with a general design document, then we chat with them, then we – obviously because we've been working with them for some time now – agree on a concept. We come back, they have style guidelines as to what their characters can and cannot do and how they should look, and needless to say they make some exceptions. 'Cause when I'm working on a small screen it's going to look different than an Xbox 360. They are wonderful to work with. They approve things at all levels but have never actually said, "This is exactly what we want." 

What is the development time frame of the typical mobile game, specifically Ratatouille? Was its time frame longer or shorter than the average game?

DC: About the average. And do you want to know what I wish or what it is?

What it is and what you wish.

DC: It's about a year and what I wish is about six months.

Do you think there's a way to achieve that – to create a mobile game in six months? 

DC: We just purchased a well-known studio in Finland that has done a lot of creative things. They can do the game in a much shorter time. It's porting issues that take a long time. And then QA and things like that. That's what ends up taking the most time -- porting it to 150 or 300 handsets, depending on where you're going with it. So the time frame isn't necessarily dictated by the core game. If I had one phone to write for, no question I could get it up that quick. But that's not how it works. 

What's next for THQ Wireless? 

DC: We have WWE coming up, another SpongeBob game... If you look at THQ you can assume that we are mostly doing everything that they do. We're doing UFC. And we're doing some things that I can't comment on at the moment. [We also have] Stuntman for wireless. And we do the Star Wars properties. We have Worms, Destroy All Humans! 3. Stuntman we're very excited about it and it will be tagged with console marketing. It'll be a big THQ release. 

The mobile and console versions of Stuntman will be released about the same time? 

DC: Correct. [Editor’s Note: THQ Wireless informed us that both the console and mobile versions of Stuntman are due in August.]

Sounds great. Thank you for your time.