Q: One of the things I personally love about Insomniac as a developer is their dedication to quality over quantity. With that said, how do you feel about the sales of Ratchet and Clank 2: Going Commando? Personally, I was upset to see the title not being in the top 3 since I believe the title to be THAT damn good.

A: Brian Hastings, VP, Gameplay — Believe me, we would have loved for it to be in the top three too. We'll always be committed to quality over quantity, even if quality and sales are not tightly correlated. We're never going to be a team that tries to appeal to the lowest common denominator to try to boost our sales. We're not going to copy the latest gimmick in the market or throw hookers into the game to try to boost our bottom line. That said, the Ratchet & Clank franchise has succeeded in selling almost 4 million copies worldwide in less than a year and a half. That's really not too bad. There have been quite a few high quality games in the last three years (Ico and BG&E for example) that fared much worse. Sure, I wish the market responded more favorably to quality products and less favorably to mediocre games based on blockbuster movies starring Keanu Reeves. But as long as we can afford to keep making the games we want to make, I guess I can't really complain too much.

Q: Ratchet and Clank is going into the third game in its series. Do you see the series continuing or is it time to move onto other projects? In the past, Spyro was allowed to continue under different developers with less than perfect results. Would Ratchet and Clank get to retire on top?

A: Brian Hastings, VP, Gameplay — At the moment we're just concentrating on making Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal the best thing on the market this fall. We're not quite ready to decide what to do when it's over. But I can tell you that we have no intention of abandoning Ratchet and Clank. We don't want them to go the way of Spyro the Dragon. Regardless of what project we decide to do after Up Your Arsenal, I'm sure we'll do another R&C game at some point down the road. We just have too much love for the characters and the universe to ever abandon them completely.

Q: A lot of debate is flying around lately about difficulty in video games. You have the younger crowd with tons of time on their hands to the lifelong gamers who now have families and careers. While playing through Ratchet and Clank 2, I noticed a lot of subtle moments where the game tweaked the difficulty on the fly. How much attention are you putting into this issue?

A: Brian Allgeier, Design Director — We spent a lot of time tuning the game so that it would be appealing to both hardcore and casual gamers. With five play testing sessions in addition to receiving feedback from all the Insomniacs, we had plenty of data on how to tune the game to be fun for all gamers.

Though there are "tweaks on the fly" for some of the challenges — we relied largely upon the RPG elements to help address this issue. Since players could always earn more money, buy bigger weapons, increase their hit points, and get upgrades - players had freedom to develop their own playing style to tackle the tough challenges.

Q: How much input did you have over the ad campaigns for Ratchet and Clank? The television spots in particular were some of the wittiest and well designed commercials for a gaming product I have seen in a long while.

A: Ted Price, President/CEO — Sony is always very conscientious about asking for our feedback on TV ads, magazine ads, etc. But the feedback we gave on the Ratchet TV ads was minimal because the ads were so damn funny to begin with. Sony and Chiat Day — the ad agency, just nailed it. I think the guys at Chiat Day who came up with the ad campaign really understood the humor in the games and it carried over well to television.

Q: What are a couple of the most influential games in your opinion?

A: Brian Allgeier, Design Director — Hmmmm. There's always the old favorites like "Chess" and "Hide and Go Seek" — but I'm guessing your thinking of the electronic variety like "Doom," which was remarkable in that it combined 3-D visceral gameplay, brilliant level designs, and a chilling ambience. Then, of course, there's "Mario 64" which I believe was a major step in welcoming sandbox games that are more fun to play than to win. Many of those above elements are more commonplace in current games like that one with the carjacking and prostitutes.

Q: Jason Jones, head of Bungie Studios, says that "Halo 2 is a lot like Halo 1, only it's Halo 1 on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas. And the ninjas are all on fire, too." Using a similar amount of hyperbole, tell us how good Ratchet and Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal will be. Don't hold back.

A: Brian Hastings, VP, Gameplay — Playing Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal is a lot like playing Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, only while riding a hurtling radioactive asteroid through space where mutant robot zombies with bad breath are trying to eat your liver and your only hope to save Earth is detonating 6 gigatons of TNT at the center of the asteroid with only a 10-inch fuse. And it's raining flaming ducks.

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