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inFAMOUS studio Sucker Punch looks back at 20 years of making awesome games

L

Loudninja

Member
All of us at Sucker Punch are looking forward to a big anniversary — we're about to turn 20 years old! Unfortunately, we didn't have enough room to invite all of you to our anniversary party, so we did the next best thing — we added Infamous: Second Son to your Instant Game Collection this month! Have fun!

Long ago, in October of 1997, five friends and I left cushy jobs at Microsoft, sublet some crappy office space down the street, and got to work on our first game.

We've been on Team Sony for a long time, but our first game was actually for the Nintendo 64 — Rocket: Robot on Wheels, a light-hearted physics-based platformer starring a plucky maintenance robot who has to rescue a theme park from the dastardly clutches of a criminally-minded raccoon.

After two years of hard work, a smattering of critical success, and a somewhat tepid response from the game-buying public, we took one important thing away from the project: ”criminally-minded raccoon".
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Sky Cooper
And that led us to the first game in our long partnership with Team Sony: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. By the way, I still can't believe we put fake Latin words in the title of our first big game. Every time I start to type ”Thievieus," I have to look up how we spelled it.

Just so you know, whenever we want to remember some detail about one of our old games (like how to spell ”Thievious") we search the internet. Those of you behind the awesome Sly Cooper and Infamous web sites have our eternal gratitude — we've relied on you countless times over the years!

Working on the Sly games was tonnes of fun, but if you make a game for kids about a master thief and his friends pulling off crazy heists, you can't help worrying that the message you're sending to the youth of the world is ”Hey kids! Stealing is cool!" Which would be the worst public service announcement ever. Eventually we decided that Sly was such a skillful thief that he only steals from other thieves, and explained this rule in the first five minutes of the game. We crossed our fingers — and managed to not trigger a tweener crime wave. Whew!
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During development of Sly, we'd held off on building the Panda King world (the first level players encountered) until the end of development. We figured after designing and building three other worlds, we'd be really good at it, and we wanted the first world people played to be exceptionally good. So that's what we did — we built the first world last, then after it was done we held a focus test with real players. And it was a complete disaster — no one could make it past the first level! We'd been playing the game for years, so we thought the tricky jumping and sneaking techniques we'd added were great, but new players were completely lost.

This caused mild panic. We were only months away from shipping the game, and didn't have enough time to fix all the problems with the first world. Luckily, inspiration struck — with a little bit of improvisation, we could change the order of the worlds! And that's what we did — we invented a new move to learn on the Panda King world (the internet just reminded me that this move was Invisibility), moved it from first to fourth in the order of worlds, and managed to escape the mess we'd made of things.
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InFamous
At first, we were building a superhero version of Animal Crossing. You roamed your city, tracked down criminals, helped out the citizens, and did some light zoning work along the way. The best superheroes have alter egos, right? So your alter ego was a property developer, deciding where to put the pet shops and tiki bars the citizens were demanding. Sounds awesome, right? Well, it wasn't. After six months of experimentation we gave up on property development and focused on superhero action.
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If you've played Infamous, you're probably wondering why I haven't mentioned karma yet. That's the point of an Infamous game, after all — waking up with superpowers and deciding how you're going to use them. Surely we switched from pet shops and tiki bars to karma? Um... unfortunately, no. We didn't have parkour in the game either, at that point. Midway through development, the awesome French parkour action movie District 13 hit our local theatres, and we were inspired to spend a couple of years trying to bring it to life.
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Obviously, we made some good decisions along the way, too. Sucker Punch history isn't an uninterrupted string of near escapes from dumb mistakes... but those stories are a lot funnier. And we can't wait to tell you the stories yet to come.
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https://blog.eu.playstation.com/201...1506355287.4098811149597167968750#sf116537984

PS blog comment:
Just an FYI for anyone reading the comments here–I've been strictly instructed not to talk about what we're working on now... so if you're planning on reading to the end of the comments section just in case I let something slip, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Sorry!
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https://blog.us.playstation.com/2017/09/25/looking-back-on-twenty-years-of-sucker-punch/
 
F

firelogic

Member
Always a fan of Sucker Punch. Hopefully they announce their new IP at PSX this year. They've been radio silent for way too long.
 
R

Ridley327

Member
I'm assuming that they're finally going to announce their current project at PSX this year, and this is the start of them getting their name back in the tips of tongues. Regardless of the smaller scope of the game, Second Son sure was a big technical marvel and still is.
 
K

Koh

Member
Please make Infamous 3!!! I was fine with second son, but it didn't hold a candle to infamous 2.
 
Okami Haundo

Okami Haundo

Member
Really interesting read! Sly Cooper was one of my favorite series on PS2, and I still have Cole's backpack that came with the special edition of Infamous 2! Can't wait to see what their new project is whenever they're ready to show it. I'm kind of hoping for a PSX reveal.

On a related but unrelated note, what ever happened to the Sly Cooper movie?
 
R

Reset

Member
I just want another inFamous game. I hope it's revealed the game that they're working on is a sequel to Second Son.
 
S

Sponge

Banned
Infamous 2 was the only Infamous game I enjoyed sadly. Great game though.

Really would love to see them return to Sly one day.
 
R

Ridley327

Member
Burdmayn said:
Really interesting read! Sly Cooper was one of my favorite series on PS2, and I still have Cole's backpack that came with the special edition of Infamous 2! Can't wait to see what their new project is whenever they're ready to show it. I'm kind of hoping for a PSX reveal.

On a related but unrelated note, what ever happened to the Sly Cooper movie?
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It's still in the works, but it's definitely not hitting 2017 anymore.
 
Okami Haundo

Okami Haundo

Member
Ridley327 said:
It's still in the works, but it's definitely not hitting 2017 anymore.
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Weiss said:
They actually turned it into a cartoon series now, by the guys making Sonic Boom.
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Thank you both for the information! I just looked this up and the answer appears to be a mixture of both from what I can see? There's definitely a Sly Cooper series in the works, but there doesn't appear to be official word that the movie is cancelled as a result.
 
psychotron

psychotron

Member
They make amazing games, and the HDR update to Second Son is stunning!

Also...

ku-xlarge.gif
 
N

Nachtfalke

Member
Something like Infamous 2 with the graphics of Second Son/First Light would be awesome. Not gonna lie, Second Son spoiled me alot in terms of graphics.
 
D

DriftingSpirit

Member
So they added Second Son to PS+ for their anniversary. Nice.

Edit - Started at MS, first game for Nintendo and extensive history with Sony. Full circle.
 
W

Waddle Dee

Member
They spent around 10 of those years making boring-ass Infamous games... Shame. They actually knew how to make some really fun 3D platformers.
 
A

Apathy

Member
Grats to everyone at sucker punch. So many memories.

With how long they are taking I gotta imagine their next game will have to be a PS4/ps5 cross gen release
 
BigEmil

BigEmil

Junior Member
Apathy said:
Grats to everyone at sucker punch. So many memories.

With how long they are taking I gotta imagine their next game will have to be a PS4/ps5 cross gen release
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Their last game Infamous First Light released in August 26, 2014

I imagine the next game will realease in 2018 and revealed at PSX 2017

Shouldn't take more than 4 years for a new IP
 
J

jwk94

Member
The transition from infamous 1 to 2 is still the hypest I've ever been for a video game and boy did it deliver.
 
TissueBox

TissueBox

Member
I'll take anything from Sucker Punch. ^^'

Sucker punch me..!!

...actually no don't, plz. o_o Unless it's with a new game!! Yeerss plz..!
 
A

Apathy

Member
SomedayTheFire said:
"shouldn't" but it very well could.
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Pretty much, also depends on how much new tech they've had to develop for it.

With Sony now sporting two high flying studios with nd and gg, it wouldn't surprise me if both Sony and sp push the studio to match the other two. I can see them wanting to do something big/different, seeing how long they've been quiet now
 
D

DriftingSpirit

Member
Apathy said:
Pretty much, also depends on how much new tech they've had to develop for it.

With Sony now sporting two high flying studios with nd and gg, it wouldn't surprise me if both Sony and sp push the studio to match the other two. I can see them wanting to do something big/different, seeing how long they've been quiet now
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And Sucker Punch is on the lower end for studio count.
 
F

Fluloco

Member
I love Insomniac, and I'm sure their Spider-Man game will be the best, but the idea (rumor that was going on a couple of years ago) of Sucker Punch's Spider-Man really excited me.

Sucker Punch is awesome, I would take everything they throw at me.
 
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