Sony Studio Liverpool: WipEout Interview

Tony Buckley gives a detailed interview on all things WipEout - the upcoming WipEout Pulse, their secretive PS3 project and other surprises to be announced soon!

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Kikizo: Let's get back to Pulse then, you've talked about the customising your ship and Photo Mode, how's that going to work because I'm not sure it's been done on PSP before?

Buckley: I've got the tool here but nobody's asking about it here, the Europeans loved it! But we're not European are we? I've got a customised skin, downloaded it onto the Memory Stick, and these are ones that have been opened as part of the game, someone has done a tiger skin at work, a zebra skin, and these are obviously designs that stand out a bit... we expect people to be more creative than this though. Once people have created their ship they can download it into the game. We don't want to be anal about the visuals but they are a massive part of the game. So why not share it, you know, with Photo Mode... at any point of the game I can hit start and pause it, you've got your usual options and photo mode is one of them. You can fiddle around with the camera and turn the HUD on and off. You get a shot that you like and then hit X when you're done, and it saves it to the Memory Stick... all the shots in my presentation earlier were from Photo Mode. And it's also a bit of fun. It's that idea that once you've got it, you can throw it up onto the website or do a competition to design a ship, and you know, winner gets a date with me, or whatever!

Kikizo: I think it will be popular because you must have seen that the Forza 2 skinning and photos thing has taken off in a massive way...

Buckley: I'm not gonna lie, even the original Forza, we sat back and said, wow, well done. And I think our player focus is the ship. That's his character. And we thought wouldn't it be ace if we could make the ship reflect the player. But it's such a simple tool to use, a Paint tool with the ability to go pixel perfect, it's going to be great.

Kikizo: In terms of music, what's your approach with this game - do you look to get that vibe you had back with Prodigy and Chemical Brothers, or do you look for new stuff now?

Buckley: I think it's really difficult to get that same vibe. I really want to emphasise to people that it does enhance the game. I'm not a massive dance fan; I don't listen to it in the car or at home, but I find that I am really enjoying listening to it when I am playing WipEout. And you can have custom MP3s [playlists of your own music] in the game. I mean look at this [he puts on a custom track, Walking on Sunshine, to the WipEout race that's running on the PSP]. Try playing the game to this. It's an MP3 on the Memory Stick so the game just picks it up. And you're sat at the start line, and you expect it to be 3, 2, 1, GO... boom boom boom... and if it's the wrong style of music, it's like what the hell?! People can do that if they want. And the little bastards in the office decided to do it to me, so I'm with journalists, and we had a time trial and this track came up! But we look for a mix of genres, so we try and get breaks, techno, drum and bass, we try and cater for the people that like electronic music, but we don't try and suggest it has the same cultural impact [as in 1995], because there are so many good DJs now that do club nights all over the world, but our emphasis is on music that people might recognise like Kraftwerk or Aphex Twin. But I also talk about bands like Noisia, who are sort of bubbling on being a big thing in this genre.

Kikizo: But also a lot of people discover this music for the first time in something like WipEout!

Buckley: I think so yes, and invariably there's always a soundtrack released. It might turn people to listening more to this music, but I think in-game it really adds so much, so our focus is on artists whose style we really feel works with WipEout, and then we leave them to actually create a track based on their style that we think suits the whole temple of it. It's a big part of the game.

Kikizo: You're not alone in this idea that the graphics and sound actually enhance the gameplay; some gamers might turn their noses up and argue gameplay is a separate element but Itagaki, the Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden guy - his view is, it's on a TV, it's a visual medium, if it doesn't look and sound nice, what's the difference between videogames and old style board games - which were previously the pinnacle of gaming. Sort of why it's called 'TV Game' in Japan...

Buckley: It's like God of War - the actual visual style of it, creates an atmosphere. Like Half-Life and any sort of FPS did. Grand Theft Auto you wouldn't call the sharpest graphics in the world but they work so well because it gives you the big city feel and that adds so much to it. In terms of WipEout, visually it's massively important, but audio is too, we're doing 600 miles an hour in a ship - race to Walking on Sunshine if you like, we'll allow you to do it, but when it says GO, you wait for that boom! And the majority will be like, yes, that works for me.

Kikizo: Well, the Sunshine tune might actually go quite well with something like OutRun2 for PSP but the difference is they never actually had the option for custom music - so it's a nice feature to have.

Buckley: It's a feature that doesn't take much thinking about. Loads of lads in the office love dance music, I've got a team that are really heavily into dance, and that really helps in terms of working with licensing department, like we receive a track from Noisia but it maybe needs a little bit more here, and we ask them, and they send another track, and we'll go back to our dance guys. And maybe they'll be like, "it's f***ing shit, don't like it!" But then we soon nail it!

Kikizo: Thanks so much for your time Tony.

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