‘Jak & Daxter’ on the Right Track

Two guys in a garage. It’s a romantic notion of how pluck, perseverance and programming prowess can generate cool games--and millions of dollars.

Just ask Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin, the guys who founded Naughty Dog, a Santa Monica game studio that developed the enormously successful “Crash Bandicoot” franchise in 1996. They’d tell you that in 1986, when they were both 16, they formed a company called Jam Software and started cranking out computer games.

In 1992, Gavin went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Rubin went to Newport Beach to surf. They regrouped a year later in Massachusetts to make the game “Way of the Warriors,” which was published by Universal Interactive Studios.

In 1994, the team, which had been reinforced with MIT graduates and New York artists, moved to Los Angeles and began work on “Crash.” The franchise went on to sell 24 million copies and make Rubin and Gavin rich.

Last year, they sold their studio to Sony Computer Entertainment of America, which makes PlayStation consoles. But the team of 30 or so programmers, designers and artists stayed on to make “Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy.”

Gavin and lead artist Bob Rafei discussed the game.

Question: How do you create a memorable character?

Rafei: The search for Jak was based on what we learned on “Crash.” Because we wanted to target a certain audience, we wanted to go for a specific design.

There’s a formula that character designers use. Basically, to appeal to a younger audience, you create a character that is less than human proportions, which would be [the height of] 7.5 heads. So if you have an adult game, they’d be about 7.5 heads high. For a cartoon-based game, you go less than that, say, five heads high. The shorter the character and the bigger the head, the cuter they are.

The other principle of character design involves having an iconic representation of the character and a realistic representation.

The most iconic character you could have is just a smiley face. It appeals universally to everybody. It doesn’t have race. It doesn’t have gender. It’s just a smiley face. The more details you put into a character, the more you separate your audience and they begin to have a more subjective experience with the character.

With Jak, we wanted to have features that were more outstanding, hence the ears. We also wanted him to have big, expressive eyes. Big eyes allow us to draw viewers in and focus them on the emotions of the character. With big eyes, you can also read the emotion of the character more easily with the limited pixels we have on the screen.

And because we have an action character, we made his appendages bigger. So he has bigger hands and bigger feet.

Q: How does game play dictate what the character looks like?

Gavin: We start with game play. This character basically started as a guy we called Box Man, which was basically a few boxes stacked together. But boxes are so ugly that it was hard to get a sense of how it moves around. So we started to think about how the character should look. We knew we wanted a game with a dexterous character who had a martial arts quality and who was also acrobatic.

Rafei: Because we wanted to make a nimble and dexterous character, we decided to make him look like he’s a capable warrior. So he has the wrappings on his wrists and elbows much like a fighter.

Once we came up with the idea, we put elements on the character itself, say, with the leather wrappings. But we didn’t want him so realistic that he’s associated with any one time period. We wanted him to be more iconic and representational, more universally appealing.

Q: Did you get different feedback from different parts of the world?

Rafei: Oh yeah. One of the things we learned from “Crash Bandicoot” was that we had to emphasize different aesthetics for different territories in our marketing campaigns.

In this case, we tried to make a character that is globally approachable. That was one of the toughest things we’ve had to do, because every time we went more cute and more childlike, say, less than five heads high, that’s what Japan liked. But people in Europe and the U.S. kept saying this was too cartoony, too cute.

Gavin: Funny thing is that in Japan, they think this character is too American-looking. And in America, they think this character is too Japanese-looking.

Q: Is Daxter a ferret or a weasel?

Gavin: He’s a mix of many animals. We call him an ottsel, because he’s part otter and part weasel. He’s just a weird fuzzy guy. He’s certainly a good tool for us in the sense that he’s super-elastic, so we can have a character that squashes and does all these unrealistic animations. His job is to push a story along by giving you hints.

Jak is the alter ego of Daxter. Emotionally, he’s a bit more neutral, so people can project themselves into him a little easier. And Daxter is the crazy one. He’s comic relief, but he can be very caustic.

Q: What were your goals for game play?

Gavin: We wanted players to have good, tight control that makes them feel like they’re in that world and they can do what they want. After we teach them the basic controls, we introduce them to a huge variety of experiences. There’s exploration, combat, puzzles, dexterity tests, racing.

Q: How is programming for the PlayStation 2 different from the original PlayStation?

Gavin: The processing power of PS2 is at least 100 times the PS1. That means you can do more interesting things. So it’s possible to do fancy physics. We have bridges you can bounce up and down and they’re all rubbery. Or simple platforms where your weight bends them. Trees sway in the breeze, and so on. That is good for the consumer but a huge amount of effort for the developer.

Rafei: The data pipe is so much bigger. It’s like the difference between a telegraph and a telephone line. You can draw more. You can animate more.

The Crash character was about 500 polygons, and Jak and Daxter combined are about 10,000 polygons. This creates a problem. Even though the graphics capability is 100 times greater, we can’t ramp up our development staff by a factor of 100 to keep up. So as with any other developer, we are going through growing pains.

Gavin: In “Crash,” the team was between five and eight people and you can toss ideas back and forth. But when you have dozens of people, you have to plan every detail as far in advance as possible.

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Alex Pham covers the video game industry. She can be reached at alex.pham@latimes.com.