When HeyUGuys met Jay Ward, it was a bit of a ‘HOLYCHUFF I’MLIVINGOUTONEOFMYDREAMS’ life moment.
For the sake of our professionalism (and a restraining order), we didn’t quite let-on how excited we were, but I have always wanted to meet someone from Pixar who worked on some of our favourite films.
So we were more than a little giddy when we received an invite to meet Pixar guru Jay Ward and test drive their new Kinect game Kinect Rush: A Disney Pixar Adventure.
Far from your bog-standard big-screen tie-in, it’s the first time Pixar have allowed for five of its movie titles to be used in one game (Up, Toy Story, Cars, Ratatouille and The Incredibles), with each being lovingly and painstakingly recreated for a family adventure through some of the studio’s most recognisable worlds.
Shortly before embarrassing ourselves with supremely dignity-shredding abandon actually playing the game, we sat down with Jay to discuss the game, and the movie status of some of their biggest properties….
HeyuGuys: Pixar has an incredible legacy on-screen – why does bringing that universe to gaming appeal?
Jay Ward: I think an important part of doing a game is you can expand the universe and storytelling from the movie. When you’re making a movie, you’re literally telling a story – you have characters that go through an arc. When you’re playing a game you have the ability to change the story as you play. For us, the challenge is how can we grow this world that we’ve created for a film.
With this game, the cool thing is we have five Pixar films to choose from. So we get to play adventures that are cool ‘what ifs’ from the movie.
HUG: Did you find it liberating to create your own story as opposed to having to stick rigidly to a plot as you would with a straight-forward movie adaptation?
JW: It’s still a challenge because you want to make sure you’re true to those worlds. We have rules that we’ve set up in each of those films – the way a car drives in that world, or what the Rats in Ratatouille would or wouldn’t do.
Then you have to sit back and say ‘what is fun’, what would it be fun for me to do in this world?
HUG: How did you decide on the five movies you’d include in the game?
JW: We have twelve feature films to choose from and they’re all great – part of the mission was to find individual dynamics in each game. We wanted to get driving in there so Cars was a natural fit. Toy Story being down at a toy’s level was fun. We hadn’t done anything with The Incredibles since the movie and its accompanying videogame. That’s a great movie – it was a great opportunity to go back to that world and record the original voice actors for a lot of those parts, which was cool.
HUG: Pixar’s movies are always very good at tailoring to adults and kids alike – did you aim for the same thing with the game?
JW: It was a fundamental goal – we wanted to make sure it was as fun for an adult and a child. So if you’re an adult playing alone we’d want you to have just as much fun. A child may play differently, mind. Some people want to explore, some just want to get through it as soon as possible, and we’ve set the game up in a way that works either way. Instead of a timer counting down, the timer’s going up – so you get rewarded for going quicker but you’re not going to die or get punished if you don’t. We really wanted it to be co-operative instead of competitive.
HUG: With this appearing only on Kinect, did the medium come first and then the idea second?
JW: Microsoft came down to Pixar and they brought the technology to show us really early on in the platform’s life. From my perspective, the really cool thing is getting kids off the couch and physically engaging. We also spent so much time making the visuals authentic for each movie and mini-game that you really want to interact with items in the environment.
We’ve never lavished five film titles on one game before – that shows you the level of belief we have in the project and I think it’s a great marriage.
HUG: I saw you were hands-on with Cars as a franchise (Ward served as Cars franchise guardian) – is that still happening? Do you have plans for any more?
JW: The world of Cars is what we call an evergreen thing – it’s always going, it’s always growing – it has almost a cult-like status. We have Cars-land opening up by Disneyland – it’s a whole Cars world, 13 acre theme park opening this summer. We have a Cars hotel opening in Florida. Oh, and there are a number of short films we’re still working on.
