Crafting Uncharted 3

That's an interesting question. I wish Amy was here, because I haven't had a chance to discuss it with her yet. Time will tell that that's going to be one of the key questions about the world of Uncharted. Because it's this long, ongoing story, just like a long-form TV serial is, by the time people have finished playing Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, they'll have followed 30 or more hours of the single-player, storytelling game, and there's a lot that can happen emotionally in that space.

Something Nolan said on stage earlier on was interesting: that Nathan Drake definitely matured between Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and the end of Uncharted 2. The way the character of Drake bounces off other characters, the changes they go through and the nature of their relationships... we saw the scene where Sullivan brings Chloe to visit Drake in prison. His reaction to her then, and the fact they remain friends despite having gone through this experience, is not something you see in video games enough. But it's the thing that allows all of us as people a human connection with the characters in a game like Uncharted.

We have said many times we went into the Uncharted series considering many video games are plot driven; the machinations of a space empire, or the fighting of dynasties in a fantasy kingdom drive the plot of many video games. That's all well and good, but we saw an opportunity to drive the story forward with characters and the interactions between the characters, and that implies they have to have meaningful struggles with each other and meaningful relationships with each other.

The love scenes have to be touching for you to really feel the love. The comedy has to make you laugh. It takes a tremendous amount of effort, and it's a great testament to Amy and Josh Scherr (lead cinematics animator) and Justin Richmond (game director) and Gordon Hunt (director of motion capture) that things gel as well as they do in the Uncharted games.

Our co-presidents Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra are very smart about setting ambitious but realisable goals for each of the projects we tackle. When we set out to create Uncharted: Drake's Fortune we felt we were bearing a great responsibility. We wanted to create a new franchise, on a new game machine whose hardware was not even finalised when we were initially conceiving the project.

So yes, I'd say there was grand ambition for Uncharted. And we for that first game bit off a lot. Nearly bit off more than we could chew; we just about managed to pull things together. And we've continued in that vein with each and every Uncharted project. But we always stay very focused on one project at a time, on the project we're currently working on, because we all believe that's the way to greatness.

For a start, we still have a ways to go with technology. Human beings are very difficult to replicate in computer graphics. We've made great strides in the techniques and approaches we've used to get emotion out of CG characters, and there are many other different ways to approach the same kinds of issues and problems. But, we still have a long way to go in terms of technologies for animation, for shader technologies, lighting technologies are in the ascendancy right now, post-processing. It's going to let us do a lot of new stuff in terms of creating different kinds of emotional effects through different graphical and different audio technology as well.

But I do think we are reaching a stage where the creative, where the ideas behind video games and the emotions you can evoke with video games are really coming to the fore. I'm interested in the indie scene and the art game scene, because I see it as the active avant-garde of video games. And just as the avant-garde has informed every great medium, whether it's the novel or stage plays or indeed film.

The history of film has a lot of great lessons in this regard, with the indie explosion that happened a number of times throughout the history of film, whether it was Easy Rider or Raging Bull. Indie games and art games are going to have a big impact on the mainstream of video gaming in terms of bringing new ideas to the table and demonstrating different things are possible both emotionally and also in the realm of game design.

I'm a huge Minecraft fan. Minecraft is a fascinating game. I'm a big fan of LittleBigPlanet, which broke so much new ground. I'm a big fan of thatgamecompany's games. I can't wait for Journey. I was proud to be wearing a Journey t-shirt on stage in our session yesterday. These kinds of games, the ones I mentioned are just a few indicators of many hundreds, even thousands of games, which are pointing new directions for game design, new directions for the art form that is video games. So, yeah, there are exciting times ahead.