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Inside Insomniac With Ted Price
Posted by Maggie Greene at 3:30 AM on November 17, 2008
Gamasutra's Christian Nutt sat down with Insomniac CEO Ted Price at their recent community event; the discussion centered heavily on Resistance 2 and the Insomniac development process. Price has a lot to say about how Insomniac deals with requests and suggestions from the user base, both on their own community as well as elsewhere (and gives us a ringing endorsement with "Well, sure, Kotaku is a good source."). A particular challenge was and is getting a handle on how best to design for online modes, since it's a bit of a 'black hole' for developers:
* And by complete, we mean complete complete. Sony says — and you may already have heard this figure tossed around — that there's some 420 hours worth of play time in Resistance 2 required to unlock everything.
Just out of of a Resistance 2 session with Insomniac boss Ted Price. Showed the game's intro, which picks up where Resistance 1 left off. The sequel features new lighting and new motion capture along with more detailed textures. The game kicks off in Iceland and then by the second level takes players through the streets of San Francisco. Players are joined by three sentinels who help fight and tell the story since the voice over narration from Resistance 1 has been dropped. That should help players learn more about main character Nathan Hale. 
Above, a still from a promo vid for Resistance 2, currently screening at 
Now that Insomniac has found success with both the Ratchet & Clank and Resistance franchises, you might expect them to simply sequel the IP as long as the checks come in, staggering each title's two-year development cycle to release one game a year. But Insomniac's president Ted Price explained that such a schedule ping ponging Ratchet and Resistance wasn't the plan. Instead they intend to, "continue to produce new IP, there's no question about that". 
Rule of thumb: Launch titles suck. It's not for a lack of good ideas, but rather, that they are rushed and the hardware is still a big friggin' mystery. Jak & Daxter developer Naughty Dog decided to sit the launch out. Company co-president Evan Wells says:
