Want to feel old? Follow these strict instructions.
Invent an innovative, cool new game concept. Get hyped. Take that hype and its core concept to a development team full of young men barely in their 20s. Expect ‘synergy’.
Pitch it to them: it’s a video game, it’s the apocalypse, it’s the end of the world. But…
It’s a funky fresh new spin on the ‘end of the world’, a new take on a stagnant genre. The world has become overrun by hordes of mutants and you must survive in this wasteland.
But guys, instead of playing as a po-faced, gritty survivor ala Joel from The Last of Us or Marcus Fenix from Gears of War, you play as a wacky Rock Star who’s breaking all the rules.
Right guys?
[A handful of nods in the room, polite smiles]
You’ll be like Iggy Pop. You’ll be the Iggy Pop of the post-apocalypse. When you guys are in the trenches, making the bones that will become this game I want you to be asking yourselves one single, all important question:
“What would Iggy Pop Do?”
[Awkward silence, rustling of chairs, a single hand raised in the back of the room.]
“Sorry, Iggy who?”
Wait… what?
According to Creative Director Marcus Smith, that’s pretty much how development on Sunset Overdrive began.
But let’s go backwards for a second.
Midway through development of Insomniac’s last major release, Resistance 3, Marcus Smith and Drew Murray discussed a common game development hypothetical. Imagine ‘Big Publisher X’ gave us money to make any game we wanted to make — anything — what would that game be?
How about a zombie game, they both said — a post-apocalyptic zombie game? That was the first suggestion. Almost instantly, the pair gave it the kibosh.
“We were like, the world doesn’t need this game,” says Marcus. “What can we do differently?”
What could they do differently? As soon as Marcus and Drew asked themselves this question, the pieces began to fall into place.
“Why not incorporate punk rock?”
Both Marcus and Drew grew up listening to (and being influenced by) punk rock. That works.
“Why not make it fun in the end times?”
Why not indeed. Then the final question, perhaps the most important question of all:
“What if Iggy Pop were the last man alive?”
That was it. That was the core of it. That was why, in its earliest stages of development, Sunset Overdrive was code-named ‘Iggy’.
“We asked ourselves: what if Iggy Pop were Charlton Heston in Omega Man? We had no idea what that would mean, but we figured he would probably die in a spectacular, horrific event.
“Whenever you see Iggy on stage he’s like a Mick Jagger who might actually be good in a fist fight,” explains Marcus. “He’s got gravitas and he’s got balls. It just seemed perfect for this game, he kind of epitomised what we were going for.”
Simple. What would Iggy Pop do? High concept done. Now all Marcus had to do was inform the younglings. Namely, the rest of the Insomniac’s development team.
“It was blank stares. It was like me talking to this wall,” admits Marcus. “Come on wall! Just get it!”
Marcus will be the first person to admit: communicating the idea of Iggy Pop as a main character in a video game set in the post-apocalypse was difficult at first.
“A group of young game developers don’t necessarily know who Iggy Pop is. Or don’t even know who Iggy Pop was. It didn’t translate very well!”
Marcus had another wise idea: movie nights.
The idea was to give Sunset Overdrive’s young developers an idea of what they were shooting for by showing them movies: movies featuring anti-heroes with the kind of swagger and sense of anarchic humour that was — largely — missing from video games. Repo Man, a 1984 slacker movie starring Emelio Estevez was an early success, but others didn’t go down so well.
“There was just this gulf,” laughs Marcus.
“I remember at one point we showed our designers The Young Ones, and one of our designers came up to us afterwards and said, “why did you make us watch that?”
There were other issues. Even if some of Sunset Overdrive’s young team did develop a vague grasp on Iggy Pop and what the idea of Iggy Pop might represent, very few — in the beginning at least — really understood the fundamentals of what it meant to be ‘punk’. The word ‘punk rock’ doesn’t necessarily mean what it once meant in, say, 1977.
“To a 20 year old you say Punk Rock and they think like a cartoon version of what Punk Rock is.
“‘Oh you mean like Blink 182?’
“I’m like ‘fuck you!’”
“To them Green Day is Punk Rock. I’m like, ‘Green Day is on Broadway!’ You know what I mean? Let’s take you back, let’s try and educate you a little bit! Those guys would go to a GBH show and get beaten to death!”
But, in a sense, that confusion helped the game’s development. Punk Rock bands, especially British groups like The Clash or The Sex Pistols, tended to take themselves quite seriously, but for Marcus harnessing that anarchic sense of fun was paramount. He wanted to tap into some of the great satire Californian punk rock was responsible for.
“For me the only good punk is a smart punk,” says Marcus. “Like the Dead Kennedy’s — they’re great satirists. That’s what I grew up with.”
In the end it was an image that helped make the breakthrough.
Well, more than one image, but images just like this one: Iggy Pop, shoulders back, chest out — shirtless of course — mic in hand, being carried by the crowd, not giving a single solitary fuck. Being cool, essentially. Images like those helped the team infuse the spirit of Iggy into Sunset Overdrive.
“There are so many images of Iggy looking like that,” says Marcus. “When you’re moving around in this world we don’t want you hunched over or scared, we want you posing, hitting these rock star poses. The animators could get that energy.”
Ironically, it was ‘the man’ — read: publishers, higher ups — who, being a little older and weathered, tended to more easily grasp Sunset Overdrive’s high concept. Mainly because they grew up during punk and, crucially, actually knew who Iggy Pop was. Randomly, the thing that crossed that generation gap and unified the team was a movie about as far removed from punk as you could possibly imagine: Scott Pilgrim vs The World.
“Scott Pilgrim is a movie based on a comic that was based on video games. Now we’re a video game based on that movie! Feels like we’re going round robin here, but that movie — the pacing, the humour and the effects with breaking the fourth wall — that became an influence that everyone across the board could kind of get.”
That, in the end, was key.
I ask Marcus to imagine a future, a dystopian future if you will. 20 years from now he pitches a brand new game, to a brand new group of young developers. Once upon a time, years in the past, he had asked a group of developers a single question: “what would Iggy Pop do?” Now he is asking a similar, but paradoxically different question:
“What would Iggy Azalea do?” What would that game look like?
“Sorry,” asks Marcus, he’s confused. I repeat the question.
“Iggy who?”
Comments
39 responses to “Sunset Overdrive And The Generation Gap: What Would Iggy Pop Do?”
The game character is wearing a shirt. He’s doing Iggy Pop all wrong.
He looks more like Vyvyan from The Young Ones.
he looks more like Travis Barker from Blink-182. except he doesn’t even have any tattoos.
That old photo is great. It’s time for Iggy to put his shirt on now though:
http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/story/iggy-pop-and-the-stooges-ready-new-album-for-april-release-20130225/iggy-306-1361807073.jpg
I G G Y
No.
Who DAT?
Some nobody.
What Insomniac need to do is come home to Playstation, at least Sony gave Microsoft visitation rights when it decided it wanted Bungie
I think they’re doing the new Ratchet and Clank for Sony. They’re not bound to Microsoft in anyway, they’re freelancers now.
I know, so are Bungie, I just wanna play this game, and can’t justify a xbone for it
Well, it seems that they approached Sony with it first but Sony wanted to own Sunset Overdrive. Since it’s important to Insomniac that they own the IP, there’s a really tiny chance of it appearing on Sony’s console, maybe in the far future, since it’s not shackled to Microsoft and Insomniac can do whatever they want with it.
I feel like Insomniac got to be the underdog of PS3 last gen among Sony’s big three platforming companies: Naughty Dog went on to create Uncharted and The Last of Us, Sucker Punch went from third place to second with Infamous, and Insomniac did Resistance which didn’t pan out as well as the other games. I don’t know if I’m correct though, just an observation. There’s a reason that Uncharted and Infamous leapt to the PS4, but Resistance didn’t.
If I’m wrong, I’d like to hear other’s thoughts on this.
I wonder if their experience with Fuse kind of created this situation. They had a game that looked similar, tonally, to Sunset Overdrive but it got re-tooled into a generic shooter, let’s assume on orders from EA. So they start over again and this time they want control to see it through to where they want it to go. With Sony not willing to budge they went looking elsewhere to try and keep the control they want.
I agree that Insomniac fell behind a bit. Ratchet and Clank is always good but Resistance failed to take hold like other exclusives. Can’t really blame them for looking at new places for their games, but I’d still like to see this hit PS4 at some point.
Iggy pop already did a zombie apocalypse!
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ILjUe-znXE4
Fuck yeah, love this track.
What? WHAT?
I can sort of get it if they misunderstood and thought the musical portion was the point.
this is probably more of an American thing than a generational thing…
BURN THAT MAN!
Yea I have no idea how someone can not like the Young Ones.
I have a feeling it might be a bit too weird and unpredictable for the younger generation. A lot of stuff now days is a lot more toned down and generic, I feel like not as many chances are being taken.
Started reading – it’s nice to be reminded you’re not that old. Ended just feeling out of touch. I know nothing about Iggie Pop beyond him being a singer. I have never even heard of this Azalea person.
She is a white rapper, looks like a white Nicky Minaj
It’s quiet ironic (and shows my age no doubt) that whenever I read an article about Iggy Azalea (and there are a lot recently … hmm) I just want to scream at my website (hey, at least I’m not old enough to prefer actual newsprint) or mobile phone – “Hey, hey, who the f*ck is Iggy Azalea really ? Iggy POP is the only Iggy worth a damn !” 🙂
I mean, I know who Iggy Azalea is (not a terribly good looking Aussie white rapper … so yeah, a bit like Nicky Minaj [as BD NZ said] who herself has kinda been hit with the ugly stick really) … but I just don’t CARE who Iggy Azalea is, if that makes sense 🙂
I never knew she was Australian, I actually thought she was Kesha for a long while.
Yea, I looked her up on wikipedia. Born “Amethyst Amelia”… poor girl. Grew up in Mullum… poor girl. Famous for singing about her vagina on youtube… … … …umm… …well, then. Good luck to her, I suppose.
Now, then… Nicky who? Back to wikipedia, I guess…
Nicky the black american version of Azalea haha… by far her best song:
Right. Pop culture’s clearly broken. Can we try turning it off and on again?
The only thing I like Nicki in is “The Creep”, and it’s not even her song.
Lonely Island?
I thought she was more famous for complaining about how when she moshes in her audience, people try to stick their fingers in her private parts without her consent.
A *terrible, white main-stream pop rapper.
Chances are you’ve heard one of her songs though.
Given that the only radio I hear is while waiting for either coffee or takeout… I guess it’s possible. But it all sounds the same to me, so I always go back to my headphones at the earliest possible opportunity.
Iggie Pop…
Now there’s a name I’ve not heard in… oh, before you were born.
This game seems to have way more in common with the neo-pop punk bands of the 90s than it does with underground punk like GBH, Exploited and the like.
This game screams “pop punk soundtrack”.
You can’t really expect the average teenage/youth Xbox One player to be familiar with quality music.
Yea definitely (and unfortunately).
I think having late punk/early hardcore as reference would be too much for these wussy ass kids now days.
This article makes me hate this game even more. Completely missed the point of Iggy Pop and Punk. DIY, danger, darkness, violence. not energy drinks and purple hair.
Good article. I know I’m going to buy a bloody Xbox One just for this game.