

Some interesting tidbits about his time at Rare and Free Radical.



TimeSplitters got made because they showed their tech demo to Sony, who were very impressed by how quickly they'd gotten something up and running using the prototype dev kits. This is why TS1 was a PS2 launch title, and an exclusive. Eidos had rejected FR's requests to make an FPS game up until this point.



Both Eidos and EA disliked the map making tools in TimeSplitters. He remarks that all the publishers they worked with seemingly considered FR as a company troublesome.



Doak says that one of his frustrations is how many people working in games publishing -- and marketing in particular -- don't understand what players want. He's become increasingly aware of this since he no longer works in mainstream game development.



EA did not understand how to market TimeSplitters: Future Perfect. In particular, they didn't like how much content the game had. Doak remarks that modern videogames have become narrower and narrower in scope. TimeSplitters had singleplayer, multiplayer, arcade challenges, minigames, and so much more. EA's marketing people didn't want lots of features. They wanted something they could fit into a niche they understood and could market traditionally. This matches what Steve Ellis said about TimeSplitters 4 being rejected for "too much content".



Working on Future Perfect was painful because "EA were being EA".



Doak has a very low opinion of Crytek, their management in particular. (He left Free Radical some time before the Crytek buyout.) He believes the people in charge at Crytek will never do anything with the TimeSplitters IP. He challenges them to remaster TimeSplitters, but doesn't think it'll ever happen.



Doak is critical of Sony's policies, particularly the ones when he was at Free Radical. While Sony helped TimeSplitters become a reality, afterwards they became very uncooperative. FR wanted to port TimeSplitters to the PSP. Sony told them that they couldn't port it unless they added "special features to sell the hardware". FR wanted to set up a small team to make a bare bones port in about 4 months. Sony said no. They tried again with the Vita. Sony began demanding "that stupid thing on the back where you could wave your fingers around" functionality into such a port. They also wanted to port TimeSplitters to the PS3, but Sony wouldn't let them unless the port had "new special features".