It’s fair to say the Insomniac Games team working on Spider-Man love superheros. Creative Director Bryan Intihar introduces himself by way of a childhood anecdote in which the only way his mother could complete the weekly grocery shop was by packing a Spider-Man doll for him to play with in the store, and follows it up with an even more frank admission that he’d wear multiple sets of Marvel-themed underwear at once so he could pretend to be whichever superhero took his fancy at any given moment.

“I’m not embarrassed [by these stories] because the truth is, we all have them, we all have that moment when these characters came into our lives and changed it,” he explains. “So for me to think, more than 30 years later, I’m here at Insomniac working on a Spider-Man game for PlayStation 4, to me it’s pretty surreal, it feels like a dream come true.”

During a world exclusive visit to Insomniac’s studios in Burbank, California, we sat down with Intihar, Lead Writer Jon Paquette and Art Director Jacinda Chew to find out how they turned that dream into a reality.

Spider-Man is clearly a labour of love. Does that knowledge and passion for the character actually make it harder to make a good game? Do you know too much?