Shack: Independent developers face a lot of challenges in today's game industry, but Insomniac was recently cited as one of the top ten small businesses to work for in America by The Great Place to Work Institute. How has the studio not only stayed afloat all these years, but comfortably successful?

Ryan Schneider: I think that success for Insomniac starts at the top. We're lucky that we have really strong, smart leaders in Ted Price, Al Hastings, [and] Brian Hastings. We've had continuity at the top since Ted founded the company, and I think that goes a long way. In addition, I think that the values that he founded the company with--collaboration, independence, quality, efficiency--are lived every day. There isn't a disconnect between what values are espoused versus how we act. We really walk the talk here.

Everybody really does have a say in how our games are made, regardless of the position that they occupy at the company. As a result, I think a lot of people are motivated to do their best, and when people are motivated to do their best, it becomes evident in the games themselves. I think that's why our games look and play so well, because it's a motivated group of people making them.

Shack: Can you speak a bit about how Insomniac is organized and managed? With so many different aspects of a game needing to come together, how do you ensure the different departments meet each other's needs?

Ryan Schneider: Personally, I think that it's a combination of two things. First, the department heads and leads are organized and passionate about what they do, and they talk. We have leads meetings every week. Our project management team is the second component. They help run and manage those meetings. Overall, there are project managers for each title, and there are project managers who handle different aspects of the production process. As a result, there's a strong glue that holds everything together in terms of project management and strong leaders who know how to communicate with each other.

That doesn't mean we don't have our bumps, but we're doing a really good job over the past few years of learning from our mistakes when we make them, and ensuring they don't happen again.

Shack: How does the Insomniac design process differ from that of other developers?

Ryan Schneider: It's hard to say, compared to other developers. You probably know that there are different methodologies for how to make games. For instance, you may have the Agile method or even Mark Cerny's method, among other approaches. In general terms, we focus heavily on pre-production, on making sure that we have a viable proof of concept going into production, and we have very clearly defined milestones during production that our project managers meticulously schedule and diligently manage.

We are trying to do a better job of aligning all the various marketing and PR requests that go along with production to make the process even smoother. That's been a big accomplishment for us during Ratchet & Clank Future. We don't necessarily subscribe to one way of making games, but we do try to focus overall on having a very strong pre-production period, and a very detailed production period. We try to factor some slack into the mix as well as marketing and PR needs.

That's the macro level. It's harder to specify how we're different in terms of going through the actual production cycle. Many departments are inter-dependent on each other, and we break things down by level cycles to manage the workload more effectively. At the same time, it's all within a very strong pre and production process.

Shack: How does playtesting factor into that?

Ryan Schneider: Playtests are heavily integrated and scheduled -- we're very milestone driven at Insomniac. We schedule these playtests diligently throughout the process. Usually they are tied either directly before or directly after important milestones, like a fully playable disc or a certain level cycle being completed. We're developing, then we're testing. We're developing, then we're testing. We're developing and then we're polishing and polishing and polishing.

There's a lot of testing, both internally and with Sony, that goes on to make sure that first and foremost, the game is fun. As part of that effort, we try to nail difficulty tuning, and we iron out potential choke points. Of course, the economy in Ratchet & Clank specifically is very important as well. We spend a lot of time working on that. We even have QA people that are dedicated to testing the bolt and weapons upgrades economy and enhancing it.

Shack: Earlier this year, Insomniac appeared on ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and based a playable character in Ratchet & Clank Future on one of the family members. How did Insomniac's involvement with Extreme Makeover come about? What effect did the new character have on the overall development of the game?

Ryan Schneider: We received a tip from a business partner of Insomniac's, who had a friend working on the show. The show producers were putting out a general call to development studios, looking to support a certain child's wishes as part of the show. As soon as we were tipped off to that, we jumped on the phone. The show producers had an original vision of what was possible, which was unrealistic for anyone. They actually wanted a fully playable game to be created in a week, and unless it's Demonik from the movie Grandma's Boy, that really doesn't happen.

We counter-proposed with the idea of what is [probably] going to be called Captain James, in honor of James Westbrook, the kid who we were doing this for. We were able to make him a playable character. The stars really lined up for where we were at in production. We had just completed the Kerchu City demo for Electronic Gaming Monthly's April cover, so we had a relatively stable level environment. While we certainly had to shift some production resources, we were able to work within the production framework to keep the project managers happy, yet still rally some support from people in their free time to create this playable skin in time to meet the deadline needs for the show. It was a rigorous process, but definitely worthwhile.

I do want to add that we did a month's plus amount of work in the span of ten days.

Shack: I assume that involved many different areas of Insomniac, concept art, animators, and so forth?

Ryan Schneider: Yes, many different areas of Insomniac were involved in creating Captain James. That's a great example where the project managers were key in not only helping push this vision through, but providing the parameters for how we could do it without affecting the game negatively. We wouldn't have been able to do it if we hadn't [stayed on schedule].

The project managers have a really tough job at Insomniac because they're the ones that have to constantly say "no." We're a company that dreams big, we always are asking "what if?" and "how could we?". The project manager's job is not only to think about "how could we?" but what would it take and at what expense will it come. That's a hard job, when our M.O. for our past games is creating crazy outrageous weapons and innovative gameplay. It's hard to tell a group of creative ambitious people no, and they have to do it every day.

Shack: How does Captain James factor into the overall game? Are you forced to play as him? Is he part of an optional mini-game?

Ryan Schneider: We know how Captain James will be incorporated into gameplay, and we're going to be revealing that over the next month or so.

We had certain parameters we needed to meet for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition regarding James' character. In real life, James is confined to a wheelchair right now, and therefore, it would be awkward and perhaps insensitive to show him running around, even with bionic legs, in our universe. That's actually one of the reasons you see James sitting in a saucer, because he can still wreak havoc in the game, but he can do so on his terms.

Turn the page to learn about the role of the fan community in Insomniac's efforts.