The Development of Naughty Dog Classic, ‘Jak and Daxter’

This week I have been looking into the development cycle of video games, auteurs and production in general. In that vein I have found a neat series on YouTube titled “Devs Play” by DoubleFineProd. Double Fine Productions is a Video Game developer based in San Francisco and owned by Xbox Game Studios as of 2019.

The series itself involves the CEO of DoubleFineProd, Tim Schafer, sitting down and playing Video Games with fellow Game Developers, my episode of choice for this article is titled “Devs Play S2E08 · “Jak and Daxter” with Jason Rubin and Tim Schafer”. This involves Tim Schafer chatting with Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin about his Playstation 2 Classic, ‘Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy’.

The ‘Jak and Daxter’ series is one of my all time favourites. ‘Jak II: Renegade’ was the first game I owned on my Playstation 2 back in 2005 and has definitely helped shape me into the person and gamer I am today. I would soon enough go on to try the sequel ‘Jak 3’ and the prior instalment, and the featured game for this post, ‘Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy’. I adore the series and have played all the games (yes including ‘Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier’). But enough about me.

Firstly, a bit of a run down of Naughty Dog’s repertoire prior to the development of ‘Jak and Daxter’. Avid programmers, Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin, having played around with C++ and Lisp and founded JAM Software (which stood for “Jason and Andy’s Magic Software”) in 1984. After several releases through Publisher such as Baudville and Electronic Arts Jason and Andy renamed the studio to ‘Naughty Dog’ in 1989. Between then and 2001 when ‘Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy’ was released, Naughty Dog developed the following titles while under Universal Interactive Studios;

• ‘Way of the Warrior’ for the 3DO
• ‘Crash Bandicoot’ for the Playstation
• ‘Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back’ for the Playstation
• ‘Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped’ also for the Playstation

Between the release of ‘Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped’ and ‘Jak and Daxter’, Naughty Dog also released ‘Crash Team Racing’ for the Playstation, which was published by Sony Entertainment. During the game’s 8 month and 6 day development cycle, Naughty Dog spoke to Sony and managed get them to not only get the rights to the Crash Bandicoot IP from Universal (who owned the rights due to the prior deal with Naughty Dog) but also straight out bought Naughty Dog as a whole later in 2001.

Then came the fateful day ‘Jak and Daxter’ released to the public. December 3rd 2001.

The game was being developed over a 3 year period, the engine for which began development back during the development of ‘Crash Team Racing’. With co-founder Andy Gavin and fellow programmers, Steven White and Mark Cerny taking the helm on the project.

Naughty Dog had the vision to create a Character Driven, Open World, Action Adventure Game. After Sony saw the game they told Naughty Dog that they didn’t want it to be like ‘Crash Bandicoot’. They wanted something that they didn’t have to license for any number of titles, they wanted something that wouldn’t eventually show up on a competitor’s platform. Most importantly, they wanted something that would remain a permanent member of the Sony Universe.

The Naughty Dog team itself had grown from an 8 man Team during the development of Crash Bandicoot to a Team of roughly 40 that developed ‘Jak and Daxter’. Another part of growth of Naughty Dog between these two games is that ‘Jak and Daxter’ used actual animators, while the animations for Crash himself in the original title were done by co-founder Jason Rubin. On that note, ‘Crash Bandicoot’ featured a unique animation for almost every single death that could happen to the player, and Crash. Likewise, ‘Jak and Daxter’ featured a vast array of quips by the side-kick of the series, Daxter.

Since Naughty Dog had hired a group of actual animators for the development of ‘Jak and Daxter’, Jason was relegated from animator to developing Particle Systems with half of his time, and managerial tasks with the other half.

As for the design of the main character, Jak, Naughty Dog took a more committee based approach. While developing ‘Crash Bandicoot’ Naughty Dog had cartoonists Charles Zembillas and Joe Pearson develop the character, creating a firm vision of who the character Crash is. Whereas when creating Jak’s character Naughty Dog took advantage of Focus Groups to get ideas and references from different regions. This meant that Jak’s design went through 4 different groups. Naughty Dog themselves, Sony America, Sony Japan and Sony Europe. This caused a lot of confusion and while Jason does go on to say that Jak is a solid character (and I love the character myself) but he definitely could have benefited from a clearer vision.

Two aspect’s of Jak’s design that came from the committee are his face and ears as a whole. They were made to look more ‘cartoonish’ to be more ‘Japanese friendly’.

Daxter on the other hand was developed with a single vision, Jason states that he thinks that Daxter is a stronger character because of that fact. Daxter himself was included in the game as a sort of comic relief and also someone that can do whatever he wishes. This separates Jak and Daxter as Jak himself is a mute in the first game. Jason mentions “…having the main character talk would distance you from the main character. ‘I’m not that character, he cracked a bad joke or said something I wouldn’t have necessarily said in that position’.”. So the player is meant to find themselves linked to Jak in a different kind of way to most Video Game Protagonists, especially at the time. This also allows for the Main Character to be likeable as he can’t do or say anything that the player wouldn’t do otherwise. Having your Main Character be likeable is a big step in the right direction.

The dynamic between Jak and Daxter was more intense during development, the game originally allowed the player to kick Daxter to “shut him up”, but this was removed before release. The two would grow to be more equal on the talking and character front in future releases as Jak would begin talking at the beginning of the sequel; ‘Jak II: Renegade’.

Naughty Dog itself has a bit of a reputation for…odd, naming philosophies. Crash Bandicoot 1-3 go by the following names:

• ‘Crash Bandicoot’
• ‘Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back’
• ‘Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped’

• 

• 

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As shown in the Box Art and names listed above, Naughty Dog like mixing it up with naming their games. This is no different for the ‘Jak and Daxter’ Series, of which there is the following:

• ‘Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy’
• ‘Jak II: Renegade’
• ‘Jak 3’
• ‘Jak X: Combat Racing’

As shown, once more, by the Box Art and names listed, there is even more variation in naming philosophies. ‘Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy’ and ‘Jak II: Renegade’ both utilise a subtitle (1 – ‘The Precursor Legacy’ and 2 – ‘ Renegade’), while ‘Jak 3’ drops the subtitle and even uses a number “3” in the title while ditching the roman numerals used in ‘Jak II: Renegade’. While they change their minds again in ‘Jak X: Combat Racing’ or just ‘Jak X’ in Eurpoe and Australia.

That’s it for this week, I hope you enjoyed the read. I’ll be posting again soon! If you want to watch the featured video then feel free to check out the video below!

Thanks for reading!
– Nathan “Naff” Hibbert