Insomniac Games' Ted Price says 'Girl With a Stick' was his 'first significant failure'

Insomniac Games CEO Ted Price considers never-released game Girl With a Stick his "first significant failure," reports Official PlayStation Magazine UK.

In a recent interview, Price said that Girl With a Stick, described as "Tomb Raider meets Zelda," failed because the team never figured out "the one thing that the game was gonna do better than any other game." Price said that basic in-game actions like running around and combat weren't fun, and that eventually the team had to admit it wasn't working.

"It was more that we had this idea of creating a more mature game; moving away from Spyro so we wouldn't get pigeonholed as "that company that does platformers," Price told PlayStation. "We took a half-step in that more mature direction. We didn't get all the way there, so we ended up with a concept that, gameplay-wise and art-wise, was in this weird sort of no-man's land between Spyro and something else. It was unclear who our audience was."

Price also stated problems with developing for the PlayStation 2 engine, something that hindered gameplay development.

"At first, I felt that I had failed everybody, because I had been the one pushing this concept for a long time, and I tried different ways to keep people excited about it, to keep our publisher excited about it," he said. "The rest of the company was not excited, no matter what I said, or how clearly I tried to paint the vision for the future, people weren't buying into it. I was reluctant to make that admission, because that was my first significant failure in the gaming business, or any business."

Price called the decision to scrap Girl With a Stick a "relief," allowing the team to learn from the experience and begin development on what would become the Ratchet & Clank series.