Q&A with Aaron Rigby 'Jackass: The Game' Producer

Jackass: The Game itself isn't at all breaking news, but a Q&A with Aaron Rigby, the game's producer, is. Questions such as "How came the idea of a Jackass game?" and Does 'Jackass - The Game' have multiplayer elements?" are sure to find a comprehensive answer in the lines below. But let's start with what we knew about the game so far, shall we?

According to Wikipedia...:

- it has been confirmed by Sidhe Interactive that all of the Jackass cast and crew will provide their own voices (except Bam Margera)
- they will also supply their likenesses for the game
- Johnny Knoxville and other members of the Jackass team also provided stunt ideas to the developer based on unused stunts from the show
- not much later, a trailer was released in June 2007 on the game's official website, along with the cover art.
- as far as the gameplay experience is concerned, an article up on IGN.com, revealed that the game would consist of a set of 40 minigames that closely follow aspects of both the series and the movies
- it is also said that the DS version has an open environment with which players interact to pull off stunts.

OK then, here's the game's producer answering a bunch questions regarding Jackass: The Game for the PSP and PS2 (the official report doesn't mention the DS installment, although the game was known to hit Nintendo's handheld too):

Q: How came the idea of a Jackass game?
A: The original series was the biggest inspiration. It was just crazy and creative. The way the jackass crew had the show set up gave us the opportunity to draw from a huge amount of stunts.

Q: Is the game based in actual sketches or are they completely new?
A: Nearly every stunt is original. The risk-factor of the stunts has been pushed higher for the game so, as tough as the guys are, they probably wouldn’t survive things like diving off a sky-scraper or rolling down a street in a trash can. We can get away with a lot more peril in the games that would be suicidal with real people.

Q: Does "Jackass - The Game" have multiplayer elements?
A: Oh, yeah. The PS2 will give you head-to-head and round-robin gameplay and the PSP version takes advantage on the WiFi features for multiplayer.

Q: What are the differences between the PSP and the PS2 versions?
A: Well, multiplayer is one of the differences. The PSP version also supports editing and exporting your replays. Basically, you play a stunt, save the replay, head over to Director mode and edits things like length, camera angels, add slo-mo, then export the stunt to your memory stick. Once it’s exported, you can upload the stunt too and show off your mad skills. For the PS2, you’ll get more detailed environments, including pedestrians to annoy during the stunts, and we expanded on the Bail-Out feature, where you rack up points based on how many injuries your character sustains.

Q: Was [it] very difficult to create a game based in a TV series that hasn’t got any kind of story or screenplay?
A: Oh, definitely. The story was pretty basic initially, but we got help from the jackass cast to make it more authentic. It was their input that made the story-line work and their voices that added the credibility and humor to it.

Q: The big appeal of Jackass is the spontaneity. Do you think you have succeeded translating this into a videogame?
A: That was a real pain. In most games success is success, you either accomplished your goals or you didn’t. Jackass doesn’t work like that. The stunts in the show were just as good whether they accomplished what they set out to do or failed completely. That means that our goals in a stunt had to make sure that an entertaining failure worked just as well as a resounding success.

At the time it was originally announced, Jackass: The Game still needed rating and dating. Things haven't changed much from that perspective, but hopefully, that day will soon come. Good thing they're still doing it. But have they dropped the DS version of the game?

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