Brighton-based studio Relentless has been producing the Buzz series since 2005, attracting many thousands of casual gamers to PS2, with its big-buttoned, buzzer-style controllers. Now that the brand is established on PS3, what’s next for the team – and for social gaming in general? We talk to co-founder David Amor, who reveals the (possible) next big thing in dedicated gaming controllers…

How did you go about rethinking Buzz for PS3?

DA: After we finished Buzz: Music Quiz on PS2 we started to have some ideas about what we’d do with Buzz if we put it online. But, of course, we couldn’t start on Buzz PS3 as we didn’t have the hardware, so there was a long period of shelving ideas. And to be honest, the online capabilities are the most important new feature. We’re a company that’s done well not being on the bleeding edge for about four years, but PS3 and user-generated content have kind of put us on the bleeding edge.

It’s been out for a few months now, so how are players receiving the game?

DA: It’s got a decent Metacritic score – it’s always skewed by the fact that some reviewers give it a six because… we’ll it’s their own reasons, they get to choose, but I think some parts of the specialist press might mark it a little lower because it’s not a hardcore gamer’s game. But overall what we’ve found is, on PS3 the game is in slightly different hands than it is on PS2. PS3 has a smaller installed user base right now so the people who have it are more into the technical things. With our online mode, although it’s great and people are really enjoying it, there’s a level of expectation in that group of people – they’re saying, hang on a minute, why can’t I do this, or that…

One example, is the slight controversy surrounding the Sofa vs Sofa mode…

DA: Yes. The reason we called it Sofa vs Sofa – and this goes way back to PS2 – was I though, okay how will this be played? I imagined a mode where you play with your buddies on the sofa, against each other for a while, then you say, why don’t we play co-operatively? So you play a team game - your sofa against another sofa on another PS3, it was always my intention that one person on each sofa would enter the answers after consultation. But of course, the expectation is that everyone on the sofa gets a buzzer and they play lots of other people. I’m pleased really – I wasn’t sure how the basic concept would translate, how popular a head-to-head online mode was going to be. Everyone says, ‘that’s great, but I want more of this please!’.

So are you considering changing the online mode?

DA: Well, yeah. I’m not going to announce anything but, as you saw with Motorstorm, Sony did a good job of supporting the game post-release, and it’s up to Sony quite what they do with Buzz in terms of updates, but my understanding is, they’re happy to support the game with new features.

It’s interesting that you said it’s up to Sony. I always thought of added content as a developer-led process. Do Sony take delivery of the game, then make requests for downloadable content?

DA: No. Relentless is closer to Buzz than any other company, including Sony – it’s large on their radar, but we’re very busy with Buzz stuff here – we think about it a lot. We have a long road map of ideas, and when we present these to Sony they’ll say, ‘well, we think this one’s important, this one less so…’. We said we’d really like to give users the ability to put pictures into their quizzes, and it would be a cool feature, but Sony said they’d love to, but legally, it’s a headache. It’s a collaboration – ultimately Sony pays for the production of the game – they get to decide what things they’d like us to work on.

How is the user-generated content working out?

DA: The quality has been really good. I was worried that we’d get lots of random nonsense, like ‘what’s my favourite colour?’, or ‘how badly can I swear in a quiz and get away with it’, but actually people have taken it seriously, they’ve come up with proper quizzes that are fun to play. It works really well.

What are some of the best you’ve seen?

DA: The one’s I like – and this is the best thing about giving people tools – are where they’ve taken it in a direction I just wouldn’t have expected. One I liked was the memory quiz – where the first question was ‘My house is red, my garden is blue, I have a dog named Rover and the sun comes out on a Tuesday’, then it says ‘press button to continue’, and then the next question is, ‘what colour is my garden?’, then later, ‘what did I ask you in question two?’. It’s not strictly a quiz, but it works. Last week I enjoyed the GoogleFight Quiz: God vs Satan?

Over the course of the Buzz titles we’ve only released something like 40,000 official questions. All of a sudden I’ve got six times more, so from a gameplay point of view, I can start using that in a different way, knowing that I’m not going to run out – it’s opened the doors for some good ideas for the future… It’s too early to talk about them, though.

About your own questions, do you write these yourselves – is there a Relentless quizmaster?

DA: Sony actually handles the questions, partly because some of them are based on pictures and videos, and Sony does the licensing of those. They’ve actually set up a language team in Brighton, who all day every day, check questions in the 12 languages we ship in. They read them and come up with alternatives if they don’t work in their language. It’s quite an operation.

Check back tomorrow for part two…