TRON 2.0 with Cliff Kamida

How long have you been in the gaming industry, and how did you get

your start?

I started in the gaming industry in 1994 as a production assistant at Knowledge Adventure and joined Disney Interactive as a producer in 1995. I'm basically a gaming/comic book/animation geek who found a way to make a living at it.

What is your role on TRON 2.0?

I'm the producer. I oversee the development of the game from start to finish.

What was the genesis of the TRON 2.0 project and given its cult status, was the idea of creating a game "sequel" daunting?

After our success in the children's software market, Disney was interested in branching out into core gaming, and what better property to do it with than Tron, which was, after all, a movie about computer games. Also, we've got some of the biggest Tron geeks in the world working here, so it was only a matter of time before a Tron game was greenlit.

Given the film's status - it was a landmark film for the computer graphics industry and inspired a generation of game developers - yes, it was very daunting to take on a game sequel to the film, but it also made a lot of sense. I think Tron is a lot more relevant today than when the film first came out in the early 80s, when people used punch cards. Computers are a part of people's daily lives now. I also think that, even though it's a 20 year old property that has lay largely dormant for a number of years, TRON 2.0 looks refreshingly different from all of the other gritty, hyperrealistic shooters that are on the market, due to both the visionary art of the original filmmakers and Monolith's talented team of artists.

TRON's look was very specific--was it difficult to stick to that image while still creating your own vision of the evolution of the TRON world?

Monolith did a fantastic job on the art - they were able to keep the essence of the original look and feel of the film, and yet update it for the 21^st century. Syd Mead flew up to Monolith for a day and gave them his "Art of Tron" presentation. He showed the team a lot of concept work that never made it into the film as well. The team also looked at a lot of the work done by Moebius. The general idea was, what does the digital world look like given today's technology?

Why is it important to integrate the light cycles into the story?

From an action standpoint, the lightcycles were a highlight of the film, so we felt it was absolutely essential to include in the game. I loved how the light cycles in the movie had that closed arcade booth feel. Doing a Tron game without the lightcycles would be like doing a Batman game without the Batmobile.