Part two of our in-depth discussion with Relentless Software’s David Amor. Check back tomorrow for part 3!

How important do you think the casual gaming sector is to PS3?

DA: It’s really important. The reason why PS2 sold as many as it did, was that it provided products that appealed to people beyond gamers. And I think it’s exactly the same for PS3. I remember when Sony asked us to do Buzz on PS3 a few years ago, we said ‘are you sure? Shouldn’t we wait a little while?’ Buzz came out toward the end of the PS2 cycle. They said no, it’s really important that there’s a broad spread of games. My guess is, if you’re buying a console and you’re telling your wife that you’re spending £300 pounds, it’s good to be able to say, ‘well, it has a SingStar game you’re going to like! Look at Buzz, it’s even better on PS3!’

It seems that some of the most interesting games at E3 this year were the smaller, casual titles on PSN – stuff like Fat Princess and Flower. Do you think casual gaming’s time has come?

DA: Certainly with PSN you can afford to take more risks, because you’re not spending the same amount of money. Additionally some of the games you see coming out are self-funded. So if I have enough money to develop a PSN game, and I’m crazy enough to think I’ll make money on, say, a lawnmower sim, then as long as Sony is broadly okay with it, as long as it isn’t inappropriate, then fine, go ahead and do it. That opens the door for people to be a bit more experimental. When you’re asking for the kind of money it costs to make a Blu-ray game then even companies that are usually happy to take risks are going to be cautious.

Is PSN development on your road map at all?

(Laughs) It’s a bit too early to say. But it’s an interesting platform for all developers, I think. Fast-forward a few years and I’m looking forward to what we saw happening with iTunes and music being echoed in videogames – it means that all of a sudden you can be more experimental. You don’t have to worry about selling a game for £40, you can think ‘well, I think people will be happy paying £5 for this’… You can do shorter games, or something episodic… I was never able to do a James Bond quiz on PS2 because there’s probably not a big enough market for it – but there is on PSN. Not that we’re necessarily doing a Bond game!

Does the downloadable element also mean you can do more time-sensitive updates – you could have an Olympics quiz, or an X Factor quiz?

Yes, exactly.

In the past, part of the Buzz business model has been to release new versions of the game, based around different subjects. But will user-generated content erode or even destroy that possibility?

There were a couple of questions that came up during the development of Buzz on PS3: what do we think of people cannibalising our future content? Somebody asked, ‘don’t you think people will download the content for £3.49 and then just write all those questions themselves as user-generated content?’ But there are a couple of things – ours are voiced, so you get to hear them – they also show up in all game rounds. With user-generated quizzes you can’t do that – they have to work in a certain way. It’s up to Sony, really, but I would take the view that, if the user-generated content thing is so amazing that loads of people are creating so much content for it, I think that’s a nice problem to have. If it happened that all anyone was interested in was user-generated content, I’m sure that Sony would work out how to structure a business around it.

How important do you think Home will be to PS3 – and have you looked at it from a development point of view?

DA: Yes, it’s certainly something we’re looking at – there are some really good things we could do with Buzz in a Home space. It’s an interesting platform for us.

Do you see people playing Buzz within Home, from their personalised areas?

DA: Yes, it’s a possibility. Sometimes, there’s the potential for Buzz to go in a direction I don’t think it should. I want Buzz to still be a game, which you just mess about with, after a few beers with your friends. When you’re taking it online, I sometimes worry that it gets too competitive and all of a sudden it’s about who knows most – the idea of Buzz was never, ‘let’s find out who knows most about pop music’, the game is geared to keep the experience steady and allow people to catch up. My preference is for Buzz to remain a kind of knockabout game, that’s just for entertainment.