EyeToy Kama Sutra - the game Sony rejected

Sony rejected a pitch for a game called EyeToy Kama Sutra.

Sony Computer Entertainment executive producer Pete Smith told Eurogamer in an interview at the Develop conference in Brighton today that the game was the weirdest pitch for a game he has ever seen.

"This was a genuine pitch from a developer," Smith began, "who pitched EyeToy Kama Sutra. Seriously, this was a genuine pitch.

"So, the guy is going to me, 'it's like, so there's an outline on the screen with the EyeToy...' I'm like, I get it, yeah.

"We were talking about it back at the office. Obviously we didn't sign it and it never ever saw the light of day. But we were going, how exactly would we QA it? You can imagine these two big hairy testers going, 'No, you're the bitch tonight.'"

How would you demo the game to press?

"I know," Smith said. "You'd just have to go for it, wouldn't you? In one sense I think, god, I wish it would have been done. We could have maybe got some celebrity endorsements and stuff like that.

"What I just find strange is, sometimes you get these pitches and you think, this is just bonkers. But the developers absolutely believe in it, which is great. I'd much rather that than they come along halfhearted.

"This guy - I can remember it, I will never forget him - he was like, 'We want to do this. We think it could be great. And, yeah. We get all kinds of pitches, but that's definitely the one that stands out for me."

Meanwhile, Smith revealed that Sony had worked on a game that rekindles memory of Microsoft's canned Project Milo.

This game - which remains nameless - almost got to the point of launch. Sony marketing staff dubbed it a "babysitting game".

"A big part of development is failing," Smith said. "What we say to developers is, it's fine to fail, but try and fail quickly.

"But obviously when you do fail, it's never nice. I always get quite emotionally invested in the games I work on. There's one particular game which I wish would have seen the light of day which never did. I guess I can't say too much about it, but we had children in it, and it was really taking that emotional angle."

Smith said if it had been pitched now, it would have had a better chance of seeing the greenlight.

"It was just a bit ahead of its time. Now if you look at some of the games that are coming out from other people, for example The Last of Us, I love the fact with the production values we can really create believable characters. That was what we were trying to do with Heavy Rain and Beyond is a massive example of that as well.

"But you have to be willing sometimes to admit defeat, because otherwise it's not a risk. If it has to go ahead from the start, and the game has to be a success and the game is going to be a success then there was no risk. So you have to risk failure and sometimes that comes off.

"But if you're going to fail, fail fast and cheap."