Category Archives: Interviews
Stumble Upon
Del.icio.us
Buzz
Born To Multitask – Interview With Paul Papasavas of Athos Consulting
In-Depth: Saltsman, One Year On From Canabalt
Interview: Epic’s Capps On Bringing Hardcore Flavor To iOS
Interview: Epic’s Capps On Bringing Hardcore Flavor To iOS is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
Epic Games is best known as the hardcore developer behind games like Unreal Tournament and Gears of War, but in formally moving its popular Unreal Engine 3 to Apple’s iOS devices, the studio hopes to bring hardcore flavor to iPhones, iPads and iPods.
The developer on Wednesday was front and center at Apple’s latest media event, showing off a sharp-looking UE3 demo dubbed Epic Citadel (available free) on an iPhone. Also on hand was Epic subsidiary and Shadow Complex developer Chair Entertainment, which revealed Project Sword, an iOS action adventure RPG that uses UE3.
The projects could be the beginning of a significant change at Epic. Here, studio president Mike Capps talks about how porting large games to an Apple iOS device can be done, gives details on licensing plans, and why “It would not be smart for us to try to get in and compete with the Bejeweleds and Angry Birds of the world on the iPhone.”
You put the Citadel Demo out now, and it represents a full game that’s coming down the road for you guys?
Yeah, and this is basically the environment, the castle space and everything which you saw there, it’s basically a “no, this isn’t fake, this really is real, it really does look this good” kind of thing, because the game won’t be out until later this season.
So Chair is developing the game?
Exactly. They’re the primary developers on the game side, and then Epic of course we’re working a lot on the tech with the Unreal Engine team.
Does Unreal Engine 3 now, for external developers, have iOS tools in it?
Well, we’ve got them internally, and we’re just starting to work with a few guys now, but yeah, absolutely, we’ll be putting them out to all of our Unreal Engine developers.
Do you use all of the exact same back-end tools, like Kismet and everything?
Yes. Everything’s supported. The difference of course is that it’s not quite as powerful a graphics processor as on the Xbox 360, so you’ll probably do some custom content work, but you’re using the same tool chain of UnrealEd and Kismet and the same physics tools and everything.
The Citadel demo is for 3GS and up. Is that also the specs for the engine, or is that up to developers?
That’s the current plan, because of the various shaders and things we have support for, that’s what we need a 3GS for.
Is there anything in the tool chain about scaling down products that are developed on console platforms, or is that something that people are going to have to do manually?
I think it’s going to depend on the title. I mean, if you’re really pushing the PS3 to the limits, then you’re going to need to do some rework.
But we’ve got some automated tools to help customize how draw calls are met for iPhone, but I think it’s probably going to be a mix of the two. Some people’s games are going to work just fine, and other games you’re going to need to do some custom work.
Obviously, art, particularly seems like it would be an issue. I mean, the character models for Gears of War, specifically, seem like they’d be very hard to translate.
It actually turns out that we get really high-resolution textures, which is the first thing you’d think about how “we’re going to have to dumb that down.” But you don’t, because you’ve got so much memory on an iPhone.
You’ve got 16 gigs of flash memory, which is way better, faster memory than what most people have generally on a home PC. So that stuff works really well. It’s the big environments that get really complicated on the rendering tools for iPhone. But yeah, we’ve got some tricks for it.
Do you see this as becoming a big area for the use of your engine? Do you see it becoming a big new space?
I do. I mean, with the expansion of the Unreal Development Kit, we’ve got hundreds of thousands of folks who are messing around with the tools doing smaller projects. So we’re not really just about giant triple-A console games anymore. Those are the ones — Mass Effect gets press, but there are lots of small hobby groups or casual gamers using Unreal Engine.
I think it’s perfect for them. It’s what they’ve been missing. It doesn’t take a whole lot of leaps of faith to say, “Right now, I can display from my iPad to my Apple TV on a big screen TV.” How far away are we from “that’s my game console, and it’s displaying wirelessly to my television set? It’s not far away.”
Yeah, I think that’s an obvious question for our space, when I was watching the Apple TV demo [on stage]. Is there going to be any game application? So far not, but like you say, it’s easy to imagine.
I wish I could say we knew, but this one was a surprise to us, too. It’s what we wanted to see happen, so I can’t wait to throw our engineers at it and see if we can get the latency we need to be able to play a game interactively over that wireless link to the Apple TV. I sure hope so.
Have you guys done a lot of messing around with Game Center so far?
Oh, yes. Absolutely. That was a big part of our demo today.
What do you think about it?
Well it’s enabling tech, right? I don’t have to worry about friends lists, I don’t have to worry about “How do I make achievements work, and how do I share them between titles?” I don’t have to worry about the interface. Which, as a developer, is huge, right? That’s something Xbox Live gave us. You don’t need to skin it. It’s good, it’s there, and it’s done, and you don’t have to do that part of the job.
And for us, that’s what Game Center does. It solves all of those problems. Basically, they got the benefit of seeing what everyone else did with the social networking space on game consoles, and they took all the best ideas and re-implemented them better, so I’m very happy with it.
How closely have you been working with Apple on getting Unreal Engine into the device?
We’ve been working with Apple for years, back-and-forth, on “How can we do something together?” But the hardware just wasn’t there for what we were doing with DirectX9-based graphics, that sort of thing. So, it’s only recently, since the 3GS, that we really started to take it seriously. It kind of surprised us how fast the iPhone tech moved, really, so when we saw what it could do, we’ve been moving ever since.
Obviously [Project Sword] is a very “Epic looking” game. It’s got a characteristic Epic feel.
It’s a role playing game, right?
I don’t know what it is.
It’s a “role playing action adventure,” I think is the phrase we used, so it’s a little different than our normal shooter-chainsaw game.
That’s true, but it’s definitely a high-power, high-3D kind of experience.
Yeah. It’s a game for guys. Or folks who enjoy it.
People who like Xbox.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it’s a core gamer game, right?
Do you see that as a new direction of this market?
I hope so. It would not be smart for us to try to get in and compete with the Bejeweleds and Angry Birds of the world on the iPhone. They’re doing a great job. For me it’s about, can we take the gaming experiences — not just Gears, but like Shadow Complex that we’ve done on other platforms, and bring that kind of quality to the mobile devices, and right now I feel like we can.
And you feel like, right now, the mobile devices have caught up with what you need to do that.
Absolutely. We can make a really solid, fun experience. The one thing we’re still working out is that your fingers are in the way of our beautiful game all the time. So if we can figure out a way to do mental interfaces, then we’ll be happy.
Have you guys thought of bringing Unreal Engine to 3DS or other competing platforms?
Well, I guess the right way to say it is that I’m at an Apple press event, so right now, all I’m thinking about is Apple.
Yeah, I know. And I guess the same would go for Android, and stuff like that as well, right?
Yeah, I mean, of course we pay attention to where the other tech is going and we have support for Tegra-based devices, and a lot of Androids are Tegra-based. But I just shook hands with Steve Jobs, so right now, I’m pretty high on Apple! (laughs)
Are you going to soft roll out the iOS tools into Unreal Engine?
That’s the plan. We’ve got a few of our licensees using it now, who’ve been testing it with us. So we’ll roll it out to existing licensees and then start opening up. I think [Epic VP] Mark Rein has a big plan for how they’re going to roll it out and make sure everybody’s using it.
Have you gotten a lot of demand and stuff from people you’ve talked to? Some of the publishers that have worked with it?
Oh, really, really, absolutely, yeah. It kind of surprised us honestly, that we’d be talking to one of the big-tier publishers, I don’t need to say who, and they’re porting games and they’re making tens of millions of dollars making fantastic games on iPhone. We had no idea that business was growing so fast, and they were so excited to be taking existing IPs built on our engine over to the mobile space, so we were like, “Gosh, we really need to get on this right away.” That’s really how we’re looking at it.
This is really a Mark [Rein] question, but I’ll ask you since he’s not here at the moment. For people who are interested in doing something smaller, more phone-oriented games launching at a 99 cent price, are you going to have licensing plans?
I think generally we’re going to be in the same range as the UDK, for folks who are just doing mobile — where, we don’t even want to know about until you start making money, because I don’t need 2,000 business relationships where I make 38 cents. It’s not worth it. But once folks get successful, we take a percentage off of that.
Because the UDK is targeted to a certain audience. I had a feeling this would be like that.
Yeah, free up front. If I could convince the Mortal Kombat guys to give me no money up front and 20 percent on the back-end, I’d do it, right? So that’s an absolutely fine deal. I think it’ll probably be royalty-based, so that it makes it easier for folks to get in and start using the tools and not worry about some big sticker price.
Innerviews
Innerviews is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
The Innerviews iPhone/iPad app delivers in-depth, uncompromising interviews with music’s most vital and original voices by acclaimed journalist Anil Prasad. Innerviews explores the widest variety of genres and styles imaginable, including rock, jazz, fusion, electronica, world music, pop, and folk. Brought to you by the publisher of the award-winning Innerviews.org website, this beautifully-designed app offers a truly unique and immersive reading and visual experience.
“Anil Prasad is like a great musician,” says Victor Wooten. “The way he expresses himself through his own art—his writing—causes readers to feel inspired, as if we’ve learned about ourselves, as well as the subject of the interview.”
“It’s a real pleasure to talk about things in such depth with Innerviews,” says Mike Rutherford of Genesis. “What Innerviews does is very rare nowadays.”
Key features of the Innerviews iPhone/iPad app:
-The latest Innerviews interviews optimized for mobile viewing
-Playlists exploring the latest in eclectic album and reissue releases
-News about forthcoming interviews
-Artists reflecting on their Innerviews experiences
-Full support for iPhone 4 Retina display and iPad, as well as previous iPhone generations
-Offline reading support—launch the app with a network connection and then enjoy Innerviews content offline
-Gorgeous, intuitive user interface
My Time With Spacemen, or Are They Pirates? – Interview with Josh Scott-Slade of JohnnyTwoShoes
My Time With Spacemen, or Are They Pirates? – Interview with Josh Scott-Slade of JohnnyTwoShoes is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
I had an interview scheduled with Josh Scott-Slade from JohnnyTwoShoes (Plunderland) at 9AM, about two hours after my dog wakes me up in the morning to go outside. Remember, two hours to go.
I figured that I would hang around and prep for the interview by doing all the company research that I could do, so I hopped on to their website hoping to find something interesting. What I found was Heist 2, one of their many online games… and it sucked the life right out of me. Then what seemed like 10 minutes later and it was 9AM (where did the time go!) and the interview was on.
Still in shock over where my time went, I made a comment to Josh saying, “I didn’t know that you guys made other games until today.” I was expecting a new, indie game house with a seriously legit design team, but was certainly not expecting a three year old online game outfit. They did have another iPhone game that came out about a year ago called High Speed Chase 2, but it must’ve gotten lost in the deep sea of App Store apps.
“Ah yeah, we’ve been making games since we were kids.” He went on, thankfully. I was still in shock over my Heist 2 induced time warp, “The company has been around as JohnnyTwoShoes for about 3 years now. It started off as a portfolio when I was at university, then it turned into a gaming site and became our company. My brother Max was a site designer by profession anyway, so it all just worked out.”
So how, after years of online games, why did they get into the App Store?
“Well we always loved the iPhone and when the App Store came out it just seemed like the perfect idea for what we wanted to do. The App Store allows us to be more ambitious and support bigger ideas. There’s only so much time you can put into a free web game.”
After 3+ years of practice making games at a rapid-fire pace, it seems that Johnny Two Shoes is off to bigger and better things with Plunderland and then moving forward. They apparently have a “ridiculous amount of ideas for games”, but are aiming to make their games as good as they can possibly be before moving on. There’s something to be said for that kind of dedication to a games success, but it’s nice to know that the company won’t stagnate on one idea for two years (cough, cough, Fieldrunners).
“We intended to release Plunderland to support ourselves while we updated and fulfilled its full potential. We tried out new ideas and reacted on feedback, hoping that it would push up the charts slowly, allowing us to make a name for ourselves on the platform. Now the reaction is so fast to everything we do with it, it’s kind of scary.” He goes on, “at the same time it feels amazing to know we can do what we always wanted. To build on the game and make it even better – bring fresh new ideas to the experience. We hope people will see it as something they can return to and have that fun and excitement brought back every time we add to the game.”
The obvious question here was, what kinds of things were they going to add to the game? It’s one thing to fix glitches, and an entirely different thing to go “Pocket God” and make the whole experience change with every update.
Josh nonchalantly wrote back, “Yeah, new levels, campaigns, game modes etc. Anything we think would be fun or addresses peoples feedback.” He went on to tell me some more specific details about upgrades, but what I gathered was that their experience with online gaming has made them quick movers, unafraid to try out any idea thrown at them. They thrive on customer feedback, and I honestly don’t think that Plunderland will stop being supported until the feedback stops coming in.
I just had one more question, because, you know, I’m an industry professional (whatever that means). I noticed when I was on their website that their logo was a space man, so I asked them why Plunderland wasn’t set in space.
“The basic idea behind the game is to create the sense of adventure and unknown. It could totally be set in space, but coming from a family of pirates, it just felt natural.”
Well nobody is going to argue with that, with them being pirates and all. These people mean business.
$2.99
iPhone App – Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Our Rating: 
:: A PIRATES LIFE FOR ME
Read Our Full Review >>
:: A PIRATES LIFE FOR MERead Our Full Review >>
Released: 2010-07-22 :: Category: Games / Adventure
[ My Time With Spacemen, or Are They Pirates? – Interview with Josh Scott-Slade of JohnnyTwoShoes is a post from 148Apps ]
Firemint: When It Comes To iPad And iPhone, Separate Game Versions Are A Must
Interview: Gamevil USA President Kyu Lee on Zenonia, Upcoming Hybrid 2
Interview: Gamevil USA President Kyu Lee on Zenonia, Upcoming Hybrid 2 is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
[While Korea-based mobile publisher Gamevil is a major player overseas, the company only recently made an impression stateside, thanks to its success in the iTunes App Store. Within the last two years, Gamevil has released several hit titles for the iPhone and iPod Touch, including the popular Baseball Superstars and the action-RPGs Zenonia and Hybrid: Eternal Whisper.
At E3 last week, Game Developer Magazine editor in chief Brandon Sheffield caught up with Gamevil USA president Kyu Lee, discussing the recent Zenonia 2 and other Gamevil projects, including the upcoming Hybrid 2.]
How do you think that the mobile market has changed in the last two years?
Kyu Lee: Two years ago, our focus was on traditional mobile phones, or “feature phones.” With over 100 million iOS devices out since the introduction of the iPhone almost three years ago — and with over 65,000 Android devices being shipped every day — most of our high-data consumers have been switching over to smartphones.
For that reason, we thought it was a logical move for game developers to move into that space. Before, we had to work with a lot of different carriers. Even in the U.S., we had to work with 15 to 20 different carriers to get our titles out. But now, with one submission to the App Store, you can get distribution to 84 countries around the world.
The tough part for a game developer like us was that we didn’t want to spend so much time getting deals done for distribution. We wanted to concentrate on creating better games. So it’s been great. The changes have been great for us.
Percentage-wise, how much are you doing for smartphones versus feature phones?
KL: In the overseas market, it’s getting close to 100 percent.
How about in Korea?
KL: In Korea, smartphone penetration is less than 20 percent. It’s still early, but the pace is really fast. Within the last six months, KTF — which is the iPhone’s exclusive distributor in Korea — sold 700,000 devices. That’s almost the fastest rate ever for a single device.
And if you combine all the iPod Touch devices with that, we’re also getting into the MP3 player market. It’s not just the phone market alone. And SK Telecom announced that they’re going to launch 13 Android devices by the end of the year. That’s going to be really interesting, to see how the market will be changing. Our development will adapt to the market changes.
You guys have been taking the tactic of making larger games that offer a much longer play experience. How has that been working out?
KL: I think it’s been working out pretty well for us. Putting in larger production costs makes it easier to compete in the App Store, and the RPG genre itself is very underserved. I think it has to do with the budget RPGs need.
I think in the RPG category right now, five games in the top ten are from Gamevil. Our only other competitor right now is Square Enix. As for other traditional large console players, I don’t think they’ve explored the RPG sector much. It’s an open opportunity for us, so why not take advantage of it?
Do you not consider [Korean mobile publisher] Com2uS as a competitor in that area?
KL: They’re a great competitor. They’ve put out a lot of good quality products. It’s just like when you run a marathon — you need a pace runner to get better records. I think in that sense, Com2Us has been a great competitor for us in the local market. They make us a better company.
We might be a straight-up competitor in the domestic market, but the opportunity globally is so huge that I think we end up sharing more information with them, rather than competing with them in a traditional sense.
One thing that I noticed is that it almost feels like the recent Zenonia 2 was launched the way that an MMO might be. It seemed like it was launched in a beta form, and there were a bunch of fixes that came right after. Was that intentional — the tactic of getting it out faster, rather than checking everything before release?
KL: I think that sticking with our release dates is an important promise that we must keep with the end users. Of course, we should have ensured the best quality while at the same time keeping that promise, but I don’t think we did a good job in doing that.
It actually taught us a lot of things, and we’ll be reviewing the project to see if there were better ways to improve the process in general. I wouldn’t say it was a perfect launch, but the iPhone enables you to continuously update. We’re still getting a lot of feedback from customers, and we’re preparing another update pretty soon. You’ll probably see it within the next month.
One thing that I noticed is that the animation is really excellent, and some of the system design is good. But it feels like some of the level design is not all the way there.
For instance, the first dungeon is an ice dungeon in which it’s hard to control your character. And it’s already hard to control your character because you’re still getting used to the d-pad.
KL: For controls, we’re doing a d-pad on a touch device, and I think that’s one of the biggest reasons why it can be frustrating from time to time.
I don’t know if you noticed it, but we’ve been working on controls and the user interface year-over-year. If you compare it to Zenonia 1, we changed the whole user interface to touch control, where it was totally d-pad-controlled before. We may not hit perfection within a year, but year-over-year, we’re constantly trying to improve ourselves.
Yeah, the touch screen control within the UI was good. Unfortunately, I can’t really beat the first dungeon boss, so I kind of stopped playing. [laughs]
KL: Are you leveling up?
Yeah, but I don’t want to grind forever.
KL: We got a lot of feedback on the grinding part. I think Korean users are a little more used to grinding. In Zenonia 2, we tried to reduce the amount of grinding and put in more story or even mini-quests so that we could lead the users to do the quests and not feel like they’re grinding in situations where they actually are grinding. I think that as the sequels continue, you’ll see more and more improvement on that side, too.
Indeed. So what’s next for you guys?
KL: We just launched Soccer Superstars. It’s a sports title, but it’s also a role-playing game. Just like in Baseball Superstars, you continuously raise your own character and totally customize it and do super shots. It’s a role-playing experience in a sports game. That’s what we were trying to bring with Baseball Superstars and our new Soccer Superstars franchise.
Our next game is going to be Hybrid 2, the sequel to Hybrid: Eternal Whisper. Opinion was split with the original Hybrid; some people liked it, and some people didn’t. We’re trying to make it have more of a general appeal, so that everybody can like it. That’s one part that we’ve been focusing on.
The other part that we’ve been focusing on is brightening up all of the sprites. Hybrid was a little bit dark, while Zenonia was more approachable. It was more feel-good than serious. But that was one of the decisions that we’ve made for Hybrid 2. Brightening up the sprites is one of the things that we’ll do. We haven’t disclosed much about the game yet, but you’ll see screenshots and more details pretty soon.
Is NOM creator Bong Koo Shin still creating games?
KL: Yeah. He’s still doing a lot of interesting stuff — stuff that hasn’t been announced here in the U.S. yet. He’s made some fun games that are solely for touch-based UI. He thought, “There’s no rubbing games,” so he made a game where you have to rub the screen. After NOM 1, 2, and 3, he went back to NOM Zero, and NOM 4 just launched. NOM is continuously going on, and he’s still trying to do something that’s very unique for the mobile market.
Interview: Firemint’s Peters On iPhone/iPad-Fueled Studio Independence
Interview: Ngmoco Acquires Touch Pets Developer Stumptown Game Machine
‘Carcassonne’ Developers Confirm That iPad Release Will Be a Universal Update; Game Will Be Faithful to Source
‘Carcassonne’ Developers Confirm That iPad Release Will Be a Universal Update; Game Will Be Faithful to Source is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
Carcassonne developer The Coding Monkeys has confirmed with us that the iPad version of the upcoming Apple handheld title will be a universal update to the initial App Store release this summer.
Just don't expect the update to hit in the immediate.
According to developer Martin Pittenauer, The Coding Monkeys haven't started work on the larger version of the game. Instead, they've focused their efforts on the iPhone and iPod Touch versions slated for release in May.
"The iPhone version will be released this month and we plan to start work on the iPad after that," developer Martin Pittenauer told us via e-mail.
"We poured a lot of love into the game already and feel the iPad version deserves the same level of attention, so it's hard to make promises for a release date right now. But we plan to have the game universal later this summer."
Universal updates allow handheld Apps to run natively on the iPad, which avoids creators from having to juggle two similar Apps on the Store at the same time.
The Carcassonne update will be free for purchasers of the App, but the price of the whole package will be raised from its initial $4.99 price point once the update goes live on iTunes.
"Once the app is universal we will end introductory pricing and sell the game for $9.99," Pittenauer told us in a later e-mail. "So, if you buy early, you essentially get a discount on the version that runs on iPhone, iPod, and iPad."
Despite being universal, the iPad version of the game will have its share of differences according to Pittenauer. Most of which are planned to stem from the iPad's larger touch screen size.
"We will try to use the available space to streamline some parts of the user interface and adopt more of the emerging 'feel' of the iPad platform," he said.
"We are also still thinking about the dimensions of the device and its implication for the multiplayer user interface. Other than that it will mainly differ by size."
But Pittenauer believes neither version will have a leg up on the other.
"We don't think any version will be better per se, but they will have different strengths."
"The iPhone version is very portable while being very easy to play thanks to pinch-zooming and its UI. The iPad version will have room to see more of the game board, but isn't as practical on the go. And as the game will be universal, both versions complement each other perfectly anyway."
Visually, the game appears to be capturing the board game feel. The big question is if the game's mechanics and components do the same. Pittenauer tells us that bringing the board game to life via our iDevices is the point of the project.
"As boardgame geeks, we hope to make players feel like they are playing the original in the real world."
"That's why we favor a very traditional view of the table and decided against unnecessary 3D gimmicks for our version. We also love the social aspect of board gaming, so we tried to retain that as much as possible by adding all sorts of multiplayer variants (pass-around, local network, internet) and in-game chat."
At the end of the day it's up to the players to judge if the digital version of the board game feels like the board game. We'll have to hope and see.
Interview: The Upside Of Downsized And Desperate
Interview: The Upside Of Downsized And Desperate is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
Corporate statements often categorize layoffs as “business as usual” or just the “nature of the business.” But that rationale doesn’t really lessen the blow when you’re blindsided with a pink slip.
Take, for example, Downsized Games, which appeared on the radar last week. Formed by four recently-laid off workers from Electronic Arts’ now-defunct subsidiary Pandemic Studios, the new studio took its collective frustration (and newly-found free time) and dumped it into a creative work with a humorous premise.
The studio’s first title, BulleTrain is a satirical iPhone game that pokes fun at EA and the dreaded corporate machine. It’s set in 2124, when “bullet trains” are used to deliver goods from point to point. Your small shipping company on planet Glendon-19 was acquired by “Elaborate Acquisitions,” which is in cahoots with powerful railroad barons led by “the dastardly JR.”
The analogy is clear to anyone who follows the games industry: Electronic Arts, under CEO John Riccitiello, acquired Pandemic (headquartered on Glendon Ave. in L.A.) in 2007, along with BioWare. Late last year, EA closed down Pandemic, and the four-person Downsized crew, along with about 200 other workers, were laid off.
With a humorous backdrop that poked fun at megapublisher EA, Downsized was able to cut through the noise created by 25,000 other App Store games. Some might call it a cheap way to get press, but what it amounts to is savvy marketing, even if it’s “marketing” in the loosest sense.
“As far as the backstory is concerned, like all video games it was just an afterthought,” said Downsized artist Manny Vega. He formed the studio with fellow ex-Pandemic employees Andrew Mournian, Zach Haefner and Ariel Tal.
“One day Ariel was asking me if we were going to have a main villain and a backstory for the hero, so I said, ‘why not,’” Vega said. “That was the extent of our evil plan. We tossed a few ideas back and forth and were laughing our asses off, so we went with it.”
The internet caught wind of Downsized’s website, where Vega and his cohorts listed a few details about the game, which the studio had yet to formally announce. Even without an official announcement, the premise alone was enough to stir up interest.
“We certainly were not prepared for this to go viral yet, but I can’t say that it hasn’t been awesome,” said Vega. “Hell, at this point I think we’re getting more press than The Saboteur got” — a reference to Pandemic’s final game.
BulleTrain, inspired by an episode of FireFly called “Train Job,” is currently in its alpha stage, with most of the gameplay and code in place, Vega said. After some additional polish, he hopes to release the game onto the App Store in May this year. “We knew we hit the mark when we tweaked our demo for [Game Developers Conference] and everyone who tried it died the first time, but insisted that they needed to try again to do better,” he added.
Vega said EA held a post-Pandemic closure job fair that would place some of the former employees at other EA studios. But programmer Tal told Vega about how he got a Unity engine-based game up and running in just two days. That’s when they assembled a crew and started brainstorming ideas, and BulleTrain was born.
“Honestly we just figured it would be fun to make something of our own, and that we could show it off as we continued the job hunt. At this point, we’re all excited about it and we’re hoping Downsized can be much more,” Vega said. “As far as I am concerned, this is the place to be in the industry… unemployed and desperate.”
The studio has “so many other ideas in the pipeline,” he said. As Unity is multiplatform, “You’ll see an Android BulleTrain and more games for Xbox Live Arcade, Wii and anything else they open the engine to,” according to Vega.
While he admitted that EA’s closure of Pandemic stung, he’s optimistic about the future of Downsized, even as the studio has yet to prove itself with a proper product launch. In the end, he thinks that maybe getting canned was just what he needed.
“You can see when developers are just making games for the paycheck, and no matter how skilled they are the game lacks that ’sparkle.’,” he says. “If we ever get to that point, I hope EA buys us for a ton of money and then shuts us down. It’s a hell of a wake-up call.”
And if he ever ran into EA’s Riccitiello, he’s confident the exec would find the BulleTrain spoof humorous. “I’m fairly certain that should I ever get the chance to talk to Riccitiello face to face, he would laugh at the image of ‘JR,’ who resembles the old pervert from Family Guy and nothing like Riccitello himself, who is a handsome man and very, very benevolent.”
[This news item was written by Kris Graft and originally appeared at FingerGaming sister site Gamasutra.]
Road to the IGF Mobile: Stair Dismount Developer Secret Exit
Road to the IGF Mobile: Stair Dismount Developer Secret Exit is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
[Continuing a series of interviews with 2010 IGF Mobile finalists, FingerGaming speaks to Jetro Lauha and Jani Kahrama of developer Secret Exit, whose iPhone game Stair Dismount is competing in the Best Mobile game category, having won the IGF Mobile award for Technical Achievement.]
Before they released Zen Bound, the nearly indescribable puzzle game which remains one of the iPhone’s killer apps, Finnish studio Secret Exit worked on a series of physics centric, stair tumbling computer freeware games in Porrasturvat, or Stair Dismount (”the ultimate stairflight simulator”), and sequel Truck Dismount.
Seeing the player push a hapless Kubrick-alike, Mr. Dismount, down a flight of stairs in order to “inflict massive damage to every weak point!”, the game has more in common with their aforementioned iPhone debut than meets the eye, most noticeably being another technical marvel, the recent iPhone version earning the IGF Mobile Technical Achievement award.
Taking time out from working on their sequel to Zen Bound (”… we’ve been totally tunnel-visioned with getting Zen Bound 2 ready”) Stair Dismount mastermind Jetro Lauha and cohort Jani Kahrama took time out of their busy schedule to speak to FingerGaming about the development of their IGF Mobile finalist sequel, a whole eight years after it first saw release on the PC.
What is Secret Exit’s background in game development?
Jetro Lauha: We have strong background with practically all flavors of mobile games development, from previous companies our people have worked in. Still, all of our coders share interest for various platforms so we do have some insight about desktop and console platforms as well.
Can you tell us what development tools your team used to create Stair Dismount?
JL: We leveraged many open source libraries such as Irrlicht and ODE. The levels are authored with irrEdit accompanied by our own custom-developed plugin and postprocessing tools. The workflow could always be better, but in the end the choices we made have still saved us a huge amount of time. Without getting OpenGL ES port of Irrlicht from the community it could be that we’d never even have made the iPhone version.
How long was the iPhone version in development?
JL: About 3 months in full production leading to first release version. But before that there was many shorter periods of pre-production work which is harder to quantify, especially because the iPhone version codebase was directly based on earlier prototype running on desktop.
How did the initial concept come about?
JL: Years ago I almost fell on the stairs, barely saving myself by grabbing handrail. This led to me thinking about making a game about falling down in stairs, created with a rich physics simulation which was still very new thing back then (2002). Ironically Stair Dismount doesn’t have handrails or the like, so Mr. Dismount doesn’t have much of a chance to save himself.
Stair Dismount won the IGF Mobile Technical Achievement category primarily for its impressive physics engine. Did you have any trouble recreating what you had already achieved with the PC version on the iPhone?
JL: Luckily the ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) has matured a lot along the years following the first PC version. This allowed us to actually re-create the rag doll to be better than ever in the iPhone version, although it increased the simulation complexity as well.
Getting something to run is fairly easy, as a test. But it tends to take lot of time to hand-tune things to behave better and generally feel like really having an impact. Surprisingly the new iPhone version still shares some considerable bunch of code from the original PC version (and sequels) way back from 2002, so not everything had to be rewritten.
Do you think functionality like the Facebook integration seen in Stair Dismount is important to indies on iPhone?
JL: Simple feeding of status updates to Facebook isn’t really very compelling. So integrating this kind of functionality shouldn’t be any compulsory thing to have if it doesn’t give any real additional value to the user.
Jani Kahrama: It’s ironic, but I wish we knew! The photo feature we have in Stair Dismount is really nice and elegant, but we haven’t implemented any way of tracking if people are using the feature. On the other hand, we’ve seen a sudden rise in the popularity of Stair Dismount Lite, so at least the feature is doing its part to enable word of mouth.
Why did you choose to self-publish, as opposed to your previous iPhone effort, Zen Bound, which was handled by Chillingo?
JK: There’s really no mystery to publishing, it’s simply work that involves preparing appealing marketing materials, talking to media and taking advantage of opportunities to get visibility for your game. It’s up to each developer to choose if they want to do that work themselves, or leave it to someone else.
Have you played and enjoyed any of the other IGF Mobile finalists?
JL: I have played a few of them. I liked especially Minigore (honorable mention), Mind Wall (honorable mention) and Spider: The Secret Of Bryce Manor.
What do you think of the current state of the indie scene, particularly in relation to the mobile space?
JL: Device fragmentation issues continue to be so ugly and most manufacturers aren’t really trying enough at all to fix them. App Store has been great change for many, but on the other hand the race to bottom with prices has really hurt many developers so badly that it is becoming very risky to do bigger projects with high production values.
Road to the IGF Mobile: Spider’s Randy Smith
Road to the IGF Mobile: Spider’s Randy Smith is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
[In the next in a series of Road to the IGF Mobile interviews with 2010 Independent Games Festival Mobile finalists, FingerGaming speaks to Randy Smith of Spider developer Tiger Style, whose game is currently competing in the Best Mobile Game category, having won the IGF Mobile award for Best iPhone Game.]
As pastoral as it is eerie, Tiger Style’s elegant Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor ended 2009 heralded as not only one of the year’s best iPhone games, but one of the best on any platform.
Having recently won the IGF Mobile Best iPhone game award, FingerGaming spoke to industry veteran and Tiger Style head Randy Smith about the studio’s stunning debut heading into the IGF.
What is your background in game development?
I’ve in the games industry for 12 years, primarily as a designer / director. I worked on the Thief series with Looking Glass and ION Storm, and consulted with Arkane Studios, Ubisoft, and others. My most recent gig before starting Tiger Style was a creative director at EA on one of the projects with Steven Spielberg.
Can you tell us what development tools you used to create Spider?
The iPhone SDK, xCode, Photoshop, and various other visual/audio/music creators and editors.
How long was the game in development?
8 months.
How did the initial concept come about?
We solicited the team for short, 1-2 sentence game concepts. Of those, we selected a small handful and did treatments of them – about 20 pages of PowerPoint that got into more depth of what the game would be about and how it would work.
Spider’s treatment attracted the most attention within the team. Originally we envisioned it as more of a slow-paced spider simulator, but during the pre-production and prototyping phases we refined our movement controls and web-building mechanic which in turn pushed the game into the form you see today.
Detractors of the platform always bemoan the lack of “real” games on the iPhone, citing examples like Rolando and Spider as something more substantial. Do you think there’s more that can be done to bring more traditional, progression-based games to the iPhone?
The iPhone is very capable gaming platform. We’ve been enjoying deep, high quality games on similar platforms such as the DS for many years (think Zelda, Metroid, Mario Kart), and there is no technical reason that iDevices can’t offer similar experiences.
In fact, Tiger Style was originally drawn to the iPhone because of its unique hardware — the high degree of connectivity, the GPS, touchscreen and accelerometer, less traditional inputs such as camera and mic, its omnipresence, etc. — lots of cool stuff to experiment with.
This could be a revolutionary gaming platform, and we also believe the demographic is very open-minded and willing to try new things. We want to see the iPhone realize its potential for the better of gaming in general.
Market pressure is the major reason we don’t see more of this kind of experimentation and deeper, higher production quality games. The App Store is flooded with very cheap games. It’s hard for a consumer to know why one game is worth 5-10x more than another, and it’s hard for a developer to prove that their game is worth more than the rest.
This creates enormous risk, and the best way around that risk is to join the crowd who is aiming low and selling cheap. This doesn’t leave much margin for high quality development.
How important was the ambient narrative you employed in defining Spider? You had a lot of feedback as to what players wanted, or expected, that narrative to be heading into your work on the “Director’s Cut”.
Spider tells the story of an abandoned mansion and the fate of the people who used to live there, but our first emphasis was on the “action drawing” gameplay, getting that right. The narrative came into existence as we more carefully considered and built out the locations in which this gameplay would occur.
Once we realized an abandoned house was our ideal set for the game, we crafted a means of being involved with that story that made it important that you were a spider, you saw the story in a way that only a spider would see it.
By design, the story was ambiguous and left a lot to the imagination, but in some ways it left players wanting more than we intended. So we polled our fans for their interpretation of the story and which levels they liked best, to get a sense of what had worked and what had not worked. Going into the design of Director’s Cut, we gave the players more glimpses of the underlying story to help them patch the holes in their understanding.
Do you think the “Director’s Cut” and the release of the Hornet Smash mini-game were successful endeavors?
We think they were very successful. Our plan had been to reinforce Spider’s presence as an important iPhone game and give something back to our fans while also trying out a new way to release a “Lite” version of a game – Hornet Smash is an entire free game based around Spider’s popular hornet-tackling gameplay that also happens to contain a Lite version of Spider.
This three-pronged approach gave Spider more attention just in time for the end of the year Best Of lists, in which we did outstandingly well, beyond our expectations. The holiday season was fabulous for us financially, and we’re humbled and pleased by all the praise. This gives us extra time and motivation to do our best with the development of our next games.
If you could reset and start fresh on development of Spider, what would you do differently?
Honestly, probably nothing. There were ups and downs, but it’s hard to argue with this kind of success – we made something we love, it sold reasonably well and was well-recognized, and we had a great time doing it. Hopefully, we took away some important lessons that will help it be less of a death march next time around.
Have you played and enjoyed any of the other IGF Mobile finalists?
Yes, lots of them, especially in the iPhone category, and I look forward to checking out the ones I didn’t know about yet.
What do you think of the current state of the indie scene, particularly in relation to the mobile space?
I think the most obvious comment here is that the App Store has been a huge, huge boost to the indie game development scene, one which we are just now seeing the beginning of. The App Store (and its future clones) has centralized indie gaming and given it more legitimacy.
Before, if you wanted to release an indie game there was no single, obvious venue, and similarly the audience had no “go-to” spot to find new indie games. This centralizing has made it far more possible to reach a ready audience with an indie game, and the terms of the arrangement are very fair and the SDK is easy to use.
The explosion of Apps is evidence that this model is attracting attention, and in the future, I expect we’ll see ways to sort them out by quality, such as labels much like we see in indie music or indie film. This is an exciting development, because having a robust indie scene, both in terms of finance and creativity, is going to provide the counter-balance to the juggernaut of risk-averse mainstream gaming that we’ve been needing for a very long time.
Road to the IGF Mobile: lilt line’s Gordon Midwood
Road to the IGF Mobile: lilt line’s Gordon Midwood is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
[In the second in a series of Road to the IGF Mobile interviews with 2010 Independent Games Festival Mobile finalists, FingerGaming speaks to lilt line developer Gordon Midwood, whose game is currently competing in the Best Mobile game category, having won the IGF Mobile award for Audio Achievement.]
Gordon Midwood, developer of “retro rhythm racing beat ‘em up action game with a dubstep flavour” lilt line, has come a long way since FingerGaming spoke to him nearly a year ago. Initially quite cynical about how his rather unique game would perform buried under a storefront filled with tower defense games and… iPhone butts, lilt line has recently seen great success, winning the IGF Mobile Audio Achievement.
Heading into the festival, FingerGaming had the chance to speak to a cheeky Midwood about the evolution of lilt line and his recent good fortunes.
What is your background in game development?
I have more of a background in web games than in traditional development. Online is definitely where I cut my teeth initially. As soon as I stopped trying to eat the cables that soon cleared up though.
I did once have a short stint at Electronic Arts doing the frontend for a well-known racing franchise. The working conditions were a little too crazy for my liking, although to be fair to EA they did tell me in the interview that I would be getting the full Burnout experience.
Independent game development definitely suits me best though, freed from commercial reality and the oppressive opinions of co-workers!
Can you tell us what development tools you used to create lilt line?
Sure, well the iPhone SDK for all the coding obviously, and a level editor in Flash to make things easier there. Marking off beat points in the audio was done using a bit of Mac software called Amadeus. Oh, and I did a fair bit of the coding on a little Dell Mini9 hackintosh on the train on the way to work.
How long was the game in development?
About 5 months in total. To be honest I was unfamiliar with Objective-C and all the iPhone stuff beforehand and it was all done in evenings and weekends. So it would have been a lot quicker if I was on it full time and actually knew what I was doing.
How did the initial concept come about?
I basically just wanted to make an original rhythm game. I had this idea of a side-scrolling thing which generated music according to the challenges of the level so I just started building it.
How important was it to have a close working relationship with musician 16bit throughout the development process?
It was crucial definitely; the music determines the levels so the selection of the right tracks, which we did together, was vital. They also gave me access to unreleased stuff, delivered audio split up in the right format and so on. In fact the whole way through 16bit have been awesome and massively supportive.
Would you think of working on another music game in the future, perhaps featuring something outside the realm of dubstep?
Absolutely. In particular I would love to make a prog rock game featuring massively meandering 30 minute levels!
In fact there are loads of crazy music genres I would like to see better represented in gaming. That’s the theme of my talk at the GDC, so you should come along if you are around and interested in listening to ten minutes of abrasive music and dad jokes.
You released a pretty substantial update at the end of last year which included several new “tracks”. Was it successful from a creative and financial standpoint?
The new tracks are definitely my favourite ones of the lot, and people have given very positive feedback on them. I loved making them because I could just let loose and make some properly difficult levels, which is my natural tendency anyway. So that’s the creative bit answered.
From a financial point of view the game sold a fair few more copies on the back of the update, but the difference was not massive. No matter, I’m very happy with the new levels and am glad I made them. It seems to have stopped people whining about the game being too short as well, and you can’t put a price on that.
If you could reset and start fresh on development of lilt line, what would you do differently?
Nothing.
Have you played and enjoyed any of the other IGF Mobile finalists?
Yes indeed they are all clearly excellent games, and I’m very flattered to be in their company. Sword & Sworcery looks beautiful and tickles my fancy a lot. I thought Minisquadron was a blast to play through too. I also enjoyed playing Spider, although the one thing that really spoiled the game for me is that the main protagonist had too many legs.
What do you think of the current state of the indie scene, particularly in relation to the mobile space?
Mobile independent gaming is a fascinating area at the moment. You’ve the iPhone explosion, increasing proliferation of Android and even the Windows Series 7 thingy with its Xbox thingy. I think it is a superb area for any independent to try to make a breakthrough. I have my suspicions about its profitability long term though; PC and console alternatives still lead the way there in my opinion.
In general, I would say that the vast majority of creativity and original thought in gaming is coming from indie games these days. I think the scene is in excellent shape. The barriers to entry are lower than ever and the amount of attention being paid is higher than ever.
The upshot of all of this for me personally is that one person making a minimalist dubstep game in his pants at 3am in the morning can eventually get nominated for an IGF award, for which I am very grateful!