Frayed Knights Interview at RPGWatch
Well, now I've gone and done it!

There's an interview with Yours Truly, where I am as verbose as usual, up at RPGWatch. The focus of the article is on that roleplaying game that may be destined to prove I don't have a clue what I'm talking about when I talk RPGs.

Warning: Do not use while driving or operating heavy machinery.

Frayed Knights Interview at RPGWatch

Labels: Frayed Knights, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:54 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Interview with Georgina Bensley
Gamezebo's got an interview with Fatal Hearts and Cute Knight creator Georgina Bensley.

An excerpt on where she gets her ideas:

"I can't stop coming up with ideas. Any sort of new concept I see or hear about, I'm likely to start thinking `How could I make that into a game? How could I make that fun?' Especially if someone says a particular concept can't be done. Someone mentioned in conversation that it would be impossible to make a racing game with drama and meaningful character development. So of course I had to come up with a design for one, where the drivers would have friendships and rivalries and this would affect the way they raced... if you stole someone's girlfriend then he might decide to sacrifice winning a race in order to make you crash out.

"I'm not making that game, though. I have far too many ideas to actually implement them all. Some ideas won't leave me alone. If I keep thinking about the same thing over and over, I probably have to make it. If I start prototyping an idea and lose interest, it probably wasn't that great an idea. I have some ideas that have been sitting in my list of 'maybe someday' for years now, because I keep coming up with better plans that I feel more urgent about creating."

Enjoy!

Interview with Georgina Bensley at Gamezebo

Labels: Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:16 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Gamezebo Interviews Georgina Bensley
Gamezebo has just interviewed Georgina Bensley of Hanako Games (Fatal Hearts, Cute Knight). They focus a lot on the indie game creation process, asking questions about design, how she finds contractors, and so forth. That's fascinating stuff to ME, since I have this voyeuristic interest in seeing how other indies manage to get their job done. :)

A couple of excerpts:

How do you fund your projects?

The business grows organically - the sales from one game allow me to spend more money building the next.

If someone offered you a studio with a staff of 10 people, what would you do?

I can think of projects to assign if I had a bigger staff, but I'm not sure I really want one. I do always have more ideas than I have time for, but that may be a good thing. It forces me to focus. I think I'd be more likely to have people working with me than for me, people who were passionate about their own ideas.

Ah, bootstrapping...

Anyway, I thought I'd pass it along:

Gamezebo: Interview with Georgina Bensley, Hanako Games

Labels: Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:22 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Jeff Vogel Interview at GameBanshee
There's an interview on GameBanshee with Spiderweb Software founder Jeff Vogel. What's interesting about this interview is that it seems to have much more of a developer-centric focus. Would-be RPG developers (who, me?) should pay attention!

A fascinating couple of excerpts:

"I never really enjoyed (making RPGs). I thought I would. When I wrote the engine for our first game, all those years ago, I was really looking forward to making the world. That, I thought, would be the fun. Then, fifteen minutes into designing the first town, I thought, `Wow. This sucks.' And it hasn't improved much since then."

"Don't get me wrong. I love nice graphics as much as the next guy. I make our games as pretty as I can. I'm not ideologically attached to low-budget games. It's just all I can do. But if someone wants a pretty game, I will not be able to please that person. And if I spend a bunch of money and an extra year making a game as pretty as I possibly can, I still will not please that person... There is one thing I can do: Make a cool adventure in a cool world. So I do that."

Of course, he does talk about Avernum V, now available for the Mac and coming soon to the PC. If interested, go check it out!

Spiderweb Software Interview at GameBanshee

(Vaguely) related stuff I found the other day:
* Why Does Jeff Vogel Hate RPGs?
* Jeff Vogel Gives Innovation Another Chance
* Is There Hope for Indie Computer RPGs?
.

Labels: Interviews, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:51 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
The Rampant Coyote - Interviewed
WorldIV interviewed me in a series of game-blog interviews that they are running. Of all of the interviews they've done so far, they've told me that mine was definitely the latest. Specifically, they wanted me to talk about indie games. The interview went up this morning.

If you are a long-time reader of Tales of the Rampant Coyote, or if you've been an indie game player for a while, nothing there is going to be news to you. What's kind of interesting to me is that this is my first interview since actually getting some kind of clue about what I'm doing as an indie (the others were all prior to releasing Void War).

Anyway, if you are idly curious or just a masochist, you can read it here:

The Rampant Coyote Interviewed at WorldIV.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 3:47 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Interview With Ron Gilbert
If you remember the classic Monkey Island adventure games - or if you are looking forward to the upcoming Penny Arcade game - you may enjoy this new interview with Ron Gilbert, the designer responsible for spoiling us and preventing us from fully enjoying lesser-quality adventures of the era.

Since this interview is for the World of Monkey Island website, he naturally talks a lot about his work on Monkey Island --- with his usual humor. But he doesn't neglect his role on the upcoming Penny Arcade game.

My favorite quotes:

Q: Do you think you’ll ever create something again that gets such a huge fanbase like happened with the Monkey Island series?

A: The problem is, you can only do one deal with the Devil and I blew it on a 16-color EGA game.

Q: Now that the newness of 3D with super realistic graphics and such is beginning to wear off, do you think games will move into more interesting styles and concepts?

A: Dear god I hope so. I'm so bored with realistic graphics. I can go outside and see realistic graphics. I want something that really excites my imagination. While doing realism is technically very challenging, it's not very creatively challenging and we need some more creativity in this business. All these stupid space marine games all look the same. None of them make me care at all about the world. Sorry Halo.

Enjoy!

Ron Gilbert Interview at World of Monkey Island

Labels: Adventure Games, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:43 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Interview With Logan Worsley, Creator of Emily Enough
I mentioned the disturbing, black-humored, free graphic adventure game "Emily Enough" several weeks ago. PlanetFreeplay.com has an interview with its author, Logan Worsley. An excerpt:

"I designed the game to be offensive or at least push the limits. Just about every game in the genre places you in the position of hero. I wanted to do something different--namely to try and make the player uncomfortable during the entire experience. The goal was to have the player know what they needed to do to win, but not want to do the things necessary to win. There's really only one instance in the game where it's that bad, but of course, that one is a little severe.

So, was I worried that anyone would be offended? I kinda wanted people to be offended.. not in a hurtful, mean way but just in a disturbing, creepy way."

Read the interview with Logan Worsley.

Tip o' the derby to Independent Gaming for the tip.


(Vaguely) related ghoulishness:
* Free Adventure Game: Emily Enough
* Adventure Gaming Alive and Well?
* Galatea

Labels: Adventure Games, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:40 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
MMORPGs Broke Jeff Vogel
Jeff Vogel, long-time indie RPG (role-playing game) developer, has an interview up at RPGWatch that is well worth reading. In it, he explains some of his more controversial articles, including his explanation for doing a Nethergate remake after blasting it as an example of why indies can't innovate.

He notes that his ripping on "level grind" and "trash monsters" was primarily aimed at flogging himself for past mistakes:

"I think that game developers need to be far, far more respectful of the time of the player. Leisure time is precious. We should not waste it. We shouldn’t burn time at the beginning making the player grind out levels before he or she can get into the plot. We shouldn’t burn time with faction grinding and trash clearing. We shouldn’t pad the game out with tons of B material."

Reconciling this with his publicly expressed love of MMORPGs, he explains:

"I was an addict. It passed.

"I spent an abusive amount of time playing Everquest. Then something happened. The switch flipped in my brain, and I didn’t care anymore. I was really looking forward to the World of Warcraft expansion coming out. Then it came out, and I just didn’t care.

"I’ll really seriously have to need an escape from reality before I pick up an MMORPG again. The whole business model is based on keeping you playing for months and months. And, since content is finite and expensive, that means wasting my time."

He also gives a little bit of a preview for the upcoming game, "Avernum 5." Where Avernum 4 was very hack-and-slashy with a huge world, Avernum 5 will instead focus on a very intricate and detailed plot.

Check out the full interview here:

Jeff Vogel Interview


(Vaguely) related Indie RPG Stuff
* Jeff Vogel Gives Innovation Another Chance, Plans Nethergate Remake
* Why Does Jeff Vogel Hate RPGs?
* How to Get Me to Buy Your Indie RPG
* Why Do RPGs Suck Now?
.

Labels: Interviews, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:40 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Beyond the Gate: Jason Compton On the Making of "The Broken Hourglass"
The "Indie RPG" (Roleplaying Game) is a category of computer game that, by all rights, shouldn't exist. Mainstream developers and publishers tend to shy away from RPGs because they are - short of anything "massively multiplayer" - among the most costly and difficult of games to produce. Only a handful of development houses are capable of pulling it off, and satisfying the often conflicting tastes of very demanding fans. The idea that a handful of indie developers, volunteering part-time effort with a budget that wouldn't even cover a week's operating expenses at a mainstream studio, should tackle this genre, to march where mainstream publishers fear to tread, defies any kind of conventional wisdom in the industry.

Interestingly enough, our story today begins with Baldur's Gate, a mainstream RPG which also defied conventional wisdom. During the mid-90's, conventional wisdom in the videogame industry held that RPGs were dead, and that the market was no longer interested in what was once a staple genre. Baldur's Gate was produced by the fairly new developer Bioware, which had a single action game (Shattered Steel) to its credit. Following hot on the heels of Diablo, Fallout, and Might and Magic VI (not to mention console RPGs like Final Fantasy VII) which topped the game charts in 1997 and 1998, Baldur's Gate was the title that seemed to finally put to rest the cries of the naysayers.

One great feature of Baldur's Gate was that it was relatively friendly to external modifications (or mods), allowing fans to create their own content. This inspired a new generation of amateur game developers, who learned the ropes of CRPG (Computer RPG) design by changing, enhancing, and extending existing games with brand-new content. Several members of one of the more prolific and successful modding groups, the Pocket Plane Group, grew weary of simply extending someone else's game and finally took it upon themselves to produce a brand new RPG, "The Broken Hourglass."

Now, ordinarily I'm a little bit skeptical about a "new" indie developer talking about their yet-unfinished RPG in development. However, Planewalker Games has a track record of successful mods for several years, and their new, built-from-scratch "WeiNGINE" RPG engine is largely complete and functional. Last week I had the chance to enjoy a telephone interview with Jason Compton, the producer of The Broken Hourglass, and he was able to give me the skinny on what I feel confident will be a great indie RPG in the not-too-distant future.

This introduction has taken way too long already, so I'll let Jason do most of the talking from here. Enjoy!

- Rolling Up a Character: Background Information -

Rampant Coyote: First off, why don’t you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself. Your background, what got you into gaming, and … everything else.

Jason Compton: Okay. Well, I’m Jason Compton, the producer for The Broken Hourglass for Planewalker Games. My gaming background goes back quite a ways. I guess it would probably start with my dad. My dad wasa young father, and the arcade stuff of the late 70’s and the early 80’s grabbed his interest. So that was something that he was interested in, and he would take me to the arcade. I was born in ’77. So as I was old enough to start going to arcades – you know – five or six years old, that’s when you had that wave of the really great, early, big-time arcade games coming through. That was my first experience, that and being an Atari player at home.

My dad didn’t grow up with videogames, but caught that wave of arcade games coming through. So he got into it, so I got into it as well.



Rampant Coyote: I was growing up during that same era, so I know exactly what you are talking about. Any game in particular really catch your interest back in the day?

Jason: I had a really wide interest. I guess some of those that really stuck – Galaga, Xevious, some of those classic games. I guess I had a couple of favorites that were probably considered “B-Listers” as well. Elevator Action – that was a big one for me. Those are the ones I keep coming back to. I put a lot of quarters and tokens into a lot of different machines. Even ones I had no chance at, like Sinistar… things like that. Just can’t stay away from them.



Rampant Coyote: (My best Sinistar voice) “I Live”

Jason: Yup!



Rampant Coyote: Ok, fast forward a little... Were you ever into any roleplaying games on computer at the time? Did you have a computer at home, besides the Atari console?

Jason: Yeah! I had the Atari, and I got my first real computer – it was the Commodore 64 – in 1985. And I didn’t immediately start playing RPGs on there, but again, time-wise, that was when the first Bard’s Tale games were coming out, that would have been an early one for me. But some of my favorites again were kind of B-Listers, like SSI's Phantasie … I played quite a lot of Phantasie. And then as the "Gold Box" games came through I played them, and I was a D&D player as a kid as well.

The way I got into D&D was kind of funny. I guess it was around that same time, ’85 – ’86, I thought that I was interested in chess. The local public library had a chess club, and I went, and the young adult librarian ran the chess club. I wasn’t a terribly good chess player, and she must have seen that. She must have seen something else in me that suggested that I might be interested in roleplaying games, because she said, “Well, Jason, why don’t you come with me,” and in the room next to the room where the chess club was going on, were some kids – slightly older kids – who were playing a Dragonlance module. She introduced me to them, and that was my first “in” to the game.

So I never played chess again, and ended up playing D&D instead, which was kind of funny. I kind of accidentally got into D&D. That also crossed over into the computer.

But I actually didn’t play much in the way of RPGs throughout, really much of the 90’s, either pen and paper or computer based. There was this big, long gap. I’d go back and play old favorites – you know, I’d go back and play, like, Wasteland every six months, or a few other games. At the time I wasn’t into a lot of the games that were coming out. I think a big part of that, actually, was throughout a lot of the 90’s I was an Amiga user. So we didn’t get the latest and greatest games. We didn’t get the RPGs. So I sorta missed that wave as a primary customer, because I was busy using a different – dying - computer platform.



Rampant Coyote: That brings up one of the questions I was going to ask you was also about any dice & paper influences – did you any other RPGs other than D&D that you've played?

Jason: We primarily played D&D – we would experiment, every once in a while, play a one-off with some other system. We played a fair amount of the Marvel Super Heroes RPG as a break from D&D. I guess the one other game that I can think that I played more than one session of was, again a B-List, or even C-List – I’ve always been into a lot of obscure things- was a game called Cyberspace. It was an I.C.E. game. It wasn’t Cyberpunk 2020, it wasn’t Shadowrun, it was the C-grade version of the cyberpunk games, called Cyberspace.



Rampant Coyote: I have seen the books, but I never played it myself.

Jason: It wasn’t a great setup, but it was okay. I think we played maybe a half-dozen sessions. But we’d usually come back to D&D. Cyberspace was a percentile-based system, with traits and so forth. It didn’t hold together really well, but it was good enough for, you know, high school kids.


- Becoming an Indie Game Developer -

Rampant Coyote: Okay. Moving on to … transitioning from being a gamer to a game developer. Now I take it that creating an indie RPG is not your full-time gig...

Jason: It’s a terrible idea, I’ll tell you that! (Laughs) No it, unfortunately it’s not a full-time gig. I guess I could set aside even more money, and try to convince myself that I’m paying myself a salary. But, why fool around?

So no, sadly, there’s not the money in the Planewalker coffers to do that at this point.



Rampant Coyote: Hopefully AFTER the game’s released, there’ll be plenty!

Jason: That’s the dream, you know, that this is the first game, not the last game.



Rampant Coyote: Right!

Jason: But no, I am a freelance writer, primarily business technology. In fact, I’ve got a story that’s due… which, while I’m not doing interviews, I’ll be working on.



Rampant Coyote: Okay – well, hopefully it won’t take too long!

Jason: No, I appreciate spending the time talking about the game. But yeah, I’ve been successfully doing that for about a decade now. But this was something else I wanted to try, and if it doesn’t work out, I will still have my writing. All things considered, sure, I’d love to be able to do the game design full-time, and have it pay comparably, and be able to pay some of the other people I’m counting on for their collaborations comparably, as well. But we’re not there yet, and I’m not the kind of person to sell all my possessions and mortgage the house in order to do it. That makes a good story in the Sunday paper, but that’s not what I see myself doing, going on quite that much of a limb.



Rampant Coyote: It’s a little bit of an experiment. Especially as it seems you are experimenting with a lot of new ideas. You mentioned the other people, also, who are working with you. I understand many of your team come from the Baldur’s Gate mod community.

Jason: Right. These were people that I was comfortable with, and I knew that they knew at least as much as I did about game design in this vein, and figured I could count on to help out with content, and help me understand the engine that we were putting together. Or, of course, in the case of the engine, actually put it into play.

Wes Weimer kinda wrote, or re-wrote, I guess, the book on Baldur’s Gate modding when he came along. And some of the technologies we’re using in The Broken Hourglass are pretty unique. Not so much the visual technologies, but the under-the-hood stuff is very different.

So yeah, a lot of modders are involved with it, simply because I knew we’ve done good work. We’ve done work that had kept people involved with a game five plus years after its release date! So we must have been doing something right.



Rampant Coyote: So why create a new engine? Why not go with one of the engines that are already out there?

Jason: There’s not a whole lot out there that’s really ready to go. I did look into it. When we sat down and said, “If we do this game, what will it take?” [Wes] said, well, I could design an engine, or I could do X, Y, or Z. And I did a little looking around, but it’s not as simple as just going out and picking up somebody’s re-work of the Quake engine, or just picking up CrystalSpace, or whatever. There’s a lot of logic that goes into doing an RPG that you can’t just pick up from anywhere .

There are really few licensable RPG engines out there. We looked into them, and two out of the three were tied to the D20 ruleset,. Which you can’t use unless you are being published by Atari. I know in the case of the people doing The Witcher, they chose to rip out D20 and put in their own ruleset – they licensed Aurora. Took out D20, put in their own thing.

I didn’t think that would be a good option for us. Especially because Wes said, well, look, if you want to work with somebody else’s code, you’ll need to find somebody else to do that. So it was go with the programmer that I knew and felt comfortable with, and would make a commitment to me to be my business partner here, or … just find somebody random off the street, probably pay them a lot of money, and not necessarily know what I was going to get back on the other side, if I went with one of these engines that had to have D20 rules taken out of them.

That and they weren’t cheap. Its not like there’s Torque for RPGs, and you pay $500 and off you go. These things are specialized and there’s a lot to them, and so it’s big money to get a ready-to-go RPG engine like that. And things like RPG Maker, that’s just not what we were trying to accomplish, we were looking for something that would let us aim a little higher than that.



Rampant Coyote: Or tie you to a particular type of gameplay.

Jason: Right. And we wanted to aim a little higher than that.



Rampant Coyote: Another question about the engine. How long did it take you –specifically Wes, but the bunch of you – to create the engine? It sounds like it came whole cloth, and it sounds like its pretty much done now.

Jason: Yeah, it is pretty much done. We had an early morning phone call about some performance issues today. So there’s still some things where it’s like, “Oh, that shouldn’t be happening like that!” And that’s because of XYZ, and then it gets fixed.

I guess… let me think about this now… The very first version of the engine is over two years old now. The bulk of it was done during a frantic summer, maybe a five month period where Wes was between jobs. He’d finished his doctoral defense, and then became a faculty member. So there was that lay-off in the middle there where he was able to put a lot of time into the engine. And then since then, it’s been things coming in dribs and drabs, feature requests, or, you know, now that we’re plugging in this content in, things aren’t working they way they looked were when it was first getting coded up.

There is that. That’s the main part now. Because this is the first game being put together with this engine, there are the things that worked in the design document, or worked in his head, or the compiler said worked when we did it the first time. But when we pesky content designers come along and actually start putting twenty creatures in an area all trying to do this, this, and this, or put a door in that behaves in a certain way. And then it’s like, “Oh!!! That doesn’t work quite right.”

So that’s where the additional work, the ongoing work that goes into the engine now, comes in. The parts where the rubber meets the road, and the theory and the reality don’t mix.



Rampant Coyote: And here’s a question with respect to the mod community: I’ve heard it said of the mod communities – I’ve not really been involved in that myself, other than the Neverwinter Nights community for a while. But I’ve heard it said that in many of the mod communities that less than 10% of the community accomplish 90% of the work. Did you find that was true, and if so how did you work around that?

Jason: More than 90% of the work is done by less than 10% of the people? Yeah, there’s certainly are a few people who were pretty prolific.

I guess the projects that I chose to get involved in had more defined scope. So I worked on a lot of projects with one other person – Jesse Meyers – and he definitely did his part and then some. We didn't run into that much, because we - the Pocket Plane Group, the name of our site - we never really set out to do the crazy… We said we’re not going to try and do a whole game, because of all the issues that you run into trying to do a whole game, which we’ve now decided to take on in a different way.

No, we kept our goals in mind, and manageable. The stuff I was involved in, there really weren’t people dropping out, or not pulling their weight, because we saw what people who set their sights too high would end up with. Yeah, you’d end up with twenty people who would argue about what the credits should look like. You’d see what not to do, and say, “Well, okay, let’s not do this. Let’s define the scope, and let’s go after it.”

So, no. I mean, I never had any disappointment like that. It is true that a lot of the output you see does come out of the same people, over and over again, because you see that they are the ones who worked it out. They kind of got the technique down, and they go ahead and do it. But even now, six-and-a-half, seven years after Baldur’s Gate II came out, there’s still people that come along and pick up where guys like me left off, and are doing new things.

So certainly not in a negative sense would I say that most of the work is done by the same people over and over. I don’t have any negative feelings in that regard.


- On RPG Design -

Rampant Coyote: In your opinion, what makes a great RPG?

Jason: It depends! I think of the games that I’ve really enjoyed, there’s a single quality about them, I guess, but not a universal way that they achieve that quality. The quality is the immersiveness of it. Not necessarily that I believe I’m in that world, but I really believe that I’m controlling that world, and interacting with it. And I don’t want to leave it alone, because only I can save it, or only I can manipulate it in the way it needs to be manipulated, or whatever.

Different RPGs have done that in different ways. I mentioned Wasteland, and certainly Wasteland did it in a different way than I think Baldur’s Gate did it. Wasteland didn’t have really engaging characters with lots of dialog that really made you feel a part of that world. You know, Wasteland had a book of paragraphs you looked up. And I loved Alternate Reality but the first game in particular had no plot OR dialog to hook on, yet the sights, the sounds, the songs all made you feel like you really were plodding around this city trying not to get killed by Champions and Brown Mold.

There’s the sense of putting you in a situation where you matter in some way. Different games do it in different ways, but yeah, you have to make the player feel like they matter in the world. Whether that’s with a lot of different mysteries that have to get unraveled that only you can get to the bottom of, or different characters who come to you with problems that only you can solve, or that feel a certain way about you, and they’ll only ever feel that way about you, or your player character or whatever you want to call it. Or, an Alternate Reality, where you are so busy worrying about survival that nothing else matters and you get fixated on that goal.

That’s the quality, immersion, but there’s no single strategy for getting there.



Rampant Coyote: Okay, well, speaking of specific strategies… What was your principle focus with The Broken Hourglass? What did you set out to achieve when you embarked on this insane journey of yours?

Jason: We set out to make a game that hardly anybody else wants to make anymore … another game in a style in which we had become accustomed, but the market wasn’t coming up with. This character-focused, party-based RPG / Adventure where you would define a character, meet other characters that had an interesting personality that could interact with the one that you created for your character. And together you would go off and find big, important stuff to do.

So if there is a vision, it would be that we can create an engaging world full of intriguing characters and welcome players into it, and give them excuses to keep coming back to that world to learn more about it, or solve more of its problems, or screw around with the minds of more of its inhabitants.

There is this game format, and we're trying to breathe some new life into it. It had a lot of people’s attention at one time. It got pushed to the side. We said, “Yes, there’s more room to tell stories with these kinds of pieces.” The strong player character. The strong supporting cast, that are more than just a portrait and stats. They have personalities. They interact with the player character and with each other. And to that end, with those people, you go out and you experience a story.

I guess the ultimate goal being that we would create a game world where story and the characters in it were both important. I think of it like I think of successful television or movie series—you load up a good RPG day after day, week after week, year after year both because you want to see what happens plot-wise, and because you want to see how the characters deal with the plots. Even though I know Charlie Chan will reveal the murderer, I still like to see how he arrives at his conclusions. An engaging gameworld is the same way.



Rampant Coyote: In a lot of games, it feels like you are railroaded through a story, regardless of what you want to do with your character. How were you able to achieve that balance between story and player freedom?

Jason: Well, uh... (laughs) we’ll just have to see, in part. I know how we think we’re doing it. I’ve always been up front about saying that we are not a sandbox game. We do have a finite and limited and non-random number of things to do in the game. We are not procedural content people. So there’s only so much you can do, and a certain number of things you’ll have to do.

We hope that by making a lot of the decisions about what order to do things in, and to a some extent which path you’ll take to reach those goals open-ended, players won't feel like they're in a box. Not everything has to be solved in a specific way. It’s not just “obtain the sort of blah from the Foozle over here, and give it to this guy, and doing that unlocks the gate.” There are some other … some different strategies to reach the end of some of the major quests, and alternative strategies for many sidequests as well. If anything, from a design standpoint I worry sometimes that we don't have enough plots which just consist of "You meet Party A. They hate you, and conflict ensues!"

We’ll have to see! What I have in my head as enough freedom may not be enough freedom for some players. But I can’t know what we do wrong until people play the game.



Rampant Coyote: Are you planning multiple endings?

Jason: Not … well… “We’re discussing it,” I guess is the thing to say there. I know what the second ending will be if we do it.



Rampant Coyote: (Laughs) Okay.

Jason: I know what the main ending is, and there will be some variations on what that main ending depending on choices made during the game, including how fast they got to the end, what they did or did not do about some of the other things going on in the city while they were getting there.

For example, the game does all take place in this city under siege. It might be tempting to say, well, look, we’re only going to focus on the things we can identify as major, critical quest goals. Because those support the main plot, those support the impending threat against the city. So solving those fastest would be the optimum strategy. But in so doing, you might have overlooked something that, although minor or unnecessary to completing the game, would have actually been really nice if you’d have solved. Because not solving it means something else bad is going to happen in the long run. Or whatever.

So there’ll be some variations on that. As far as a completely different ending, like I said, I know what it would be. I think it’s a question of “can we tell it in a compelling and believable way?” We’ll have to see.



Rampant Coyote: And still make it a satisfying ending.

Jason: Yeah. I know what it looks like, but we’ll have to see how it plays.



Rampant Coyote: There are a few games with multiple endings that, you know, there’s only one ending that I felt was really the “true” ending. The other two were… lame.

Jason: There’s a problem with that, too. Right. Again, would it be better to do one thing really well, or try and do three different things and none of them are terribly interesting? Of course, if you do three different things and all of them are wonderful, everybody gets candy!



Rampant Coyote: Right. So the game, the gameplay of The Broken Hourglass, hopefully the first of a series, takes place almost entirely within one city?

Jason: Yes



Rampant Coyote: It sounds will be a fairly focused, intense experience, without the big world and globe-trotting stuff. Tell me about the city in the The Broken Hourglass!

Jason: Okay. Well, the city is Mal Nassrin. I made a comparison about it once, and I won’t do that again, because people got touchy about it. But it’s a second-class city in the nation that the game takes place in, the Tolmiran Empire. Basically, Mal Nassrin, is a city with a lot of history, in that it was a fairly early human settlement, and it was a city-state in its own right. And then the capital of a small nation in its own right. But early on, as the Tolmiran Empire was being formed, it was absorbed into it.

So a lot of its unique culture has been lost. It’s not really a ‘hot spot.’ Most of the mineral resources of Mal Nassrin and surroundings have been exploited by now. So there’s no booming economy in that sense. People live there; they work there; it’s not a hell-hole, but it’s not posh. It’s not a vacation destination. It’s not a hot spot – it’s not where a lot of things happen. It’s where people live, and there are some old buildings … Occasionally someone who’s a big history buff might come by, but its not a happening place.

So it’s not where you’d expect the world to potentially come to an end. But that’s kind of where the game starts. It’s, “Oh, And of all the places for it to happen, it would have to happen here!!"



Rampant Coyote: Sounds like you already have a lot detail on this game world. Where did Tolmira come from? Was that your idea, or Jesse’s, or one of the other designers?

Jason: We had a couple of world designers who put this together, and they were a couple of old collaborators of mine. Jesse Meyers was one of them, and Raleigh Grigsby. They co-designed the Tolmiran Empire over the course of a couple years. Actually it was originally… Jesse had some notions of using it for a game of his own design that he had tried to get together an Infinity-based project around. But since doing new games in that engine was really, really hard it didn’t really go very far.

But when we sat down and decided that maybe we could do something with some money, with a brand-new engine, I turned to that immediately. I am not a world-designer. It’s not something that I personally have talent for. I went to a couple of people who I knew had been working on something, and I could trust to get whipped into shape for the game’s purposes. You know, fleshing traditional things out, and giving some direction in terms of play mechanics in the rule set that we needed. So that was how that came to be.



Rampant Coyote: Besides the fact that it is for “Baldur’s Gate Fans,” if you had one or two “hooks” … you know, big marketing plugs there to say, “This is what makes The Broken Hourglass so freaking cool,” what would they be?


Jason: I… Right now we’re at the point of just saying, “Oh, we’ve worked so hard on it, buy our game!” But I know that’s not a realistic expectation.

I guess the thing I’d say the “hook” is that we are making a story for you, the player. There’s been a lot of emphasis lately… and I’m not saying it’s bad or negative or hurts people or whatever … but there’s been a lot of emphasis on building multiplayer worlds where a lot of the story or engagement is based around you and some people that you managed to hook up with and collaborate with. And you build the story around the programmed events in the game. And that’s fine.

And then there are games where the exploration is the story. They give you kind of a loose plot thread, and the story comes together in your head as you buy houses and play dress-up. And that’s fine, too, but… the way we’re doing it is: We are building a story – what we hope is a rich and engaging story – for you the player, with you in mind, for you to play on your own, to enjoy, to immerse yourself in. Certainly to discuss it with your friends and collaborate with on strategies or mods or whatever. But it is built as a single-player experience.

And that’s something that not everyone can say that they do right now. I think that there is still a need for that. The same as there is a need for group events, and there is a need for being able to go home and read a book. We are more the reading-a-book side of it.


- Coming Soon: The Broken Hourglass -

Rampant Coyote: Yeah, I’m right there with you! I’d love to see more of the good, quality single-player games. Especially those coming out of indies like yourselves, and several others. So I’m really looking forward to seeing The Broken Hourglass, whether it appears on store shelves, or downloadable. Actually, that’s another question – have you been able to cement any plans yet for how you are going to be distributing the game?

Jason: No changes there yet. We have had some conversations with publishers which were promising, but no commitments from anybody yet. If we end up doing everything direct, I have no problem with that. So one way or another, there will be boxed product and a downloadable version available. It’s just a question of who will handle it, and on whose terms.

But I am committed – if we have to produce our own, then we’ll produce our own. If somebody else wants to handle that side of it, and deal with retail distribution, then for the right consideration I am very happy to let them do that as well.

There's a new breed of "heavy" indie RPGs coming: our game, Age of Decadence, Eschalon, maybe even Depths of Peril in that department, and I think one way or another we will each find our audiences, and hopefully get to share them as well.



Rampant Coyote: The Indie Way: It’s gonna happen one way or another! You just don't wait for someone else to give you permission to make your game.

Jason: (Laughs) Because that’s what it comes down to. Nobody’s going to do it for me. Nobody’s going to beg me to put out the game. So yeah – we will. We’re doing our best, putting our best foot forward, with some of the publishers. And some have been impressively receptive, and saying that, yeah, RPGs are a priority for them. But if they’re not interested in what we have, or its not on terms that we think will work for us, then we are still getting it to players! There’s no turning back from that now!



Rampant Coyote: Okay, this is the dangerous question, and do not have to feel obligated to answer it but… If you were to look into a crystal ball and see about how soon you might be able to get it out to players…

Jason: (Laughing) Woah!!!



Rampant Coyote: …when would we be able to expect it?

Jason: (Sighs) It’s tricky. I really, really want people to be playing it this year. I so badly want it, and there are days where it looks like that will certainly happen, and then there are days where it looks like, “Oh, man, what are we doing?” But that’s where my energies are focused --- our getting the game out this year. And if it doesn’t happen, then it’ll be early next year.

That’s what I’m asking of myself, and hopefully will be able to get from everyone else involved, is getting it out this year.



Rampant Coyote: Well, I can’t wait. I sure hope so!

Jason: Yeah, me too! (Laughs) It has to end sometime!



Rampant Coyote: Yeah, that’s what I keep telling myself with my latest game, too. Hey, anything else you want to add about The Broken Hourglass, or Planewalker Games, or anything else?

Jason: No, we’re always grateful for the interest that those out there have shown in the game, consistently checking out what we’re doing, and covering the information that we have been metering out there. Every week, we put out something about the game, whether it’s something about the world, or about the engine itself, or a story in the game world, or whatever. The uptake on that has been pretty good. For coming from, kind of, nowhere, in some sense, its been reassuring, certainly, seeing that people are interested in what we’re putting together and how we’re putting it together.

We’re grateful for that, and grateful to you for taking the time with us! Certainly, I’ll keep an eye on the Rampant Games site. As people have additional questions or comments, I’ll do my best to answer anything else there.



Rampant Coyote: Well, hopefully we’ll be able to do a follow up with the game’s release some time this year and talk more about it! Hey, thank you very much for your time!

Jason: Thank you!


(Vaguely) Related Chats With Folks Who Know Their RPGs:
* Interview With Amanda Fitch, Indie RPG and Casual Game Designer
* Interview with Georgina Bensley, Creator of Cute Knight
* Scorpia's New Tale: An Interview With One of Gaming's Most Popular Columnists
* Indie RPG Roundtable
.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Interviews, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:00 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Interview With The Father of DirectX, Alex St. John
Alex St. John was the "Gaming Evangelist" at Microsoft when I started my career in the game development biz. He threw me a really awesome birthday party once, though he had no clue he was doing it at the time. He was the guy who really pushed through the DirectX initiative back in the day. And he's now involved in indie games, as the founder of Wild Tangent.

He's been interviewed at Shacknews, principally concerning his role in creating DirectX. This was awesome reading for me, as I was there in this era, on the periphery at least, viewing it from the angle to a game developer trying to figure out Microsoft's strategy (and being immediately suspicious, balking at the idea that a bigger, bulkier operating system could actually make games run BETTER). He also talks a lot about the politics at Microsoft, how he kept almost getting fired, and a little bit about Windows Vista and Gaming (which he isn't too happy about).

We were working with Rendermorphics when Microsoft (under Alex St. John's direction) bought them out. We were really irritated with them because we liked their API but needed some changes (or access to their code to make the changes), and they suddenly became very unresponsive. They were still friendly with us, and really were nice guys, but they suddenly wouldn't commit to anything. We were starting to look at alternative APIs when the announcement came out that they'd been bought, and that their new, improved API would be integrated into Microsoft's DirectX 2 for-friggin-free, and it all became clear.

And it took Microsoft another three years to fix the problem we'd been complaining to Rendermorphics about. DirectX 6 or 7, I think. That stupid execute buffer. It made perfect sense for things like 3D fighting games, or anywhere else where the polygon list was relatively static. But for a game like Warhawk (or any First Person Shooter), it was horrible. When Microsoft told us at a GDC that they were going to kill it dead, they acted like they were leading the charge to get rid of it, although they'd been ignoring the shouts of angry game developers for MONTHS.

Ah, the memories.

Originally, I was hired to be a PC guy at SingleTrac, so I was much more involved in what was going on for PC ports of our games. But very quickly I was pushed on to full Playstation development. I was still a PC game fan at heart, though, so I kinda forced myself into the periphery of things. So some of my coworkers got to go to the events mentioned in the interview, and I just got to hear about them later. My wife says she's very happy I missed the one with the eight-foot-tall vagina. Ah, the game industry in the mid-90's! It was a crazy time.

Alex says in the interview, "I actually attribute my reasons for being successful there to listening carefully to the game developers. My strategy was very simple--I go to them and ask, "What kind of crack would you get addicted to?" They'd tell me, and I'd go back to Microsoft and say, "If we make this crack, those developers will buy it." Very simple. DirectX was essentially the crack they asked me to make. That's the way you hook somebody--ask them what they'll pay money for, then go make it."

That's pretty much exactly what they did, and they made no secret about it. After years of being given total crap to work with on Windows, and told "Here it is, you'll use it and you'll like it!", this was a stunning new approach by Microsoft. Except we didn't even have to pay for it. The clincher for DirectX - more than anything else - was hardware / driver independence. Game developers for years had had to struggle with supporting all kinds of different hardware. The AdLib sound card versus the Covox versus the Gravis Ultrasound versus Sound Blaster versus Sound Blaster Pro versus the really nice MIDI sound cards. And all the different joysticks. And EGA versus VGA vs SVGA and the whole "Mode X" thing. And it wasn't just the game developers. If you load up DOSBox and try out some of the games from around 1990 to 1995, you will find yourself immediately faced with baffling configuration screens asking for IRQs, Ports, and so forth for every single game.

The big thing that DirectX offered was that independence. No more having to create your own configuration screen. No more confused tech support calls by customers trying to figure out why they couldn't hear sound out of their weird sound card that nobody had ever heard of. Then, with DirectX 2, they introduced a 3D API which was pretty fast (if cumbersome).

Like I said, the games industry (and PC gaming) in the mid-90's was crazy.

And as far as Vista? Well, Alex has already made his point known, but he elaborates: "Well, the PC--forget the operating system--is always a great platform. Modern PCs have superior graphics and memory and processing power to any next-gen console. I don't think Microsoft did anything to help the PC as a gaming platform with Vista, and that's a tremendous frustration because I take it very personally. If I would've been there, I would have made much more aggressive efforts to make sure Vista stayed out of the way of games. What you see with Microsoft is, without people at Microsoft who realize that the operating system does not add value to gaming, it gets in the way, they think they can add more value by adding in more sh** that only gets in the way of making a good game. Unfortunately, Vista does that. Microsoft added more sh** that impedes game development. It's certainly possible to make great games in Vista, it's just more of a pain in the ass than it needs to be. I think Vista is a missed opportunity for Microsoft to have done a better job in supporting PC gaming."

Anyway, as you can expect, Alex St. John is very ... outspoken. The interview is awesome, especially if you remember the heady Windows 95 days...

Interview With Alex St. John at Shacknews

I am dissapointed that he never mentions the toga party where the live lion got loose. Maybe he's trying to forget that one.

(Vaguely) related retro-views through infrared-tinted glasses:
* Dress Codes And Development
* The Wildest Birthday Party Ever
* Is Vista Going To Destroy Indie Gaming?
.

Labels: Biz, Interviews, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:11 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Geneforge 4 Interview
RPG Vault has an interview with indie RPG developer Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software about his newest RPG, "Geneforge 4: Rebellion."

A couple of excerpts:
"Thus, though it's a low-budget title, it still has a place in the marketplace (and early sales are very strong). Most people don't make single-player RPGs like this anymore, so there isn't a lot of competition. It may seem that MMORPGs have sort of taken over the world, but there are still lots of people who long for this sort of game."

And later...

"There is almost always a non-combat way to solve any given problem. Diplomacy. Stealth. Mechanics. Trickery. I love having multiple ways to solve every problem."

It's heavy on promotion (of course), but enjoyable:

GENEFORGE 4: REBELLION INTERVIEW


But what I'm really anxious for is his follow-up to his last - and perhaps most controversial - "View from the Bottom" article, about how he hates RPGs.

Labels: Interviews, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 3:06 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Jeff Tunnell on the Great Games Experiment
Jeff Tunnell (founder of Dynamix and Garage Games) speaks up on the Great Games Experiment in an interview.

Excerpt:
"The industry is finally starting to recognize the Indie scene. GarageGames has been working for this since 1999, and as new people come in the market, they act like they are the first to recognize the market. But, everybody that comes into the market makes it stronger, and I think Indies have a bright future. However, not everyone will make it. In fact, it will be extremely difficult to make a living making games, but it is possible and will become even more possible for people that understand the huge amount of work involved in making a career of making games."

Check out the whole article:
Jeff Tunnell on the Great Games Experiment

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:06 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Console Indie: An Interview With Steve Taylor of NinjaBee
What does it take for an indie game developer to make downloadable games for the newest generation of consoles? I've heard a lot of indie and aspiring indie developers ask this question. Steve Taylor is the president of Wahoo Studios (AKA NinjaBee), which is on the cusp of releasing their third XBLA title for the XBox 360. So he ought to be the guy to ask!

Wahoo started out as a more traditional "gun-for-hire studio", but in late 2004 it set out on the path of the indie, releasing their self-funded (and award-winning) PC independent "tycoon" game, Outpost Kaloki, as a downloadable game. The next year, they followed up with Outpost Kaloki X, a new version for Live Arcade for the XBox 360. Kaloki X became a solid hit for the fledgeling Live Arcade service, and really interesting things started to happen.

In 2006, NinjaBee released Cloning Clyde, a hit side-view platformer for the XBox 360. As Wahoo Studios, they have also announced the impending release of Saga, a massively multiplayer real-time-strategy game. The soon-to-be-released XBox 360 title, Band of Bugs, is an IGF nominee.

This is one of the strangest interviews I've ever done, because I'm interviewing my own boss. He volunteered, and I was able to get a few questions from folks here to make sure I wasn't throwing too many softballs. This also gives me plausible deniability to try and avoid getting fired for asking some really ugly questions.

So, here we go!

--== Ancient Origins ==--

Rampant Coyote: Although you are a staunch supporter of the Xbox 360 and Microsoft’s leadership in downloadable console games, would you care to elaborate on the rumors that you are, in fact, a raving Nintendo Fanboi?

Steve Taylor: Haha, here's where you have an unfair advantage because you work with me during the day. I'm surprised you didn't ask me about the time I found the cardboard in my shirt collar! [Jay: Why ask? I already mentioned it in passing, though now everybody will know who it was!]

It's true, I'm a raving Nintendo Fanboi. Nintendo creates some unparalleled experiences. I've been hugely pro-Nintendo for a long time, and from a consumer point of view I don't feel like they've ever really let me down. I also had a great time working on N64 games as a developer. I look back fondly on that time in my life - working with the smart people at Nintendo was awesome.

One result of that was that I expected working on the Xbox 360 would kinda suck in comparison. Boy was I wrong. The system rocks, the dev setup rocks, and the Live Arcade team has been completely on the ball before anybody knew there was a ball to be on.

So I've learned to love cool things about Nintendo and love cool things about Microsoft at the same time.


Rampant Coyote: How’d you get involved in the videogame business?

Steve: I've been doing game projects ever since my brothers taught me to program when I was a kid, but I somehow got into writing educational software for a living. I left the educational software world in 1995, and worked on a game (Assassin) on my own that was released as Macintosh shareware. It was also released as a downloadable game for Outland, a way cool (but now long defunct) online game destination for the Macintosh. It wasn't until the end of 1995 that a friend (Kier) suggested I apply for a full-time game development job at Saffire. I was able to show the work I had done (Assassin and some tech demos) to Hal Rushton, who took a big chance and hired me.


Rampant Coyote: So what was the first game you ever worked on that actually made it onto store shelves?

Steve: Technically, a version of Assassin was released on a shareware collection CD in Japan, so that was on somebody's shelf somewhere. :)

My first traditional retail project was Legends '98 Football. I was a programmer on the PSX version, which got cancelled, but I think I had *some* positive impact on the PC version that finally shipped. Over the next half dozen years at Saffire I did some N64 games, a bit of management, a Dreamcast game, and I made what contributions I could to games on a bunch of different systems. I even worked on a tech demo for the Nuon for a few weeks.


Rampant Coyote: So what led you to strike out on your own and create Wahoo Studios?

Steve: In 2001 there was pain and sorrow and gnashing of teeth across the industry. Investors had been disappearing for a while, projects were scarce, companies were shutting down, and the games business felt like a wasteland. Naturally that seemed like a brilliant time to try to start a new company!

Basically, I had been planning to leave my previous employer for some time, and when a friend (remember "Kier" from earlier in this interview?) left for his own reasons, we had a few talks and decided it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take our own shot at doing things our way. We left together and started Wahoo Studios in a little basement office in Pleasant Grove, UT, with almost no cash and certainly no work lined up.


Rampant Coyote: What else has Wahoo done prior to Outpost Kaloki?

Steve: Prior to Outpost Kaloki we did a whole lot of begging, some writing contracts, some low-budget PS1 and PS2 games, some level contract work, some programming contract work, some concept art contract work, a few useless demos, and countless concept pitches. We also got to work on a GameCube game for 3DO, which was a good experience in a lot of ways, but ended up finishing right when 3DO declared bankruptcy. That was not good.


--== Current Projects ==--

Rampant Coyote: Okay - since people keep asking: What’s the difference between Wahoo Studios and NinjaBee? Aren’t they the same company?

Steve: Wahoo Studios is a traditional contract development studio that does work for publishers and other people with money and a project. The NinjaBee name was created around the time we decided to release Outpost Kaloki, as a unique brand with which to label our self-directed Indie efforts. Wahoo and NinjaBee are very much the same people - we don't make a distinction between who works on which projects, but we use the NinjaBee label only for projects we design and create ourselves.


Rampant Coyote: What can you tell us about Band of Bugs?

Steve: Band of Bugs is NinjaBee's new Tactics game for Live Arcade. The game features some new ideas designed to focus and accelerate the flow of turn-based strategy games. We also worked hard to make the game interesting for traditional Tactics game players while still making it appealing and accessible to more casual users. The game was designed from the start for Live Arcade and incorporates a bunch of unique Live Arcade features, including all the standard stuff (Leaderboards, achievements, rich presence, online play, etc.) as well as some neat new things (like a level editor and the ability to play custom levels over Live).


Rampant Coyote: What can you tell us about Saga? (Yes, I know, I’m feigning ignorance here, as I was one of the guys who spent much of 2006 working on it. But I’m not allowed to say anything. Maybe you can!)

Steve: Saga is fortunately more public than Band of Bugs, so we can talk about it a bit more. It's a persistent-world RTS supporting lots of players (hey, it's an LMOG!) with a cool collectible unit system. Dragons, elves, magic, machines, orcs... Cool stuff! People interested in the game can visit www.playsaga.com for more info or to sign up for beta testing...


Rampant Coyote: Why wasn’t Cloning Clyde submitted for the IGF this year?

Steve: Well, technically Cloning Clyde didn't qualify! Clyde was the achievement of an Indie vision from start to finish, and a true labor of love, especially for John Nielson, but we did get some significant help from Microsoft for that one.

Band of Bugs (which does qualify, since we paid for everything) almost didn't get submitted to the IGF - we were so swamped we barely got the submission in by the deadline.


--== Indie Game Development ==--

Rampant Coyote: In a game like Outpost Kaloki, how much of the gameplay is the design of a single person, and how much is a group effort? Is it a case of one person coming up with a design doc, to which everyone else adds, or is it a case where everyone brainstorms together until they have a common vision?

Steve: I feel it's fairly important to let everyone contribute to the design - everyone needs to have a sense of ownership so they're excited and committed to the project. At the same time, we always have a "buck stops here" kind of person who can define and document the final official design. In the early versions of Outpost Kaloki, that was me. For the Xbox 360 version, Jeremy Throckmorton ended up taking on a lot of that responsibility. But everyone working on the project (including artists and testers and programmers and management) had some influence on how it was built and balanced.

Band of Bugs is a bit more structured - Jeremy has been the lead designer from the start on that, but again everyone has had a chance to give feedback and make contributions along the way.

I'm also a big believer in the value of goal-directed design. It's easier to define high-level goals for a project and throw all the big design decisions against those goals to see what makes sense. For example, the goal of making Band of Bugs a game that could be played in short sittings strongly influenced a bunch of smaller design decisions that came up, such as how to handle turn order in multiplayer games.


Rampant Coyote: You've done several games now without the help of a publisher. Is this something you're looking to change, or is the money simply not worth the risk of giving a publisher leverage over your project?

Steve: Honestly, we intend to continue doing a mix of traditional contract work for publishers (as Wahoo Studios) and self-directed stuff (as NinjaBee). Working with a publisher has its downsides (including smaller royalties, less control, loss of IP, etc.) but also has tremendous upsides (more money, increased stability, additional resources such as research people and a marketing staff being contributed to the project, etc.) that we continue to appreciate. How will this balance change in the future? I'm not sure. So far, we swing both ways. ;)


Rampant Coyote: So here’s the biggie – let’s say I’m an indie game developer (I know, it’s a HUGE stretch…) How would I go about getting my game published and distributed through Live Arcade?

Steve: Yowza. This is a question I love to think about and talk about, but it would take me days and many pages to explore it fully. Let me try to brutally summarize:

1. Make an awesome game demo
2. Get an NDA with Microsoft
3. Show them the demo, and pitch the game
4. Make sure your design has great graphics, live arcade focused
gameplay, awesome multiplayer, and cool downloadable content
5. Convince them that:
5a: The game will rock and will take advantage of the Xbox and of Live
in brilliant ways
5b: That your team has the ability to pull it off
5c: That you're in it for the long haul - you're not just one guy in his
basement, you're a team of dedicated individuals with a history of
completing projects and the commitment and resources to finish this one.
6. Make a deal with Microsoft for distribution
7. Work hard and endure delays and hurdles and finish the game and hand
it off to certification
8. Hope the game passes certification! Spend a number of sleepless
nights worrying about this.
9. Relax and Enjoy. Or, start on the next one. :)

Note that you need the resources (talent, money, etc.) to make the game! It's a lot more expensive than you think. Consider testing, certification, localization, development hardware, etc...

For some more great insight, read this interview with Ross Erickson:
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/07/25/joystiq-interviews-xblas-ross-erickson/

[Jay: Note - by way of current events, Erickson just left XBLA this week to join Sierra. But the information is still valuable.]


Rampant Coyote: Outpost Kaloki was released to several portals for its PC release, but was only popular on a few of them. Yet it was a significant hit on the 360. Why is that? Aren’t “Tycoon” games traditionally PC-centric? How would you recommend indies approach deals with portals?


Steve: Hey! You're trying to sneak two questions into one bullet point!

How did a game from a traditionally PC genre do well on a console and not well on the PC? For starters, we put a LOT of effort into making the experience console-centric. In fact the original design for Outpost Kaloki was for console play, and it's really the PC version that was "adapted". For another thing, with the Xbox game we were a bigger fish in a much smaller pond. Finally, one key reason the game didn't do well on traditional portals is that it's not a puzzle game. It's not super casual. For a console game, it's relatively casual, but for a PC game released on sites like BigFishGames, it's a bit complicated!

How should indies approach deals with portals?
1. Don't make an "agent" deal with a portal - don't let them sell your game to other portals and give you a cut of the deal. You end up with almost no return while your game is spread all over by some portal 3 levels down the chain.

2. Get the low lying fruit (like high-traffic free-game download sites) yourself with your own version, and THEN make the deals with the portals. Otherwise, you'll finally get around to putting your game on a download site and find it's already there, but with somebody else
getting the money!

3. Don't listen to me - go read indiegamer.com and gamedev.net and other indie developer sites - those guys actually know what they're doing with PC indie games.


Rampant Coyote: After the initial success of Xbox Live Arcade, specifically with games like Geometry Wars and Outpost Kaloki, it sounded like everyone and his dog (including most major publishers) were proclaiming that they had plans for dozens of Live Arcade projectst. Greg Canessa claimed that they were swamped by large and small publishers wanting in on Arcade. For a while, looked like the indies might get squeezed out. However, it sounds like over the last year the biggest problem was that there weren’t enough XBLA games (from the consumer standpoint) hitting the pipeline. Do you have any insight as to what's been up with that?

Steve: I am not privy to Microsoft's release schedule or relationships with other developers, so I can't really say for sure what the situation is.

One possible issue is that making a game for Live Arcade is a lot harder than it seems. Sure, it's "small" stuff, but it's still console development, and the quality bar is still high, and the certification process is still tough, etc...

Regarding Indies getting pushed out: It sure seems like that's not going to happen! I've talked to 2 or 3 key people on the Live Arcade team who are quite committed to supporting indie efforts on Live Arcade. They can't approve every game they see, but there seem to be some great indie games coming down the pipe, and I think that will certainly continue, thanks to the approach Microsoft is taking. This is all my personal observation, of course, and I can't speak for their official policies in these areas.


Rampant Coyote: Hey, I’ve got this idea for a game, do you want to buy it from me and make it? I’ll only charge you 50% of the profits…!

Steve: Haha, My Favorite Question Ever! Can I *please* pay you cash up front for your awesome idea? We are all stupid and completely bereft of good ideas, and yours is surely going to Change The World!


Rampant Coyote: Once upon a time your advice for other indies on how to properly get involved in the downloadable games market was “Don’t.” Has your advice changed at all?

Steve: Hmm... I still think it's important to read articles (like this one: http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/3/10029 or this one: http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2006/07/yes-virginia-there-is-money-in-indie.html) and face up to the fact that most Indie games lose money! But I believe in the increasing power of Indie game makers, and in the *potential* for talented, persistent people to put in some serious time and start making a profit after releasing several titles.

But you know who's a bad person to ask? ME! What do I know about making a hit PC indie game? The biggest return we got on the (significant) investment we made in Outpost Kaloki PC was that it opened the door for us to make Live Arcade games right when that door had a chance of being opened. As far as I'm concerned, if you count success in dollars, we're not a successful indie PC developer at all! From an indie point of view, we're a bunch of n00bs that suddenly had a lucky opportunity to apply their console expertise to an indie situation, so they grabbed on with both hands, both feet, and a few teeth just in case. And it paid off.


--== +1 Questions of Smiting ==--

Rampant Coyote: If you were offered the chance to do an online version of any board game, what would it be?

Steve: Well, my instant answer is Settlers of Catan, which I was playing way before it became everybody's favorite board game!. But hey, that's already been done. I'd strongly consider games like Robo Rally, Empire Builder (or EuroRails), and Cosmic Encounter. [Jay: Cosmic Encounter = Best boardgame EVAR! Though Cataan comes really close.]


Rampant Coyote: Let’s say you could go back in time and correct one mistake you’ve made in your business. Aside from hiring me, what would you change?

Steve: Maybe waiting so long to hire you? :) Seriously, though, that's a hard question. We started the company, which was pretty exciting. Then everything TOTALLY SUCKED for a really long time. And then some awesome opportunities came along and we worked hard to make them happen, and now we're pretty happy. How could we change anything in the last five years and still come out in the same place?


Rampant Coyote: What are you playing in your “spare time”? And I caught you playing NetHack the other day, so no using the “I’m too busy to play games” dodge!

Steve: Haha... Justin (the team lead on Saga) caught me playing NetHack in the middle of a Saga meeting. Of course, Justin is a NetHack addict as well, so I think he was more envious than annoyed. :)

Besides NetHack, I'm still occasionally playing Civ IV, which is a (most of the time) brilliant game. And I play every Live Arcade game when it comes out. I play Wii Sports and Zelda Twilight Princess when I have a chance. I'm looking forward to playing Supreme Commander.

As far as indie PC games go, the last thing I played with any decent level of attention was Virtual Villagers. That was a great game.

I really do have a hard time finding time to play games during the week. I started writing the answers to this interview at 2am on my birthday and finished about a week and a half later, so I think I should be able to claim I'm a little bit swamped. :)