So without further ado, here’s some takeaways that I think are worth noting:

• Never rely on some flashy peice of software to make your presentations look “cool”. The fact of the matter is that it is the content that counts. So rather than spending hours, days or even weeks on smart trailers, often it is better to choose something that is easier and faster to produce.
• Make sure you have your presentation on a laptop with some battery power left.
• If you are going to hand out objects during the presentation, make sure they are prepared well in advance.
• It is tempting to go by train to meetings. But having a car available can really save your bacon. Those last minute things you might need desperately spring up and having a car gives you another avenue to go down.
• Try and think what it is the audience of whatever you are presenting are fundamentally interested in hearing. Try and address those issues as well as giving the message you want to.
• Enjoy the process as much as you can. It can be stressful, but it definitely helps you solidify your own ideas.

I can honestly say I learnt a hell of a lot from preparing this whole pitch. Not least about my own core competences and where I really need help. I also managed to start to solidify my design ideas somewhat. I think the process of preparing to show them to someone else in a formal setting is really useful in that sense.

Of course, the success of all this, is that we either get the money, or we don’t. But I would imagine everyone who has taken part in the “get in the game” process this year got something out of it. Lets keep our fingers crossed on making it to the next round, which is far more comfortable (prototyping).

Phil.

Phil:

Hi Jon, could you give us some background about Onteca for those who don’t know you guys?

Jon:

We are a Brit Indie in all ways both by size, less than 20 people, and attitude.  We are defiantly independent and want to make our own games with as little external interference as possible.  We are grown to this size through doing a variety of different projects but our core passion is the production of Computer games.  Our business model is similar to that of Aardman Animations who would do a variety of advert and commercial work but then reinvest any profits into their own creative projects.

Stumpe's? or Stumpys!

Phil:

I saw recently that you had released some information about Monsteca, the Wii game you guys are working on. It feels like the Wii has been perhaps the poor relation in terms of indies getting on the platform. Do you think releasing a title for the Wii will be any different to releasing on XBLA or steam or any other platform?

Jon:

Wiiware the download platform for Wii is probably the most indie friendly console platform going.  The Wii is quite easy to program, Nintendo are very supportive and due to the memory limits on game install (16 Mb or 40Mb) big publishers can’t just flood it with failed disc product.  The Nintendo Devkits come with all the compiler tools and some nice middleware so you don’t have any hidden costs.

Sales on the platform are OK are will hopefully get better as Nintendo push it harder.

Phil:

From your site, its pretty obvious you tend to be platform agnostic. It also seems like you do quite a wide variety of games for lots of different clients. Is this intentional? How do you balance working on a game for a client versus working on your own games?

Jon:

Client work nearly always has deadlines and mostly these get prioritised above our own work.  With Monsteca Corral we have been lucky enough to have support from the Regional Attraction Fund which is administered by North West Vision the regional film agency.  This has meant we are able to treat Corral as a proper project and it doesn’t get bounced when commercial work comes in.

We have a very clear strategy for the company and will turn down commercial work if it doesn’t fit into our plans.

Phil:

What do you think of the new platforms available? The iPhone has gotten a lot of attention for the “hit” titles. But its incredibly rare to get a hit. Have you got any particular views on what is the best platform for an indie developer?

Jon:

Um, that is an interesting question.  I really like iPhone as it has such a rich API and interesting interface but on the other hand it doesn’t work well for many types of game.  As an ex-Sony employee I am bred to believe that consoles offer the best sales but on the other hand they are much more complicated to make games for.

So what would I recommend probably Facebook Apps based on Flash are the best platform if you want to get rich (check out the O’Reilly book Facebook Cookbook for more info) but it you want to make great 3d games get a Sony devkit and push out PS3 for download.

For us we are interested in controllers so really Wii is the only way to go until Natal or the Sony Motion Controller come along.

I am disappointed that it is impossible for Indies to get Xbox Live Arcade developer status for anything other than C#.  To make the games we make we would need proper devkits but to my knowledge they only give them to publishers.

Monsteca Corral screenshot

Phil:

You used to work for Sony right? What made you transition from the traditional industry to running your own company? Do you think it was a wise move?

Jon:

Yes, sometimes I feel like all games companies are based on Logan’s Run, you have hit 40 and they really don’t want to keep employing you, you cost more and are more arsey.  I see many of the people who I used to work with getting made redundant and feel that my destiny is very much more in my own hands.

Otherwise you have to remember that actually you probably won’t get to carry on being creative if you run your own company you will need to employ creative people and your life will become about finding funding and shaking hands.  I still manage a bit of programming but try and keep off the critical path of delivery as I am not as quick as the guys who do nothing but programming.  I don’t mind this as I think I am probably better at running a business than being a programmer but you should be probably be aware that it is very different skill set.

Phil:

You seem to have a pretty good balance of artists to programmers. How have you staffed up the company to achieve that balance? Do you think there is an ideal size?

Jon:

I continually worry about being too big.  If we grow to more than 20 I won’t know everyone but then it is frustrating.  We could probably do with a couple more programmers maybe a ratio of two programmers to one artist with a couple of other support staff is the ideal.

We have grown organically and unscientifically on the whole, most of our team have come via paid work experience placements.

Phil:

Monsteca is a very strange game, it feels pretty AI driven. Its a strategy game too. Are those sort of AI/strategy type games the kind of games you like to work on?

Jon:

Yes they are mostly the sort of games we play.  We are also very interested in emergent behaviour and game design.  That is you design a set of creatures with specific attributes and almost let them produce the game experience and then tune the game AI around what they do.

Phil:

You’re really pretty good at getting money from the government. It’s a skill that most indies seem to be pretty bad at. Is there a secret to that? Is there any advice you can give to other indies?

Jon:

We are not the only guys to get money from the government I know Introversion, Emote, Blitz and Monumental have as well.

You have to understand that the UK Government is very keen to support our sector but is only able to give money to companies rather than individuals and really want you to have a track record.  I understand that this is Catch 22 in that how do you get a track record without funding but that is the way of the world.  It is important to remember that Hewlett Packard started off designing bowling alleys, we started by doing Web Sites and Flash Games.  At least with the iPhone or Facebook it is possible to make something on your own and then release it, it may not sell well but you are then starting to get a track record.  I advise any UK Developers who are passionate about starting their own business to talk to Business Link the government’s business support agency, and to maybe think about using the Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme as a way of raising Debt Finance.  Don’t forget about entering competitions, Google have one for their app store with cash prizes, Adobe have one for Flash Lite (Open Innovation Fund), the Ordinance Survey have one at the moment for Map Apps, Intel have one for Physics Apps and Facebook have an Innovation Fund for Facebook Apps.  In Architecture all new Indies get their first break through a competition maybe our industry might go the same way.

Phil:

Is there anything you want to tell other British indies?

Jon:

Only occasionally do windows of opportunity open in any industry, early 70s for microprocessors, 80s for microcomputers, 90s for dot com.  We are just entering probably for first big one for games in the last 10 years.  Download games are cheap to make have potential world wide audiences.

Thanks to  Jon for sharing his insights and we wish Onteca luck for the release of the game! Be sure to visit Jon and the guys (and girl!!) at http://www.onteca.com/

Phil.

Perfect pitch?

The first day was taken up with some presentation skills training. Which involved a bit of presentation in front of a camera, some discussion about the good and bad parts of each presentation (there were 14 companies in total, split into two groups), followed by some more time in front of the camera.

I’m reasonably happy in front of an audience, being a bit of an old fart. So I wasn’t phased by having people in front of me. I guess being a lecturer helped there too. But I did learn a couple of really useful things about my own presentations:

• Never wear light colours on TV
• I am too laid back when trying to get my points across
• Pauses are sometimes good, to give the audience time to take information in
• The beginning and end of the presentation are the things they will remember
• Don’t try and convey too much information, stick to three key points
• Practice presenting in front of a camera, replay your own presentations
• Be positive in your critique, 2 positives 1 negative is ok

I am sure that the things we discussed during the presentation training will definitely help make pitching better. Certainly I expect to be able to improve my own presentation skills leading up to the actual pitch. One thing we did discuss was the possibility of not using powerpoint at all. The main point of a pitch being to get across an idea and powerpoint being a way for people to lose sight of that and simply to geek out doing slide transitions. I think there is some merit to thinking about this some more. For my own pitch to Sony, I have some plans that might enable me to ditch using powerpoint for the presentation, or at least minimize the “powerpointyness” of the pitch. After all, they’re going to have seen 14 companies presenting 20 minute pitches in one day, I know from bitter experience how your mind melts when viewing something as intense as a pitch in such a short timespan.

On Friday we also learnt a little about the kind of things Sony look for in a pitch (we have to pitch to Sony next month) and learnt of a few expressions they use internally, which I’ll try and describe now.

The X statement

The “X” Statement

The X statement is a simple expression of the core of the idea. They talked about Motorstorm’s X statement being “Brutal off-road racing” (or a paraphrase of same). It is basically what I’ve seen called an “elevator pitch” before. The concept being the simplest thing you could say to someone to get a an idea of what the product is about.

The Rip-O-Matic

Like the X statement, this is a method of trying to convey the experience of the product. We were shown an example for Little Big Planet. The ROM doesn’t actually need to show the product, so much as the values of the product. Apparently they are going to put up some video on GITG site so hopefully you can watch this for yourselves. But the closest I’ve seen to this thing before is in the movie “What Women Want” with Mel Gibson where he starts hearing the thoughts of women. During the film they have to pitch to NIKE and he comes up with this (stolen) idea for a pitch which sells the vision of a woman running on a road, the road not being judgemental, the road always being there (yada yada). So at the end they hit the tagline and everyone loves it. This felt fairly similar to that concept. Its really about expressing in video the essense of the experience rather than trying to tell people exactly what the product is. Interesting really, I’ll be trying that out next week.

The X movie

This one was more for AAA style developers than us indies. The X movie is the type of movie that attempts to actually recreate the game, but in a short movie. A bit like the killzone2 and motorstorm trailers, although there are obvious drawbacks for when people see the movie and expect the game to be exactly the same. One thing that amuses is that the budget for some of these movies could be pretty much the same as an indie game.

The X demo

This is a demo of the final product, but trying to only show the major elements. I have also seen this called a “vertical slice”. The idea is to make a demo that faithfully recreates the user experience for a tiny fraction of the game. It probably works best for games with lots of content, because you only need to produce a small part of the content and suggest “more of the same”. My own game is using procedurally generated content techniques and is mostly AI-based, so the X demo is a little bit harder to pull off because it won’t represent the final polish of the finished product. There is a danger that if you show a demo that is really crude, people who are less well versed in game development might simply think that it IS a representation of the finished game and not like it due to the lack of polish or final content.

Just Add Water's concept art

Takeaways

The thing I take away most from the experience is that you really have to be able to define and describe your “vision” for the game. Why should people be interested in it? Can you explain it to them in a way you might an 8 year old kid etc. Being concise and understandable when tasked with describing what might eventually end up quite a complex game can be hard, but it should still be possible to distill the essense of the gameplay down into a single sentence. My own game still has a bit of thinking to be done, but I’m considering “Mess with the heads of cute box characters” as a starting point. The question is, can anyone understand from that what they will be doing in the game?

On Friday the guys from Sony gave us an exercise to do, looking at other games X statements. These were gleaned from marketing materials so were probably not that accurate as an X statement, but we tried to rank the various titles and statements along the axes of good-bad and functional/slogan. It turned out to be pretty hard to find good examples. Although there were often huge differences of opinion. Clearly the point is to get everyone to buy into the statement, whatever it may be.

We were also shown some concept art from a game by Just Add Water (another British Indie we’ll have to catch up with) who got their game on PSN.

All in all, a great few days. But it really puts a crimp on updating the site!! Hopefully normal schedules will be resumed from next week. We’re slowly tracking down a few indies we know, but I think we’ve got a long way before we can say we caught em all!

Til next time!

.Z.

Qwak

Phil:

Hi Jamie, you’ve been in the games industry quite a while. I was wondering if you could give us some idea of your background, how you ended up becoming an indie etc?

Jamie:

Back in 1983-ish, I got my first computer, a BBC model B. I started teaching myself, learning what I could from books, and other friends with computers. I soon moved from BBC basic to (6502) assembler, and direct manipulation of screen buffer for software sprites etc. I actually developed a few games on the BBC, most of which weren’t published (only 3 published games, which were “Dead or Alive”, “Qwak”, and very recently “Zap”).

Even back then, making games was a fun creative thing to do; it was much more about engaging with the creative process; rather than a means to make money; and that’s something, an ideal I guess, that’s always stuck with me. After the BBC, I had an Atari 2600 VCS (so, not so much coding on that then!), then an Atari 800 XL, which I didn’t develop anything for that, the development environment wasn’t so good as it was on the BBC.

Next it was an Atari ST, which was great. Again I did quite a few unpublished games for the ST, mostly shoot-em-ups. I did some pretty nifty trickery on the ST to squeeze the best performance out of the limited ST hardware. It’s the kind of trickery that’s no so important these days, what with the speed of modern gaming hardware etc.

I then started developing some code that could take a source sprite and compute 32 degrees of rotation for that sprite (all stored in RAM). Coupled with some software scrolling this soon turned in to a vertical scrolling, top-down racer, which I took to Psygnosis, and it became Nitro.

I thought Psygnosis were a pile or crap, and I left (after Nitro) not wanting anything more to do with them. I got the impression they were more concerned with making a quick buck, rather than nurturing positive win-win relationships with talented developers. Okay, not good to dwell on the past but I do think a lot of people involved in games, are cock-suckers, and just in it for a quick buck, and have no soul or creative instinct what-so-ever.

Hmm, I also had a few months at Gremlin, in house in Sheffield. That was just before I developed Qwak on Amiga. After Nitro, I did a new version of Qwak for the Amiga, which I remember touting it to some publishers at ECTS. It wasn’t until the end of that day that I showed it to Martyn at the Team 17 stand. After so many rejections by other publishers I was quite surprised they actually liked it, and saw potential in the game.

In contrast to certain Liverpool based game developer-publishers, Team 17 were a great company to work with. Certainly in the early days, they were innovative and there was a good creative fresh buzz about the place. They had a genuine interest in Qwak, everyone in the office was enthusiastic about the game and while I was definitely holding the creative reins, other people did have suggestions and input. Yeah, was good back in those days and I have fond memories, but I guess the creative dynamic changed as they grew bigger and more successful (maybe it’s wood-rot, perhaps due to the worms infestation?! … only joking, Team 17 were good to me, and I wish them all the best).

In recent times, I’ve been focusing on PC and Mac, with new versions of Qwak (www.qwak.co.uk), I really shouldn’t do anything more with Qwak now. It kinda feels like I’m just repeating myself, creatively, and not risking doing anything new, which in some ways kinda sucks. Right now, today, this week; I’m working on a sprite based animation tool. I guess similar to flash animation. If you look at the animation on the zombies in PopCaps’ Plants vs Zombies, where each zombie is made from several component sprites. It’s that kind of thing, only the tool I’m making isn’t flash based.

Qwak amiga box

Phil:

I’ve noticed from your site that you’ve done a fair number of games for the DS. Are you still doing DS work or are you working on other platforms as well?<Editors note: It turns out I read that wrong, it was FOR DSi not ON DS! )>

Jamie:

Did I!? For the DS?! That’s news to me!! I did make a few GBA games though, I guess they’re compatible with DS, so, perhaps maybe I did. With the exception of Qwak, all the GBA games I did were commissioned, and took around 5 weeks each to develop (in most cases I did the art too). Was just a little something to do to bring in some cash. They’re certainly not works of art and there was little scope for creativity with those games. I did do some other, really clever tricky highly-optimized ARM assembler running in RAM funky trickery on the GBA. Again, this never saw the light of day, which to be honest kinda pissed me off. It’s like all that work and effort, and no reward (no recognition, no money, no people enjoying something I made etc). I can’t blame anyone but myself for this, or for anything else that happens in life. I make the decisions and I reap the consequences of those decisions. It’s just to me, publishers didn’t seem to want innovation and creativity anymore, they just wanted any old pap, so long as it’s got some Micky Mouse license attached to it. Which is like f**king over the end-user. Which is why people need to buy games from indies, because we’re not out to f**k you over, we’re out to make great games we love making and we love it when you love playing them (and paying for them of course).

Phil:

I get the impression that there is only you working on your products, is that right? How do you handle things like artwork?

Jamie:

Oh yeah, for a lot of games I’ve done my own art. I quite enjoy it in some ways, though it can detract me from coding, which I guess is my strength. So in that way, in a pragmatic sense, it’s not such a good idea. I’m sure a dedicated artist would make a much better job off producing quality art than I would. So I’m being a bit dysfunctional by spending time making my own art (rather than focusing on coding, or design etc). I tend to approach the business of making art in a technical way. I’ll develop my own processes and ways of doing stuff, that will usually be a bit technical or have some mathematical basis (which I think lends a consistency to any art you make). For example, a lot of the stuff in (PC and Mac) Qwak I drew (pixeled) over-sized, and used image majick to reduce the size. Going from 8-bit to 32-bit in the process, creating smooth anti-aliasing to edges etc. Once you’ve set up a process through which you can pump all your art creation, it seems to go pretty well.

Phil:

How do you view your work as an indie? Are you aiming to create a specific style of game? Or do you have a market in mind?

Jamie:

I view it as a fun thing that I love to do. The way I see it, I’ve got a limited number of years of life on this planet and before I check out I want to spend as much time doing something I love. There’s also an inherent joy in doing something well, to the best of your ability. It’s not like a showing off thing, give me a medal, or anything like that. It’s an inner satisfaction you get from knowing you’ve followed your heart and you’ve done something as best you can. As far as markets go, well, I’m feeling more and more inclined to trust my own inner instinct, and not be so ‘in my head’ (i.e. calculating) about the whole thing. I think when you do that there’s a real danger of diminishing your heart-felt creativity.

I kinda have in my mind and heart, ideas of things I want to do and so that’s what I’ll do. As for specific style of games? Well, fun games, that people love to play. Maybe that’s too generic? I do have a specific game idea in mind though, which I think would be absolutely awesome and fun. I’m wondering if it would be too much though, I mean, for me personally to develop it all. I should be thinking more in terms of building up a team, at least get together with one or more artists.

Qwak screenshot 2

Phil:

Have you found that it can be hard to get recognition for your games? Do you have a marketing plan in place before you start development? How much marketing do you do for your games?

Jamie:

I suck at marketing!!! I know it’s a very very important thing, it’s something I need to get handled and I will do that. I really like what the wolfire guys do with their indie marketing. I think I’ll just copy those guys, or cliffski (i’ll be bringing my notebook and pen to this indie meet-up we’re having!). No, seriously; I want to make games, and I want to make the games that I want to make and to do that it’s important to get the market sorted. Another thing that occurs to me is making your games accessible. You have to make a game such that someone can pick it up and “get it” within like 5 minutes or preferably 30 seconds. I think with a lot of my games, you don’t really get to the juicy stuff until you’ve been playing for hours. I think that’s something I need to address too.

Phil:

How is the business side of things? It seems to me like you have the experience for development but often that doesn’t make for the best business person.

Jamie:

I’m way more inclined to do the creative stuff, to just make games. That’s what juices me up. I think you’re absolutely right though, in that having or developing a talent for something is not an automatic recipe for success. You need to think wider-scope and consider your business development strategy. That’s something I’ve often neglected to do. But I am learning more and more each day and just like any skill, if you apply yourself, you can learn new stuff and you can do it.

ATR Racing screenshot

Phil:

Do you get any support for your business from the government in any way? Have you been in touch with GameRepublic for instance? Did anything come out of that?

Jamie:

Yeah, they’re not throwing wads of money at me or anything. I feel the main focus is bigger indies and companies who are already established. I wish they’d do more to help the little floundering fish. Not just myself, but smaller indies everywhere. We need some more love! (and help from regional development agencies and the government in general).

Phil:

So what are you plans for moving forward? Are you looking at the casual space, the hardcore gamer, or something else?

Jamie:

I want to finish this animation tool (which makes use of Sprite Grabber, check that out here: Sprite Grabber). After that, I may either do a quick port of Qwak to iPhone (though I’m not so convinced as to the touch screen controls, maybe PSP-go would be a better fit?). Or, I want to do a scrolling adventure-platformer (nothing to do with Qwak) featuring dungeon exploration. I’m not that inclined towards casual games, they seem kinda watered down and a bit boring to me. That said, there are some genes in the casual game space that I’d be happy to have a go at. I like the little people games, where you get a tribe of little people and you have to look after them and save them from natural disaster etc.

Phil:

Finally, is there anything you’d like to say to other British indie developers?

Jamie:

I’d like to wish every one of them the very best of luck. Always keep in mind where you want to go and what you want to achieve. Apply yourself and focus more and more on what you want to make happen. Also, if I rant on too much about following your creative impulse and I do consider that to be important, but it’s also important to get the business stuff right too. Also, go and buy Qwak (www.qwak.co.uk).

Thanks again to Jamie for agreeing to this interview!

Phil.

NOT the real Alice Taylor

Phil:

I recently heard, I think it was in develop magazine, that you had earmarked a significant amount of money from C4’s budget for indie developed games. Can I ask how this came about and why you specifically chose indie developers?

Alice:

Yep, it was probably Develop magazine. I’m one of the two Commissioning Editors for Education at Channel 4, and it’s Education’s budget that I’m talking about specifically: currently a total of £4.5m per year to spend on internet-native projects aimed at teenagers aged 14-19. Which is to say, not *all* on games – but a hefty chunk of it is, and will be, spent on games!

Why we chose indies: Channel 4 actually has a remit to encourage and support UK independent production companies, although historically they were mostly television ones. Now they’re television, digital and games ones. Tomorrow, they might be television, audio, digital, games, mobile and locative ones. Not in that particular order, either! So we evolve.

Luckily for me, the UK indie games scene is awesome. Always has been, and hopefully always will be…

Phil:

How did you find those indie developers to work with? Also, how did you find working with those indie developers?

Alice:

Sought them out, mostly, through checking out their work. I play a lot of games, always have done, and it helps that I’m often a judge for indie games things (2 years on the Independent Games Festival at GDC, this year Indiecade, etc). I blog about games, too – bit busy these days, but I’m always noodling about looking for new interesting things. Lastly, we keep Margaret Robertson on a retainer: ex-editor of Edge magazine, she’s now a roving games consultant, and is nothing short of amazing in her absolutely encyclopedic knowledge of games and the UK games industry.

I’ll tell you in more detail now about what actually happened in The Finding of the Indies…

Firstly, by the way, I’m going to use a broader definition of “indie” than some might: as far as I’m concerned, if you make games and are independently owned by individuals, you’re a games indie of some description. We could spin off here for hours about what makes an indie an indie, and whether it’s aesthetic or income or output, but it’s a pretty simple business definition for the purposes of fulfilling our remit of supporting UK independents. All indies are independents, but not all independents are “indie”, if you see what I mean – but as I’m not in the business of only identifying the artistic, starving-in-a-garret type, that’s okay

So, I’ll list ‘em.

We started with Littleloud: they make games, stuff in Home, gamelike experiences, and some websites. Oh, and lots of animation. I saw a game they’d made on the BBC website years ago, thought it was pretty sweet, and that we’d start with them. They produced Bow Street Runner for us, which hit the ball out of the park on so many levels. (Google Bow Street Runner or… sorry, long URL…

http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/C/city-of-vice/game/bow-street-runner/game.html)

Secondly was Oil Productions, a new ARG outfit, who outsourced some minigame-making to Player Three, a very well established UK indie flash game producer. Routes did spectacularly well for us in terms of reaching teens with science material, and the minigames have had 19 million or so plays – and counting. Big numbers for a science project! (http://www.routesgame.com)

Thirdly, Preloaded. A classical digital indie with a strong, strong reputation in web based games. They made 1066 for us: it’s the top result in Google for that date, above Wikipedia fer cryin’, and with nearly 7 million plays so far it’s really grabbing people’s attention. (http://www.1066thegame.com)

Fourthly, Six To Start. ARG/nu-story tellers. The Hon Bros. created Perplex City, and we went to them with a request for a game tackling privacy, security and online behaviour, which resulted in Smokescreen (http://www.smokescreengame.com) – just gone live.

Then the stuff still in development. This is probably where it gets more interesting for classical indie fans:

1. Privates. From Zombie Cow Studios. I contacted them directly after playing Ben There Dan That! which I loved. Cor it was brilliant. I just love their humour and style. Privates will be a PC download (free).

2. Cover Girl. From Tuna Technologies. They got in touch with me originally via Wonderland, and with a proposal for a game I loved the sound of. We met up, they seemed like top chaps, we signed a contract. Flash, maybe a PC version.

3. Ada (working title!), from Beatnik Games. I actually met Alex (now left) from Beatnik at the Three Rings party in San Fran during GDC; he emailed me periodically with “here’re cool things” stuff, and then with a “here’s our game” stuff, which is Beatnik’s up and coming (out ANY MINUTE NOW, right chaps?) Plain Sight. Terrorist robots with swords and antigrav, kinda: it’s special! PC/Mac.

4. The Curfew. The second game from Littleloud, with Kieron Gillen penning and Simon Parkin leading! Flash.

5. 2 x unnamed Big Flash games – think BSR – with Fish in a Bottle, and Preloaded again.

Phil:

Other indies who are interested in working with you would want to know how best to approach you and the kind of games you are interested in seeing from them. For instance I know one female developer who has a game that encourages girls to get involved in science, is that the kind of game you are interested in?

Alice:

Definitely. There’s a crisis in science in the UK, and not nearly enough kids and teens choosing it as a career path. We’d love to help change that. I love it too when indies have an insight into this sort of issue or problem.

14-19 UK teens are what we go for, as I mentioned, and soft learning, soft skills, so not typical curriculum stuff. Definitely not basic maths or spelling games, although if you have mathematical puzzles inside your bigger-picture game, that’s fine with me. The way we approach it is:

- Make a fun, amazing game, full stop.

- Make it free (in the UK, at least).

- Make it factually or educationally accurate and useful.

You can’t start with the latter, because if you lose the fun, you lose everything, right? But then again, pure fun without useful content, well there’s more than enough of that on the internet already. What’s the point.

But in sum: teens perennially need the same sort of “soft” education: sex, drugs, alcohol, relationships, health, careers, money. Then there are themes, zeitgeisty ones, currently “happiness” and “territories”, where we issue open briefs (www.4producers.co.uk tells you everything here). Then we look for interesting approaches and new talent. Our stable of games so far have a wild spectrum of content, ranging from privacy to civil liberties to sex to scientists to the origins of the police… I love that.

Want to pitch? Email me with an idea. That’s how it starts. If you have stats to back up your idea, and a novel approach, that’s always better!

This is the real Alice Taylor

Phil:

There is some talk of tax credits for games going around still and part of that is to encourage “British” games. I think that’s the same for C4’s remit? I’ve tried hard personally to define to myself what I feel a British game actually is, because I’m a bit old and have been around since gaming began in Britain. Do you feel that culturally there is such a thing as British games? If so, what do you think they have that makes them unique?

Alice:

Yeah I do, actually. Humour is one: Zombie Cow’s games are very British. But I think this “Britishness” is probably more about this situation where culturally-American games – Grand Theft Auto being the poster boy here, but APB too, and so many more – are being made in the UK. Kids and teens play these games, a lot, and so are growing up on a diet rich in American culture (despite many games’ British origins) and I suspect government are a bit worried that we’re all going to turn into the 51st state. If we haven’t already, that is.

There’s also this issue of talent leaving Britain for better prospects in the usual places: the USA, Canada, sometimes Japan, Germany, Scandinavia… If the UK games industry isn’t bolstered and promoted like the UK TV and Film industries, then it is indeed in danger of being exported.

My personal bugbear is that games are still reviewed in magazines, newspapers and websites under the banner of “Technology” (see the BBC as a primo example) rather than “Culture”: games should be reviewed and talked about in the same spaces as television, cinema, theatre, books and music. As an industry, it dwarfs the last four, and yet…

Phil:

While I do my own thing as an indie, I’m also an academic in the area of games. One of the most frustrating things about being a games academic, is the ignorance of management and their failure to understand how important games have become and will continue to grow as demographics change. Of course a large part of this is the age gap between “senior management” and the typical gamer age demographic (where I’m probably at the upper end). This is bloody frustrating because we could do so much more for games. I get the feeling that media companies like C4 have that same kind of internal struggle. Although I get the feeling that C4 has a better grasp of games compared to say the BBC. Do you ever get that frustrated about your bosses simply not “getting it” when it comes to the potential of games? Do you think the mainstream media understands the potential for interactive entertainment?

Alice:

Heh, all the time: I’m regularly called upon to explain this new games lark to someone. New! Imagine. It’s why we need a constant churn of data pointing out that games are like, really big. And important. I used to be employed by the BBC, and did a national study of gamers for this very reason: google BBC games research, and you’ll find it. It was powerful, that stuff, but still change takes time.

Phil:

To kind of press the point a bit, one of the things that irks me about external media when they approach games and gamers, is the notion that games are “for kids”. This essentially restricts games to the ghetto of hardcore fans and doesn’t really promote development in new directions. Of course developers and gamers themselves are also responsible for this. For instance, you are responsible for educational content is that correct? With a relatively young target audience? Why can’t C4 actually approach games and gamers from a more mature angle. There are plenty of very interesting, unusual and deeply considered games, especially in the indie space. Why do we see no coverage of the creative side of game development for instance?

Alice:

Pretty sure I know what you mean. Sometimes we use the term “playful experience” (cf Routes), sometimes too “interactive story” (cf Smokescreen) for both the purists who want to argue the finer points of what defines a game, but mainly to break away from the tyranny of the tiny word “game” that has to cover such an enormous category of products, ranging from Snake to World of Warcraft. It’s vast. And reducing it all to the word “game” is like squeezing a universe or two into a black hole. *blip!*

Not sure what you mean by approaching games and gamers from a mature angle. My target audience is teenagers, but everyone plays, including oldies .

Phil:

With audience figures dropping off and advertising revenue spreading out in other areas, I can see that media companies are going to have to consider methods of differentiating themselves. I can see that interactive TV and “online” content is a potential growth area as it tends to lock in customers in a more direct way (which I assume is easier to sell to advertisers). Do you think that in the future we will see more direct tie-ins between broadcast content and interactive online content?

Alice:

Dude, that’s a whole essay right there. But time’s a-pressing. IP that can cross borders and platforms is a good thing, but usually also a big thing. Imagine if you could play WoW on your android phone, I’ve always wanted that. Why can’t I grind while on the tube? Or on that 4 hour train journey where the trains going too fast for the broadband dongle to cope (Vodafone I’m looking at you). But if you’re a smaller project, being multi-platform is expensive. So you pick your winners, invest big … and hope they hit.

Phil:

Traditionally broadcast media’s approach to games has been to treat it almost as a curiosity and yet there clearly is a “gamer” culture, both amongst players and amongst creatives and developers. Do you ever think we will see a day when games are given the same respect and analysis as other creative art forms?

Alice:

See previous comment about games being classified as Technology. Not until that changes, no.

Phil:

Can I ask, what you personally find interesting about games? I know you have a great interest in them from your blog http://www.wonderlandblog.com (which is ace by the way), but what really excites you and interests you about them?

Alice:

Aim accuracy, of course!

Okay, seriously, I love playing with real life friends. Co-op L4D, 5-man partying in WoW, that’s my thing. Quake III Arena CTF. Team play, with everyone with A Job To Do. I adore that. Single player games .. euh, I only ever finish Zelda ones or horror ones, or Advance Wars when on an airplane. Games are what we do to socialise and learn, naturally – just look at kids – so playing a lot of sociable games is probably inevitably happy-making. I think people who haven’t yet discovered this are seriously missing out. One by one, they come over…

Phil:

Is there anything else you’d like to say to British indie developers?

Alice:

Keep being superb. What a history the UK has in games development. David Braben was an indie (heck, still is). Peter Molyneux was an indie. The Darling Bros. The Jagex Duo. Sir Clive Sinclair! My old office, I used to be able to see into his apartment. I could tell you some stories. But these guys, and so many many more, they grew from humble beginnings. We need more – and we need more women, too. The Sims is the biggest selling game ever, ever (and, by the way, 35% of Sims players are MALE, that’s a LOT of men) and the Sims team is over 50% female. Diversity is a winning formula, so get out there and mingle.

Phil:

Thanks a lot for this Alice. I’m sure it will be really interesting for British devs to hear your thoughts.

Alice:

You’re very welcome, zoombapup

Phil:

Can you give us a little bit more background about the company? How many people there are, past games, that kind of thing?

Ella:

Remode was formed in August 2007 by Martin Darby and Andy Russell when they graduated from uni. They started off by doing web development work, just to bring cash into the business whilst they explored how to start developing games. At the time I was in my final year at uni (on the same course) but I was working with them and Andy was teaching me DirectX and C++. When I finished uni in May 2008 I joined the company and we decided it was time to focus completely on games, so we started pitching for investment.

In terms of past games, we developed game prototypes in uni, but none of us had worked in the games industry before. Our degree was in digital art and technology rather than games, which meant that we had a wide variety of skills and we all had experience in industry.

In the team at the moment we have a full-time artist and a placement student who is training as a programmer, and we have several contractors that we use on our projects including a lead programmer, two audio guys and an artist. Mole Control has had 9 people working on it in total.

As well as game development, we also do simulation development which is generally work for hire. Currently we are developing simulation for airfields as well as our game Mole Control. Both projects use the engine we have developed, so the synergies between the different sides to the business allow us to diversify risk and generally take a broader view of things a software company.

Remove studios Mole Control Logo

Phil:

You mentioned that you spent a year finding funding and ended up with a business angel and funding body supporting you. Thats a pretty big achievement straight out of University and something that many indies would dream of. Can you give us some more information on how you went about this and how the deal ended up?

Ella:

To be honest, it was really hard and you have to be very patient. The first challenge was to find people who wanted to give us money… We looked around a lot and looked at the angel investor networks, but eventually the science park where we are based put us in touch with an investor who was looking for new investments, and also a funding body. It was really daunting going through the process with them. We had to put together a business plan and financial projections, and when you have just graduated from a technology degree it’s not something you have a clue about! It was the biggest learning curve we had ever been through.

The first thing we had to do was structure the company properly, which may seem weird with only 3 of us, but if you want to get investment you really have to demonstrate that you are prepared for growth. We realised that one member of the team has to be outward looking, and not really be involved in day-to-day development (although in a small company there is always a small amount of cross over at points). The way it was explained to us was that the MD should have three concerns – vision, culture and money. It we hadn’t followed this, we would never have been taken seriously by investors. Which actually leads me to another point – when you are starting up take as much advice and help as you can get, from as many people as possible.

The other key factor was that we were already a registered company, we were making money through web development, and by the time we actually got the commitment from the investors we had proved that we could run a company for a year – if we had tried to get investment as three graduates wanting to set up I don’t think we would have even got through the door.

With writing the business plan and projections, we really had to concentrate on the business rather than the products – investors don’t care about the products, they care about how what you are doing fits into the bigger picture. If you just care about products then that’s great, but you need to realize that you are more of a lifestyle business and probably aren’t suitable for investment. I would say that deciding whether you are a growth business or a lifestyle business is the single biggest question you need to answer if you are thinking of starting a business (and all directors need to agree) as your approach to the business will be fundamentally different.

In the end we actually had investment offers from two business angels (one of which we accepted), plus an offer from the funding body. What we noticed was that once we had one investor interested, we could leverage interest from other people.

Mole Control title screen

Phil:

Your first game, Mole Control <link> has a nice casual feel to it, but it is unusual in that it is 3D, what made you go with the 3D engine route in comparison to say the majority of casual games that tend to be more 2D?

Martin:

There are really several factors that affected our decision take the 3D route. First and foremost we felt that 3D would offer a more immersive experience for the player, but crucially the production skills we had in house lent themselves more towards 3D (modeling, texturing, programming etc). The lead programmer on the project is very experienced (former Lucasarts senior) and after a discussion with him we felt it would be just as easy to do full 3D as it would isometric. We also felt that some robust in-house 3D tech would serve us better in the future. After looking at the minimum hardware specs for Steam users, a look at the way integrated graphics chips are going, and glancing at the fact that even browser based 3D seems to be more of an emerging standard now, it just felt right. Obviously tech should never be put in front of gameplay (a 3D match-3 could be weird…) but in this case we didn’t feel like it compromised the casual nature of the game, we felt like it enhanced it.

Phil:

From watching the video, it seems like the game draws a lot of its core mechanic from games like minesweeper where you have a numeric value showing potential threats for any given cel? How did you come up with this new take on that kind of mechanic?

Martin:

The origin point for the project was looking over old games. We knew we only had about five months (no time for brand new game mechanics) and that we wanted to make a small puzzle game while we were between contracts for simulation work. It seemed there were a lot of ‘match-3’s’ about, each building on the basic puzzle mechanic in a different way. Andy and Ella were big minesweeper fans and found the basic mechanic addictive but the game itself very 80’s and stale. Some initial research also suggested that a surprising amount of people don’t actually know how to play it. After some brainstorming on a whiteboard we realized the mechanic could be modded to be played with a character and Ella subsequently knocked up a flash prototype in a couple days to test this. Ella then passed the brief to me (designer) and Matt (artist). Matt gave it an initial conceptual treatment, coming up with the notion of ‘exploding moles’ and digging, I then worked through this from a functional angle, deciding what each powerup should do, untrodden/trodden grass, where you could dig, lives, game modes, how story was unlocked etc. We have also incorporated a tutorial that teaches the player to think about how the puzzle works. All these features were essentially born out of what we felt was wrong with wrong with minesweeper: you can die straight away, people don’t get it, there are no real graphics etc. Hopefully this should make the game more appealing to non-gamers and casual players.

Mole Control screenshot 1

Phil:

So you are about to release your first game. How do you plan on actually selling the game, via portals? Your own website? Did you consider the marketing plan when you started to create the game or have you concentrated on the development so far?

Ella:

We are going to sell it via our own website and also via other digital distribution channels. We are currently talking to several different channels and building our own site at the moment.

I think we did underestimate the marketing side of things when we started this project. The whole process of developing our first game has been a real challenge, and whilst we are really pleased with how it is going so far we didn’t predict the process perfectly! However, because I’m not involved in a lot of the development I have recently diverted my attention to marketing and distribution. Actually referring back to your earlier question about 3D graphics, this seems to be helping our marketing/press attention. So far Mole Control has been featured on Eurogamer TV and the front page of IGN and we are looking for further press once we get a release date scheduled.

Phil:

I guess one issue with having investors funding your developments, is that at some point they expect a return on their investment. How do you see yourselves achieving that goal?

Ella:

Game developers really need a string of hit games or a novel business proposition in order to grow. An advantage of a young and small company is that you can adapt easily according to the fast changing industry and the success of your products.

Three of the key areas that we focused on in our business plan, which demonstrated to investors the potential for good returns were:

1. Risk diversification – by developing both games and simulations. The simulation work is generally work for hire and therefore less risk, less return, and the games are self-funded and so are higher risk and (hopefully!) higher return.

2. Building value within the business – by building up our own technology and IP as we develop our products.

3. Strong management team – have a clear objective of how the company is run and where we want it to go and be focused on both the business and the products.

Mole Control screenshot 2

Phil:

How do you find life as an indie in Britain? Do you think there are any particular advantages to being an indie in this country?

Ella:

I think that there is opportunity in the UK to develop games that are perhaps a bit more unique, or a bit quirky maybe. A lot of mainstream gaming seems to be more outwardly American or Japanese, and I think this gives us in the UK, and Europe, a chance to make games that are a bit different.

I think from our point of view being in the UK and specifically the South West has been an advantage. There aren’t many other companies like us down here (as far as we know, we are the only games studio in the South West), and the area is really focused on economic growth so we had a lot of support including the links to funding opportunities and free rent for a year!

Phil:

What are your plans for future projects? Do you plan on targeting the more casual market? Do you consider other platforms like iPhone or PSP as a target?

Ella:

Our overall plans are to continue with developing games and simulations and build up the two sides to the business. With regards to games, we have a lot of ideas but I really want to see what people do and don’t like about Mole Control first. I would say though that we are interested largely in self-publishing, although we may look at DS and PSP in the future. With our background in web we are keeping an eye on the online space and we are interested in new business models like micro-transactions. We aren’t considering iPhone though as we don’t think that the business model is one we could justify to investors.

Phil:

Finally, do you have any words for other British indie developers reading this?

Ella:

I guess that my main advice would be to have a clear vision for your company, and to play to the advantages of your team – make sure that everything you do supports your long-term goals as well as your short ones and makes the most of your resources. You also need to immerse yourself in the industry as much as possible, go to events, do your research, find out what other people are doing and how they see things and then draw your own conclusions – for me that’s what makes being an indie interesting.

Martin:

Spaceships, zombies, violence, spacemarines and war CAN be cool if done well, but as far as the ‘conceptual layer’ on top of a basic game mechanic goes, surely there are different ways to stand out and still create appeal?

You can check out Remode studios work at Remode studios website and we look forward to reviewing their first release!

Easter Bonus

Phil:

I remember your “bonus” series of games which you pitched at the specific holiday periods. How do you think that specific targetting fared in terms of generating more sales? Do you think that kind of approach could work well for other types of targetted game creation?

Jake:

Most games have a spike of sales when launched and then sales tail off pretty rapidly unless they are pretty special, but my Bonus titles spike every year when the relevant season approaches (and with a little help from portal marketing). In fact my Holiday Bonus game sold the most copies ever during Christmas 2008 even though it was launched in December 2006. This may be due to the growing size of the casual market, or just the fact that Big Fish Games has been growing a lot (my game was on there as well as other portals). Anyway, I’m certainly keen to see how well Holiday Bonus does this year!

Clearly sales for seasonal games do plummet when the season is not correct, but amusingly they do still sell all year round – I still sell about 50 copies of Holiday Bonus in months like June. However, sales are about 40x higher in December.

Some portals will not take seasonal games, reasoning that they want all year-round sellers. Thus some portals refused Holiday Bonus when it came out, such as Real Arcade. Unfortunately, as well as being their loss, it was mine too.

However, having seen how well some of my non-seasonal match-3s sell compared to the seasonal ones, I would have to conclude that making specifically targeted games it NOT worth it *unless* you can really crank it out quickly – perhaps by re-skinning an existing title in a shameless cash-in manner. So anyway, I can’t particularly recommend it and I’m not sure what other types of targetted game creation could do well. If you have an idea, please share!

Phil:

If I recall correctly, you were doing casual games pretty early on in the casual game boom. How have things changed in the casual space since those early days? Do you think that the casual marketplace is as good for indies to work in when compared to a few years ago?

Jake:

Great two-part question. It’s changed a lot over the last 5 years. Mainly the bar has been raised hugely for casual games in terms of graphics, sound and general production values (the games have got noticeably lots better). My first match-3 game had a budget of $220 (not including my time) and most of that was spent on the compiler. My fourth match-3 had a budget of $2300 (again, not including my time), but I needed to spend that money to have any chance of competing with other match-3s at the time. It has actually made me $23,000 in sales, and only took me 5 weeks, so I’m pleased with the result. My sixth game had a *much* bigger budget, and my current game’s budget is the biggest yet (can’t say how much because they are owned by BFG). The best casual games have budgets well over $100,000 but they make that back easily if they are good. Also team sizes have changed from a team of one to teams of three or four, or even more in some cases.

What does this mean for the average Indie? It means that you can’t make a casual game on your own any more with “programmer graphics” and hope for any decent sales. You’ll either have to team up with some brilliant people who will work for profit share (hard to find) or get investment (also hard). It probably makes more sense to make a low-budget iPhone game to get started these days (maybe), or specialist Indie titles.

Another point worth mentioning is the “great price drop” of February 2008 when Amazon started selling Reflexive’s titles at $9.95 and $6.95 instead of $19.95. This means that you have to sell more units to make the same money as before. Of course the theory is that more people buy at the cheaper price point and you ultimately make more profit, but not everyone has found this to be the case. I make hardly any sales from my own site, but I don’t really promote it. 99% of my sales come from portals who have really cornered the market now. So selling casual games on your own site at $19.95 is no longer viable, although it is of course viable for Indies who make non-casual games for a specialist audience because their games aren’t on the portals.

Xmas Bonus screenshot

Phil:

You recently made what is a fairly unusual move and went from being indie to actually being employed by a large casual developer/portal. What prompted that move and if you hadn’t made that change, what would you be doing now?

Jake:

I ask myself the second part of your question all the time To answer the first part: in June 2008 when I received an offer of employment at Big Fish Games’ new Vancouver studio I had already been making games for them for about 18 months at my home in England but not as an employee. So I knew them well and had enjoyed working with them. I had already discussed moving abroad with my partner Helen just to experience a different lifestyle, so we weren’t too shocked at the idea of moving to Vancouver with our two boys and cat. I also knew that I would be able to learn from some of the best casual designers in the industry and do tons of networking. So for a learning experience it seemed like an excellent idea to move. I did have a great life in a lovely place in England (Bridport, Dorset). I was free to do what I wanted, when I wanted, and I was doing well financially. However, we did decide to move to Vancouver and give up certain freedoms (i.e. become an employee) just for the experience and it’s turned out great. It’s all part of a master plan anyway

So, as to what I’d be doing if I hadn’t made that change; well, after making Holiday Bonus I really wanted to start working on multiple games at once. I wanted to work with several teams of programmers and artists and direct them to make the games that I designed. But then I started making games for Big Fish Games at home and that took up all of my time, so I put the idea of making multiple games simultaneously on the back burner. If I didn’t take the Vacnouver job offer I would probably still be making games for Big Fish Games in England but I like to think that I would also have other projects on the go – in fact I had already initiated some other projects before I moved to Vancouver. Now that I’m here, I’m still working on one game but I do get to give feedback to the other designers and programmers in the studio about their games, which I love doing. Plus if I do a good job on my current game I’ll most likely be overseeing multiple games at once next, which should be fun and challenging. Wish me luck!

Oz screenshot 1

Phil:

You also moved to canada to take up the job. How are you finding life abroad? Does it feel strange to be working for someone else so far away from the UK? What do you think would be different if you were actually doing the indie thing in canada instead of the UK?

Jake:

Canada has been great. The language is the same but the culture is different, plus Vancouver is very multi-cultural anyway. It’s a really beautiful city with mountains, sea, beaches, woods etc. People are friendly and there’s plenty of things to do in the city. Also we had an awesome hot sunny Summer but I gather it was unusually good this year (global warming anyone?) We went back to the UK for three weeks in the summer, and it was nice, but it felt good to get back “home” to Vancouver – I guess you get used to change pretty quickly. Our kids love it here and they like going to school, which is a big plus for us as parents.

It certainly felt very odd working for someone else at first, it took me months to get used to it and a little part of me still isn’t used to it. Luckily I’ve still retained my company Grey Alien Games, so I feel partially Indie

If I was an Indie in Vancouver, it would probably be awesome because there’s a really good talent pool here as well as close by in Seattle, and also tons of industry events to go to (I just went to PAX last weekend to speak on a panel). I know that you can work with people in a distributed team (having done if for several years) but it’s much easier and faster to work with people in the same office, believe me. Let’s say, hypothetically I lost my job, I would prefer to stay here and start up an Indie company with some of the people I’ve got to know than to move back to England and to be Indie whilst living isolated in the countryside.

Phil:

Another thing that strikes me about your games, is that they are written in Blitz. I’ve never used it myself, but I assume there are some benefits to using it to produce casual games specifically?

Jake:

Yes, there are benefits to using BlitzMax for sure. Having programmed in BASIC, Assembly, C, C++, Delphi etc. I find BlitzMax to be very easy and fast to make stuff happen in. For example it has an auto-garbage collector, which is very useful. Also it handles all the DirectX/OpenGL stuff and cross-platform compiling for me. The language itself is a (modifiable) Object Orient BASIC language that relies on underlying C++ modules. Also it has a great forum with very knowledegable and helpful members. All of these things mean that I can focus on making great games instead of fiddling around with technical crap. Although, I must admit that when I first got BlitzMax and began writing a framework for casual games I spotted lots of problems with the languages. But, to the authors’ credit, they fixed the the issues when I pointed them out, which was great. The default IDE is also very limited, but there are some great third party IDEs and tons of third party modules including 3D ones. Several years on the language is very stable, advanced and has a good user base – I highly recommend it. I’ve used it for four games and I’m on the fith one now. Three of those games got in the BFG top 10, so I know that the tech is viable because it’s been tested on a large audience of millions.

Oz screenshot 2

Phil:

Working for a large casual portal, you must be aware of some of the trends happening in the casual space. Are there any you think are particularly interesting for indies?

Jake:

The resurgence of adventure games is neat because we all love those old Lucasarts titles right? This means that Indies could make some really cool adventures that sell brilliantly and not feel that they are “selling out” by making some kind of fluffy time management game, or God forbid, a match-3 game

Also social gaming is getting very big now. In 2007 and early 2008, everyone asked “How will Facebook games really make any money?”, and some people said via advertising. Well then the global recession hit and advertisers are not spending as much as they used to. But from that fire emerged the phoenix of micro-transaction-based (can I have that many hyphens?) social games. Micro-transactions were already big in East Asian MMOs but now some games on Facebook are making a killing with them. Assuming you can program in Flash and have knowledge of a decent way to manage the transactions, this could well be an arena worth getting into.

Alternatively there’s always the iphone. Cheap to get started, many casual games doing well on it, but also tons of competition. We should also keep an eye on Google Android to see what happens.

Another interesting trend is casual games by PopCap and IWin appearing on Steam. I’ve yet to see any sales figures published, so I don’t know how well the games are doing, but I’d imagine it must be pretty good for the best sellers.

Also Casual games are making it onto consoles via XLBA, WiiWare and PSN, and onto DS of course. Big Fish Games’ Millionheir title reached #1 in the UK DS charts for example.

Phil:

Do you have any advice for indies starting out in the UK?

Jake:

Move to Vancouver or Seattle.  That is serious advice.  Anyway, wherever you start, the rest of the advice is still the same: Save up some emergency money so you can live off it for 6-12 months whilst you make your first game or two.  Don’t plan everything to the last detail, try out the Ready Fire Aim approach.  Keep it simple – no MMO as your first game, start small and build up with each game you release.  Speculate to Accumulate (I’ve already explained that one above with regards to spending more on making your game), but don’t spend tons on your first game, learn the ropes first.  Learn from Experts – go on forums, read relevant material (like my blog: http://greyaliengames.com/blog ), ask questions, hook up with other Indies to ask their advice about what went right and wrong.  Stay abreast of the industry but don’t read so many forums, blogs, books that you never get started making your game!  Network, because it creates opportunities.  Be open to change and roll with the punches.  Keep yourself healthy!  Live, breathe and eat games.  That’s probably about it.  I was able to rattle these off because I just did a talk last night to a bunch of budding Game Designers at the Vancvouver Film School – that’s the kind of opportunity I get over here.  Oh one more thing – get stuff done, stop procrastinating, and finish something (the holy grail!)

Phil:

Finally, is there anything you want to say to other indies?

Jake:

Good luck! It ain’t easy but it is rewarding when you finally succeed. Believe in yourself, want it enough and go for it!

You can find Jake’s games over at his company website http://greyaliengames.com

Phil:

The first thing that strikes me about your games, are the really great titles. I particularly like war twat as a title, because it really sums up the nature and futility of war. War.. is a twat. Its so deep and profound. Even Squid Yes, Not So Octopos and its sequel have a rather similar depth to them, even if they are perhaps a little more picasso-esque in their denial of interpretation. How do you come up with such great names for your games!

Rob:

I do what any creatively bereft indie artist does. I steal them. Well, sorta. Squid Yes, Not So Octopus is a throwaway line from a Half Man, Half Biscuit song, I figured “hey, I wonder if they’d mind if I nicked it and made a game from it?” so mailed Geoff at Probe Plus who asked Nigel of HMHB and they said fine, go for your life. So I did. And the lives of any passers by too. I was going to call the follow up Binman, Thinman, Lexicographer but I couldn’t work out how to draw a lexicographer in 60×60.

As for War Twat, there’s not enough games with swearing in their titles. There’s Fuck Space and Space Fuck by Cactus and well, that’s about it isn’t it? We’ve got a glorious bunch of swears in the English language so why not use them? I think I’m just ahead of the curve here, in ten years we’ll be playing Microsoft Cocksticks and EA Fuckknuckle and not blinking an eye. It’ll happen, I tells thee and when it does, people can turn and say “that Rob, he started it, he’s a genius”.

Squid yes, not so octopus 2

Phil:

I really do get the feeling that you put a bunch of yourself into your games. Hopefully not physically, but spiritually. How do you go about the process of development in terms of ideas and inspiration?

Rob:

I do what any creatively bereft artist does… no wait, I’ve done that answer haven’t I? I dunno, I tend to go into a trance for a few weeks and stuff just plops out of my brainbonce.

War Twat was born of frustration – I’d spent a week growing to hate Everyday Shooter and driving myself increasingly spare with the grind, the noise of the guitar making my brain bleed the more I played and crying myself to sleep each night over the tag line “What if god made you a little dot”. What on Earth does that even mean? If god made me a little dot would I spend my time shooting robots or would I probably get trodden on by a cat or something? I don’t know, but I didn’t like it anyway. So, I kicked back at it and made a game so stupidly hard, no high concept rubbish masking an iteration of Robotron and no arty angle to speak of – just straight to the silly bit. Yeah, that’ll show that Jon Mak I thought. And it did, I mean where is he now? Shhhh at the back.

The graphics were designed by my then 4 year old (Erm, that sounds bad doesn’t it? He’s still mine, just not 4 anymore – I don’t collect them then give them away or anything). I sat there and asked him what he wanted in the game, he said “a truck, a handbag and an alien” so that’s what he got. Sod crunch and gold farms, child labour is the future of the industry. Harness the imagination of a child and riches will come to you.

SYNSO, on the other hand, came out of awesome web magazine now blogthing Way Of The Rodent. I can’t remember the precise details of how it came about but a chap on there said he wanted a game where the maximum score was 9. “I can do that”, thought I and did so. The sequel came about because I hated so much of what I put into the first and wanted to make things right again in the world. Plus working to the deadline for entering Indiecade… which I naturally enough didn’t make. I think posting a foaming rant instead of an artistic statement probably put the kibosh on that one. Oh, and that it’s not a beard strokingly worthy game.
So yeah, my inspiration comes from all over the shop. A lot of music I listen to, a random album sleeve, a passing comment in a forum thread and other games I’ve played (mainly Minter’s with a side order of Eugene Jarvis lovesnuggles). I’ll start off with a random cluster of disparate ideas and hack away for a few weeks to see what gives from it. After that, it’s iterate and annihilate all the way – I learnt the hard way of what happens when you get afraid to drop a shit idea so I tend to be brutal in that regard. If it doesn’t fit even slightly I’m not going to spend time trying to make it fit and rejigging around it, just kill it off dead and move on.
After that, it’s bludgeoning an agenda home in trying to wedge in as many accessibility options as I can work out how to fit in. I’m a strong supporter of accessibility in games and love the hard work that folks like Barrie Ellis, William Pilgrim (who’s responsible for the switch control’s in SYNSO) Special Effect and others do to help folks enjoy games on their own terms. So many small things you can add to your games that make a massive difference and it makes me pull sad faces that this stuff isn’t considered de rigeur to include. Plus, y’know, if I can do it, anyone can so there’s no excuses. I could rant about that all day though, so I won’t this time.

Squid yes, not so octopus 2

Phil:

Another strange attribute to your games, is that they are free. I find that hard to compute, given the quality of the gameplay. I notice on your website you have a paypal donation option. How does that work out for you in terms of actually making a profit? Do you ever plan on creating pay-for games and if so, how will you get players to pay for them?

Rob:

I’m lucky I suppose, I don’t need to make a living from making games, I’m a full time carer which takes up an obscene amount of time, results in ridiculous day/night crossovers and making games is something I do because I want to, not need to.

Yes, I’m perpetually skint, I run a couple of sites that even with the support of the users still mean I throw money out monthly rather than make any but truth be told, I don’t really care too much. The paypal button brings in the odd fiver here and there from kind passers by (and it’s always awesome when someone clicks it – people should click it more!) but it’s never going to support a fast cars and fast women habit or anything. It’s all very well people boffing their mouthvomits over the Radiohead model or how NIN can do it or whatever one of the football management games it is currently throwing their game at the general public for a nominal fee but they’ve all got something most indies don’t have. A fanbase. Last time I checked I don’t have half a million folks ready to fork out some of their hard earned wonga to get my next game and I can’t see it happening any time soon in the future either. My games aren’t exactly the type that you can iterate upon to infinity a la Dwarf Fortress, they’re quick, short sharp shocks that someone on a forum once said they’d pay £3.20 for. How you come to that figure, I have no idea. Is there a formula? Time smiling x Graphic Fidelity – Cost of mainstream game or something? Answers on a postcard.

I don’t have a problem with that, mind – If I made a fortune it’d probably make me corrupt to the core and I’d develop a crack habit or something and destroy my family life and end up washed up in a clinic somewhere bemoaning how I could have had it all if only it weren’t for those pesky kids. Mind you, it might stop my most asked question being “and have you made any money from them yet?” so that’d be nice.

If I were to go down the payware route, it’d probably be something akin to Zombie Cow’s recent way of doing things (make totally non-shit game and punt it out for cheap). £2.99 still seems as reasonable a price as it did when I was punting out for M.A.D. games in the 80’s and ties nicely into my eternal fascination with budget software. Talking of which, have you seen some of the stuff Pheonix get away with? It’s awesome and I’d bet they’re eating money for lunch out of carrier bags. White Van Racer? Maniac Mole? Amazing. Maybe I’ll do a Don’t Buy This or Cassette 50 equivalent soon, if nothing else it’d be a laugh. I wonder if I could find enough respectable indies willing to tarnish their reputation for a cheap giggle?

Phil:

You have gone for a deliberately retro feel to your games. It feels like there is almost an underground scene within the underground scene that is interested in retro shooters. Is that just my perception, or is there a strong community of shooter creators?

Rob:

We’re the dirty unthinkers nobody speaks of, man. A bit like some sisterhood or something in a 70’s Doctor Who episode who work against the powers that be, quietly, in secret, occasionally pausing for a bad special effect and some idle mind control. We’re so underground, Paul Weller didn’t get anywhere close to us when he got his head kicked in.

Seriously? I have no idea. I run a no rose tinted spectacles allowed retro obsessive community of developers, it’s my spiritual home of homes so it’s sort of normal to me to do the retro thing.

I write the sort of stuff that’s not really down with the kids, it’s not beardy stroke stroke, grounded in NES generation platforming or exploration, serious shit or anything that stands up to a 30 page dissection – it’s stuff for old codgers like me with 5 minutes to spare a day who want to blow stuff up. I don’t see that as especially underground stuff more generational. It’s enchuffing to see kids and teenagers getting into it but I tend to find more kinship in my generation, those of us who grew up playing Williams games till our hands felt like a claw. The same folks who thought Space Giraffe was about as good as it gets. The ones the games industry forgot about in the nineties. The bastards.

I didn’t get into making games till late in my life so I missed the chance to make the arcade games, Speccy games or whatever I wanted to play so I make them now. One day, I will kill Jeff Minter and be him, y’know?

I don’t think there’s nearly enough folks doing this lark, there’s Charlie of Charlie’s Games. Cas, obviously. PomPom to a degree, Minter is still churning out the awesome and some of the guys over at Shmup-dev do some good things but nothing I’d call a community or movement – just a bunch of disparate folks doing their own thing that might happen to align to some degrees along the way. It’s probably best that way too. No-one likes an overcrowded party and it means we’re all off doing different things in different ways which results in better things for everyone in the long run.

War Twat

Phil:

I saw that SYNSO has an XBox 360 port. Is that something you think long term you will get into? Doing console development rather than PC?

Rob:

Were I not such a useless buffoon, I’d love to. Fixed specs? Oh yeah, that’s probably the biggest draw there is. I’m not by any means a natural coder or even one who has a brain wired for code, it’s quite the effort for me to get these things out of my head anyway which creates a bit of a barrier to me going there.

The uber talented Andy Noble is responsible for the 360 version of SYNSO, he started it for a bit of practice and it eventually ended up fab even if I do say so myself. I look at his code and my eyes cross over, never has Intellisense had such a work out as when I’m browsing his source. Then of course, there’s the forced monetisation thing – I can get away with a shonky menu system if I’m giving the game away for nowt, I can get away with a few rough edges on the graphics here and there or even some totally rubbish ones – if I were to be putting a price on these things then I hand on heart couldn’t let it out the door and ask for even 80 fake Mickey Mouse points for it in that sort of state.

When Andy dropped SYNSO in my lap it used the old double pixel chunky sprites designed for 640×480. Imagine them suddenly on a 1280×720 screen. They look cock. No way was it going to go out doing a Digital Eclipse y’know? So I went back and redid all the graphics, 3d renders to replace the old sprites, super massive scale high resolution arenas and things, Andy threw in some shiny new effects and shader stuffage to make it glorious. That’s a world apart from what you can get away with when bunging something out for free and it’s a massive leap up in asset generation stakes and the time it takes to get stuff together.

So aye, it’s something I’d like to move towards in the future but it’s going to mean I’ve got to get my shit together a whole lot better than I do currently and find an art style that I can feasibly work with that isn’t going to consume months out of my life for that alone. The pay off of being able to lie on the sofa in the buff playing your wares is totally worth it though, especially when you spend an inordinate amount of time tied to the PC chair.

Phil:

I recently started an entry for the Ludum Dare competition, although I never got round to finishing it, it seems like there is a healthy number of people taking part in game development competitions. Although these entries obviously aren’t of the same scale as AAA retail titles, it does feel like there is enough talent still within bedroom programmers to create unique games. Have you found that to be the case?

Rob:

God yeah, I mean to go back to Jeff Minter a mo. There’s him and there’s Giles and Space Giraffe knocked the socks out of most things I’ve played over the past 30 years and his latest game is bloody smart too. Take a look at some of the stuff coming out of TIGS and even my own little corner of the web, RR and there’s this immense talent base there. Some of it might not hit the spot but heck, when you’ve got folks like Anna Anthropy, Terry Cavanagh, Steven Lavelle, Ron Bunce, Ovine By Design and many more really pushing the quality stuff out there on a regular basis it’s pretty hard to argue. Just take a look at Cliffski’s latest epic, Dan and Ben reviving the adventure genre and storming metacritic, Matt of Hermit Games banging out the best vertical shooter I’ve had the privilege of playing – this is stuff you couldn’t possibly get greenlit or the support for in most of the mainstream industry and it’s vital to the health of the gaming scene.

With digital distribution rapidly moving from a sort of hidden thing to being the de facto way to purchase stuff we’re getting back to a time when one man in his bedroom can make a smash hit game. That’s as funky a thing as you could want.

Phil:

Finally, is there any advice or knowledge you want to impart on other British indies?

Rob:

I don’t think I’m the best person to give advice about anything, although it’s never really stopped me before.

Thing is, if you’re an indie then your strength lies in just that. Write the games you want to see made, y’know? There’s an audience out there for just about everything and you can find your niche without trying to follow the masses. You, yourself and what you put into your games are your strength. Make stuff you believe in. Make stuff you’d want to play and pay money for and make it not shit. I know the latter seems rather obvious but I think we’ve all played enough games now to realise it’s not a given.

On a personal note, I’d love to see more quintessentially British games. Bowler hats, cups of tea, Monty Python, shit weather, queuing, dominatrixes and politicians, all ripe for games. In the eighties we had games about moles and miners, blowing up Parliament, elevating our social status from dolescum to moving to Hampstead… what happened? Where did this stuff go? We need more of these things. Make it so.

Do something interesting! If a cocky bearded git can muster enough interest in his stuff to make two appearances in a row at the Eurogamer Expo, there’s your proof it works.

And click my paypal button, obviously. I’m out of chocolate fingers and in dire need of teabags.

Thanks Rob for that refreshing take on the indie scene

You can visit Rob’s website at Bag Full Of Wrong for more information about his great FREE games.

Desperate Space

Phil:

Your games to date have all been shooters. I guess you must have some strong feelings about shooter games. Traditionally I know they haven’t been the easiest thing so sell to a paying audience. How have you found sales?

Neil:

Ironically I only became seriously interested in shooters after becoming an indie. Prior to that my favourite games were RPG titles like Final Fantasy, Baldur’s Gate and Morrowind. I’m quite young so I kind of missed the ‘glory days’ of the shmup.

When I originally started out I planned on making expansive RPGs but I quickly realised that I was aiming far too high and needed to have a more realistic goal. I looked at the current shareware games and saw 3 genres that seemed to have any level of success: cutsie puzzle games, cutsie platformers or shoot em ups. Not wanting to compromise my manliness I decided to go the shooter route.

While I was developing my first few games I spent a lot of time researching the genre and playing older titles like Gradius, R-Type and Raiden. It was only at that point that I really  began to fall in love with shmups.

And you’re totally correct, downloadable shooters really don’t sell well. Typically my download to sale conversion rate would be about 0.1%. My best selling downloadable shooter was Desperate Space, which after 4 years has only made about $10,000. It took me six months to make and I spent about 3 months on marketing. I don’t know many people in the UK who could live (not in their parent’s basement) on $1100 per month.

Phil:

After a number of downloadable games, you have switched to a flash based platform that is a sort of MMO hybrid. Can I ask what prompted the move from downloadable to flash based development?

Neil:

According to Einstein the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results. By the time I had finished Mighty Rodent I realised that I was literally acting like a crazy person. The message was clear, downloadable shoot em ups weren’t selling and I needed to try something different.

I started looking at different technologies, thinking of different business models etc. I played around with Flash for a while and eventually fell in love with it. I found development to be much faster than anything else and the fact that I could easily deploy to a large variety of platforms made it all the more attractive. By this point I wasn’t really sure what my final direction would be, but I knew that it had to be something involving Flash.

Xeno Assault

Phil:

Do you find the flash limits you in terms of the speed of the rendering and the smoothness of movement. I would imagine for shooters, that’s a very important part of the appeal. Having said that when I played Dead Frontier it felt like a slower paced game than your other games anyway. Is this a concious decision to pace the game more slowly?

Neil:

Yes Flash definitely limits you but it’s getting better all the time. With the advent of AS3 and FP10 it’s actually possible to make some quite hardcore stuff. When I originally made Dead Frontier I was working with AS2 and speed was a much bigger issue. My answer was to try to focus the game more on the horror/suspense side of things rather than pure shooting. Having said that the game does get much more intense later on.

Though being a zombie game I’d really like to have more than 8 zombies on screen without the user’s computer exploding. So I’ve gone ahead and hired a Flash guru to help convert the game to AS3 and optimize everything. We’re aiming to have up to 30-50 zombies and 10 players on screen at once without compromising framerate. I’d really like to go for that “OMG EPIC ZOMBIE HORDE!!!!111″ feeling.

Dead Frontier Multiplayer

Phil:

Dead Frontier is a fairly dark game in theme. It is also unusually a flash based MMO. Although there are plenty of those around, they do tend to be fairly bright and happy affairs with a very young audience. How has the public reaction been to a zombie shooter made in flash?

Neil:

The feedback has been 100% positive. My players love zombies, violence, gore and everything that goes with that. Dead Frontier is the only MMO where they can really get it.

Honestly it feels like the casual/female gamer revolution has gone too far. Right now all MMOs seem to be either anime, cartoony or cute and it drives me nuts. It’s not just MMOs either, this plague seems to have infected just about every genre and platform going.

I think there are a lot of people out there that feel the same and want to play something a bit more hardcore. For a long time I had a naked female zombie on the front page. Sure I got a few complaint emails, but I got many more from people praising my boldness.

Dead Frontier Screenshot

Phil:

Can I ask you about the business side of Jagged Blade Games? Are you a one man outfit? Who does the art, business and other things? Are you full-time doing it? Do you have contract work to support yourself?

Neil:

For the longest time it was just me. To start with I lived with my parents and basically gave them any money I earned to go towards for my food/rent. Eventually I scored a part time job with ArcadeTown which gave me enough total income to buy a house an start living as an ‘adult’.

When I launched Dead Frontier it started making some money, nothing amazing but still much more than I’d ever made with my previous games. Literally a month later I was told that I was no longer needed at ArcadeTown. At this point I was incredibly relieved that I still had Dead Frontier to pay the mortgage.

Since I no longer had a job I focused all of my attention on improving the game and the income started to increase exponentially. Right now I have two full-time employees, Ian who handles customer support/community management and Nick who handles promotion of the game. I also work with a range of freelancers/part timers: Greg Taylor (art), Jesse Hopkins (sound), Matthew Bowie (server admin) and David Patterson (programming). I’ve got some big plans for the future and I expect the game to eventually grow around 5x it’s current size.

Phil:
In many ways, choosing shooters as a genre to work in is a very risky move. Many indies choose to try for the casual market, although that has come under increasing price pressures recently. You obviously made a decision when you switched to creating flash based games. Did you not get tempted to move outside of the shooter genre and go more “casual”?

Neil:

I was seriously tempted to try making a match-3 or time management game a few years ago when I wasn’t making any decent money and you could still sell them for $20. I’m glad I never did it but the whole casual craze did have a big negative impact on me. I always felt like the answer to more sales was to make my games more and more casual as that was the prevailing advice at the time. The closest I ever came was with Mighty Rodent; my only cartoony game. I thought that by dressing a shooter in cute clothes I could get more sales. Turned out I was wrong and it actually made less money than some of my more hardcore games. After that I promised myself that I would never pander to portals again; I would make exactly the kind of game I want and never make compromises.

And that’s exactly what I did. When I was brainstorming for new ideas I said to myself, “what would I really like to play?”. The answer was a survival horror MMO. So that’s what I made.

Realspace 3

Phil:

Looking to the future, how do you see your games evolving? Do you think that you will ever create downloadables again? How about platforms like steam, or consoles?

Neil:

Well I’ve got some really neat ideas for both MMOs and downloadables but right now I simply wouldn’t have the time to begin work on another project.

The upside with downloadables is that when you’ve finished a game you can generally move on to something else quite quickly. MMOs aren’t like that at all, if they become successful then you’re basically tethered to them until they die or get bought out. Though that isn’t necessarily a bad thing since it gives you the chance to make something really big and really special.

Not really interested in other platforms, although if I were to do a downloadable I’d definitely like to give steam a whirl. They appear to be the only portal where a hardcore game can do well.

Phil:

Finally, is there anything you want to say to aspiring indies in the UK thinking about going it alone and starting thier own studio?

Neil:

My advice would be not to set your sights too low. Right now a lot of people seem to think the route to success is by keeping your dev time short in order to get the maximum ROI on time spent. That’s great if you’re happy to just scrape by, churning out endless streams of mediocre titles. That’s what I tried to do in my early years and let me tell you first hand – it sucks.

If you really want to make it big then you’re going to need a big hit. To do that you need a game that’s really special and that simply isn’t going to come from a 3 month development cycle. I would also recommend trying things that haven’t been done before. Nothing better than having an entire niche all to yourself.

Thanks to Neil for giving us such a great insight into his life as an indie developer. You can check out Neil’s latest game Dead Frontier at www.deadfrontier.com and his other games at www.jaggedbladegames.com

Until next week!

Phil:

I remember you releasing gibbage and doing loads of things to try and sell it. How did gibbage work out in terms of return on the time you invested in making it?

Dan:

Well, Gibbage was always a learning experience: I wrote it while learning to code, I didn’t really expect to sell any copies. I didn’t know a thing about digital distribution or indie games, so I simply didn’t know what was possible in terms of revenue.

Sales paid my beer money, and still do occasionally, but it didn’t sell enough to fund an extravagant lifestyle.

Ben There, Dan That

Phil:

You’ve released Ben There, Dan That for free and recently released Time Gentlemen, Please for £2.99. I’m wondering why you released a game for free and then came to the £2.99 price point for TGP, is this a deliberate plan to gather a greater audience at a smaller price point? Or has it got something to do with the cost of development?

Dan:

Bit of both, really. BTDT was originally written to drive traffic toward Gibbage, but took on a life of its own. TGP was written in evenings and weekends, as a hobby, so I could always afford to be generous with the price. It’s an amazing game, but it’s not a talkie, so £2.99 always felt like a fair price point.

For Zombie Cow Studios, at this time, it’s more important to me that people play the games and find out who we are and what we’re about than making billions out of it.

Phil:

One thing that strikes me about your games and your site, is that I have this feeling that you dont really think in a mainstream games way. I get the feeling that a lot of indies tend to think that casual games are the way to make a living. How did you come to develop such unique games?

Gibbage

Dan:

I make indie games because it doesn’t feel like a job. It’s a passion. If I were to work on something that I didn’t enjoy, that passion would fade pretty quickly, and so would my enthusiasm. I’m all about loving your job, at the moment. Doing what you do should make you happy, that’s the most important thing.

Phil:

I posted on the site a while ago about how impressed I was with your press coverage of Time Gentlemen, Please. A huge part of the differences I see between “professional” indies and the regular starving kind, is the ability for the more successful indies to reach an audience. Do you ever think about your target audience when making your games? Do you have any hints for other indies on how to reach thier target audience (I’m thinking of Cas here )?

Dan:

I think as an indie if you’re making something a bit special it’s more likely to find an audience. That said, getting press coverage is a full time job. You’d think that even with something that has regularly scored around the 90% mark you could sit back and let word of mouth take care of the rest.

Unfortunately, that simply isn’t true – I’ve just spent the last five hours responding to emails, sending out press copies and writing interviews, for example.

These things simply don’t land on your lap – you need to actively get out there. I’m still learning how it all works. I’m fortunate enough from my time writing for PCZone to have some journalist friends to point me in the right direction from time to time- they know what it’s like on the other side of the fence, so can occasionally guide me accordingly.

I’m still learning all this obviously. Don’t announce new games during trade shows, for example, because the news sites simply won’t cover it. There’s such a thing as too much news, apparently. Find a lull in the press and exploit it with a full-on blitz.

Time, Gentlement Please Enemy

Phil:

If I recall correctly, you’re not doing the indie thing full-time yet. Is it your intention to work developing games fulltime? Do you think that other media types are amenable to game content? I get the feeling that your games could offer something to other media outlets as they have that quirky sense of humour that often works for youth oriented TV content. Have you ever considered working with other companies to take your games out to a broader audience?

Dan:

Since TGP released, I am now full time indie. Zombie Cow has some exciting projects coming up that are going to require 100% of my attention and use up every single hour in a day.

People in TV are, generally speaking, terrified of games. They don’t really ‘get’ them, and they know at the back of their minds that one day they’ll take over. For Zombie Cow , at the moment, we’re all about games. I’d gladly look into doing other content for TV or internet, and have done in the past, but I’d have to really want to do it.

Time, Gentlement Please

Phil:

How do you find the support you get for developing games here in Britain? Do you get any support from the government, help on business matters or any of the kind of development aid that seems to happen a lot for other creative industries?

Dan:

I haven’t looked into Government support yet. I probably shall do soon, given the very British nature of Zombie Cow’s recent titles.

I’m going to be working with Channel 4 on an upcoming project; they’re hugely brilliant and supportive, and love working with British Indies. If you’re an indie, I highly recommend getting in touch with them to see what they’re up to.

Phil:

Finally, do you have a message for other British indie developers, game players, or even just random web-browsers?

Dan:

Buy my fucking game, you cheapskate. It’s only £2.99 and I’ve got a wine habit to feed.

Thanks for the interview Dan!

You can visit Dan’s website at: Zombie Cow Studios

More interviews next week!