joystiq-indie-pitch
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Joystiq Indie Pitch: Kosmo Spin
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Simon Flesser, half of Simogo, the team behind the adorable Kosmo Spin. How did your company get started? We met at Southend Interactive where I worked as an artist and Gordon as Technical Director. I had always wanted to "do my own thing" and it turned out that Gordon wanted the same thing. Times have changed and it's now possible to make games with only two people and no publishers, thanks to all the new places to distrubute your games (like AppStore). I also think that the DS, Wii and the iPhone have played a huge part in changing people's attitude to gaming. Not only are there more people playing games, I also think bite sized gaming is more accepted by "real gamers". Not every game has to be this super big epic experience. Not that we don't enjoy those games, it's just great that there's room for everyone now. So, the time was right and everything just seemed to fit, so we decided to set up Simogo and go for it.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Beat Hazard
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Steve Hunt, half of the team behind the music-fueled dual stick shooter action of Beat Hazard. How did you get started in game design? I first started making games when I was about 10 on an Atari 800. I remember I made a grave robbing game (unpublished!) where you had to break into a cemetery and drag out corpses without getting seen by the guards or caught by ghosts. I'm not sure if my parents though I was clever or messed up in the head. I've been doing game design pretty much ever since.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: DETOUR
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Geoff Keene, CEO of Sandswept Studios, about his upcoming XBLIG release, DETOUR. First things first, who are you and what do you do? My name is Geoff Keene, I'm 19 years old, and I'm the design director/project lead for DETOUR. I'm mainly in charge of keeping everything moving and moving smoothly within Sandswept Studios. Sandswept is a team of incredibly talented artists, programmers, writers, and I think at least one of our guys rides a motorcycle. We are currently working on the PC and Xbox LIVE Indie Game DETOUR, set to launch early 2011.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Prismatic Solid
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Yoichi Hayashi, whose Prismatic Solid took home third place in this year's Dream.Build.Play contest. How did you get started in game design? I started developing games using BASIC from the early '80s when I was in junior high. Books and magazines were my teachers since there was no internet at that time.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Retro/Grade
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Matt Gilgenbach, co-founder of 24 Caret Games, the developer behind upcoming PSN release Retro/Grade. How did your company get started? We always dreamt of having our own game studio. In the summer of 2008, the game business was booming, the sun was shining, and birds were chirping, so the time seemed right to venture out on our own. Unfortunately, soon after we started, we were caught by surprise by the great recession of aught-eight. Perhaps it wasn't the best time to start after all! Despite that setback, we decided to follow our dream against innumerable odds. We are hoping to option the true story of 24 Caret Games to Hollywood for one of those feel good triumph of the human spirit movies. I was thinking Rpattz could play me. He had the appropriate game developer complexion in Twilight. So far, no studio has gotten back to me about it ...
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Lumi
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Christophe Panattoni, co-creator of Kydos Studios, the developer behind Dream.Build.Play grand prize winner Lumi. How did you get started in game design? I created Kydos Studio with Nicolas Daures a year ago; we both had a background in game development. We basically started designing games at the same time and we often take our inspiration from real life activities. For example, the main idea behind our latest game, Lumi, came while we were pinning tasks on a white board using small magnets. We were having fun with those magnets and we thought that would be a good start for a game.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Retrofit: Overload
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Will Storer of WAM! Games. Joystiq: How did you and your company get started? Will Storer: Martin Stone and I were both working freelance after several years at large studios. We both worked together on MotorStorm for the PS3 and we used to chat about games a lot on the way home from work. We then went our separate ways into various other jobs and freelance gigs but kept in touch. We literally decided one night at the pub, lets make a game of our own, something simple, something small, just to see if we could actually make a complete game by ourselves. About five months later Pegzo was released.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Silas
How did you get started in game design? I was around 11 years old when I first started programming 2D games. I was using an old program that made these top-down 2D RPGs. This was in the late 90s. After a few months of creating these really ugly tiles and sprites in Paint, I soon decided I wanted to work on 3D games. I played around with some different engines, and soon enough I was programming and making art hours a night. Some years later, the thirst then began to consume me and ordered me to make a game. So, I willingly gave in. While still in high school, I started the company, and started laying the foundation for Silas. It was a crazy idea at the time, and still is, but its all part of accepting risk and believing in your product! %Gallery-97840%
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: 0 A.D.
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Aviv Sharon of Wildfire about the studio's 0 A.D., an indie project nine years in the making. What's your game called, and what's it about? 0 A.D. (pronounced "zero ey-dee") is a free, open-source, cross-platform real-time strategy (RTS) game of ancient warfare. In short, it is a historically-based war/economy game that allows players to relive or rewrite the history of Western civilizations, focusing on the years between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D. The project is highly ambitious, involving state-of-the-art 3D graphics, detailed artwork, sound, and a flexible and powerful custom-built game engine. It focuses on six factions: The Hellenic States (aka The Greeks), the Roman Republic, The Celtic Tribes, the Persian Empire, the Iberian Tribes, and the Carthaginian Empire, each complete with unique artwork, technologies and civilization bonuses.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Delve Deeper
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk Lunar Giant Studio's Adam Eidukas (Lead Developer) and Neil Wickman (Creative Director / Lead Artist) about how Adam FULLY beat Final Fantasy with just the thief. ... Oh, also they made a game.) How did Lunar Giant get started? Neil: In the future of the planet Earth arose a world of unthinking, unfeeling machines. A world without fun, a world without games. A world without heroes. But not without the memory of them, or those few left who could resist the robots. And like unto heroes did they arm themselves, and set upon their quest, bringing joy to a world that knew only the grip of steel. A great battle was fought, and though it was awesome, the machines were too strong, too numerous to be defeated. At that very moment before humanity's final defeat, two Men and one Stig escaped through time and space. Returning to the year 2008, Lunar Giant was formed. A company with one purpose: to save the world.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: iBailout
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Nick Marroni, who, after deciding he'd had enough inferior games that combined Ms. Pac-Man and the Federal Reserve, set his mind on making his own. And stay tuned for your chance to win a free copy! How did your company get started? Well, I had been endeavoring mightily to get a job in the industry for most of '08, always with the idea of eventually starting my own studio, but only after gaining years of experience working for someone else. After the App Store went live on the iPhone, though, I was starting to experience intense jealousy of (and burning desire to join) the numerous indie outfits bum rushing the App Store. In early '09, I managed to talk my way into a work-for-hire contract for an iPhone entertainment app with one of the big boys on the App Store, formed my company Marroni Electronic Entertainment (M.E.E.) and teamed up with an acquaintance I met online, Ivan Galic of his NightIrion. After that, I managed to do some more talking into of things and convinced Hands-On Mobile to give me a little indie budget for iBailout!! (think of an indie budget as like a bag of pork rinds: Technically, it's sustenance, but it sure isn't something you can afford to make a habit of).
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Hamlet, or the last game without MMORPG features, shaders and product placement
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with mif2000 (Deins Galanin) about how he turned the unlikeliest of IPs into a point-and-click PC adventure called Hamlet. Joystiq: How did you or your company get started? Deins Galanin: Before I became an independent developer, I spent five years working in a Russian game development company, where I helped develop a number of commercial games. (Some of them are very popular in Russia, but almost unknown in the west.) At a certain point, each developer faces a tough moral choice: either do what you're told to do, or do what you want to do. I chose the latter and became an independent developer.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Pinch
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Paul Crab of Coatsink Games about his new release, Pinch, and why he thinks the puzzle genre is the pinnacle of gaming. How did your company get started? I previously worked as an artist for Atomic Planet Entertainment. When they shut down last year, I applied for other jobs, but, oddly enough, none of them could recognize my genius. At the time, my friend Tom was working for a small-time, unknown company called Blizzard Entertainment. I went to visit him, and you know how it is – a few drinks, some reminiscing and next thing you know, you've decided to start your own games company. The main problem was that we didn't have a programmer. I had a tiny bit of C programming experience from back in University, so I began to re-learn as much as I could, using any online resources and tutorials I could find. The iPod games market was blossoming at the time, so it seemed like a good starting point. By October, we had a game design, business plan, basic prototype and concept video that we showed in a hilariously humiliating pitch to the Institute of Digital Innovation's Digital City Fellowship Scheme. Amazingly, we were accepted, and that helped us to go on to set up our company and develop our game full time. Coatsink Software was born (don't ask about the name, we'll be here all night).
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Super Shock Football
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Adam Meyer of Steamroller Studios to learn how his passion for art lead him to the digital gridiron of Super Shock Football. How did you and your company get started? Steamroller Studios came about in February last year when we started working on our first game, Super Shock Football. I'd been wanting to get into game development for a while, having had a taste of it while doing the cover for the BioShock L.E. and the Section 8 logo. But my skills mostly end with art and I don't have the coding knowledge to make a game myself. Then one day my buddy, who's a technical director over at WETA Digital, called me with his idea to make an electric football game for the iPhone, I jumped at the opportunity to work with him on it. So the company really started out with just the two of us but we're starting to bring some really talented people in. We have a great animator named Jalil that also works at WETA and he just came on board for our new game. Plus we have some talented freelancers. [Programmer Keith Lackey]'s cousin helps out with the sound and he worked on Dead Space and BioShock 2. We're very fortunate to have some very gifted people helping us out.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Run, J-Stache Run
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Tavit Geudelekian of Primary Wave Games about the studio's first release, Run, J-Stache Run for iPhone. Tavit previously served as a producer at Atari (N+, Ghostbusters) and worked in pre-production on Mizuguchi's unreleased QJ for Wii. How did you or your company get started? Primary Wave Games can best be described as an interactive/games imprint of independent music publisher Primary Wave. I had been working at Atari for the past four years as a games producer and I had collaborated with my buddy Ryan Barkan over at PW on a music-based game proposal that we pitched up to Atari. Unfortunately, at the time Atari didn't have the resources to bite on that project, but Ryan and I kept in close touch and when I wanted to make a move towards the world of music, Primary Wave was there to catch me. Primary Wave has a really fresh perspective on music publishing. We really get behind our artists and catalogs through proactive marketing and collaborative licensing, seeking out both traditional and non-traditional avenues to raise the value and profile of our intellectual property. Primary Wave Games is our effort to extend those marketing and creative services into the interactive world by making games and projects that begin to actively bridge the gap between music and games.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Armor Games
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Armor Games' Daniel McNeely (Founder) and John Cooney (Head of Game Development), who converted a love of medieval Flash games into a full-on gaming hub. How did Armor Games get started? DM: Armor Games got started out of the desire to make quality Flash games available to just about anyone. There're so many out there, we wanted to be consistently great. We initially launched as 'GamesofGondor,' with the intent of focusing on medieval games. I'm a big fan of Tolkien, CS Lewis, Robin Hood, King Arthur and pretty much anything representative of chivalry, so it was a natural choice. Anyway, I quickly found out that the word 'Gondor' was protected by one of Tolkien's law firms, and so I searched for another domain name that would keep it Medieval. I found ArmorGames.com, and went from there. I worked from my bedroom for a year before bringing on my first full-time employee (John Cooney, our game development lead). Being independent and supporting indie game development has always been important to us, so I'm glad we can continue to fund and sponsor Flash games in the long-term.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Rotor'scope
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Mauricio Garcia, one of the programmers of Nivel21, about how their game Rotor'scope proves that nothing is impossible. How did your company get started? Nivel21 Entertainment was born in 2005. At that time, some of us were working in software development and enterprise consultation. We were lucky to get to know each other some way or another, a group of videogame aficionados sharing the common dream of becoming professional game developers. So we decided to join forces and immediately began working together, trying to establish our own studio, or, at least, learn enough so that we could end up working in some other studio. We never gave up hope to finally get where we are now, and we spent a lot of time and effort to learn just by ourselves everything that there is to know to make videogames. Even though it all started out as a hobby, we're pretty damn serious about it. Since our first "learning" projects, we've tried to work as professionally as we possibly can. After all these years, we finally see our dream come true in Rotor'scope.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Overgrowth
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with John Graham of Wolfire Games, whose Overgrowth, a follow-up to underground hit Lugaru, is currently in development. How did you your company get started? David Rosen created Wolfire in 2003 as a web site where people could download his personal gaming projects. All of us at Wolfire were really into computer games growing up but I think something unique in David compelled him to get an early start. I had the good fortune to go to the same elementary school as David, and while most kids were playing the hunting section of Oregon Trail at recess, he was spending his time coding his own stick figure war game in a programming environment called HyperCard. He even went so far as to craft his own explosion and gunshot sound effects by recording the distortion that occurs from blowing into a microphone. Soon David's war game spread around the school until, not surprisingly, it got banned by the administration for being too violent. By the time David hit high school, he had migrated to 3D games using C++.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: League of Legends
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Riot Games co-founder and president Marc Merrill about how he and his team turned their passion for a Warcraft III mod into a full-fledged game. How did your company get started? The idea to create League of Legends and open Riot Games both started around the end of 2005. We had been playing DotA (Defense of the Ancients, a user-created mod of a popular Warcraft III map) and been very active in the community for a while and believed that the gameplay was so fun and innovative that it represented the spawning of a new genre and deserved to be its own professional game with significantly enhanced features. Riot's CEO Brandon Beck and I co-founded Riot and partnered with some of the key creative minds behind the creation of DotA-Allstars – Steve "Guinsoo" Feak and Steve "Pendragon" Mescon to accomplish this mission – and League of Legends was born. It took almost a year to get Riot off the ground and open our initial office in September of 2006, which is really when we began to build the team to start on development.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Olu
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Red Button Games boss (and champion Omeganaut) Daniel Frandsen about his new Xbox Live Indie Game, Olu. How did you get started? I've always dabbled in game development, but it really started in a college game development course. After the course was done, a handful of us went on to create an organization for game development. The bug bit me, and I spent most of my time in my last two years of college working on games. Red Button Games came out of my spare time, and some spare money to hire a few freelancers. Why did you want to make games? It's always been the combination of two passions: gaming and design. I remember back when I got my first console (Super NES), I would draw Super Mario Kart tracks and Donkey Kong Country levels on a sheet of paper. It's what first brought me into a desire to learn programming, and it's something I really enjoy doing, even if it's technically work.
