With the potential audiences for downloadable titles growing, do you think there is a greater need for indie studios to perform more user testing?
SM: Yeah. I think there are a lot of indie games that I would say are ‘impenetrable’. I talk about my brother, right. I try and sit him down with some amazing games, that really are amazing and I know he would enjoy, but he doesn’t have the vast knowledge of games that most of us have acquired – the people who read blogs and magazines do. He’s never read any of those things and he hasn’t played the majority of games that I have. I think a lot of indie games are self-referential and rely on that. That builds up like a wall that you have to climb before you get into the [game]. We’re, hopefully, trying to make [Joe Danger] an accessible game, but it’s still deep.
Could something like crowdsourcing be a potential solution for low-budget studios wishing to test their game on a larger scale?
SM: Yeah. There’s some really interesting stuff if anyone’s played any of the games by The Casual Collective. They did Desktop Tower Defence originally, which is obviously huge. But they’ve done some really good games since then as well. Space Game is something I’m totally addicted to. And they do this thing where they put games on the web, and they pay a very small amount of money for hundreds of people to play the game. [They] then have it screencast so they can see what everyone’s doing, what buttons they’re clicking and everything. I think it really shows through in their games. You sit down and play a Casual Collective game; you know it’s one of theirs because everything is exactly where you expect it to be.
That’s something that Microsoft talk a lot about – their usability labs. And Introversion have talked about going through [Xbox Live submissions] without struggling with that. It’s part of that thing I talk about before – guerrilla tactics. Small studios using what big studios do. Doing focus testing, getting lots of people to play your game and [ironing] out all those crazy issues that we’re so accustom to.
When you first started work on the game, was it difficult to decide what platform(s) to focus your efforts on when it came to negotiating for dev units from the platform holders?
SM: (laughs) Yeah, that’s definitely something people don’t really talk about. I read Team Meat, who do Super Meat Boy. I’ve read them in interviews. They’ve been asked similar questions, like “How helpful has Nintendo been?” For us, people always ask us how helpful have Sony been or Microsoft been? And people don’t understand we’re tiny compared to them. We really have to fight for these things. It’s not a case of you show up with your game demo or you’ve worked on bigger games before and you get these things. There’s a real chance for us that our game might never come out. Or that it might never come out on the platforms that we want. Or that we might never even get the kit that we need to just make the game. It’s a huge struggle. When we started out, we started on PC and then just kept trying, and trying and trying to get the kit that we needed to compile the game on, which is crazy.
In certain areas, like promotion, Hello Games seem to come across as quite naive. Have you used that as a way of connecting with readers or is it simply another learning process for you?
SM: Wouldn’t that be awesome to say we had used it to our advantage? I would love to say that we used naivety to our advantage but… Sometimes it works to your advantage, which has been a total surprise to us and a godsend. Most games that people talk about, they don’t say anything of any substance. That’s something that the indie scene provides. At least they’re interesting if nothing else. [Indies] say the wrong thing, they say stupid things sometimes and they make outrageous claims, but at least it’s interesting.
Bumbled is word I would use. We bumbled our way through. And that’s kind of interesting to people. Even tonight I can see that people are interested by that, because I’m just basically talking nonsense (laughs). That is refreshing actually, because, most of the time, if you read about a really good game – like God of War or Halo, I’m so hungry for information on those games – it comes to [you] in really whitewashed, cling film-wrapped packages. I just want to get some raw meat, something really interesting, you know. To hear what those developers feel.
So, how has Hello Games’ relationship with the press been so far?
SM: When we started out we knew no press. We’d worked in games before, but that’s something as a programmer [that I was] totally hidden from. I work every day at a keyboard. The only experience I ever had with press before [starting Hello Games] was one day some magazine came into our office and wanted to take some photographs. Because programming is really boring, I had to open up PhotoShop and pretend I was drawing, so they could take some photos. That’s the closest I’ve come to press before. For us this is totally new. It’s absolutely nerve-racking and really very scary, something we’re totally not prepared for. But it’s going OK. It takes a lot of work and a lot of building up those contacts.
Did you aspire to join the games industry when you were a student?
SM: Yeah. I think when I was in uni I didn’t think that I could work in games, because I thought only geniuses worked in games. I though only John Carmack and Miyamoto [and people like that] were the only people who were clever enough to work in games. And was like, “I would love to work in that industry, I would absolutely love to.” But I presumed that if I did, I would be making cups of tea. That was my assumption.
So, I did a computer science degree. By far that was the most interesting thing to me – to make games. But I had assumed that I’d end up making databases or something. I just kind of worked at it, followed up on it. I always wanted to, but I never assumed I would be making games.
Where did you get your break in the industry?
SM: It was with Criterion. I applied for lots of places. And I did that crazy thing that I think most graduates have experience of that I’ve talk to, which is, basically, I applied to Rare, Bungie, Valve, Nintendo… that kind of thing, and no one else. I was really lucky. I got a whole bunch of jobs which blow my mind. But Criterion was really small at the time, and I just really loved the people there and I thought I could work on a really small team. Burnout 1 was made with 10 people, which most people didn’t realise, I guess. When you go in and you see a room with 10 people making a game like that, you’re like, “this is exactly what I’m after.”
Does Joe Danger have a release date?
SM: No, it’s not announced yet. I mean, we’re working on it. We’re working incredibly hard. The thing is, with our release, there are four of us and we share a really small space. If one of us gets a cold, as has happened, all of us get a cold. And then the game slips by a week, which is just incredible. It’s not like normal development.
What can people expect from Joe Danger?
SM: I hope they get a really fun game. We can’t provide a game that competes in terms of content with [something] like Gear of War. But we can compete in terms of something that gives replayability. Something that gives real enjoyment. [Looking] at something like Geometry Wars that’s what I see. That’s a game I’ve formed this emotional bond with almost. It took over my life for about three months. That’s what we’re aiming for: something that takes people’s enjoyment of games and nurses that.
After the release of Joe Danger, have you considered what Hello Games’ next project will be?
SM: We’re totally focused on this game and just getting it out. I mean, it would mean everything to me to just be able to keep making games. As Hello Games, we’re a really tiny, little group and the idea that we’d be able to keep doing this is just awesome. But if we could, yeah, we’ve got some really cool ideas. Things that would really surprise people, but it’s too early to talk about that. It’s Joe Danger right now.
Joe Danger will be released on PSN, XBLA and PC later this year. See more on at Hello Games.
Aaron Lee
Tags: gamecity, hello games, indie, joe danger, sean murray
