Max Vs. The Internet

Interviewee name: Nick Tipping
Title: Director/Artist
Company: Moonpod
Years experience: 12 in the games industry in general, 5 specifically in indie games development.
Background/bio: 32 year old computer game artist, originally from Manchester in the UK.
Describe of their duties: Maintaining the moonpod.com web site, all art for games at Moonpod, and running the business.

Games worked on/Companies worked for:

Gremlin Interactive
Judge Dredd
N2O

Infogrames
Art tools and docs for various games

Rage Games Limited
Gunmetal

Moonpod
Starscape
Mr. Robot

How did you get into the business?
I got into 3D art when I was about 14 - messing around with Turbo Silver on the Amiga, and I'd always been keen on animation having made a few Plasticine animations with an aging cine-camera. When I went to university, there were no courses for 3D art though, so I decided to do architecture. The course I was on was a sandwich course, which meant my third year was spent in active practice. My 3D experience got me a job with an architectural visualisation company - making walk through renders of building projects. I quickly realised that I wanted to do something in 3D art, so at the end of my year's work I took 6 months out to put a portfolio of 3D art together. The first place I applied to was Gremlin Interactive, and they offered me a job.

What makes your job interesting or challenging?
Well, do you know many people who can say they made a robot or a space ship during their day? For indies it's incredibly hard, because you are always short of time, but all that is outweighed by having something different to do all the time. Especially as I'm the lone artist at Moonpod - I have to do everything, from maintaining the web site, to modelling, texturing and animating, to front end work. There's always something different to do and I'm never bored.

What is the most difficult aspect of your job?
There's just never enough time to do anything, particularly as an indie company. The distractions of having to run a business really detract from the fun of just sitting down to do some modelling or animating. Making games is fun, marketing and running a business is soul destroying.

Where do you see the industry going over the next 5 years? How will this affect you?
At the moment I see a lot of companies trying to 'own' the store front that is games delivered via the Internet. Microsoft probably have the biggest chance of doing this when they roll out live arcade for Vista. There's a chance that will be really bad for indies selling from their own sites, because everyone will expect to find games via live arcade, but I suspect it might introduce more people to the idea of downloadable games. There will always be a group of people who want more than is shoveled to them by a big corporation and will find us. The other problem though is that live arcade titles are at a much lower price point than your average indie game. Whilst that's good for the consumer, it's almost impossible for indies to sell at that price because we don't have the throughput, and it's not viable to advertise lower cost products. I'd really hate it if indies ended up having to sell through channels controlled by other companies, the great thing about selling on the Internet is that you can sell directly to your customers and be in touch with them. Nobody is sitting in between sucking away revenue and making the customer's experience a cold one.


What are you most proud of?
Really just that we've made two games, which we actually love playing ourselves and which from a creative standpoint are very close to what we would like them to be. It might not sound like a lot, but working on our own has gotten us closer to a product we are happy with than working in the mainstream industry ever did. Of course, there's still a long way for us to go!

What was your biggest mistake?
Not tracking adverts. Before we put advert tracking in place, we burned thousands of dollars on web sites that didn't work out. At the time, we didn't really know which sites did or didn't work. In some respects it was good, because we learned a lot, and quickly.

What is a typical day like at Moonpod? Is there a typical day, or does it vary wildly depending on the development cycle?
Depends on the day of the week - Wednesday we usually take the morning off and go to the pictures (Orange Wednesdays 2 for 1 offer!). Friday have a pub lunch and go over what we've accomplished for that week. An average day usually involves at least an hour of emails to customers/publishers etc, and then solid work punctuated by manic lunchtime gaming sessions! This doesn't change much during the development cycle - crunch time is always on if you are an indie.

What prompted you to start your own company? Is it an experience you would recommend to other designers in the industry currently? What about new comers?
We had just finished a project at Rage Games, and the company was about to go bust. We love living in Sheffield, and didn't want to move. We'd also been toying with a small game idea called Star Warrior. This was just for fun, because mainstream dev can be quite frustrating, but it gave us the idea to try and make a full game based on the ideas it contained. That ended up being the prototype for Starscape - our first release. I can't say I would recommend it to anyone who wants to earn a decent living though - it's a long term business for those who want to become self reliant.

What is your design process like? Once you have an idea, how do you breath life into it?
We usually bounce around lots of small ideas at meetings - trying to find something we think is different enough that it would work well as an indie game. More importantly, we are looking for something we want to play. It's not conventional marketing wisdom, but we've found when we try to think about making games that would work well in the indie market it's just a waste of time, they are slowly warped into something we want instead!

Once there's an idea we are excited about, Mark writes up a complete design document - essentially filling in the technical implementation and complete set of rules for the game play. We usually end up with a few of these, but there's always one we are more excited about than any other and that's what we end up making. With both Starscape and Mr. Robot, the design was still extremely fluid until around halfway through the project. I should point out that this is not a good thing and always ends up extending development time - something you really can't afford as an indie.

What sort of a role have online communities played in the creation and sales of your games? How much community building did you have to do, or how much of your audience was already there and organized?
Our forum plays a massive role. Based on feedback, we implemented a lot of changes into Starscape, and the lack of modding support in Starscape, and feedback we got from that prompted us to put a lot of effort into the editor and the support around it such as adventure sharing. I can't really say how much time we spend on the forum - it's just part of the day, and it's somehting we enjoy in any case. Staying in touch with your customers that way is a big benefit for indies.

How closely do you feel your final product mirrors your initial inspiration or design goals?
It's never exactly what you want it to be. Anyone who invests any artistic energy in a project is always striving for more than they can realistically achieve, but I do see both Starscape and Mr. Robot as being far more 'complete' as products than anything I worked on in the mainstream industry. Both games got better review scores than any of the multi-million pound projects I worked on before going indie, so I think it's probably true that they are a bit closer to being a fully realised project.

Your games seem to have a bicameral structure (in Mr. Robot, the puzzle/platformer rooms and the ghost hacking sequences; in Starscape, the shmup and the larger strategic R&D/navigation provided by the Aegis)? Is there a a particular reason for this? What are some of the challenges you face in blending two layers of gameplay so that they meaningfully influence one another?
I think that happened because as we played the games we felt they needed even more to differentiate them. The strategy/research/development aspect of Starscape, and the battle-RPG 'ghost hack' sections of Mr. Robot were both added part way into the project. This is usually a terrible way to design games but I think the reason they worked better than they might of is that both ideas were the result of playing the games extensively in their early states. It wasn't that we were actively seeking an idea to shoe-horn onto the project, but that as we played the games we kept thinking certain design changes would be really cool. Coming up with ideas that way means that you don't have to force them into the design. You still end up adding development time on though.

You've mentioned in other interviews how Mr. Robot had an unusually long development time, how did this help/harm its development? How did you avoid fatigue/burnout on the project?
Well, to be honest, we didn't avoid it. By the end of Mr. Robot we were really exhausted. If it had been a design we weren't interested in from the start I don't even think we'd have completed it. Indies are always short on time - even with Mr. Robot, we could spend another 22 years implementing even more ideas we have. I think that's one of the big appeals of casual games; because the base game play is much simplified, you have a greater chance of putting together a perfect product. Content heavy games with complicated game play like Mr. Robot just aren't possible in a short period of time. That's just how long they take, and you have to keep hammering away to make sure you get the best result you can. Like any non-casual game, the end result could always be improved upon. That said, we did take the conscious decision to extend development time on the project

Does Moonpod sell its games primarily through its web site or other channels? Have you looked into other distribution methods (particularly direct download services like Steam)? Is there a possibility we will ever see a Moonpod game on the Xbox 360 or PS3 (or even, perhaps miraculously, the Wii)?
Almost all our sales are through our own web site although there's a good percentage through retail deals too. We are looking into other distributions sites, but they always have their own problems that compromise your own web site to some extent. We will probably go much further down this route on the future; we just haven't had much time to look into things.
As for the console download services, they are something we really want to get into (check out test images for StarscapeX here: http://www.moonpod.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=3101 ). The problem we have is that we know another PC game will help grow our business, and we'd have a lot of control over it. With the console services, we'd have to concentrate on them, and then we'd have to be competing with much larger teams, and trying to talk to already overburdened service managers. Even then, completing a project doesn't guarantee you will be accepted, and you don't know when your release slot will be. It just makes more sense to do what we are doing and not have to rely on the whims of giant corporations who really couldn't care less about a 2 man team from the North of England who can't even afford to fly over to GDC to shmooze them. If we had another programmer on the team, I think we'd have them on this in an instant though. It's a real shame because, other than Mutant Storm, there's not a lot of interest for me on XBLA. I'd love to see Starscape on there with multiple players to a mothership, or a pad controlled editor for Mr. Robot so you could share levels via the live service.
Consoles suck, I much prefer the freedom of open platforms like the PC.

Can you share any of your future plans with us?
I think our next release 'may' (I hate to jinx it, because development has been really tough) be War Angels. Although that's an external project by Hamish in New Zealand - it is looking good though, but it's had a troubled development. I think Hamish is finally getting things together now though. As for internal dev - sadly, it's the wrong time to ask us as we don't know ourselves yet. We have a couple of prototypes in the works - a 'cute' space exploration adventure, a trading game based around Starscape, a planet management sim and a semi-2D shooter based on line of sight. We are also discussing possible collaboration on a much larger project. Could be any of these or something entirely different. Mr. Robot updates and discussions have stopped us making our mind up for now, but I'd think we would be able to make a decision within a month or so.

If you could play the perfect (or "a perfect") game, what would that game be like for you?
Something we discuss a lot, is an idea we call 'existential gaming'. It's a completely escapist concept, where you can disappear and 'live' in a world. Modern games often strive for this through ever more realistic graphics, but I think you can rely on the player's imagination to greater effect. The key is not to do anything that would break the reality of the world you have created. 'Realism' can be interpreted as nothing being out of place to make your world appear unrealistic. Bad characters, unexplained limitations and out of place events can jar your inner imagination and break the illusion. Sometimes it's better not to put things in, and let the player fill in the blanks. Few games have really pulled it off, but Elite probably got the closest. Ironically, the technical limitations of the time meant it never strived to show things that it couldn't represent well. Later efforts in the same genre have failed because they try to do more but can't come close to simulating something as expansive as the universe properly.

Mark has a design along these lines that I'm so in love with I often dream I'm playing it, but it would probably take 5 or 6 years to develop. :(

As a player, what is your favourite game (or favourite and a few contenders for the top spot) of all time? Why?
Favourite is Elite, for the aforementioned reasons. After that, I'm a fan of Speedball II on the Amiga, which I don't think has ever been surpassed in the violent sports genre - it's a great way to let of steam!

Which was your favorite game to have worked on? Least Favorite?
Favourite game to develop is impossible to choose between Starscape and Mr. Robot. Starscape was less mentally damaging as it had a shorter development time, but I loved working on the robots for Mr. Robot so much. Every artist has to make a big clunky robot once in their career!
My least favourite game to work on was an RPG called Soul Bringer that Gremlin released. It had the worst editor I have ever used, and it was painstaking trying to make anything with it. Luckily I wasn't on it very long - I just put together a few ships and some statues. The game was really popular despite being a little dated- especially in Germany, where I think the voice acting was probably better. It's a real testimony to the artists who worked on the project that they accomplished so much with such a terrible editor, although I think it did send a few of them bonkers.

What are you currently playing?
I've been playing some of the Cortex Command alpha, which is shaping up to be a very interesting game - especially if they can get the AI games right - although I think it's probably better 2 player. Haven't had a lot of time otherwise though. Mark has been playing Maple Story and Puzzle Pirates quite a bit this month.

Which games are you looking forward to?
Little Big Planet and Mario Galaxy are the first mainstream games I've seen in a while that had me genuinely intrigued. I was really looking forward to EyeDentify, but I suspect it might be vapourware now. PomPom have Mutant Storm Empire coming on XBLA, which I can't wait for. Bitblot's Aquaria looks incredible, and so does squashy software's 'Cletus Clay' - I wish I could send them all some extra staff so they could finish quicker.

That's it! Many thanks to Nick Tipping for graciously answering my inane questions, and the rest of the team at Moonpod for making excellent games. If I were slightly less lazy, I'd hyperlink everything that could be linked in this article, but I trust that if you're reading this you're pretty good at using google and mobygames.