In any case, I was lucky enough on the very last day during the very last minutes of the expo floor of GDC this year to talk to Rowan Parker about a few things. We were somewhat rushed, and being my first interview of anybody ever, I was a bit flustered. Still, I am glad that I got the chance to talk and ask a few questions.
-------------------------------------
So, 4am. Definitely less of a gamey
sort of game, doesn't have a lot of the same trappings, it's much
more of a creative outlet. Was that really what you wanted to do when
you started making it?
RP- Yeah, there's no score, there's no
points, no goal or high score, which means it's freeform music
creation, so, we wanted to craft an experience which can let regular
people feel what it's like to be a DJ, bottle the essence of what
DJing is and then let them manipulate that soundscape with the
Playstation Move, so, yeah, we were more focused on capturing the
feeling or experience than making levels.
So, as far as "capturing the
essence of a DJ", what does that mean to you? Is it having it
all in your hands, or seeing and hearing the music.
RP- It's something much more meta than
that. The DJ doesn't just DJ in a bubble, isolated, by himself. He or
she is a performer, reads the room and the crowd, and needs to be
playing to an audience, which is why 4am is always broadcasting live
to real people on PSN so you have a real audience who are feeding
back into your performance and they can make it quite awkward for you
to quit because you feel like you are letting real people down. I
think that's very core, very key to that DJing aspect. Of course, you
have all the cool filters and sound samples and tracks and stuff at
your fingertips as well but it's a social performance art as well,
it's not just isolated.
With the visualizers, were there any
particular notes you wanted to hit, things you wanted to have in the
visualizer?
RP- All of the music is done by Baiyon, he did all of the music for Pixeljunk Eden as well. He has very
minimal house, like, electrohouse style, and he had some ideas as
well for what kind of visuals he would like to match his music to. He
helped give us some ideas for the style, so it's all a very
Baiyon-esque deal, very minimalist and chill-out, and that kind of
feel.
So coming from this to Pixeljunk Inc,
at least from the brief setup you have given me previously and what
is on your website, is slightly more gamey by comparison but
certainly not a standard product. Coming from 4am to that, what kinds
of things are you trying to do with Inc.?
RP- Inc. is a game that we all wanted
to play, and no-one else was making it, so we started making it. It
was started at a conversation at lunchtime. We were saying, "hey,
wouldn't you want to play a game like this where you were making a
massive soup empire, and, like, Incredible Machine Terraria Minecraft
base, and defending it, and all these things. We kept talking about
this dream game where we had all these things from other places, and
put them into one game, and we were kinda waiting, and no-one else
was making and, and we said, "wait, hold on, we'll just make
it". So one of the programmers took his Christmas Holidays off
and his personal leave days and weekends and lunchtimes, and he made
the first prototype of what we were all designing, and so artists
started drawing art and I started coming up with more ideas and it
just kind of happened naturally. That's how Pixeljunk games are
usually born, and Inc. was that way.
What kind of size team are we
talking about with Inc.? Is it pretty small?
RP- Pixeljunk Inc. is three people.
(chuckle). We are making a ridiculously ambitious game, and with the
smallest possible team. It's just me, I'm the lead designer, and we
have one artist and one programmer. So its a bare bones skeleton
operation.
For a bare bones skeleton operation
though, especially off of this particular Indie conference and with
Journey sweeping the GD Choice awards, It feels like the time to be
in those sorts of projects. Are you pretty excited for the product
you are hoping to put out?
RP- I wasn't really thinking about the
conference. 4am got nominated for an IGF award, but while I've been
here everybody has just been asking about Inc. and when's the next
game coming and can we get cards. It's, we just wanna make the game
that is in our heads and once that's done we are just going to go
into a cave for three months and just play it, so we will disappear,
which hopefully means we have the mod support by then because we
wanna do, because it's on Steam we want to support Steam Workshop and
provide modding support, so by the time we go into the cave everyone
else will be making things for it.
This all sounds really interesting,
and I don't want to take up too much more of your time, so last quick
question: Which IGF game caught your eye the most? Which one-
RP- Super Hexagon, Super Hexagon, Super
Hexagon.
Super Hexagon? Super Hexagon.
RP- Yep, Super Hexagon holy crap that
game is awesome, yeah, just... Goddammit Super Hexagon.
Okay, actual last question. One
thing I have been hearing, especially when I asked Terry Cavenagh was
the idea of Player Respect, of respecting the player, and with 4am I
can see some of that in just giving the player the tools and just
letting them do their own thing. What does it mean to respect the
player in your mind, with your design philosophy?
RP- With 4am in particular it means we
are not an orthodox rhythm game. An orthodox rhythm game like Dance
Dance Revolution, or Guitar Hero is a game that forces the player to
march to its step. Play these beats, when I tell you, and you are a
slave to the game. 4am is the complete opposite of that
philosophically. 4am is a blank canvas, and the player tells the game
what to do. The player has all of the power, and all of the control,
which is why it's more of a digital instrument than it is like a game
even. It doesn't ask anything of you it does whatever you tell it.
So, yeah, with a high skill ceiling that's the most respect that I
can give to a player.
Cool. Thank you very much for your
time.
RP- No worries.
No comments:
Post a Comment