Alexander Monney: Splosion Man kicked off the Summer of Arcade for the Xbox 360 this year and The Maw came out early in 2009. Why are you guys focusing on Xbox Live Arcade titles rather than retail releases?
Michael Wilford: Well when we started as a company in 2006 we started small and we wanted to be able to make high quality games and own our own original IP, like stuff that we came up with. Really the only way that we could see to do that was to do downloadable games. At the time, the Xbox 360 just came out and Xbox Live Arcade was this new awesome thing that any developers could really get in and make their own thing. It was just a natural fit and we went after it. The Maw was the first game that we got the green light for and we love it. These titles are downloadable, which cuts out the middle man between us and the manufacturers releasing the games. We just get a lot of creative control and it’s really fun.
AM: Are you specifically working on only Xbox Live or is their possibility of bring some of these titles to other services, such as PlayStation Network.
MW: We’re definitely thinking about it. You know we’re not necessarily one hundred percent exclusive to Microsoft. It’s just that we love working with Xbox. We do talk to everybody and we’re going to go wherever it makes sense. So far, it has made a lot of sense to work with Microsoft.
AM: Specifically for ‘Splosion Man, where did the humor come from? I was playing the game and I have to say that some of the things are freaking hilarious. Him just running around with his arms spread like an airplane cracks me up every time.
MW: The idea started with this brainstorm meeting. We just bought pizza for everyone and sat around thinking, “man what would be a fun game to work on?” The idea started out with gamers walked to a room and solving 2-D puzzles to find their way to the exit. That’s all the game is. After, we thought how do you make this game new, fresh, funny and awesome? Everyone at the company started throwing out all these wacky ideas. We thought of this guy made out of ‘splosions and every time that you saw a scientist you had to run up to him and hug him. When you would try to hug him, he would blow up and meat goes everywhere. It just didn’t really make much sense.
AM: Yeah, where did the meat come from? Like why meat?
MW: I don’t know…it was just funny *laughs*. Someone mentioned it and everyone was rolling on the floor laughing for about ten minutes. We then knew that it had to be part of the game. That’s really the story of the whole game because we did that a lot until we had a pitch. We thought man should we take this to publishers…are they going to take us seriously? ‘Splosion Man, I don’t know. We did and everyone loved it. Next thing we know we were working on ‘Splosion Man and everyone on the team was having so much fun because it was an idea that we all came up with together. We all felt like we really owned it. Everyone was throwing in crazy ideas. Our audio guy, Chainsaw, was awesome and came up with the Donut Song.
AM: Oh man that song was hilarious.
MW: Yeah, he came up to me and asked, “Hey man. Can I make up a song about donuts for the game? It will be really funny and we can put it in there.” I just said, “Yeah man go for it.” And you know, it just turned out hilarious.
AM: How many people are in the company?
MW: The whole company of Twisted Pixel is 15 people and then we do a lot of outsourcing for art and we work with music composers. We used two different composers, one for the single player and another for multiplayer, giving the levels a different feel. The art outsourcing is for models and textures and stuff like that.
AM: Are you guys planning any DLC for ‘Splosion Man?
MW: Nothing to announce yet. We’re thinking about it. If we do it, it’s going to be something special, not just others levels or whatever. It’ll be something with a cool twist to it.
AM: Sort of adding more gameplay aspects to it?
MW: I don’t know. We just want to exceed that standard expectation.
AM: So, how hard is it to record that ending video without laughing? I finished the game and it was such a relief because it was a difficult game, but that ending totally made up for it.
MW: Yeah, we were talking about doing that video for a long time and we weren’t sure if we were ever going to do it. Finally, one day towards the end of the project, we passed out costumes to the team and went out to the backyard of our office. We just started running around like idiots recording it. After, we gave it to our buddy at SLACKCiRCUS to do all the cool effects and it turned out great. It’s purposefully cheesy, which was just the way we wanted it. It was just a lot of fun…we have a lot of fun at work.
AM: Was the game created knowing that it would be very difficult? I tell my friends that it is easy to play, but difficult to master.
MW: Yes, I would say that with all of our games we try make a broad appeal. With The Maw we maybe went on the easy side, but it was still something attractive to some hardcore gamers with all the production value and characters. It looked something like a good animated movie. However, with ‘Splosion Man, we were looking to make something for the hardcore gamers that was a little more challenging. But, you still have the way of the coward, so everyone can get through the game. You can still see the enemies, bosses and levels. It was our different take on creating that broad appeal.
AM: Cool, so you guys are going to be the first ones to release the avatar awards right? What do you feel are the benefits for the players with these awards?
MW: Absolutely, every time we start up a new game we call up Microsoft and ask, “what is the most amount of stuff that we can give away for free?” This time around, they said, “hey if you are lucky it might time out just right you might be able to take advantage of these avatar awards.” We just said, “hell yeah sign us up.” When we began the project, we just started planning all these items and everything worked out. We just love giving away free stuff. I mean, it doesn’t really cost us much to create those assests and make them available.
AM: Twisted Pixel seems to be very focused on the fans when creating games.
MW: We like to be. I think we could do a little bit better job on community managing. We don’t really have a forum on our web site, so we need to work on that. We are actually planning on do that since we released our two games and we’re announcing a new game way early. We’re planning a gradual build up of information. It’s going to be a while for the game to release, but we want to give information out gradually.
AM: Let’s talk about that now. So you just release the teaser trailer for Comic Jumper. What kind of gameplay should we be expecting in that?
MW: For the most part, what you see if what you get. We’re not really talking about the gameplay right now or anything like that. There is a little bit of a mockup of what the gameplay is going to look like. That is part of the game. You have the running, shooting and jumping gameplay. We’re really not getting into that right now.
AM: So ‘Splosion Man reference previous titles. Is that being continued in Comic Jumper?
MW: You know that’s a good question. We haven’t talked about that. It made a lot of sense in ‘Splosion Man and The Maw. ‘Splosion Man was a distant prequel to The Maw. You are actually visiting the facility where Maw was perhaps created. Later in the distant future, Frank goes on an adventure with him. But, we don’t know about Comic Jumper yet. We don’t know yet.
AM: Are you thinking about doing a retail release anytime soon instead of the XBLA anytime soon?
MW: We haven’t announced the platform for Comic Jumper. That will be coming in the not too distant future. We are currently talking about to publishers and just long term, yeah we are interested in retail. We thinking the downloadable space is growing very quickly. The types of games you are seeing now are much more grander in scope, like Shadow Complex. The Maw, we think, is one of the first games that really pushed the retail experience on downloadable games, at least that’s what we think. With ‘Splosion Man, we are getting more and more gamers. Like Battlefield, they are building a huge community on a downloadable game. I think we are considering doing retail stuff down the road, but for now we are just sticking to downloadable games.
AM: Sounds good. Thank for the interview, I really appreciate. We’re looking forward to more information about Comic Jumper.
MW: Yeah no problem. Glad you stopped by.
~yetweallfalldown
Michael Wilford: Well when we started as a company in 2006 we started small and we wanted to be able to make high quality games and own our own original IP, like stuff that we came up with. Really the only way that we could see to do that was to do downloadable games. At the time, the Xbox 360 just came out and Xbox Live Arcade was this new awesome thing that any developers could really get in and make their own thing. It was just a natural fit and we went after it. The Maw was the first game that we got the green light for and we love it. These titles are downloadable, which cuts out the middle man between us and the manufacturers releasing the games. We just get a lot of creative control and it’s really fun.
AM: Are you specifically working on only Xbox Live or is their possibility of bring some of these titles to other services, such as PlayStation Network.
MW: We’re definitely thinking about it. You know we’re not necessarily one hundred percent exclusive to Microsoft. It’s just that we love working with Xbox. We do talk to everybody and we’re going to go wherever it makes sense. So far, it has made a lot of sense to work with Microsoft.
AM: Specifically for ‘Splosion Man, where did the humor come from? I was playing the game and I have to say that some of the things are freaking hilarious. Him just running around with his arms spread like an airplane cracks me up every time.
MW: The idea started with this brainstorm meeting. We just bought pizza for everyone and sat around thinking, “man what would be a fun game to work on?” The idea started out with gamers walked to a room and solving 2-D puzzles to find their way to the exit. That’s all the game is. After, we thought how do you make this game new, fresh, funny and awesome? Everyone at the company started throwing out all these wacky ideas. We thought of this guy made out of ‘splosions and every time that you saw a scientist you had to run up to him and hug him. When you would try to hug him, he would blow up and meat goes everywhere. It just didn’t really make much sense.
AM: Yeah, where did the meat come from? Like why meat?
MW: I don’t know…it was just funny *laughs*. Someone mentioned it and everyone was rolling on the floor laughing for about ten minutes. We then knew that it had to be part of the game. That’s really the story of the whole game because we did that a lot until we had a pitch. We thought man should we take this to publishers…are they going to take us seriously? ‘Splosion Man, I don’t know. We did and everyone loved it. Next thing we know we were working on ‘Splosion Man and everyone on the team was having so much fun because it was an idea that we all came up with together. We all felt like we really owned it. Everyone was throwing in crazy ideas. Our audio guy, Chainsaw, was awesome and came up with the Donut Song.
AM: Oh man that song was hilarious.
MW: Yeah, he came up to me and asked, “Hey man. Can I make up a song about donuts for the game? It will be really funny and we can put it in there.” I just said, “Yeah man go for it.” And you know, it just turned out hilarious.
AM: How many people are in the company?
MW: The whole company of Twisted Pixel is 15 people and then we do a lot of outsourcing for art and we work with music composers. We used two different composers, one for the single player and another for multiplayer, giving the levels a different feel. The art outsourcing is for models and textures and stuff like that.
AM: Are you guys planning any DLC for ‘Splosion Man?
MW: Nothing to announce yet. We’re thinking about it. If we do it, it’s going to be something special, not just others levels or whatever. It’ll be something with a cool twist to it.
AM: Sort of adding more gameplay aspects to it?
MW: I don’t know. We just want to exceed that standard expectation.
AM: So, how hard is it to record that ending video without laughing? I finished the game and it was such a relief because it was a difficult game, but that ending totally made up for it.
MW: Yeah, we were talking about doing that video for a long time and we weren’t sure if we were ever going to do it. Finally, one day towards the end of the project, we passed out costumes to the team and went out to the backyard of our office. We just started running around like idiots recording it. After, we gave it to our buddy at SLACKCiRCUS to do all the cool effects and it turned out great. It’s purposefully cheesy, which was just the way we wanted it. It was just a lot of fun…we have a lot of fun at work.
AM: Was the game created knowing that it would be very difficult? I tell my friends that it is easy to play, but difficult to master.
MW: Yes, I would say that with all of our games we try make a broad appeal. With The Maw we maybe went on the easy side, but it was still something attractive to some hardcore gamers with all the production value and characters. It looked something like a good animated movie. However, with ‘Splosion Man, we were looking to make something for the hardcore gamers that was a little more challenging. But, you still have the way of the coward, so everyone can get through the game. You can still see the enemies, bosses and levels. It was our different take on creating that broad appeal.
AM: Cool, so you guys are going to be the first ones to release the avatar awards right? What do you feel are the benefits for the players with these awards?
MW: Absolutely, every time we start up a new game we call up Microsoft and ask, “what is the most amount of stuff that we can give away for free?” This time around, they said, “hey if you are lucky it might time out just right you might be able to take advantage of these avatar awards.” We just said, “hell yeah sign us up.” When we began the project, we just started planning all these items and everything worked out. We just love giving away free stuff. I mean, it doesn’t really cost us much to create those assests and make them available.
AM: Twisted Pixel seems to be very focused on the fans when creating games.
MW: We like to be. I think we could do a little bit better job on community managing. We don’t really have a forum on our web site, so we need to work on that. We are actually planning on do that since we released our two games and we’re announcing a new game way early. We’re planning a gradual build up of information. It’s going to be a while for the game to release, but we want to give information out gradually.
AM: Let’s talk about that now. So you just release the teaser trailer for Comic Jumper. What kind of gameplay should we be expecting in that?
MW: For the most part, what you see if what you get. We’re not really talking about the gameplay right now or anything like that. There is a little bit of a mockup of what the gameplay is going to look like. That is part of the game. You have the running, shooting and jumping gameplay. We’re really not getting into that right now.
AM: So ‘Splosion Man reference previous titles. Is that being continued in Comic Jumper?
MW: You know that’s a good question. We haven’t talked about that. It made a lot of sense in ‘Splosion Man and The Maw. ‘Splosion Man was a distant prequel to The Maw. You are actually visiting the facility where Maw was perhaps created. Later in the distant future, Frank goes on an adventure with him. But, we don’t know about Comic Jumper yet. We don’t know yet.
AM: Are you thinking about doing a retail release anytime soon instead of the XBLA anytime soon?
MW: We haven’t announced the platform for Comic Jumper. That will be coming in the not too distant future. We are currently talking about to publishers and just long term, yeah we are interested in retail. We thinking the downloadable space is growing very quickly. The types of games you are seeing now are much more grander in scope, like Shadow Complex. The Maw, we think, is one of the first games that really pushed the retail experience on downloadable games, at least that’s what we think. With ‘Splosion Man, we are getting more and more gamers. Like Battlefield, they are building a huge community on a downloadable game. I think we are considering doing retail stuff down the road, but for now we are just sticking to downloadable games.
AM: Sounds good. Thank for the interview, I really appreciate. We’re looking forward to more information about Comic Jumper.
MW: Yeah no problem. Glad you stopped by.
~yetweallfalldown