Interview

The guys at Moonpod were kind enough to do a bit of an interview with us, over email. I'm always suprised at how friendly these guys are, and that they didn't immediately call the FBI and have me detained for asking silly questions over and over again. :) Without further ado, the interview!

Real names and ages of all three of you? Who does what around the office? (Assuming you have an office as such.)

Mark Featherstone 69: Game Code/AI programming/eater of smelly foodstuffs.
Darren Griffiths 3 years old: Rendering Code/networking/tools/reuseable module programming/Cleaner
Nick Tipping: 55: Art/website/scripting/Occasional Dish washer

Musical preferences?

Darren: Korn, Slipknot, Marilyn Manson, Machine Head, Kate Bush
Mark: Belgian House & Eurovision collections.
Nick: I'll listen to anything, I even have Betty Boo albums in my collection.


What was the last movie you watched, and what's your favorite movie of all time?

Darren: Freddy Vs Jason. Favourite movie is Fight Club.
Mark: Legends of the Fall, Anything with Brad Pitt in it.
Nick: 'The Eye' by Pang Bros. Favourite film is Raiders Of The Lost Ark, reminds me of my Grandad who took me to see it.


If you could spend an afternoon with any person, past or present, who would it be and why?

Darren: Jennifer Korbin. Do a Google if you're over 18. Failing that I'd like Jedi lessons off Alec Guinness
Mark: I'd like to spend an afternoon with the lead singer of Electric Six and star in his 'Gay Bar' video.
Nick: Sophia Loren when she was young (for obvious reasons)

If Moonpod ruled the cosmos, would you be kind and benevolant dictators, or would you be just too darned busy creating chaos with a dash of unrelenting horror to be kind?

I suspect the world would be a complete mess if we were in charge (so no change there then...)


Does the little man in the moonpod on the logo have a name? (Sorry, but it has to be asked.)

It's actually a lady (although that's hard to tell in the logo you can see her in the 'moonpod' bit at the begiining of Starscape, although it's still hard to tell because she is in a space suit). The ship and character are the very first test models we made when we started out. Originally the character was going to be the Captain of the ship in the game and was going to be called 'Aria'. So I suppose that is her name.


Who's got the coolest thing sitting on their desk, and what what is it?

Darren has Kermit the Frog sat on his desk, which beats Mark's Dalek in our opinion.


What video game character do you most associate yourself with, and why?

Darren: Commander Jameson from Elite
Mark: Lara Croft (Because I have big t...)
Nick: Guybrush Threepwood (I like the taste of rum on my lips)


Tonight's steel cage no holds bared wrestling match features Space Oddesy 2001's HAL vs. That robot thing from Lost in Space. Who's your money on?

The robot from Lost in Space of course, HAL doesn't have limbs. In the grand final Jonny 5 takes the Lost in Space robot out with a well placed tank track to the head.


And now, for the somewhat serious stuff:

Can you give us a little history behind Moonpod and the people behind it? What inspired you guys to start your own game studio?

We all worked together at Gremlin Interactive, then Infogrammes then Rage Games. We had a lot of ideas for games that we knew would be difficult to make in the mainstream industry and had been toying with the idea of setting out on our own for a long time.
Bizarre as it may sound, starting our own game studio was the most stable thing we could do at the time. We didn't want to move from Sheffield, but pretty much every games company here had folded or was about to close. Many people we worked with moved to other studios about the UK only to be out of a job again one year later. So we feel like we have done the right thing.


What city/country are you based out of?

Sheffield in the UK.


What projects have you guys worked on previously as individuals?

We all worked on various games (a full list is on our site) at Gremlin Interactive Ltd, then Infogrames then Rage Games. Our last project at Rage was Gun Metal on xbox.


What do you see as Moonpod's goal/reason for existing?

Boring answer: but we just love making games! It's certainly not for the money in this industry!


There's a great deal of interest out there right in breaking into the gaming industy, any advice for aspiring game developers?

If you don't have a job:
Be prepared to be a nomad.
Enthusiasm and willingness to work in a team is important at interview.
Artists: Don't be a failed traditional artist/illustrator/film effects artists, be a games artist. Portfolio is king.
Programmers: Learn C/C++, learn your data structures, learn lots of math stuff, make a whole bunch of demos, start small and work up, don't try to write Doom3 as your first project.

If you have a job:
Keep an eye on the share price of the company you work for.
Always have an up to date CV (and portfolio if you are an artist) handy.
If the company you work for stops buying trade periodicals as a cost cutting measure GET OUT!!!


If there was one thing in the gaming industry you could change, what would it be?

Less emphasis on big licenses and hyped up games.


Anything you can tell us about future plans/projects?

Yes, our second game is very early in development but I can tell you that it will be an RTS set in the Starscape universe. We were initially worried about entering such a saturated market but we think we have come up with some core thoughts about the genre that will make the gameplay stand out. We will be releasing more information on our site as work progresses this time.


What games are you guys playing around the office? (Other than Starscape I mean. ;)

Wolfenstein ET, Priston Tales, Hide the sausage, Anarchy Online, Total Annihilation.


I've noticed you have an advertisment on Penny Arcade... What made you decide to advertise there?

We just contacted a few sites for advertising as we didn't have much experience of it. We emailed a lot of big gaming sites, and thought we'd try PA too because we are big fans. The PA guys only advertise products they actually like and think their readers will enjoy. So we had to send them a copy of the game first. Luckily they enjoyed it. It was really good of them to help us out.


What inspired you guys to create Starscape? Why did you go into this rather unique genre, rather than a shooter or RPG?

It started out as an experiment to design something that was as simple and addictive as possible and then see how that could be built upon to give more long term depth and enjoyment. People love collecting, building and exploring so it all fell into place quite quickly and logically really.


What was the development time like on Starscape? Did you bring in any extra help or do it completely inhouse?

Starscape took just over 7 months to complete. The full team consisted of the three of us developing the game and a 1 lead tester working full time. Externally we had 1 musician, and 1 web developer to create our payment back end system.

If you are interested, Mark wrote up a full postmortem about what turned out well and what went wrong on the project and posted it on our web board here:

http://www.moonpod.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=209

How are the sales going with Starscape? I find your sales structure interesting, in that most companies don't allow you to download the game and pay a little less for it. What lead to the decision to publish yourselves?

Sales are good but not at the 'driving ferraris' stage yet! We aren't even earning close to what we got in the mainstream industry. It looks like it will be enough to keep us going until we get our second game out though, which is all we hoped for. Publishing the game online ourselves means that we can concentrate on making more games arther than chasing publishers. We have had a few publishers get in touch about vaioous territories which is great, but it's nice not to have to rely on them.


Are you finding that most of your orders are for the download version, or for the retail box?

It can vary quite drastically from day to day, but it averages half and half.


I'm all about the old skool, and as I'm playing Starscape, I find myself comparing it to one of the greatest (in my humble opinion) games of all time: Starcontrol2. Any influances from there?

Yes StarControl2 is one of my all time favourite games, sadly I can't get it to work anymore - damn you windows2000 !! The wierd looking aliens and groovy music were fantastic and multiplayer death matches were always fun.


And of course, here's the tough question: There's TONS of games out there. Why should people buy Starscape? What's going to really draw them in?

Probably we are the wrong people to ask, because we are obviously going to say it offers something different! A lot of our customers have said it was because the game offered an interesting twist on a familiar theme: they could pick up and play without needing to know much but were surprised by many of the gameplay elements that got introduced as they progressed. The great thing about selling online is that our customers can answer this for themselves: just download the demo and see if you like it!


Thanks for your time! Any last words for the readers?

Apart from 'check out www.moonpod.com' of course, just check out the indie games scene in general if you haven't already. Things have come a long way in the past year, there's still a million tetris-a-likes, but if you look around there are some amazing games to be found. After fragtopia, www.diygames.com is a great place to start if you are new to the scene. The more this side of the industry grows, the more you will see improvements in quality and innovation, which can only be a good thing.

Moonpod Offices: (left to right) Darren, Mark and Nick