XBLIndie spoke with the minds behind “Milkstone Studios,” the creators of eight Xbox Live Indie Games including “Inflamous,” “Zombie Football Carnage” and the critically acclaimed “Avatar Ninja!”
Who are the people behind Milkstone Studios?
Milkstone Studios is currently formed by two people:
- Alejandro González, who performs mostly the programming, administrative & PR tasks.
- Miguel Herrero, who is in charge of graphic design, sound & music, tool development, and the website.
Give us some background: Where are you from, what drives you to make games, what did you do before you formed “Milkstone Studios”, what is your favorite food?
We're both located in Asturias, in the north of Spain. We have a little office were the magic is done.
The reason behind making games is mainly because we loved games and computers since childhood, so it's everything, a natural consequence. We studied computer science and started programming games for our own amusement. Shortly after getting the degree, we had the luck to find work in a 3D software development company (not exactly games though), where we learned a lot.
After some years, we saw an opportunity for developing small games on XBLIG and tried with "Little Racers." It was successful enough, so we kept releasing games. After the highly successful "Avatar Ninja!," we decided to switch jobs and dedicate 100% to this.
Our favorite food? "Pizza!" says Alejandro. "I eat journalists for breakfast," says Miguel Herrero!
You guys really pump out games. Is there a secret to your prolific releases?
Over these years we have developed a game engine that we've used in all our games. This engine has improved our development speed and stability of the games. The engine allows us to develop 2D/3D scenes without too much effort, allowing us to focus on the core game mechanics.
Each of your games is completely different from one another. Where do your influences come from especially for games like “Inflamous” and “Zombie Football Carnage”?
We didn't like to stick with a specific genre--that's the reason we've done so different games.
For "Inflamous," we wanted to develop a game where the main goal of the player was crowd control. More or less like you do on our previous game "Wool," but with more violent goals. Instead of saving people, here you have to guide them to a zone outside sprinklers and firemen area, and set them on fire. Also, we wanted to show people running on fire, propagating fire on contact.
For "Zombie Football Carnage," we wanted to do a survival game with successive waves of increasing difficulty, much like "Gears of War 2" horde mode, with a shop to improve your weapons and skills. The zombie inclusion in the name was almost mandatory to ensure some success on the XBLIG market (It's sad, but it's the truth). We did a football setup to help differentiate a bit from other zombie games. It's also the only game in which we used 2D sprites on a 3D perspective, an uncommon feature on XBLIG or other Xbox games.
Were you concerned about how people would react to the mature content in “Inflamous”?
To tell the truth, it caught us by surprise. We never thought of it as a mass murdering game. On many games you can set enemies on fire with a flamethrower and nobody complains. We were in the verge of being failed for this. In that case we would just paint the victims' skin green and say they were zombies, and it would have passed then.
Could you explain how you approach your development cycle?
We spend a few days thinking on possible ideas and "documenting" (that is, playing other games.) We also have a list of ideas so we can choose one if nothing comes to our mind. Once chosen, we write a small game design document and start working on a playable prototype with very basic gameplay and graphics. It usually takes one week (If it takes more than that, probably the full game will take too much development time, so we stop it and choose another idea). After that, we just keep adding the features intended and the game graphics/sounds. Finally we make the game GUI, awards, etc.
When planning new games what do you do to try and ensure a unique and fun experience?
We try to see the game in our heads. We're experienced gamers so we more or less know what will work and what will not just by thinking about it. That is usually enough to select an idea and start working on the prototype. Once the prototype is playable, we can check if the idea works as expected or not. We more or less have a success rate of 60%.
How long are your games typically in development?
We've imposed ourselves a maximum development time of one month, unless we see the extra time will be worth it. XBLIG is a small platform, it's really hard to sell 10,000-plus units at $1, so more than one month in development will probably be a bad idea.
Can you give us some examples of notable challenges you had to overcome?
The biggest challenge has been creating the studio and switching to full-time jobs. Now we have more time to develop and we're more relaxed at work, but other issues have arisen. Now we have far more expenses than before and need a constant cash flow.
From a technical point the biggest challenge right now is to keep having good game ideas (both from the gamer side and the economic side) at a monthly rate.
Are you seeing much in the way of returns for your games? Do you get enough back from the Xbox Live Marketplace to fund development?
Right now yes, thanks to "Avatar Ninja!," which is still our best-selling game each day. Our most recent games have been a mild success. Only one of them is going to fully cover development costs. But we don't want to rely on "Avatar Ninja!" forever.
Have you considered sequels or revisiting games you have completed?
Always. We have planned developing some sequels to our best-selling games during this year, but it will take some time. Most of them won't be direct sequels and will probably change the core gameplay. But we want to develop new ideas as well. Even on full-time there's not enough time to do all the things we want to do.
Is there anything you can say about what's next? What can we expect to see from you in the future?
We've just finished a game for Windows Phone and it's being tested by Microsoft right now. It should come out someday this week. Other than that, we're going to start development on a game for the "Dream Build Play" contest. Something bigger than our previous games. But we haven't found an incredible idea so we don't think it will win anything. Anyways it will be a good game.
Is there anything you would like to say in closing to developers, gamers or fans?
Thank you for reading this interview, and I recommend you to try all our eight games if you haven't yet. There's a high chance you'll like some of them. After that remember to rate them properly in the Marketplace.
No comments:
Post a Comment