Press Play Interview Part Trois

Our interview series with Press Play's Ole Teglbjærg continues.  This time we move a little away from the game and talk about Press Play and how they got started in the game industry.  We'll discuss Max a little bit, but thought it would be good to give you a little bit of the background of the company.  I'd like to thank Ole, once again, for joining us.

I’ve done a couple interviews now about the game, but I thought this time we’d do things a little different. Let’s just talk about Press Play for a bit. Can each of you tell us a little about what you do at Press Play?

Being such a small company we all have a number of different areas of responsibility. I’ll briefly go through the Max line up.

Mikkel is in charge of Max & the Magic Marker. He is the most technically minded of us, so he codes the more heavy stuff, and then he has the general overview of the project.

Lasse Outzen is the lead artist. As such he is responsible for all graphics, but he also has an opinion on everything else in the game.

Asger Strandby is the sound guy. The soundtrack was made along with the rest of Analogik, but all event sounds is his work. On top of that he is also responsible for having them implemented in the game.

Mike Akopyan is our Russian/American game designer. He has been taking puzzles from doodles to final implementation.

Along with him are Asgers little brother Bo Strandby and Kasper Kristensen, who are also designing and implementing levels.

Then there is Stine, who is helping Lasse out with the graphics.
Rune and I are helping out wherever we can.

You’re relatively new in the game development scene, you’re working on your first WiiWare game. How exactly did you guys get started?

In university Mikkel, Rune, and I wrote our final thesis in university together about managing creative processes. When we were almost done we agreed that it would very hard to find a job that would be as fun as making our own company, and so we did. In the beginning we were just the three of us and we made small flash games, but then our clients got bigger and bigger and we needed more people. During the last two years or so we have grown a lot, and now we are making games for consoles.

What sort of insider secrets can you give us about Press Play? Any embarrassing stories you care to share with people?

I wish I could come up with something really funny, but nothing really comes to mind. On the embarrassing side however, I hate to think about the first games we did for clients, when didn’t have an artist on the team. Rune and I did most of the art, and it was horrible – that was embarrassing. Luckily we quickly realized that we needed someone who could actually draw and then we found Lasse.

If you weren’t working at Press Play now, what would you be doing?

I’d probably be working somewhere in advertising or perhaps writing about games. When I started university, that was actually my plan. Then “by accident” I took a programming course and I found it fun. Then I met Rune and Mikkel and a few years later I’m here.

How did each of you get your start in the video game industry?

For most of us, Press Play is the first game company we’ve worked at. We’re pretty much all educated in university, but only Kasper has an actual game design degree from ITU (IT-university in Copenhagen).
So to be honest none of us have any big game experience but we have done a lot of small games in our time with Press Play, and that has given us valuable experience in taking games from the initial idea to the final execution. Of course we lack knowledge in some parts of the process, when making a game in the size of Max. But the experience you get from making small games is valuable even though the size of production is not comparable.

What one thing would you tell people out there who are interested in designing games? What’s the best way they could go about getting their foot in the door?

Make small games and make a lot of them. I see a lot of startups and dedicated game developers with no experience, who get excited about one idea: “I want to make an MMO, with elements from Call of Duty and tactics like in Civilization with a twist of Mario sillyness…” etc. Often they get nowhere, because they try to do too much. I think they would be much better off doing small games and learn from that. When you make a small game, it is a lot easier to get to something other people will also enjoy, and when other people play your game, that’s where you learn what you have done right and what you did wrong. Also when people apply for a job at Press Play, the single most important thing is their track record, and when it doesn’t say you have many years of experience a big company, the next best thing is to show a game or two, which is actually fully functional and fun to play. It shows that you can transform an idea into something real.

What’s the process been like for Press Play in getting Max from an idea in someone’s head to a fully featured game that’s ready to be played?

The process has been very long...
The first prototype was made in Flash, and demonstrated only simple core mechanic. This proved to us, that this was actually something. We then applied for funding through different public game support systems (Danish Film Institute, Nordic Game Program, and EU MediaDesk), and they believed enough in the project to support us.
This chunk of money brought us from having a very rough prototype, to a (somewhat) playable demo we could show to publishers, and so we did.
However the response we got from them was lukewarm. They all liked the concept, one of them also offered a contract, but the terms were too bad. So eventually we decided to selfpublish on WiiWare, and so far this has been a good experience. Now we just need to take the final step and get it out. We can’t wait…

What’s been the most challenging thing you’ve had to do working on Max?

The biggest challenge in making Max has been to make a game with a direction – you go from A to B on each level, while still maintaining room for creativity and open ended gameplay. It’s been a goal all along to preserve a playful atmosphere, where you as a player want to experiment with the game.
Also it has been a great challenge for us to take a game genre (drawing games) which has a tendency to appeal to nerds (like ourselves) and make it accessible for people who normally wouldn’t play such a game.

On the flip side of that, what’s been the most fun thing you’ve been able to do working on Max?

I guess it is the same thing.
But to be more specific it has been a lot of fun coming up with the “gimmicks”. On each level there is a gimmick – a thing which if you in do the right thing to it, will award the player with a secret.

What game systems do you guys play when you’re not working on Max? If we turned your system of choice on, what would we find in there right now?

In the last few weeks we’ve been playing Beatles: Rockband in the office – great fun. Also a few of us have a soft spot for Vector Racer (http://vectorracer.boschloo.net/).

How much work goes into creating a typical level for Max?

That’s really hard to say exactly because they go through so many iterations. But a rough outline on the process looks like this:
First there are the initial doodles of each puzzle. Very quickly we try to get a rough version into the engine. Once in there we can tweak it to match the physics inside the game. Then we play it over and over again, adding details and removing things that are not necessary. Then the puzzles are distributed into the levels to match a decent learning curve. We don’t want people to get stuck too early in the game.
With all the puzzles inside the levels, the refining of the level starts. We want to make a nice flow on each level giving the player the best experience possible.

Did you ever consider putting this on another platform, the drawing mechanic seems like it would work perfectly on DS or did Wii seem like the perfect fit?

We definitely considered the DS as a possible platform, but we eventually we had to focus on one thing, and that became the Wii – with our concept it is the perfect fit. Other platforms are not out of the question either, we just have to do one thing at the time.

Lastly, Are any of you actual Tupac fans?

Yes, we all are ;-)
We can’t wait for him to get back. Only five more years and he is here ;-)

Thank you, yet again Ole, for joining us.  We're looking forward to seeing more about Max and the Magic Marker in the coming weeks until the game is finally released. 
I hope you folks are enjoying this look at Press Play and Max and the Magic Marker.  You can stay tuned for for all the latest information about the game.