Creative Boom managed to peel busy independent games developer and creator of 'The Gun Game' Chaz Carter away from his raft of new projects to talk to us about how he landed in the games industry and what has contributed to his success...
Give us your top 5 qualities that make you a great games designer
I like to think that because I grew up playing a lot of videogames that I can understand what the average player wants from their experience. I think it's important to have a keen eye for what's 'flavour of the month' and be aware of the feedback players like to get while playing. I'll try to find a good balance in the difficulty of my games, and make sure it's pleasing on one's eyeballs.
What motivates your creativity?
I've always been an avid fan of videogames and I was designing them before I even knew it was possible to make money from them. The fact that I get to do what I love and make a living out of it is always a great motivation and in turn helps my creativity.
You designed text based games when you were young? What was your absolute favourite and why?
My fondest memory of playing a text based game was the old 'Zork' adventures. These usually came as demos or sometimes freebies with various PC magazines in the mid-nineties and would always serve as an endless form of fun, allowing the player to type in any action or command and have the computer react to it accordingly - which more often than not lead to some humorous results!
With the text based games that I used to create, I remember spending alot of time coming back to one that I was writing in Microsoft Excel, where the reader would have to go to line 'x' to read the next part of the story, with different options. The storyline was basically non-existent; the player would just walk around Anfield football ground interacting with various groundskeepers and staff, but I vividly remember being pretty excited about writing my own adventure.
Tell us what you mean when you say you hit a turning point last year from being a 'coder' to an artist.
When you start using Flash, it's hard to work with a programmer when you don't even know how to make art in the program, so you kind of have to learn both at the start. Somehow I ended up drifting towards teaching myself the programming side of things and made quite a lot of games with animators. I realised after a while that it may be better to focus on what I enjoy the most and leave programming to people who were much more capable, and so after amassing a respectable back-catalogue of work I didn't have much trouble finding a coder to collaborate with. 'Captain Crash' was the first game I made where I focused soley on the art and didn't dip my hand into the programming.
You've started developing games for the iPhone, what excites you most about this great little piece of kit?
It's a natural progression to go from one platform to another to keep up with the changing game landscape, but the fact that Apple has made the iPhone and iPad so easily accessible to bedroom developers is extremely exciting - we now have this massive marketplace available to us where game concepts are extremely similar to those found in the Flash gaming world, and many ports of Flash games have been extremely successful in the app store. Releasing a Flash based version of an iPhone game can also be priceless in terms of promotion.
What has been your proudest professional moment?
It was pretty cool to see The Gun Game take off as well as it did, and watching the game's fans discuss it and demand a sequel was nice. It's quite cool seeing people making YouTube videos of your game as well, and justifies one reason for getting into making games in the first place - knowing that there's people out there playing and enjoying what you have created.
Tell us more about The Gun Game
The Gun Game came about after I got in contact with Nicolas Picouet. I made some graphics for a game that was intended to be an iPhone gadget, but after sending them to Nick we came up with the concept and finished the whole game in a week flat. The sequel took eight months to release from the date of the first piece of artwork I did for it, however production on the sequel ceased for around four of those months while Nick finished his university work.
What other games do you like to play?
Ironically, I don't really play that many games anymore. Occasionally I'll pick up a game and play it through for a bit, but I definately clock up more hours thinking of and working on new game ideas than I do playing them. However on the occassions I will play a game it's usually an old-school Japanse RPG like Suikoden or Final Fantasy VII. I've been enjoying 'Red Dead Redemption' lately too.
What sound advice would you give budding young game developers?
I'd say that if you have the ambition but you don't have an ounce of experience, then to just dive head first into learning what you need to know and running with it. Use the internet to your advantage - everything you need to know is out there and you can find it in seconds. I'd definately recommend downloading a trial version of Flash from Adobe's website, searching for some tutorials and seeing how you get on with it. You might be an untapped talent.
Can you tell us about any great new projects you have lined up for the coming year?
I've got various iPhone projects on the go at the moment - The Gun Game will be released soon for iPhone along with an HD version of the game for iPad and I'm also working on 'Ninja Drop', which is kind of like Doodle Jump but in reverse. With awesome ninjas. We've got the guys who did the music for the XBOX Live game 'Castle Crashers' making music for it and some professional voice acting lined up too. I've got a physics based puzzle shooter called 'iZZi' in the pre-release stage, a Bazooki spin off set in the 1900's nearing completion and an RTS / RPG hybrid called Azriel in the works; which combines RPG style cutscenses and story with a fresh take on real time strategy. You can probably tell I like to keep myself busy!
