Podcast Interview: The Development of Vans Sk8 Pool Service, an IPhone Game

Brian, from Fuel Games, talks about developing Vans Sk8 Pool Service

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/vans-skate-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]jQ89B5kVcC0[/wp_youtube]

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at the Game Developers Conference and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Brian: I’m Brian Robbins. I’m the Studio Head for Fuel Games, Denver. We’re an iPhone game development shop based in Denver, Colorado.

Interviewer: Can you talk about the iPhone game you just developed?

Brian: We’re about to release the game called Vans Skate Pool Service. It’s an action sports skateboarding game, very much in line with like an EA Skate or a Tony Hawk skate game, but obviously on the iPhone.

We’ve developed this with the Unity engine. We did it in conjunction with Vans Skateboarding, Vans Skate Shoes, and it actually features two of their premier riders, Bucky Lasek and Omar Hassan.

Interviewer: Since it is in conjunction with that company, is it going to be released for free? Is it more of an adver game, or is it something that is going to be charged?

Brian: It is actually a sports title. We’re developing it with Vans, but it’s not an adver title. The goal for Vans and the goal for us is not to just promote the Vans name. Our goal is to actually create a really cool, compelling skateboarding game. We actually feel that we’ve created one of the first really true action sports games for the iPhone platform. It should be available soon, and it will sell initially for $4.99.

Interviewer: Can you talk about the development process then for making this game? It’s a 3D game in iPhone. How did you do the game play, and what was that process like?

Brian: Right. So, game play, there is sort of two sides to that. There’s the technology side.

Interviewer: Sure.

Brian: And for the technology we are using the Unity 3D engine developed by the Unity guys, based in Denmark. They’re really awesome guys. They’ve built a really solid engine, and we’ve been able to use their engine so it drives a lot of the underlying technology. We use the physics engine that comes built into it, and that process has been fairly straightforward, fairly smooth.

Game play is actually something we’ve had the most fun developing. One of the interesting challenges that we had when we were developing this game was figuring out how do you interact with the game? How do you actually control a skateboarding game?

You don’t have a joy stick. You don’t have a D pad. You don’t have a bunch of buttons to press. So, we experimented with a lot of different styles, a lot of different ways to interact. What we ended up with is this system where you use the accelerometers on the iPhone to navigate around the pool, to tilt away from you, to travel away from you in the pool, to the left, you go to the left.

And when you get up in the air, when you’re jumping in the lifts, you swipe your fingers. So, you can swipe your thumb up or swipe your thumb to the right to do a trick. For more complicated tricks, you use two fingers at a time, and it can touch and hold with two thumbs, and that’s how you do your grinds.

We found that what we hope to be something that’s actually really enjoyable to play and fairly intuitive, about as intuitive as you can get. Certainly, it’s very different than pressing buttons on your Xbox controller. In lieu of buttons, we definitely like the feel that we have for this game.

Interviewer: In terms of play testing, how did the play testing go with this kind of interface accelerometer and using the touch?

Brian: Right. Play testing is a big trick. It was definitely a lot of trying it out. We have five people in our office. A couple of them were working on this game, so some of the earliest play tests were just giving it to the other developers in our office. Kind of typical, hand it to them. Don’t tell them anything. See how they do. See if they can figure it out. Give them a little bit of tricks, a little bit of tips on how to do it. From there, it’s moving on to our wives and girlfriends.

We also did a lot of play testing up in our Ottawa studio. So, our parent company is based in Ottawa. We have about a hundred people up there, so we had a lot more people there that hadn’t played it. Mostly, it’s just getting it in the hands of people.

Our target is gamers, so we weren’t as concerned with people that never played anything before but very concerned with people that are generally used to playing video games and seeing how they were able to interact with it.

It’s just a lot of getting it in front of them, seeing how they play, seeing what happens when they try to use it, seeing where they have problems with it and, hopefully, trying to find a good balance between needing skill to actually play the game and being able so that you can just sit down on your first run and still have a good time and still enjoy what you are doing.

Interviewer: In terms of business models, are you going to release a lite version and then a pay version, or how is that going to go? Or are you going to use their Virtual Goods?

Brian: Initially, there’s just going to be the paid, full version. We’re obviously looking at doing a lite version. I’d love to get the chance to do that. We’ve talked internally about how we would kind of tweak the game so that we’d have a really solid lite version that gives you that core game experience but still not giving away the full game that we’ve developed out.

We’re really, really excited about some of the stuff that you see in the 3OSDX. Initially, the game is going to launch with one pool, two skaters and a few tricks and some unlockable boards and wheels. So, we’d love to be able to have just a minor upgrade and pay 99 cents for a new pool or something like that.

There’s a lot of stuff that we can do there, and I would just love to be able to do it. We’re just kind of getting started on looking at some of that stuff, but absolutely have plans to see how we can take advantage of that stuff.

Interviewer: In terms of promotion, are you going to mainly try to promote it on the App Store? I know it seems like it’s overcrowded, so what other ways are you thinking about promoting it?

Brian: Right. Promotion is obviously a huge problem for the App Store. Somebody was saying earlier this week that there’s 165 apps coming out every single day on average. So, getting the word out is obviously a really big issue.

What we’ve done with this is certainly trying to get whatever App Store promotion we can get, but we’re also looking at ways – and that’s where Vans is really helping us out. That’s what they bring to the table in the partnership. They lent us the Vans brand name. They lent us their riders, and they’re also helping us out a lot with promotion.

They are doing stuff like getting this game out to a lot of the skate mags and the skating press. They’re also having their riders, Bucky and Omar, talking about this when they are on tour and that sort of thing. The Vans side is really kind of… They know how to reach the skate audience, and they know how to reach those types of people.

We’ve worked with them to make sure this was a very authentic – as authentic as you can get – skate experience on the iPhone, and we’re really counting on them to really help us bring the game and make sure that skate audience really knows about the game.

Interviewer: Then, what’s next in store? Are you going to focus more on this game or are you developing other games now?

Brian: We have a bunch of games in progress right now. We are currently working on four other titles. Not all of those are announced, so I can’t talk too much about them. We’ve done a couple of things that tie in with Facebook and using it so you can either use it on Facebook or on the iPhone version.

We’re working on a platform game for a big media company, kind of tied to a children’s title, and then we’ve got a couple internal projects that we’re still working on that we’ll be able to talk about in a few months.

Interviewer: Is there a site where they can find out more about the game or see a demo or something?

Brian: Absolutely, we have all kinds of stuff including a blog and several developer diaries on fuelgames.com.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.

Brian: Thank you.