Battleship will be in theaters in just about a week and leading up to the movie Coke Zero has launched Battle for Everything, which is a tower defense game that you can play for free and earn rewards. We had a chance to chat with the GTTV host about Battleship, Battle for Everything and even classic gaming. Check out our video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Battle For Everything is a tower defense game packed with unique twists and alien battles by sea, land and air to save planet Earth. It was created by Coke Zero as part of its sponsorship of Battleship, which hits theaters May 18. Gamers can use My Coke Rewards points to access additional levels and upgrade weapons for the chance to win exclusive prizes, including Coke Zero coupons, movie tickets, concert tickets, dream vacations and more. My Coke Rewards points can be found on 12-, 16- and 20-ounce bottles, fridge packs and 24-packs of Coke Zero and other Coca-Cola products.

Check out Amanda’s Gamer Profile.

You can view the latest Battleship trailer and play the tower defense game at Battle for Everything dot com.

A few weeks ago, we showed you the awesome indie game, 8-Bit MMO. Well I had a chance to talk with Robby Zinchak, the brilliant mind behind 8-Bit MMO about the game and the development process.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So in your words describe your game?

8BitMMO is a construction sandbox game, which essentially means you can build anything you want in a massive, persistent, retro-styled world.

What made you go the 8-bit route?

Nostalgia!  I grew up on 8bit & 16bit games.  I explored every nook and cranny of them.  It was at that age where the line between reality and fantasy hadn’t 100% cemented yet, and it felt like those worlds were infinite.  Those places felt real, like you could move in and become a part of them.  With 8BitMMO, I’ve tried to capture that feeling from my childhood and create a 8bit world where you really can become a character in the game.

Can you tell us about the character customization and being able to change so many things?

The project is an ongoing work in progress, and character customization is one of the areas that is in the works.  I just rolled out the first few items in character customization, including being able to change your color, or to choose a non-human race to play.  The first non-human race is the Zombie, which you can use to infect other players with Zombieism!  I’m also planning additional non-human races, as well as wearable clothing, for the near future.

Many people know the term “Sandbox” because of the game Minecraft can you tell us about the “Sandbox” aspect of your game?

In the game you’re free to build constructions of whatever you want.  Many players build houses, castles, even whole cities.  Often times players come up with new and interesting ideas – like building pvp arenas, or gauntlet courses.  It all takes place in one massive, persistent world.  Even just wandering around and checking out all the cool creations can be a lot of fun.

Now was this game made completely by you, can you tell us about the process and experience of making the game?

I started making the game around 2001, and have restarted development several times.  Most of the intervening time has been just me working on it on & off in my spare time, but late last year I left my day job to work on the project full time.  Before last year, I had experimented with a lot of different visual styles and engines, before settling on the current setup.  I like that it can now be played in browser, because it means many more players are willing to try the game since they don’t have to install anything.

Having the freedom to create and destroy is awesome in a world of MMO’s that make you march in line with everyone else. However, are you worried people can cause trouble in the game  as well with such freedom?

Fortunately, the town system greatly limits troublemaking.  When players create a town, they effectively own the surrounding area, and it cannot be tampered with.  The player can allow specific friends to build in their town, but otherwise they are safe from griefing.

With a lot of free to play MMO’s there is often al carte items that you can purchase that gives you an advantage. It is good to see there is no money advantage with this game. Did you consider adding special items that you could pay real money for?

There are several purchase-only items in-game, but they don’t give you any combative advantage over other players.  Players are able to enjoy the game without having to purchase anything — of course, I hope they will consider a purchase if they want to support development

Can you tell us about the NPC’s or Non Player Characters?

There are several NPCs in-game that will teach you the basics of how to play, or give you quests.  RobbyZ will teach you the basics of how to play.  Draco the Architect is a dragon who likes to build, and he’ll teach you how to use the construction system by giving you various quests.  Tutorial Zombie is a mercenary of sorts, and he’ll give you contracts to go out and kill the nefarious LawyerCats that plague the wilderness.  I am planning additional monsters & quest NPCs in future.

I asked earlier about giving people freedom and the possibility of griefing, however, there would be social consequences in the game if that happened correct?

Yes.  Griefers generally don’t have much success in their trolling, and they are generally shunned away from towns.  So it behooves players to be nice to others, or they’ll likely be playing alone.

Can you tell us about your video gaming background?

I’ve been in the industry for around six years now.  I got my start at Midway, then moved to Capcom, and then Microsoft.  I enjoyed working on some great titles with very talented folks while I was in the traditional industry, but I’m excited to now be a full-time indie.  It’s fantastic to be able to work on my own vision and interact directly with fans.

To play 8BitMMO, visit http://8BitMMO.net

Zoltan Gonda, and Csaba Foris, both well known for the legendary Commodore 64 RPG “Newcomer™,” have teamed up once again to bring PC gamers another RPG which brings back the story and gameplay that won’t let you sleep until dawn. Supported by Lenore Hoehl, the team has already produced the full story in a development environment, including a crafting system, character development sytem and many more. Currently the team is at the funding stage via Kickstarter to move the project further on with the graphics, music and sound effects, voice-overs, and combat system.

Tortured Hearts™: Or, How I Saved the Universe. Again. is an epicly epic, satirical RPG, dedicated to the proposition that most RPGs take themselves far too seriously. Since almost every imaginable plot scenario and character has already been used and overused to the point that cliches are unavoidable, Tortured Hearts™ instead revels in pointing out that the life of adventurers is one endless heroic cliche, some sort of existential trap created by the gods of RPG worlds.

Tortured Hearts™ is set in the unique custom world of Eupherea, where things are different. For example, the gnome race hasn’t yet been written out of the Big Picture. Celestial bureaucracy, which functions much like ordinary mortal bureaucracy, has a hidden hand in the affairs of things and especially in the lives of adventurers.

The PC is one of many seasoned and stereotypical adventurers seeking their fortune. But it bothers the PC to be a stereotype; he doesn’t want to be identified as another loot jerk. He’s jaded by the same old dungeons and fetching quests. Yet, wherever he turns, there are still the inevitable rats to kill, puzzles to solve, errands to run. He seeks thrills, but the thrill is gone. His own quest is to get a thrill out of life again.

Some quick facts about the game:

-          About 100-150 hours of gameplay.

-          200 areas

-          Over 500 NPCs / Over 100 quests

-          Single player game, with 8 possible companions.

-          Six playable races: human, elf, half-orc, halfling, dwarf, and gnome.

-          Character skills and abilities can be developed freely. There are no predetermined classes with built-in limitations, only trends which you can follow or not. A similar system was used in Newcomer™, now perfected.

-          Combat will be turn-based

-          Highly replayable: Because many NPC interactions involve choices, there are many possible ways to get through the world.

-          Graphics: 2D/3D style compareable to animated cartoons.

-          A crafting system which will create saleable items and buffs.

-          A variety of companions who contribute in an interactive way with the PC, the NPCs and each other

Obsolete Gamer reported Jorn Asche had a sit down with the team behind Tortured Hearts.

Please introduce yourselves a bit to our readers, not everyone might be familiar with the projects you’ve been in so far:

Zoltan Gonda – Lead designer and writer—has been making games since 1990. An early project was Newcomer(TM) for Commodore 64, which is still around. He worked for Digital Reality and Stormregion, game developers in Hungary, on several strategy games. He made two of the top community mods for NWN 1, Tortured Hearts I and Tortured Hearts II.

Lenore Hoehl – Writer and producer – Worked with Intension Games of Hungary and later with Zoltan Gonda to make several casual games. Lenore also worked with Zoltan Gonda on the NWN modules.

So there are lots of RPG’s out there. What are the main aspects of Tortured Hearts that makes it different from all the other games out there?

It is more intricate in its choices and plot progression. You cannot do all the quests in one play through, for instance. You will not be able to see all the responses of any one group of henchmen. There are multiple outcomes to quests as well as to the game as a whole. The art and the world are unusual and detailed.

Which setting did you choose for your game? Will it be more a fantasy setting or can we even expect elements of the real world in the game?

The game starts in a fantasy world of Eupherea and progresses to more fantastic locales. But the behavior of people individually and socially is understandable and like behavior everywhere; for instance greed, and stupidity, and hope are the same and expressed as they are in the real world.

The subtitle of the game is “Or how I saved the universe. Again.” Which role does the main character and his companions play in the game and are there several different endings of the game?

The protagonist and his companions are all very experienced and professional adventurers. They have “saved the Universe” any number of times because that’s what heroes do. Yes, there are several endings.

Does the world of Tortured Hearts “live”? Do people have a special time frame when they go to work, sleep or anything of that sort?

No, we tried that in the 1^st NWN mod and it was too hard for all but the most dedicated hardcore player. However, the NPCs are walking around, talking and interacting with each other and objects, so areas look alive. Sometimes the NPCs will be “out” for the PC until a condition is set.

On the Kickstarter page a turn-based combat system has been announced. Can you give us some details? Will there be boss-fights as well?

Of course there will be boss fights. Initiative in fights depends mostly on stats with a small random factor. The party grouping can be controlled by the player and their inventory accessed during combat. There are personal traits called Tactical traits which are taken on creation, including the companions, and these are either offensive or defensive, so a different party group will have a different mix of these feat-like qualities and this will make combat a little different in every game. In combat, the player can let the companions fight through AI or control them individually.

What will the character system look like? Will it be depend upon experience points or will there be event trainers in the game who you’ll need to progress further?

Characters will have skills and abilities and one tactical trait. The skills and abilities are dependent on experience points, abilities costing more than skills. Crafting depends on skills. One craft, Junk Art, requires an NPC to complete.

Will there be also a possibility to automate the character development for all those who would like to focus more on the fights and the story of the game instead of character development?

It could be done, although it seems like it would crippling rather than helpful. We can do anything on popular demand though.

How many main quests can be solved and how many sidequests are in the game? How long will it take to complete the game?

There’s really only one main quest. There are more than 100 side quests, most of them optional. It will probably take a minimum of 30 hours to do the essential side quests that advance the plot, and over 100 hours to do as many as possible (some will be mutually exclusive, see #2)

How far has the game been already developed? What needs to be done next?

The story has been worked out. The areas have been laid out and the connections between them mapped and transitions planned. Simple convo cut scenes have been programmed. The conversations between the PC and NPCs, between NPCs, between companions have all been done and programmed. The quests have been written and programmed. Characters and items have been created. We are now working on the GUI. Next we will model the areas and import them to the game engine, then put in the placeable items and NPCs.

How much time did you invest in the project?

At least 6000 man hours over four years.

How can the costs for such a project be calculated?

By taking the jobs to be done times the cost of man hours to do them. This project will take more than 10 people working full time for at least eighteen months.

Can you give us a example of a similar project so we can relate the costs? I think many people might be curious first when they read at Kickstarter that you’d like to have $300,000.

Games are like movies, the cost can be very high for a studio. I don’t know how to answer that except to say that it’s often in the millions for a big game, and this might be underfunded at $300,000. On Kickstarter, you should also remember that all the money will come in a lump sum which in the US would be subject to between 25% – 30% tax if not offset by the end of the year; if it weren’t offset the total would be cut by that much, so collecting from Kickstarter at the end of your fiscal year could be a big, even ruinous, problem.

Also Kickstarter and Amazon take a 5% cut of the pledged amount, each, so there’s another $30,000 gone. Also, Kickstarter requires rewards, and pledgers like tangible rewards, this is a big cost to the developer too. Even if we only gave away digital rewards, like a game, at a low price, it would cut into our future market by giving the greatest fans, the ones most likely to buy it, a special low rate.

What will you do if you don’t get the money in the time between?

We are going to very thriftily use what money we have from other work to make a playable demo, which we think will convince people to support the project.

Which versions of the game will be available? Are there plans for a special edition with printed map etc. ?

At the moment we are only planning for a digital release, due to the cost of tangible boxes and maps. In a future Kickstarter we plan to have things like maps as digital rewards; unless we get overfunded, tangible maps and books would be a huge expense. We might sell them from our website.

Are there special races that can be played and can you tell us somehing about the way it changes the gameplay?

The races are very typical: human, elf, dwarf, gnome, halfling, half-orc. No half-elves. The different races start with different attribute stats as in D&D. After that they can develop by XP in whatever way the player desires.

You can few their website here.

Also check out their Facebook page.

Here is a link to their Kickstater page.

How did the idea come about to create video game trading cards?

Walter: The Twin Galaxies Video Game Trading Card Set was originally created to celebrate Twin Galaxies’ 30th Anniversary. But the vision for the card set soon expanded to encompass the history of the worldwide video game industry, with cards created to honor the iconic industry pioneers, the world champions, the video game personalities, landmark milestones and events and significant people who, through their creative contributions, have enriched the global video game community. The card set already honors people including Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell in addition to the most recent world record holders on the hottest new games on the Nintendo Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360.

What were the requirements in selecting who would be on a card?

Walter: The basic requirement to be on a card is to contribute something of importance to the global video game culture, either as a business person, a creative professional or a superstar gamer.

What has the reaction been by fans and those featured on cards?

Grace:  Many of the individuals featured on cards feel honored to be on the cards.  Tommy Tallarico, for example, was excited and recommended other individuals, like Nolan Bushnell, and others to appear on cards and asked us to contact them.  The response of the fans has been curiosity and excited.  They’re interested in seeing where this goes and how it will expand.

Walter:  There has been a lot of support in the initial card sets, which resulted in us going beyond the initial 100 cards that were planned. Already, TGI has held numerous autograph sessions that featured celebrities pictured on the cards appearing at events to sign their cards. Public support for these autograph sessions has been very strong and exciting. On March 16, 2012, at the Smithsonian Institute, Walter Day presented to Nolan Bushnell (Founder of Atari) an enlarged version of his new Twin Galaxies Video Game Trading Card (#165) in front of a crowded auditorium. Both Nolan Bushnell and the audience were very appreciative of the cultural importance of the video game trading cards.

Can you tell us a little more about the upcoming magazine issue featuring the cards?

Grace:  Sure can.  The Non-Sport Update is a bi-monthly publication which contains two parts, the magazine itself with articles and features on non-sport trading cards – like the new Big Bang Theory Cards and other cards distributed by Cryptozoic Entertainment.  This upcoming edition contains information on the 56th Annual Philly Non-Sports Card Show in Allenstown, Penn., where we will be featured and premiering our card to the non-sport trading card industry.  Inside the main magazine is a flyer that talks about the Twin Galaxies Video Game Trading Cards and information on the cards.  There’s another full page toward the back of the book, titled “Trains, Planes and Video Games” which talks about the history of video games and the fact that Twin Galaxies International and Non-Sports Update will have a feature displayed at the Smithsonian launch event “The Art of Video Games,” March 16-18.

The front cover of the Non-Sport Update Price Guide features a number of cards available in our card set and promotes the fact we will be featured at their upcoming card show.  The Price Guide contains pricing and information on a large number of card series both past and present.

Can you tell us about some of the rare and error cards one can get?

Walter:  Rare cards are produced as limited editions that are individually numbered on the back, with each card having its own registration number. The rare cards are randomly distributed among the plexiglass collector’s cases, with the promise of at least 2-3 rare cards in each case. So far, there have been about ten cards produced with only 100 copies printed and individually numbered and five others printed with 500 copies individually numbered. In the cards planned for Series C (coming out in April at the Philly Card Show) and beyond, there are plans to produce numerous cards in limited runs of 50 cards only — and a few as low as 10-25 copies total. These cards will be distributed randomly in many of the forthcoming sets. There have been numerous cards that were printed, released in very small quantities and then with re-called due to typos that were later discovered. Already, there is competition among collectors to get these error cards, too. There have been three error cards so far and two other cards that were re-released due to data changes on the backside text.

Do you think these cards could become valuable the way baseball cards are?

Walter:  Yes, the Twin Galaxies Video Game Trading Card Set is the gaming industry’s first set of trading cards and we hope to position it to be on a par with TOPPS baseball cards and become the definitive card set that commemorates gaming accomplishments in all genre of gaming.

What about those who want to have their card signed, any advice?

Grace: Definitely.  Throughout the year we will be doing various card signings at multiple locations.  For example, Midwest Gaming Classic, which takes place March 24-25, will be doing a card signing ceremony.  People will be able to get some cards signed at the Philly Non-Sports Card Show in April.  Information about upcoming shows, once they are solidified, will be posted on the Video Game Trading Cards website.

Some of the individuals who appear on cards will sign cards and send them back if you include a self-addressed stamped envelope.  With their permission, we may post their contact information on the website.  Understandably, some individuals may not wish to have their personal information made public.

What would you say is the most valued card out right now?

Grace: I honestly couldn’t say.  I’m interested to see what the appraisers say in a few months.  I’d suspect that some of the cards that are rarer will be more valued, especially those that are signed by the relevant person.

Walter:  We have already been in discussions with PSA – a firm that specializes in grading and authenticating trading cards – to establish the Video Game Trading Cards as certified collectibles that are preserved and graded in the same way that TOPPS and other more establish baseball cards are.

Do you have a favorite card?

Grace:  My favorite card has to be the Video Games Live Card where I was introduced to Tommy Tallarico and his team after we presented them with their card at a Video Games Live Concert in Sioux City Iowa.  I have always loved video game music and the fact they’re being recognized for the art of music in video games with this card is awesome.

How can we keep up on changes and new releases?

Grace:  We recently launched a website dedicated to the trading cards at http://www.videogametradingcards.com.  This site will contain links to press releases, press coverage, event pictures, information on upcoming events where cards can be purchased, checklists for cards in various lists, updates on individuals who have agreed to be on cards, how to order cards and more.   The site is constantly being updated with both current and past events.

Nolan Bushnell hasn’t worked a day in his life. At least, there are very few he’d consider “work”. From his early days at Atari, to launching Chuck E Cheese, and now his current adventures at the forefront of interactive entertainment and education, the aptly titled “Father of the Video Game Industry” has led a life rich with innovation, excitement, and most of all: fun.

So how did he find time to talk to us? We have no idea – but you can bet we took advantage of the opportunity. Join us as we pick Nolan’s brain on the future of gaming, why it pays to remember the past, and what it is to be a gaming icon.

Let’s begin with one of your most recent achievements; your British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Fellowship Award. What did this mean for you?

Well, what was really nice about that is [gaming] was being represented or thought of as a truly creative endeavour, and that really is sort of a transitional point in some ways from being a hobby and just about games. I mean, I’m not sure if Monopoly—as wonderful a game as it is—ever got a BAFTA [laughs].

It was a nice win for gaming. When do you first recall video games receiving that level of recognition?

I’d say probably in the very late 80s or early 90s. One of the pivotal games that I’ve always felt represented a big shift was Doom. Somehow, the graphics, the immersion, and the ability to feel like you were in another world…I think it was truly excellent. And then, to add to that, do you remember Myst and those kind of games?

The point and click adventures…

Right, the point-and-click adventures. One of the things that happened with those is the graphics and the sound and the experiences were so compelling; like, I felt like I visited those islands. So all of the sudden, there became an ability to really capture the emotive experience of being somewhere else. Of course, movies give that to you in the abstraction—one’s interactive and one’s passive—and so I kind of think that was where I felt it was really good. Before that the technology was so rough, the best we could do was sort of a cartooney view of the world, which was not immersive.

Are modern games hitting that mark in terms of immersion?

Absolutely. Now it’s almost de rigueur; you do that all the time. It’s not novel or new to be immersed in a strange or fantasmagorical world.

You hit on a topic that sometimes polarizes the gaming community; that is, the idea that modern games don’t offer the same degree of immersion or skill level as some of the more classic games. What’s your take?

I think that both camps are right. I mean, let’s face it, in some ways the early classic games are much more finely tuned and in some ways better produced because we could not rely on graphics to steal the show. We really had to make sure the challenge was right, the timing was right, and the difficulty was right at every level or else the dog didn’t hunt, as they say.

And in some ways the arcade world—the coin operated world—was a very, very good development world because each quarter was a vote. We as developers got immediate feedback from our customers as to what they liked and didn’t like, what they found objectionable, and when they would quit putting quarters in the machine. That feedback mechanism was very, very good for the early days.

In reality, very often graphics can actually cause fuzziness in the gameplay. For example, I play tournament chess. We wouldn’t think of playing on anything other than the classic wood, knight, queen, king, and bishop chess set. There are brilliant and wonderful chess sets, but to have to worry about whether what you’re moving is actually a bishop or actually a rook because the design is kind of funky…that’s not part of what chess is. Chess is about no ambiguity, and often times really good graphics will introduce a level of ambiguity when it’s not wanted or not needed, or is actually destructive to the gameplay. If you go back to game theory, sometimes you want to introduce abstractions and sometimes you don’t. It depends on what the creator or director of the game wants. Gratuitous abstractions are not good.

Can you think of games that demonstrate both extremes?

The one that harkens back for me is a game called Zaxxon from the early days of the coin-op business. That was very, very confusing to a lot of people. In some ways, though, Tempest had a level of abstraction that was quit obtuse, which people found very, very compelling.

Today, Portal is a game in which there’s some abstraction that are really wonderful integrations to the gameplay. As for games that are using gratuitous abstractions, there are a few of the Zynga games [Farmville], but that seems to be working for them!

To be called the Father of Arcade Industry is a huge honor, and a lot to live up to. How does it feel to carry that title, and how are you keeping that moniker alive?

Actually, to tell you the truth, I don’t focus very much on the rear view mirror. I’m always focusing on what I’m doing, and right now while I’m doing some help with Atari on the 40^th Anniversary, my real drive is to fix education using some of the things I know about how to immerse kids and how to addict them to activities that can be educational as well as entertaining.

Does that involve game theory? Are you drawing on your experience as the founder of Atari?

Massively. We know for a fact that video game play increases the IQ. There’s been study after study after study, and it’s absolutely true. What happens though, is video games are, in fact, addictive and people who play an excess amount of video games find that they end up being able to creatively problem solve, but they’ve got no data to fall back on. They’re what we call “processors with no memory”. I think that it’s important to keep a well balanced life.

You’ve been in the gaming world for quite some time. Who else do consider an unsung hero of the video game industry?

I think Steve Meyer doesn’t get talked about a lot, but he was absolutely pivotal in a lot of the creative thought that Atari is known for. Ed Rothberg [Battlezone] is another one who did some wonderful stuff. Joe Decuir in the later stuff in terms of being a brilliant coder. That’s kind of the early days. Of course, I’m a big fan of Will Wright [Sim City], and I think John Carmack from Doom has done wonderful things too. He’s not necessarily unsung, though.

What about some of the indie developers coming up. Any on your radar?

Yeah, the guy who made Minecraft, this Markuss “Notch” Persson. I just think that that is brilliant in its simplicity. There’s this rule in gameplay: maximum richness, minimum rules. He’s kind of done that, and created this very, very compelling world space.

It’s seems right now there’s a lot of gameplay innovations vying for domination. You’ve got motion controls, social gaming, graphical enhancements, and all that. Is there anything you see as coming out victorious in the next couple of years?

Oh yeah, for sure. We all know the direction; we all want to have essentially an artificial universe. Whether we’re talking about the Holodeck or Westworld, we want virtual experiences that are real. I’m not sure if we’re ever going to get jacked in like Neo.

It’s funny, I just finished a science fiction book that will be published in a few months, Video Games 2071. It’s set a hundred years in the future from the first video game. I timed it from Computer Space, and I sort of let my technology mind run wild as to what I think the ultimate video game would be.

Which is almost the Matrix, right? Being unable to separate the video game space from the real world?

Yeah. It’s kind of a reverse turing test.

Do you see us getting to that point?

Getting close. I think we can get real close. And with what I consider the technology to be, that is not just possible, but probable…and probably sooner than what I postulated in my book.

We’re talking a lot about future trends, and Twin Galaxies lives in the more competitive domain of gaming. Do you think competition is still going to play a key role in the video game experience going forward, or is that going to be replaced by social and cooperative experiences?

No. I see a lot of signals that say competitive gaming is going to explode. I predict that within two years there will be several television channels devoted to nothing but watching other people play video games.

Understand that what happens is players become audiences. People watch basketball and baseball because they played it as a kid, so they know the rules intimately, and in some ways they project their aspirations from then onto the players now. That mechanism is part of our psyche, and that’s going to happen in games. You have to have enough of the audiences, and you have to have the right games, and the right dynamic. I believe that someday somebody will put it all together in a very short while.

There was a time in 70s and 80s when that appeared to be happening, but it never fully took off. What is different now?

The games were not designed for viewing that well. The field of view was constrained. I think in some ways they should almost design a game sport that is designed for third party watching.

Assuming competitive gaming does take off as much as you predict, will there be a need for score keeping organizations like Twin Galaxies?

Not only that, I think there’s going to be opportunity for Video Game Halls of Fame for great players– which clearly are score based, and all kinds of those things. Remember that what we have is a social phenomena, and surely as there’s walks of fame and a lot of these things, once it becomes a social phenomena, people want to experience it aspirationally.

You’ve give us a lot of insight into what’s the come, but what about what’s already happened? Looking back, what has been your proudest achievement?

My family of eight children, being married to my wife, and having a really nice home and support structure. The most important thing is really your family and friends. All the other stuff is window dressing.

The reality is, am I proud of things that I’ve done? Absolutely. But, you know, they were a vehicle for creating an interesting life for myself and my children in some ways. I’ve had really, really fun life. I haven’t worked a day in my life. Well, actually, that’s not true. We all want these ideal jobs, but there are times like [at CES] where the last thing I wanted to do is go down to the consumer electronic show and fight the crowds, but yet I was curious. So is that work? Is that play? I don’t know.

Speaking of your career, it seems far from over. Aside from the educational initiative and your continuing work with Atari, what else is keeping you busy?

I’m also on the board of a company, CyberSecurity, that I really love. I get involved with companies that are doing important and interesting things. Right now, part of the thing that I really like is I don’t have to be CEO. CEO is really a hard job. It’s all consuming. I think as I’ve got older, I’ve found it’s really fun to not be CEO [laughs]. It’s really fun to—I don’t want to say dabble—but to have an impact on a broader set of issues.

I am absolutely, in my core, an existentialist. The journey is the reward.

Are you playing anything right now?

I still play Go. I am playing some Portal. I am playing a lot…an awful lot…of the Atari Greatest Hits on the iPad. It’s a wonderful articulation. It brings me back and, you know, it’s almost like a time warp. I was playing Lunar Lander today and just having a ball. It was like time travelling back to 1976 or whenever it was. I got the Atari joystick and button thing for the iPad for Christmas, and I’ve just been having fun playing Missile Command.

What about your work in the industry? Anything up your sleeve?

I’m actually doing work on a truly interactive movie. Imagine, if you would, 100 people in a theatre playing an interactive movie. I’ve got a design, and one I think would be spellbinding. I’ve driven the cost out of it, and I think that it’s possible the first few interactive movies can make 20-percent of what Avatar did with the fraction of the budget.

You know, a lot of people think that it’s horrible to give away all your secrets, but I’m almost the opposite. I like to bounce those things off people. I’ve found that an unproven idea you can’t give away, let along have somebody steal them [laughs].

People don’t realize how bumpy the road to innovation is. Could any of the thousand companies come up with the iPad? Absolutely. And I think some people did. You know, people were talking about Apple Computers and that five years before, but what you have to do is execute properly. A lot of people don’t realize how hard it is to execute properly.

And that was Steve Job’s genius.

Exactly. And in some ways it was Atari’s genius. At one point in time, we had about a 90% market share. That’s really, really hard to do unless you had the secret sauce. Anybody could have done what we were doing, but we did it first and best.

That said, the Fairchild Channel F was out almost a full year before Atari. How did Atari succeed where it failed?

This is going to sound very dismissive, but…they were really crappy games [laughs]. Quite candidly, the technology was not extensible. It was viewed a tiny little step on the pathway to a multi-game, which is where everyone was going. Everyone wanted to do a multi-game. Once you have a multi-game, it has to be good enough, and [the Fairchild Channel F] just wasn’t. The Magnavox Odyssey, they basically had huge returns, and actually in some ways—and i hadn’t realized it at the time—but kind of poisoned the well for consumer games going forward.

How so?

When we took the Atari Pong to the Toy Show, we sold none. Nobody wanted to touch it, because there had been enough people that had heard about Magnavox and some of those things, and so they just didn’t see it. If it hadn’t been for Sears, I’m not sure if we could have gotten it launched. Of course, it turned out to be one of the most successful consumer product launches for ages, but it was a real, real struggle. When you look at it, what was the difference between Pong and Ping Pong games. You could say, well, “was there really that big of a difference”. And it turns out it was massive.

Yeah, you could say that. 

—–

Twin Galaxies thanks Nolan Bushnell for his time and for laying the foundation for what TG staff and members enjoy on a daily basis. Look for Nolan in our Trading Card Series and keep watch for his next big projects.

Well, Alter Ego was to be followed by a game called Child’s Play -a humorous simulation about raising children, but Activision fell on financial hard times and had to be scrapped. The project manager was someone named Brenda Laurel, whom everyone first referred to as “The Lizard Queen” in the early days of the Internet.

Since then I have had some game ideas. One is finally coming to fruition. It’s Internet based and code named K-OS.

K-OS? Will it be an MMO sort of game? Could you describe it briefly?

Only briefly. People purchase computer generated DNA. They feed, train and teach the creature that forms from it. The creatures meet in a virtual world on line, fight, consume each other’s attributes until one becomes most superior. You know, the kind of touchy feely activities psychologists are known for.

Any idea when it should be available to psychologist adoring masses?

Well a lot depends on how much time I can slice from my media business which is doing quite well right now. My guess would be Winter 2007.

So, back to the old days, if you don’t mind. Alter-Ego. How would you describe it in a couple of sentences?

Alter Ego was a life sim, written in a tongue in cheek style which permitted people to explore the consequences of their decision making. It was built on a foundation of hundreds of interviews I conducted with people about their most memorable life events. Combined with stuff I just made up!

And how did you decide to undertake such an apparently mammoth task? What was your inspiration? Your PhD in psychology perhaps?

Actually, it was the other way around–it was my love of game design and the prospect of making some money. Psychology was a way of breaking out of the pack of other designers.

Hehe… A cunning plan indeed!

Well, its more than that, although I am cunning. Technology is by nature an exploitative enterprise. You have to strike while the iron is hot and you need to innovate in order to achieve that. That is what juices me up about working in this business and that’s why I rarely sit in a room with people who tell me about their anxieties.

Alter Ego, despite being critically acclaimed, didn’t sell very well. Why do you think this happened?

It sold well enough to buy me a house and a car. However, it did not sell like Mortal Kombat.

Why? Well, the egoist in me thinks it was before its time. It was developed during a period of gaming that did not know what a game activity was. It came after the initial shoot em ups and after some Zelda like stories, but was quite different than both. People have been begging me for years to re-do it.

Actually, should you re-do it, it would still be innovative and unique… Creativity in the mainstream gaming media seems to be at an all-time low… Or not?

Well, a project like that needs some cash behind it. It would have to go through a big developer like Sony. It would also have to be multimedia because that’s what turns people on -and well it should be- better for the nakedness and the killings and all. However, large developers wisely stick to their franchises–sports games, carjackings, and war themes. I don’t know if it would make it past the funding stage.

Then again, the Sims did it… And it was the only truly successful spiritual child of Alter Ego.

Yes it was, damn it. Can’t do the Sims again though; it would be me imitating an imitator of me.

How surreal and psycho-confusing….

Thank you. If someone would toss a few million my way, I am sure I could come up with something.

Which reminds me, have you played Timothy Leary’s game? Actually met the man? Helped him with his game?

Only by phone. Tim was an interesting sort of fellow. Lots of ideas about technology but no real clue. On the other hand, I don’t like people mucking about with my stuff, so I learned programming from the ground up. I am actually quite a technical person.

But where did you learn game-design and coming up with intuitive and never before seen interfaces?

I think game design is a function of a person’s idiosyncratic way of living. To some, life is just one big game. HA!

Wow!

I just realized what that implies about Alter Ego.When I was younger I used to make up games to amuse myself and to torment my little sister.

Did you ever hit her with an Alter Ego manual, then?

No, she was already too old and strong to mess with.

Sisters, tsk… Like reviewers really. Remember any of the reactions and/or reviews back in the day Alter Ego was released?

We all grew up in Brooklyn and had to learn to street fight relatively early in life.

Oh people loved it, the reviews were excellent with the exception of two guys from Compuserve who hated it because it relied on manipulation and was nothing more than a simulation based on psychology. Imagine! I laughed my ass off when I read that review.

Besides laughing at reviews, what else did you enjoy from the Activision era?

Well, also, loved the perks. Activision was big on treating their designers like rock stars. It was hilarious that when we showed at Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas we were always right near the porn stars!

Now, one final question. Which games did you recently enjoy?

I like the online multies. World of Warcraft is a good game -causing quite a stir with parents who say their kids are too involved in it

Well, parents can be funny, but WoW is a huge and all consuming time sink….

Sure, but you can expect more of the same. People are becoming more vegetative, and the more they veg, the more they will be looking for these kinds of activities.

Now, that I’ve never thought. Quite the vicious circle really…

There’s a reason televisions are getting bigger and bigger, and if you listen to Bill Gates everyone of them will have a web browser built in in just a few years.

Actually, quite a few anarchist believe that a color TV equals a black ‘n’ white life…

I can see that, but what’s going to stop the deluge? Nothing.

I see. Now, care to add anything else?

Well, only that there will always be a fascinating interplay between people and the widgets they keep themselves occupied with -and in that there is still a lot to learn, explore and exploit.

Thanks so much for the interview. Oh, and good luck both with K-OS and Tendrilmedia!

1.Well, David, how about introducing yourself to those troubled souls that seem to enjoy Gnome’s Lair?

2.And you’ve been working on games for how long?

I got a Fighting Fantasy gamebook (The Forest of Doom) when I was nine. I loved it and I really wanted to create my own. I wrote three full gamebooks before I was thirteen, just for the pleasure of creating my own little worlds. The first was typed up on an old Olivetti typewriter from the fifties, although I later saved up enough money to buy an electric typewriter. Working out the structure of those books would have been a lot easier on a computer. I really got into the creation of imaginary worlds came when I discovered roleplaying. I went through everything I could find: D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Rolemaster, Spacemaster, Cyberpunk 2020. There weren’t too many role-players where I lived, so I mostly spent my time fleshing out detailed campaigns and maps. Like many games, they didn’t survive the introduction of actual players. They were usually more interested in just killing the townsfolk or otherwise trashing the place, and usually had little interest in the extra immersion I tried to provide, in the form of carefully-aged messages or maps.

Roleplaying gave way to gaming once I got a Spectrum and then an Amiga. I started playing at the tail end of text-based games, when it started to become all about the graphics, so I never really thought I could make my own. The intervening years were spent as a consumer of games. Fast forward to a few years ago and I jumped at the chance to work on games for Jolt, first on UI and art direction then as a game designer. The skills I had learned working in print and online media seemed to come together and allow me to revive my passion for creating virtual worlds.

3.Care to reminiscence on that online Zork game you worked on?

It was a privilege to work on an actual licensed Zork game. I had a lot of fun immersing myself in the world and piecing together what could be used for a game based on the series. I was the game designer, but I also took on the role of art director and worked on the UI. The brief was very specific, so it was always going to be a certain type of online game. I know that disappointed a lot of people, but I was very careful to stay true to at least the mythology that had accrued over the various incarnations of Zork, and I tried to make use of elements like the Double Fanucci cards to keep even the game mechanics relevant to Zork. I hope that the excellent artwork created and sourced by Jim Zubkavich – who was a pleasure to work with, always enthusiastic and able to bring my descriptions to life exactly as I had imagined them – helped to make LoZ a pleasurable diversion for some Zork fans. I decided to leave Jolt very soon after the release of LoZ, so the game has developed differently from how I would have hoped.

4.So, what are your current projects?

World of the Living Dead is what we’re focusing on, although we also started a micro-patronage site called Karmafan a few years ago, as we had a lot of artist friends who wanted to get support from their fans but didn’t know how. The whole voluntary payments thing really took off a little later but by then I was working for Jolt and so Karmafan didn’t get the attention it needed to develop. Artists still sign up from MySpace, but times are hard so there isn’t much support from fans. I’m also working on a WotLD comic, but my artistic skills have atrophied over the years, so that will probably take quite some time to appear. We both have day jobs, of course.

5.Could you describe the World of the Living Dead?

I like to describe it as a survival strategy zombie sandbox MMO. Players control groups of survivors using a heavily-modified Google Maps interface. The concept is that the players are members of the fictitious National Emergency Control & Relief Agency (NECRA) who have been sealed into secure locations. They have been tasked with remotely assisting survivors via an emergency system set up when the authorities realised that centralised control and evacuation methods were futile. The government and NECRA seem to have disappeared, but these operatives have their mission, which is to ensure the survival of their own “cell” at all costs. Simulations showed that large groups would always lead to infection, so competitive survival was seen by NECRA officials as the only hope for humanity. The game is primarily about scavenging for supplies and avoiding contact with other groups of survivors or, alternatively, about finding other groups and stealing their supplies. Characters are managed by placing them in squads. The live position of any plays in the area around your squad is updated real-time – so the game is effectively a browser-based RTS, but with no Flash required.

6.But why Zombies?

I’ve been fascinated by the genre for a long time. Not because of the gore and horror, but the constant pressure on survivors to gather supplies and find safety. It’s about the apocalypse, really, so zombies are really only one aspect of it. I recently rewatched a UK series created by the often brilliant Terry Nation in the 1970s called Survivors which I remembered enjoying in the ’80s when I saw it (it was also remade recently). A virus killed over 90% of the population of the world, and the remnants of humanity are left to try and rebuild society. I find that premise fascinating, especially when rival groups form based on such basic needs as seed for planting, or a safe water supply. When zombies are involved, there’s also the tension which comes from how easy it is to be turned into the enemy, to be infected and lose control or to be killed and then “come back”. I think that fear taps into something deep inside us, a sense of how random death can sometimes be. Most of the good zombie/infected films get that fear exactly right. Other influences were Threads, a particularly harrowing UK docudrama about how a nuclear holocaust eventually leads to the collapse of society, or any number of the apocalyptic stories which seemed to be everywhere at the end of the last millenium.

In the zombie genre, the magnificent comic The Walking Dead deals with exactly these difficulties. The zombies just happen to be there in the background and only leading to deaths when the characters are tired or distracted, whereas it’s the other survivors that you really have to worry about. I’m really looking forward to the TV version of this, which starts at the end of the month in the US. And of course there’s World War Z and the Zombie Survival Guide, both of which I had great pleasure in rereading repeatedly throughout the design process.

7.What would you say are its most innovative and/or unique mechanics?

I wanted the zombies to be a faceless horde, so decided that they would be represented by z-density, rather than as individual enemies. Z-density is basically a shorthand used by NECRA to determine how dense the zeds are on the ground, based on satellite tracking of their movement. We take real city blocks and work out how many actual zombies are in the block (there are over 9 million zombies moving around the LA County area we’re using for beta testing – they react to player activity, including the use of firearms, over time). Based on the size of the block, we calculate the z-density as a percentage. The players have to imagine this, as z-d is represented by colours, but we might introduce more graphics once we’re happy that all the mechanics are working correctly. Combat is effectively automated, with survivors using firearms or weapons if they have the skills to wield them. Every route completed can result in them putting down some zeds, or in injury and even death for the characters.

The need to consume enough food and liquids each day is something I wanted to have, although I know that it’s a risky prospect for games. Characters need a certain amount of calories and volume of liquids or they will start to accumulate thirst and hunger. Once these reach maximum, the character will die the following day. It takes about four days for dehydration to result in death, and 28 days for hunger to prove fatal. Even if players find supplies, they can’t just feed and water their characters back to full strength. If you neglect them for a few days, it will take a few days for them to recover, as they can only eat and drink so much each day. We decided to make consumption automatic, to avoid forcing players to feel that they had to continually tend to the characters, but it can be tough to keep a large group supplied with enough liquids. Locations do not replenish once they’ve been exhausted, so that means that players have to stockpile when they can, or work out a way to barter for their needs.

8.How long have you been developing it?

I first started working on the idea back in 2007, but we started working on it properly in mid-2009.

9.When will it reach the MMO masses?

I sometimes feel that we’re on Valve Time, so I’ll just say that we hope to be out of beta by the end of this year or the beginning of 2011. We are determined to go into open beta over the course of the next two months.

10.Any plans for the future?

Any other concepts for games have had to be consigned to my notebook while we’ve been developing WotLD. I hope to start working on at least one of those once WotLD is running smoothly, although we don’t really plan on stopping development on the game. The list of features we have planned for WotLD is extensive, and we hope to be able to grow and develop the game so that it becomes a huge multiplayer simulation of the zombocalypse. Vehicles will be making an appearance in the relatively near future, as will a deluge of content once we go into open beta, including hundreds of items and weapons. The graphics side of the game has been limited to what I can create myself, so I’m also hoping to be able to focus more energy on that as the balancing and tweaking settle down. The period of rebuilding civilization after an apocalypse provides plenty of scope for developing the game in some interesting ways.

I’m sure everyone who has played an FPS, RTS or even PVP game in a MMO sees themselves as a pro gamer. Johnathan Wendel, better known as Fatal1ty, is not only a true professional gamer, but also a business man and philanthropist. Last year you saw his gamer profile and Obsolete Gamer had a chance to ask him some questions.

Tell us about your early days of gaming. What was your first video game experience?

First video game experience was playing games like Microsoft Flight Simulator on PC and some Ikari Warriors on the Nintendo.  I did mess around with Atari, but I never owned one.  Mostly played it when I went to friends’ houses, etc.

At what point did you realize you had the talent and want to become a professional gamer?

I guess when I was 18. One of my good friends, Eric Paik, who was a pro gamer and traveled a lot, told me I was very talented and should definitely go to a tournament.  You will win money for sure!  So I saved up about $500 and went off to Dallas, TX and won a qualifier and took 3rd at my very first pro tournament winning $4,550.

So your first professional match was playing Quake 3, what was it like your first time playing competitively? 

Exhilarating!  I was amp’ed every second and wanted to play to my full potential.  It was a do or die experience for my gaming career as I was putting all my money on the line.

Tell us about how you train and prepare for tournaments?

Play about 8 hours a day in the virtual world working on my movement, timing, strategies, fighting skills and hearing the sounds of the game.  I want to be so knowledgeable about the game that if I hear a pin drop or an item picked up from anywhere on the map, I know exactly where my opponent is at all times and where he could be in the next 5 seconds.  Predicting your opponent’s moves is very important.

Personally, what differences do you notice between playing in a tournament solo versus with your team?

I’ve done both extremely heavily but I feel, in a solo environment, you can only blame yourself if you lose.  When you win, you know you won and when you lose, you know you lost.  I enjoy it the best, when the game is in my hands to win or lose.

Tell us about a day in the life when you were actively entering tournaments?

My routine was to play 4 hours, go run 2-3 miles, have lunch, play another 2 hours, relax and play another 2 hours before 4 AM so I could wake up and repeat it the next day.

Many people still don’t understand professional gamers, are there any myths or stereotypes you would want to address?

Most professional gamers are actually in shape and have a pretty good social life in their virtual and real life.  We mostly come from some other competitive sports that we played forever as kids and we’re able to use our skills of hand eye coordination and out thinking our opponents just like we do in our traditional sports.

Which game did you like competing in the most?

PainkilleR was a great game to play because we had a full season where we traveled for almost 18 months, continuously playing all over the world and winning loads of money.  It was also the biggest payday of my career in competitive gaming, taking home $150,000 for the World Tour Finals in NYC.

Do you still have people trying to challenge you to this day?

Yes, I actually go on tour promoting my products to distributors and buyers in different regions of the world, and I do exhibition/show matches for the crowd/press at these events.

What made you want to start Fatal1ty Inc?

I wanted to create a brand that a gamer who lived in the battlefield understood what competitive gamers wanted and needed in order to experience their game at the highest level.  When people shop at the store or online, I want them to know that when they buy a Fatal1ty product, they’re buying a Gaming product.

Thanks for the interview and game on,

-Johnathan ‘Fatal1ty’ Wendel

1. Let’s start with something personal, shall we? Nice. How did you get into game design?

2. Is it only board games you’re interested in designing or are you looking to expand into video gaming and/or RPG territory?

3. Care to mention some of your favorite games?

4. So on to your brand new It’s Alive! board game. It’s your second one right? Care to describe it a bit?

5. A set-collection and board game it is, then. How do those game mechanics work?

6. Regarding the weird an wacky game setting/plot. Did you decide on it? Could you briefly describe it?

7. Still, should be fine for kids. What’s the target group of It’s Alive?

Gamers and geeks.

8. Are you happy with the final product and Reiver Games? Why did you decide to go for a limited 300 copies only release?

9. Anything planned for the future? Should we be looking forward to more designed by Yehuda games?

10. Improvise, please. Is there anything you ‘d like t add. Something related to your blog perhaps?

Thanks for taking the time, best of luck with It’s Alive!

Thanks, Gnome.

Kondtantinos or Gnome is a classic and indie gaming writer. You can see his wonderful blog by following this link – Gnomes Lair.

Tell us a bit about yourself, oh Balrog. Some info on the cat might be nice too.

Why -and more importantly, how- did you start Zenobi? Were you all alone in this, erm, adventure of sorts?

And the focus on text-adventures on the ZX Spectrum? How did you decide on that?

Weren’t you afraid of actually competing against bigger software houses?

You’ve created a fair amount of admittedly brilliant, tough, inspired and generally hilarious adventures. Which ones are you favorites? Was there a certain way your games were designed? I mean, really, where did all this inspiration come from?

How did you come up with those intricate puzzles?

What about them weird names, settings, loading screens and stories?

Now, as Zenobi published quite a few games from a variety of authors/designers, could you give us some insight as to how this bit actually worked?

In retrospect, which would you say were the finest moments in/of Zenobi?

Why stop after the Atari ST games?

Any other platforms you developed for?

Oh, and do you still play games? Any thoughts on their current state?

Considering there is a strong Spectrum retro scene, a very lively interactive fiction scene and an obvious revival of the adventure genre, well, what does the future hold? More games? A book per-chance?

Finally, you do still feel the Zenobi love, don’t you? Mind you, feel free to add anything else you think would be vaguely appropriate and/or titillating.

1.So, Agustin, care to intorduce yourself to the Obsolete Gamer crowd and let ‘em know a bit about you and your creations; besides Scratches that is?

I’m Matt Barton, host of Matt Chat, a weekly YouTube show dedicated to classic games. I’m also co-founder of Armchair Arcade and author of Dungeons & Desktops and Vintage Games (co-authored with my friend and colleague Bill Loguidice). I’m also an assistant (soon to be associate) professor of English at St. Cloud State University, where I teach classes in writing, rhetoric, and new media.

2. And what would you say some of your favourite games are? Any particular love for a genre or a gaming machine?

My favorite genres are adventure games, role-playing games, and strategy games. Some of my favorites include Baldur’s Gate, Pool of Radiance, World of Warcraft, Civilization, and the Nancy Drew series of adventure games. I have many consoles, but my favorite gaming device is the PC. Going further back, I will always be an Amiga and Commodore fan at heart.

3. So, Armchair Arcade, how would you describe the site and what’s the story behind it?

We were friends on a forum dedicated to Shane R. Monroe’s Retrogaming Radio show. We talked about putting together an online magazine, and eventually set it up. For awhile we focused on “issues” and tried to make it look like a retromag. We were amazed by how much attention it got, frequently mentioned on Slashdot and many other sites (even Slate and the Discovery Channel). Eventually, though, we morphed into a blog format and started selling our features to other sites (especially Gamasutra). Now we use AA as our home base for communicating to fans and fellow retrogamers, talking about our latest projects, and so on.

4. Same question on the incredibly well produced Matt Chat episodes… How did you decide to start a video show on retro games, and what would you say is this little something that makes Matt Chat unique (for, believe me, it is unique)? By the way, love that gaming wall you got in the background.

Matt Chat has come a long, long way in a short time. When I first started, it was just me and a webcam trying to hawk my books. The production quality was terrible! But I wanted to learn more about videos because Bill and I are producing a feature documentary for Lux Digital Pictures (Gameplay: The Story of the Videogame Revolution). I figured I needed more experience with videos to really handle a project like that, so I kept learning and experimenting, trying to refine my techniques. If you notice, I usually try to put in one more technique or one more refinement per episode, so I’m always learning something new.

I don’t think Matt Chat is unique. There are many, many other YouTubers out there doing similar shows. For instance, ianwilson1978 does great work on the Sega Genesis and Marlin Lee covers a variety of games. I guess one thing that makes my show special is that I feature games from all platforms, especially covering PC and computer titles that the others miss. Most other shows are dedicated to consoles, especially Nintendo classics. I figure those games already get enough love, so I try to cover ground that is not covered by the other shows–such as Dungeons of Daggorath for the Tandy CoCo, Tunnels of Doom for the TI-99/4A, or even the PLATO platform. I also feature interviews with classic developers, such as John Romero and Al Lowe. I’ll soon release my interview with Chris Avellone.

5. Really, is it tough producing something of this quality on a weekly basis?

It can be. Sometimes my editing program (Sony Vegas Platinum) crashes so much during rendering that I’m tempted to just give up. I would really love a better setup! The other big problem is capturing footage from games, especially old Windows games. Even with fraps, virtualdub, and the rest, it can be a nightmare sometimes capturing decent footage.

Other than these purely technical problems, though, it’s not hard at all. I can easily come up with things to say, and I like researching the games anyway. I also enjoy inserting inside jokes and humor, and interacting with the fans is a real joy.

6. How about your books? They are two on games and one on Wikis, correct? Do you feel gamers actually bother reading?

I think most gamers are highly intelligent; at least the ones I talk to. I know plenty of professors and graduate students who are serious gamers. But, of course, there are many who never pick up a book. That is sad, of course, since I couldn’t imagine living life without good books to read. It’s really important to read good books, not just newspapers and such. You can always tell when you’re talking to an avid reader, because he or she will be more knowledgeable on a broader range of topics–plus, I think it makes you more articulate and, frankly, intelligent. I had a friend who read War and Peace just for fun, but he told me later he felt more intelligent after reading it. Some people laugh at comics and graphic novels, but they are actually much more sophisticated now than they used to be. You could certainly learn a thing or two from Moore‘s work.

There’s really no excuse for being ignorant. So read!

7. Now, let’s focus a bit on the rather epic Dungeons and Desktops. Why CRPGs? Could you briefly describe the book? Has it sold to your expectations? Did you enjoy writing it?

It’s pretty much what it says; the history of computer role-playing games. I tried to talk about every important or even remotely influential game in the book, describing what makes them fun and how they fit into the grand history of the genre. I tried to show connections across eras and styles, so you could get a sense of the diversity. Someone may have heard of Baldur’s Gate, for instance, but be unaware of Planescape: Torment, Pool of Radiance, or Eye of the Beholder. I meet people who may know all about Zelda and Final Fantasy, but have never heard of Ultima or Lord British. That bothered me, so I thought it was time to write a book on the topic.

The book has sold well. Of course, something like this won’t be a bestseller. But I wrote this book for people like us, not the mainstream. By “us,” of course, I’m talking about people who love games like Wizardry and Fallout and enjoy nothing more than talking and thinking about them.

8. Should we expect more books from you? Maybe even a new project or collaboration?

Almost certainly, though it’s very hard to find publishers interested in game books. I have been dying to write a book on adventure games similar to D&D, but no takers so far. Bill and I have been talking about a book on the Atari 2600, and I’ve got one on virtual worlds that needs development. We will probably also write a book based on our documentary.

9. And now for something that interests me quite a bit on a personal level. How did you really manage to -effortlessly, it seems- combine an academic career with all this quality work on computer and video games?

In a sense gaming is my job. A professor is expected to research as well as teach, and game studies is an important part of new media. I’m presenting on aspects of gaming at two national conferences later this year (Computers and Writing, Rhetoric Society of America). People tend to think of “English” strictly as literature and grammar, but it’s far more than that! There are many of us studying games as well as other technologies like wikis and social networking. All of these things involve communication and rhetoric.

10. Finally, have you thought about actually creating a game yourself?

I have, though I’m not satisfied with the results! But a few years ago I taught myself C++ out of some books and made a simple adventure game, which I entered into the Interactive Fiction contest. I was shocked that it was 28th in the 12th annual interactive fiction competition. At any rate, it was fun learning C++, and I’d love to try something more ambitious one day.

Gaming? Hm! I’m a big RPG nut. I’ve recently replayed Arcanum and I’ve just started the latest Final Fantasy, which should probably keep me busy for awhile. I have yet to finish any installment in that series, so let’s see if this is the exception.

As for non-gaming, I’m pretty low key. I love to travel, read, and wander aimlessly around NYC looking for places to go.

2. And how exactly did you first decide that playing via a keyboard and some chips was a good idea?

It’s all my mother’s fault. I was 11 years old and she bought me a copy of Infocom’s Wishbringer. After that, my fate was forevermore sealed.

3. From enjoying to creating; how and when did you decide to start coming up with your very own digital bits of interactive entertainment?

It all started during a time in my life when I was looking for some distractions. The year was 2001 and it was September and I live in New York, so you can imagine what I needed distracting from. I searched the web for freeware adventure games and I ended up discovering the Reality on the Norm project. The idea behind it was basically a shared universe. All the assets – characters, backgrounds, even the world itself – were shared by the community, and anyone could come along and make a game in that world and add to its story. The idea appealed to me. After playing a couple of them I decided to make one, so I took a week or two and made a little game called “The Repossesser.” People seemed to like it, so I kept making more.

4. What about Wadjet Eye Games? A bold step.

Maybe! At the time I was between jobs, having just come home after spending a year abroad teaching English in Asia. My apartment was being rented out so I was staying with my parents. They were both retired, and it was a bit embarrassing to be hanging around their apartment all day when I didn’t have a job either, so I took my laptop to a nearby café. For a month, I tinkered around with making a game for 7-8 hours a day and I told myself I was working. Completely self-defeating, but The Shivah was the end result. I had so much fun making it that I realized I didn’t want to do anything else. I had about nine months worth of savings in my bank account, so I figured it was “now or never” and just dived right in. So it wasn’t a “bold step” so much as putting off getting a real job. You could say that I’m kind of still doing that.

5. And you’ve already been around for almost 5 years. Quite a feat that. How did you manage?

If I do anything on purpose it’s that I make a point of keeping my games a bit on the short and manageable side. It’s a lot easier to recover from a commercial failure if the time and money you put into it is minimal. There’s always that temptation to throw more and more money and time at a project to make it super awesome, but there’s always the fear that the game will bomb and you’ll lose it all. I’ve learned to treat every dollar I put into a game as a potential loss, and I’ve become very careful. While it does occasionally force me to cut some corners, it does force me to be very creative in how I do things. If I screw up, I can bounce back much faster.

6. What are your ambitions for Wadjet Eye? To create an absolute classic? Turn into the next EA?

Future plans, eh? Yeesh. I don’t even know if I’ll have matching socks tomorrow! Well, my wife and I have eventual plans to take a break from adventure games and work on a cRPG in the vein of Fallout. Unlike with adventure games, there is no middleware available for that kind of thing so we are making the engine ourselves. Or rather, my wife is, since she’s an actual programmer. It will take a long time to make, so in the meantime I am content working on point and clicks like Blackwell. Honestly, our only ambition is to keep things the way they are. I love that we can live this way. As long as we can still make games and enough people are still willing to buy them, I will have no complaints.

7. So, what does the (more or less) immediate future hold?

Right now I’m working on the fourth game in the Blackwell series, called “Blackwell Deception.” It’s fully designed and I’m in the midst of getting art and writing the dialog.

8. If it isn’t too much to ask of you, could you suggest a couple titles (and describe them a bit) that would help our readers understand what’s unique about your point-and-clickers?

I suppose if you have to start somewhere, you can’t go wrong with the Blackwell series. They games star a medium named Rosa Blackwell and her sardonic spirit guide Joey Malone, who are tasked to seek out lost and confused spirits and help them move on. Usually this is done by looking into the spirit’s past and using that knowledge to help them confront their death. So the games are one part mystery, one part detective story, and one part character study. They are also designed, written and programmed completely from within various cafes in the east village of Manhattan. So by supporting Blackwell you are also supporting the New York coffee industry.

9. You really seem to enjoy life in NYC. Care to tell us how you incorporate it in your -decidedly urban- games?

You look at a magnificent skyscraper, and it’s hard to imagine that it was something made by people. And a whole city of those things? It’s kind of overwhelming. As cities grow over the centuries (or millennia, in some cases) they develop a personality and history of their own. But New York is kind of special. It’s so prevalent in media – you see New York in movies, television and books all the time – that it’s touched everyone in the world in some way or another. You could live all your life in some isolated little town, but step into New York and it’s like you’ve been there before. I like being in the center of all of that. It’s a kind of energy that inspires me, and that’s obviously reflected in the games I make.

10. Ever thought of being creative in the cafes of other major cities? Berlin and Paris do sound different enough I’d say.

Not a bad idea! Although I don’t think I meet the minimum requirement of intellectual pretentiousness. Plus I look stupid in a beret.

11. Care to briefly describe the (usual/average) way to a Wadjet Eye game release?

It varies! Typically I get a notebook and scribble down ideas until something forms. Then I take those notes and compile a working design document so anyone else involved will know what to work on. For myself, I often try to make a schedule, with a day-to-day list of tasks that I intend to complete by a certain time. But then Things Happen and there are delays or I get inspired to work on something other than what I am scheduled to do that day, and it becomes a free for all. There is really no rhyme or reason to the way I work, but I’ve still managed to get six games out the door in four years so I figure I must be doing something right.

12. After publishing Puzzle Bots, do you think you might care to try something similar again? Oh, and how was working with Erin as an experience?

Puzzle Bots was an interesting experience! I had never worked on a game quite like it before, and we really stretched the limits of what AGS could do. At the time I had lofty goals of becoming a publisher for other indie adventure titles, but I soon discovered that publishing someone else’s game requires just as much time and attention as publishing your own. Over the course of making Puzzle Bots, I was also involved in several other projects (Emerald City Confidential, Blackwell Convergence, and another game for PlayFirst) which forced us to delay Puzzle Bots much longer than any of us would have liked. It turns out that I’m not one of nature’s best multi-taskers! Would I do it again? Yes. Sort of. I’m in the midst of publishing another game designed by somebody else, but rather than funding and developing it from scratch, the game has come to me 95% complete and I’m helping to push it the rest of the way. You’ll hear more about that in a month or so. It’s a project I’m really excited about.

1. Space-faring Pacian, how would you describe your game making activities? And, frankly, why do you make games?

I’d describe my game making activities as poorly focused, unproductive and easily interrupted.

Why do I keep making my little games? I guess for the same reason that I play them: escapism. I’m a hopeless day-dreamer, and I’d much rather be piloting a Zeppelin through the acrid clouds of a volcano than sitting at work writing boring software for boring people. And since, although there are plenty of games out there that grab me and draw me into their worlds, no-one’s yet made one where you specifically pilot a Zeppelin through a volcano, I end up trying to make that one myself.

2. How about your crafting of short and not particularly short stories? How? Why? Ugh…

‘Ugh’ is my take on it often enough as well. There are people who write and people who don’t write. The only difference between those two groups is whether they write or not. As simple as that.

But of the people who *do* write, there are those who write, and those who write and then re-draft and get a second opinion and a third opinion and scrap the whole middle section and re-write that and rinse and repeat until someone pays them for all the hard work they’ve done. That’s *not* me – at least, not at the moment. I only write for fun – to create worlds and characters that interest me. I just hope that a few like-minded people will come along, look at what I’ve done and say, “Hey that’d be pretty cool if it went through a few more drafts.”

One day I do mean to make a dedicated effort to write something ‘good’, but I’m such a scatter-brained procrastinator, that’s not likely to be any time soon.

3. Interactive fiction, text adventures, must have been quite a natural choice as a game making genre, right?

Yeah. Sometimes I worry that I’m focusing on this as an easy way out. I’m useless at making graphics, and I hate tedious coding, so working in ready-made environments for text games really appeals to me. In TADS and Inform it’s trivial to create a location with a character in it and some scenery and a cool gizmo – and when you push the button on the gizmo the prince dies and you have to feed dead apples to his ghost. Whereas working in C++ or even Game Maker there’s a lot of set-up to do just defining the basic rules of the universe you’re creating. How does the main character push that button? How do they pick up the apples?

This is why I keep persisting in making crappy non-text games like Space Shot. I kind of want to prove to the world that I’m not just an IF writer – and that when I do write IF it’s for a specific reason beyond it being easy for me to do.

4. Do you actually believe games can move beyond being merely games? Could they actually manage to be political, thought-provoking and interesting while embracing Dada?

Yes, of course. Creative minds can (and do) make moving and provocative experiences from any medium.

From the Dada angle, I immediately think of Cactus and games like Mondo Medicals and Psychomnium, in that they really seem to take a lot of the unquestioned assumptions about how games are ‘supposed’ to work and then slap them about a bit. Beyond that I’m afraid you’re merely dazzling me with your technical terms.

5. Am I? Well, let me blush here for a moment. [...] Done. Lovely. But, really, Mondo Medicals and co, even though surreal and innovative in style and mechanics, don’t actually offend the gaming, let alone the societal, status quo. They really aren’t political or progressive in a meaningful sense. And frankly, besides Molleindustria’s games, I think nobody has even attempted such a thing. Are you sure it’s not the short-comings of the medium?

My gut instinct is that the mere act of player participation creates a whole range of possibilities for messing about with people’s prejudices and received wisdom – but for all we know, you may be right. We never truly know if something is possible until someone actually goes and does it.

6. On a more light-hearted note, any truly favourite games? And I am asking for something that could stand next to a book or a film for example.

So what, I’m not allowed to say Resident Evil 2? When it comes to what I look for in a game – imaginative worlds and strong characters – I think Chrono Trigger is the one that immediately springs to mind. In many ways, it just chimes really well with my personality, but I’d also argue that objectively it’s a very well put together game in terms of tone and motivation.

I’m also a big fan of Emily Short’s Galatea. It’s pretty much the only IF game that I unreservedly find enjoyable to mess with, just in idle moments, and I think it has plenty of interesting things to say about the nature of interactive characters. I know a lot of people only like it as an experiment or a piece of dry academia, but I don’t really enjoy that kind of thing by itself. I like Galatea because I like the characters, the tone and the little stories you end up experiencing.

And also, Resident Evil 2, damn it.

7. Any favourites among your ludic creations?

Well there’s only about four or five to choose from. I am very pleased with Gun Mute. I think I created a nice set of characters in an accessible package, in some ways purely by chance. To be honest, I don’t expect to be able to create a better game in the future, but I hope the stories I want to tell will still interest a few people.

8. Oh, and how would you describe the general game making process you follow?

I’d say the most notable thing about my game making process is the distinct lack of process to it. It usually starts out with scrappy notes in my diary, and then graduates to a grid of tasks to tick off. And then beneath the grid are a load of scribbles supposed to remind me of other things I’ve suddenly thought of.

Honestly, it’s a wonder that I have the wherewithal to get out of bed in the morning, let alone write semi-functional code.

9. Would you ever attempt to sell a game? Live off your creativity?

That’s an interesting question. If a company offered to pay me to do interesting, creative work on a game, I’d take the offer. But I don’t think I’d ever want to charge for games that I’ve created all by myself. Going back to what I said about writing, I’d want to put a lot more time and effort into these things before I thought they were actually worth paying money for – but I have so many ideas and such a short attention span that I’m not really interested in doing that.

10. Any particular plans for the future per chance?

Over the next couple of months I’m going to try and squeeze out a small IF game for David Fisher’s EnvComp – an IF competition for unusual settings and locations. In the longer term, I’m working on a larger IF game – and of course I have plenty of ill-considered ideas for action and strategy games as well.

I’m also engaged on a super-secret collaborative project with this short, bearded fellow in a pointed hat. I last saw him standing over by the garden pond with a fishing rod…

A few weeks ago we posted an article about the upcoming series called Game Over that showcases a video game store and the funny stories and interactions that happens within. We had a chance to talk with the makers of the series about how the came up with the idea and what we can expect from the show.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Great to talk with you; let’s start with how you came up with the idea to create Game Over.

I just shot Stephen King’s In The Deathroom and wanted to do something different. Kicking around different ideas, I realized it’s the perfect time to shoot a TV pilot idea I had based on working in the video game industry. I started working at an EB Gameworld in 2001. After working there for years, I was subconsciously getting ideas for this show.

Tell us a bit about the process of getting production off the ground and getting everything together.

The entire project was a battle every step of the way. I was fortunate to have a great Director of Cinematography and he had all the equipment we would needed for the shoot. The hardest part was finding an area to film in was really the hardest part. We had places confirmed but when every place fall through; we literally had to build a video game store from the ground up. I called every real estate agent I could and asked if there’s any spots they knew of. Most were very friendly once they heard about the project. I remember when I tried to film in an vacant former supermarket, the real estate agent thought I was nuts but asked the owner anyway. He came back with a total price of $20,000 for 3 day shoot. We politely declined that.

When we started our crowd funding campaign, Paypal marked as a terrorists group and refused any donations to go through and once it was fixed the same people never got around to trying to donate again.

Also various game companies showed interest in donating products to the show, as time went on they all fizzled out expect Rockstar. Rockstar Games ended up giving us a ton of prizes to give out.

Anyone that has spent a good amount of time in a video game store has seen something funny, strange or both, what types of stories, topics to you want to hit on?

I want to go beyond the obvious of dealing with annoying customers (believe me they will be in the show) but we also want to hit on the funny happenings in retail and in these characters personnel lives. I wanted to create interesting characters that people can relate to.

Do you plan to go more for the realism of life running and working in a video game store or is it more a backdrop for inside jokes and stereotypes?

I definitely will feature the various aspects of nerdcore, geek culture, etc.

Can you tell us more about the stores you were going to film in and what happened with that?

Some episodes will take place entirely in the game store, while others will take place entirely out of the store. There’s definitely going to be inside jokes, etc that gamers will pick up on such as a future episode entitled, ‘All Your Base Belong to Us.’

We had a deal in place with the 3rd largest game retailer in North America. The President of the company called me and told me how much he loved the script and how everyone in a conference call told him they wanted him to get behind the show. Everything hit the fan when he decided to take away the investment money and spend it on radio advertising instead. He said we could still film at a location in Bear, Delaware but we had to film with no money. Going ahead without money was very difficult.

From there an independent game store contacted me and the owner expressed interested about getting involved. That deal from through when he backed out.

Beyond frustrated, the entire project was in limbo. No one knew what would happen or if it would even happen.

It’s when I attended a Pennsylvania Film Industry Association (PaFIA) meeting I was introduced to the studio head of Sun Center Studios. Sun Center Studio is the new multi-million soundstage here in Aston, PA.  I told him about the idea and he agreed to let us do auditions there and let us film there. Without him, we wouldn’t have been able to shoot Game Over. He literally saved the project. We were able to film in a complex on the studio lot. We were able to transform the room they gave us completely and also we were able to build the set and keep materials there.

Reps from Paramount and Universal stopped by and complemented us on the set.

Tell us about the staff and actors, are you guys all professionals as far as writing, filming, directing and acting or is it a mix of being fans and having the drive to create something such as this?

All cast & crew were professionals who are in the industry. Something of this undertaking definitely required a lot of professional work from building the set to editing. We had to build an actually game store from the ground up. A local Blockbuster video and Rite-Aid were going out of business and I was able to buy  racks, shelving, and a friend from an EB games gave me various cases, boxes and marketing materials to help ‘dress’ the set.

Literally this project was definitely the one that tested my passion to the limit. It takes beyond fandom to make something like this.

Do you have a style you are going for as far as storytelling and direction like a Seinfeld or Always Sunny in Philadelphia?

Think of our show as a hybrid of It’s Always Sunny in Philly meets Louie meets Clerks meets South Park. That’s really the best way to describe it. Haha.

This might be a question more for film nerds, but can you tell us about not being able to use real game names and products in your episodes?

If you change anything by 7% you can legally use it. If you visit our site and see the set design pictures, we changed every insert, poster, etc we received.

As for games, we used a couple ‘open source games’ like Blood, etc because they essentially the equivalent of ‘public domain’ movies (which we have some of too).

Do you have a specific season number of episodes and do you plan to keep this running as long as possible or is there a set end date?

I definitely want the show to always stay fresh. Nothing irks me more than when a show stays ‘past it’s welcome’. The plan right now, is make treatments/outlines for future episodes and see how many episodes the network wants per season.

What can those who want to help and support the show do?

When this show gets pitched to networks, a big selling point will be the built in fan base. In today’s market that’s so important, so we need everyone:

Like Us on Facebook

www.facebook.com/gameoverseries

Follow Us on Twitter

www.twitter.com/gameoverseries

This is a show by the fans for the fans! We need the support! THANK YOU!

Perhaps you have seen the video floating around the internet of our favorite plumber carrying a special tool from another one of our favorite games. Mari0 is a project being work on by a group of programmers over at StabYourself.net. The game brings together the classic Super Mario Bros game with elements from the Valve game, Portal.

Obsolete Gamer had a chance to talk with Sašo Smolej from StabYourself.net about the game:

Tell us a little about Mari0?

Mari0 is what happens when you take the NES classic and add one of the best received concepts in the last few years: Portals. It’s a feature rich, close to original remake of Super Mario Bros. with portals, map editor and co-op. We will also deliver a story with custom maps with the game, and will allow users to send us their maps, which we will host on our server to be downloadable by anyone from ingame.

 How did you come up with the idea for it?

Maurice started working on a SMB clone in January, and in April we came upon Dorkly’s Mario with portal gun video. The original idea before seeing the video was adding the same multiplayer that is found in “New Super Mario Bros. Wii”, but that changed after discovering it. Since the whole code is optimized for multiplayer, it was really easy to add co-op (With any number of players) though, so that helped.

Since this is not a mod, but a full game can you tell us about the process of creating it?

Before we started hammering away on the keyboard, we had to think the concept through, see where problems may arise and what we would have to change in order to keep the game fun. It’s not as simple as “Take Mario and add Portal Gun”. We had to start at the very basics: Level drawing, movement, collisions, controls, all that junk.

It really is a lot of work to recreate a whole game. We’re ripping graphics and sounds as we go, and compare the game a lot to the real thing to make sure we’re getting as close to for example the jumping physics as we can. After we had a solid and playable foundation and thought things through, we started adding Portal logic, as well as mouse support and everything related. This is an example of a trade that we have to make between “playability” and “close to original”, because one the one hand, Super Mario Bros. obviously doesn’t have a mouse, but on the other, having to use the arrow keys to point the portal would be a limiting solution.

We have also decided to break free a little from NES graphic restrictions concerning anything Portal related. Once we’ll be completely done with the Portal gun (we’re close!), we’ll start thinking about the story and level design.

 What made you go with the classic 1985 Mario Bros?

It’s a game everyone (or at least everyone 16+) remembers from their childhood, and we love to play with people like that: Give them a familiar environment and then surprise them with a modern twist. We think that’s what gives these games their appeal.

Can you give us an idea of the stories you might explore in the game?

We’re still collecting ideas, thinking of the direction we’ll go. We can’t say anything specific at this point since it will probably end up being completely changed.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What are your plans as far as music?

We have gotten an offer from a music artist whose work we quite liked, so he will probably be writing the music in a Portal 2 soundtrack style for the Portal levels we will ship with the game. The original levels will use the original music, for nostalgia sake.

What is your favorite classic video game and why?

Maurice: It probably really is the Super Mario Bros. series, especially the third one. It just has so many levels, worlds and side stuff, you can really tell Nintendo went all out on this one to create the best game in the NES library.

Sašo: It’s kind of a hard pick for me since I grew up with the PC, never really having the opportunity to play console games. I think Outlaws and Jazz Jackrabbit would be my pick since they’re the most memorable of the games I actually played. I did of course play games like SMB, but a bit later than most other.

When do you think the playable version will be ready?

I’d love to be able to give you an answer, but since this is a pure hobby we’re making our own times and can’t give you a solid date. We keep telling ourselves “This year” but hopefully it’ll be in about 2 months or so.

You can check out and keep up to date on Mari0 at their official website – http://stabyourself.net/mari0/

There are a lot of free-to-play MMO’s out there, but just like paid MMO’s there are the great ones and the rest and World of Tanks is definitely one of the great ones. A number of us here at Obsolete Gamer began playing World of Tanks right after E3 2011 and are still playing to this day.

World of Tanks is massive multiple team based tank fighting game where you choose from a number of World War one and two era tanks from Russia, Germany and the U.S. You start out with older smaller tanks and as you level up you upgrade the tanks and unlock new ones. You level up by playing in team based matches where the objective is to destroy all the rival tanks or capture their base.

That is a very general description to a game that while easy to play has a level of complexity to it any gamer would enjoy. Not only do you need to understand each tank, not only the ones you own, but the ones you are going up against, but you need to understand the map layouts and work with your team because victory brings more points than defeat.

The game is free to play however you can purchase gold in the game that allows you to buy game time giving you a boost in experience points and a different garage to hold your tanks. You can also purchase special ammo, tanks and more garage slots using gold, but you can play and enjoy the game without spending a dime.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Obsolete Gamer had a chance to talk with Jeremy Monroe, general manager for Wargaming America about World of Tanks and the upcoming patch for the game.

World of Tanks is becoming wildly popular. What do you think has made the game so popular with gamers?

Tanks! Who doesn’t love Tanks? The game’s a great deal of fun to play and the community is fantastic. I believe we really hit a sweet spot in the market. We’re part shooter, action, strategy and mmo coupled with a respect for the historical authenticity of the era. World of Tanks is compelling for gamers at any level. It’s fun and it’s free.

Do you find the free-to-play model works best for games such as yours?

Free to Play is a great model for most, if not all games. It really puts gamers in a position to have quality choices and the industry in a position to showcase fantastic titles, unique gameplay and innovative features. The evolution of the industry has been tremendous with the widespread adoption of the free-to-play model.  Given the quality of the game, its design and the merging of so many popular genres, we knew the model was perfect for World of Tanks and gamers.

 There have been questions about balance where lower tier tanks keep getting in matches with higher tier tanks. Can you tell us a bit about that and any changes you are working on?

We’re constantly adjusting the match making system to provide challenging but evenly matched battles at every level. With that said, consideration must be given to the number of players and the tiers of the tanks being queued. It’s a difficult balance to strike. On one hand, you want fair and evenly-matched battles and on the other, you want short queues for the players. It’s a key priority for us to strike that balance and we’re constantly growing, evolving and getting better over time.

Third party add-ons like skins for tanks and the crosshairs are becoming popular. Do you have plans to add your own skins and add-ons?

Yes; in our 7.0 update we’ll be introducing a number of cool features like that including camouflage; the camo will be true to the era so no pink bunnies or rainbows.

What can we expect in the next update and content patches in the near future?

We try to update every month with fixes and upgrades but it’s also critical we listen to our community and continue to evolve World of Tanks with significant changes that include new compelling features, maps and of course more bad ass TANKS!

Our newest update will include  -

• A new Fishing Bay map
• New tier 4-5 light tanks: Т-50, Т-50-2, VK2801, M24 Chaffee
• Tier 6 American tanks M4A3E2

You can always find the newest information here – http://game.worldoftanks.com/in_development

With the recent announcement of World of Warplanes and World of Battleships, are there future plans to integrate both games with World of Tanks? And will there be universal Clan War maps where tanks, planes, and ships will partake?

Right now the 3 games will not be integrated into one world…but as this is a constantly evolving game with innovative designers behind it there is never a definite “No”. As for clan wars, we are looking at being able to bring the 3 games together into that world. We’ll update you as soon as we get more information.

People are reporting on forums that World of Tanks will be released in a retail box form. Any information as to when it will be released and what it contains? Any plans for a collector’s edition?

Yes, we are releasing a box in North America; it will be in stores Sept 1^st at the top retailers. The box will be $19.99 and includes $30 worth of in-game items. We are looking at a collector’s edition but we want to make sure it is truly compelling for our players. We’ll certainly keep you posted as we finalize our plans.

Besides the three current armies (USSR, Germany, USA) represented in World of Tanks; are there any more that will be added in the future?

Yes, definitely. French Tanks will be introduced very soon (here is a peek – Wot Facebook) and as you can see with the new additions to the German tank lines: Pz.VI Tiger (P), VK 4502 (P) Ausf. A, E-50, Е-75, Е-100 and two new premium tanks T-15, T-25, we are always expanding the current roster of tanks.

Right now the Clan Wars map takes place in Northern Europe and the Mediterranean. Are there future plans to add more map locations, like the Pacific region? 

Yes, currently Clan Wars is still in beta but we will be expanding. Eventually clans can compete for global domination.

Are there any plans to add special tanks or tanks skins that are purchasable if your clan holds certain objectives or territories?

We’re definitely looking into these options and many other ways to reward and recognize the top clans for playing well. Unfortunately, I can’t go into further details at this time but we hope to be able to present it to our players very soon.

You can download and play World of Tanks for free at - http://www.worldoftanks.com/

Remember when browser based games were barely a little more advanced than Pac-Man? Then we were introduced to flash games and from there skies were the limit. BattleStar Galactica online has flown past the skies into space bringing us their free-to-play massive multiplayer game based on the SyFy series. Obsolete Gamer had a chance to talk with Sarah Levantine, Producer for Battlestar Galactica Online about the game and its upcoming changes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Can you give us an overview of Battlestar Galactica Online?

Battlestar Galactica Online is a free-to-play, browser-based space combat MMOG that combines high-quality, 3D graphics with intense gameplay. The game is based on the acclaimed Emmy and Peabody Award-winning television series “Battlestar Galactica,” which aired for four seasons on Syfy. In the game, humans and Cylons are in a constant struggle to control the universe, which players accomplish through a mixture of tactical space combat, exploration, and mission-based gameplay.

Can you tell us a little about the process of creating this game from the idea stage to the beta and post release?

In terms of visual fidelity and design, Battlestar Galactica Online represents a new breed of online, free-to-play games. Prior to its launch, BSGO was been met with some disbelief that a browser-based game could look and feel good. We knew we had to get it right, so we made sure we didn’t launch until we were all quite confident that we had a hit on our hands. Thanks to Unity 3D, the platform on which BSGO was built, we’re able to deliver an extremely high-quality gaming experience. When seeing it for the first time, people often forget it’s played through a standard web browser. Core to all development is our desire to be authentic to the IP, yet flexible enough to introduce new content; after all, our game must live beyond four seasons. Recently, BSGO’s post-launch development has fully transitioned to our San Francisco office. Here we’re focused on short- and long-term content additions, and of course continued optimization and polish.

Would you say you would need to know BSG or be a fan to enjoy this game?

No, it’s as easy for players who aren’t familiar with Battlestar Galactica as it is for those who are fans of the show. Battlestar Galactica has an enormously loyal and passionate following, and we wanted to give fans the opportunity to experience it through an engaging online experience

Now it being free to play can you have fun and do everything in the game without having to buy anything additionally?

Players can earn Cubits (premium in-game currency) through PvP, although much more slowly than by purchasing them outright with real money. While most ships and items in the game can be purchased with Cubits, there are some that you can only buy or upgrade with Merits – a type of currency that is earned solely through gameplay. Generally, we’ve found that players who earn their achievements through gameplay are better than players who spend money to reach new levels or unlock items faster, and even find “grinding” to be the most fun part of the experience. At Bigpoint, we take the issue of player balance very seriously. We have a design requirement that everything can be achieved for free. However, because we need to pay for developers and servers, we have to allow players to spend money in-game…not doing so would mean we simply couldn’t build, launch, and support any game.

What can you purchase if you wish and what benefits would you gain if you do so?

There are many items available for purchase in the game, including things likes weapons, engines, computer systems, ammo, and even complete ships. The benefit of buying an item comes down to time…some players would like to experience new ships, for example, but they simply can’t dedicate enough time to earn it through basic gameplay. Like most F2P titles, however, the number of paying players is dwarfed by those who play 100% for free. This is top of mind with us at every step of development.

Since it will be humans versus Cylons PVP will be a big part of this game, can you tell us more about that aspect?

BSGO is primarily an MMO that pits humans against Cylons; you can play as either side. One of the newest features that we’ve added to the game is a “Top Gun” match system, which pairs players based on level in 1v1 or 3v3 battles. Players can challenge other players to private, instanced PvP ranked battles to determine who is the “Top Gun” and Top 100 on each server. Alternatively, players who wish to compete against other pilots of any faction (including their own), rating, ship size, or class can engage in “duel” PvP matches, where no rewards or changes in rating will occur after winning/losing a match. PvP is a core element of Battlestar Galactica Online, but we also have plans to expand the PvE space combat, missions, mining operations, and exploration of capital ships, outposts, and bases.

As far as adding to the game meaning content or additional features how will those come about?

Our games live online for many years, so there are a lot of opportunities to introduce new content and features. Working with the acclaimed IP provides us with a direction where we can take the game, but we also carve out opportunities where we can intertwine new concepts into show’s storyline. Since BSGO has transitioned out of beta, the dev team has been able to shift away from making patches and optimizing performance to adding new content and features. We have our own (very big) list, and pay close attention to what the community wants – we’re building this game for them.

Currently are you working on a release that will address issues and add more content and if so when might we see that?

Our development team continues to work on performance optimization and new content features on a daily basis. Every couple weeks a new release is sent out to include information on bug fixes, UI improvements, patches, new ships, gameplay features, etc. The next big content update and announcement on Battlestar Galactica Online is expected this fall.

Some players have experienced lag even with high-speed internet, can you address that?

What players describe as lag in any online game can actually be caused by several different issues. First, their Internet connection may be slow or intermittent. Second, older or slower machines may not be able to render all of the ships and effects in heavy combat situations at the target frame rate. Finally, during peak hours game servers under heavy load may have trouble sending out the volume of network messages that they need to – this is a network issue on the game server side, as opposed to the user’s side. Our development plan definitely includes paying attention to performance on both the client and server sides of the game.

Do you plan to add a marketplace or trade area for the game?

A marketplace or trade area is definitely a feature we have discussed, but don’t plan to implement in the near future.

Do you plan to make changes/advancements to the current chat system?

The chat system has had a number of changes made to it since the game’s launch. It now has the ability to send specific messages to the entire system, squad, or wing, and also send private messages to individuals or to your own fleet.

Will players ever be able to switch between servers but keep their character?

At the moment, players are not able to transfer their characters over to another server. It is something that we have also considered, but is not possible to achieve quickly. Our current focus is to expand the game in various directions, pumping out new content and ships for existing players to look forward to. The dev team is also very open to receiving feedback and suggestions from the community, as they are incorporated in many of the decisions made about the game and how BSGO will evolve.

There have been issues of balance on servers do you have a plan to address that?

The balance between the different classes of ship – strike, escort and line – was very carefully planned out in a rock-paper-scissors design. Each class has unique strengths and weaknesses. The balance between the two factions is a trickier question. Players will always choose Colonial characters at a higher rate than Cylon, simply because they identify with the protagonists of the show. What you end up with is a larger number of Colonial players at a lower level, and more hard-core, high level players on the Cylon side. It’s an interesting thing to try and balance, and we are definitely working on a plan to weight the two factions in a more organic manner than occasionally offering a faction switch token.

How many people over at Bigpoint are fans of BSG?

Most of us at Bigpoint very familiar with BSG, and we have around 800 employees. Members of the Battlestar Galactica Online development team are of course diehard fans (a solid group of developers and artists, plus additional colleagues from the community management, QA, web development, marketing, and PR departments). There are a few people who follow the show closely and can’t wait until the prequel of the series “Blood & Chrome” airs. Many of us also play Battlestar Galactica Online in our spare time as either a Colonial or Cylon – and we have a bit of an internal rivalry – all in good fun. Often times, we even have company-wide playtests to show off our dog-fighting skills.

 There is quite a legacy of space based games, can you tell us what some of your favorites were and did any inspire you for BSGO?

While I played some X-Wing back in the day, I find most of my inspiration for BSGO from the show itself, and trying to bring as many cinematic moments into the game as possible. We want to allow the players to create stories to add to the already rich Battlestar Galactica universe. At the end of the day, who wouldn’t want to be a Cylon in tactical space combat?

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You can play Battlestar Galactica Online free by heading over to their website.

1. Well fearless developers, care to introduce yourselves?

2. Now, how about introducing us to your forthcoming release: Age of Decadence?

3. Any idea when we should expect to play it? Will it be a download-only title?

4. And the name, the name… What is the significance of the Age of Decadence title?

5. Care to elaborate a bit on the setting and story bits of the game?

The story begins when your character acquires an ancient map and revolves around learning where and what the map leads to, dealing with factions that have very different goals, and finally dealing with what awaits for you at the end of your journey.

6. I understand this will be more or less a turn based experience. How exactly will AoD play?

So, going with the above mentioned example, armed with a short sword and 12AP per turn, you can do 3 regular attacks, or 4 fast attacks, or 2 power attacks, in which case you’ll still have 2AP left. If you grab a dagger in your free hand, you can perform a fast attack with a dagger. We also offer throwing nets, acid, and black powder bombs to enhance your combat experience.

7. Will there be dialog? Puzzles? Moral Choices? Naked goblins?

Overall, dialogues and choices are the main aspect of the game and the main attraction. We have seven different endings and only two involve mortal combat. You’ll be able to talk your way in and out of trouble, make allies and enemies (there are no default good and bad guys), and handle quests in non-combat ways using dialogues and text adventure elements.

8. Any information on the engine you’ll be using you’d care to share?

9. How about the available quests?

10. What kind of character creation and game mechanics systems will you be using? Should we expect something like D&D or something more akin to Fallout/GURPS?

1. So, it’s Bob, Robert and oddbob. Care to explain who you are and state your age, obsessions and/or any bit of personal info you think the Gnome’s Lair lot would be interested in? You know, for the record…

2. Besides being responsible for some brilliant retro remakes you (well, Mersey Remakes and you) have a lovely blog. Love the name. What do you mean with it? Do you guys indeed make the cops look bad?

3. On to Mersey Remakes. What’s the story behind this very giving group?

4. Ok, that was slightly confusing yet quite reassuring. Then again you are not thinking to try creating some non-retro inspired games, are you?

5. Any hopes for a commercial game? You would do quite an impressive indie group you know…

6. Oh, and -I know that’s quite irrelevant- but are you interested in them modern games? Played anything interesting lately?

7. Couldn’t agree more. Also, there are just too few memorable (and even less funny) songs in gaming. Then again, there aren’t enough Python references either… Anyway. Aren’t you immensely proud for Jet Set Willy Online?

8. Guess you should be proud about G-Force too, even though I’ve wasted an unhealthy amount of time on the beast. Still, top visuals, great humour, trippy music and frantic old-school shooting action are too good to ignore. How did you manage to pull this one off?

9. So, uhm, not a particularly exciting question, but which is your favorite Mersey Remakes game?

10. And finally, what do you think of innovation in game design? Can it co-exist with a retro feeling or was JSWO a work of demons?

I had the pleasure of meeting Geoff for the first time in person at Metrocon this year in Tampa, Fl where he won the tournament for Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition. He is known for not only his brilliant Cammy in the SSF4 series, but also for his humor and video editing. His Youtube channel contains videos he’s made that bring helpful tips and many laughs to the fighting game community and beyond. He just finished completing a video walkthrough of the game Catherine in parts. Geoff is a valuable asset to the gaming community and his words are very important to gamers everywhere including myself. Thank you, Geoff.

Geoff’s Gaming Career

When did you start competing in fighting games professionally? Did you start when you were confident in your skills or did you get good by participating in tournaments right away?

First off, thanks for the opportunity for this interview! I LOVE YOU. I started actually caring about winning in fighting games when HD Remix came out in 2008. However, my first tournament was a week after Vanilla SF4 came out, which was the nationwide GameStop tournament (they banned my character and forced you to use broken, sticky 360 controllers!). After that terrible abortion of a tournament, I stuck to playing online. I had a terrible grasp of the fighting game engine though, so a lot of that practice time went to waste. I started to gain some sort of understanding of what was happening on the screen when I started making friends on Shoryuken.com’s Cammy forums. Trust me, a tiny bit of research will help your game tremendously. From there on out I believe I’ve been doing good for myself! I’m pretty great.

How much do you practice to play as well as you do? How much practice do you think one should have in a fighting game like SSF4?

Back when Vanilla SF4 came out, I would grind ALL day long. I’d lock myself in my apartment for an unhealthy amount of hours at a time and grind online like no tomorrow. Little did I know back then that all that was very inefficient because I had a very poor understanding of the fighting game engine itself. When I came to my revelation of understanding, I was playing about 2 hours locally/online a day, due to my job and university taking priority. Nowadays, I find myself playing SSFIV AE a little less than that, but the excitement and spirit of the game is as fresh as it was the first day! My good friend SeikuRyu, a phenomenal Cammy from San Diego, recommends 2 hours a day minimum in training mode… Loser~

I’m sure you have a few characters under your belt but I understand your main character is Cammy. What was your reason for choosing her to stick with even after the initially gruesome nerf?

I’d like to get back to the nerfs/buffs she got in a second, but to directly address the question– it’s character pride. I’ve stuck with Cammy since Vanilla SFIV (where she was considered horrible) and there’s no reason for me to switch off now. The main change that people are upset about is the Cannon Strike move (a move that is able to apply offensive pressure by cancelling her jump arc into a high damage potential attack). It now has a height restriction which makes her rushdown less intimidating. However, nearly all of Cammy’s punches have been buffed to be insanely effective as frame traps as well as more damaging combos. You do have to put some more brainpower into making her work, but ohhhhh does she work. All the big, established names I talk to absolutely agree, Cammy is still a sexy beast. I do wonder what Ono (SF Director) has in store for Cammy in the rebalancing patch coming this year.

I have been told, actually, there are players who have you to thank for helping other Cammy players get through the change. Are there any comments you may have for them and others who were discouraged by the nerf?

Street Fighter is not immune to typical social stigmas. Hive mentality goes hand in hand with ignorance. Just go into any Street Fighter stream chat and look at how boisterously stupid the majority of chatters are. Any true player will be able to see Cammy’s amazing potential, and I leave it at that! However, if you haven’t seen it, please watch my lightning-quick overall Zero To Hero Cammy tutorial:

Are there any conventions or tournaments you intend to compete at coming up?

I’ll be attending many more tournaments this year. To name a few: Storm Underground 3, some crappy local Tallahassee tournament, Final Round and EVO 2012. GamerBee wants a salty runback on our Hugging Money Match:

Geoff’s Videos

What was the inspiration for your videos? If there was none, where did the idea come from to become so involved? How long have you been making and editing videos?

Since making it as a co-host on MTV’s G-Hole when I was 16, I’ve been inspired to show others that screwing around playing video games is a ton of fun. You don’t need to have an unhealthy obsession with winning at video games in order to have fun. Where’s that going to get you in life? I hope that through example, I’m able to teach others how to take it easy, have fun, and be receptive to learning/daily life experiences. All while I’m having a blast playing video games.

When I made the DarkSydeGeoff channel/persona, it was made as a parody of the ridiculousness of the video game community. The idea took off and formulated into its own cult following.

General Questions

Fighting games aren’t the only type you play. Do you have any favorite developers or series in other genres? What are they?

Atlus and Capcom are my favorites right now (not Capcom as of late!). I ran a fairly popular MegaMan website community way back then, so I’m pretty diehard about that series. No matter how hard they run everything into the ground. Otherwise I love pretty much any game/series that can emotionally wreck me. Ace Attorney Series, Heavy Rain, SMT/Persona Series– all must play games.

What are you playing now besides Catherine?

I just finished a playthrough of the indie game VVVVVV. So simple yet addictive.

Any last comments for our readers, Geoff? Is there anything you’d like to add?

If you’re interested in my crazy, wacky video game philosophies, check out my YouTube channel: DarkSydeGeoff

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A Few Notes::

- A “vanilla” version of a game is the original. It is a term that can be used for other genres but it is mainly used for fighting games. Street Fighter 4 is the “vanilla” Super Street Fighter 4.

- A developer can fix or modify an already made game in the form of a totally separate upgrade like SSF4: Arcade Edition or downloadable content. This can either “nerf” an aspect or character which makes things worse, or “buff” it to make them better. This is meant to create balance but not everyone is always happy with changes made.

-Gamerbee is a Taiwanese SSF4 player who came out of nowhere and eliminated the infamous Justin Wong, one the top players of the United States during the SSF4 semi-finals of EVO ’10.

-”EVO” or “Evolution” is the annual fighting game world championship for not only Street Fighter, but other fighting games as well.

1. So, is it Vince Twelve or Vince xii? Oh, and do please add a bit of further personal info to spice things up… The tabloids will love you.

Quick personal run-down: I’m 24, married, have a one-year-old daughter, and I live in Japan where I teach English in a Junior High School. And for the benefit of the tabloids: I’m dating Jennifer Aniston, have an eating disorder, a drug problem, an illegitimate love-child, and I’m gay. How’s that for spicy?

2. Are you more of a game designer, a programmer or even (don’t deny it) an evolving visual artist?

As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to design games. The only way I can prove to myself that I’m capable in that regard, however, is to release games and get feedback from the players. That’s why I’m always starving for any kind of feedback I can get.

As far as being an artist… while I’m quite pleased with the final looks of both Anna and Linus, I don’t have the artistic skill that I need to realize some of the games that I’d like to make. Plus I take way too long to draw anything. I’m learning as I go, but it’s a slow process.

3. Xii games. Quite a few people have been credited in your three (brilliant) games. Is it indeed a group or are people just coming and going?

Spooks was definitely an amazing team effort, but it was still Erin’s baby. She designed, wrote, and drew everything. I joined the project after her previous programmer vanished and took all the game’s code along with him. Erin and I were in constant communication for the next few months as she finished up art and animation and I put the whole thing together. Chris Moorson was also there the whole time working on music and sound.

For Linus, I was back in the designer’s chair. After I worked up a working prototype of the game, I got Nikolas Sideris on board to do the music. But he ended up being much more than just a musician. I sent him updates throughout the development for suggestions and motivation. He was really awesome. The third major member of the Linus team was my wife, who wrote all the Japanese translations as well as providing a lot of support (and if you finished the game and saw the super-secret ending: that was her playing the sexy nurse!). It was really great to be able to share my love for making games with my wife. I definitely plan on involving her in more of my projects.

4.From Anna to What Linus Bruckman Sees When His Eyes Are Closed… What’s next? A paragraph long name?

Yeah, I was totally pleased with the long name. I thought it up really early in development and it just seemed appropriately strange… and it makes more sense if you see the super-secret ending!

5.Right. Names aside, what’s more impressive is your tendency to constantly innovate. Anna is quite possibly the only 3D, keyboard controlled AGS adventure, and Linus really did something never attempted before. So, how important is innovation? Do you believe gamers are actually interested in it?

That being said, freeware game makers are in a unique position to innovate. Since they don’t have significant money invested in the game, it isn’t such a big deal if their clever, innovative idea doesn’t work so well in a game as it did in their head. Compared to a big developer with millions of dollars invested in a title’s success, or even a small developer who scraped together every last penny they could find to fund their game, this is a big opportunity to take some risks and try something new.

As for the gamers’ interest in innovation, I suppose that depends on how successful the innovation turns out to be. Afterall, “innovation” implies “new” not necessarily “fun”. I do think that most gamers are always on the lookout for something unique and exciting, and when that new idea turns out to be genuinely fun, you have a real gem of a game. I think Linus was moderately successful in this regard.

6.Linus, well WLBSWHEAC, lets the player simultaneously play two games and experience two stories and two totally different visual styles with only one mouse. You’ve already mentioned the DS (and your shower) was an inspiration. Care to elaborate?

When the Nintendo DS was first announced, I began thinking of the new types of games that could be made for the system. I figured that if I thought of myself as a game designer, I should easily be able to think up some unique new types of gameplay for such an innovative system. One of the ideas that I really liked was having two completely different worlds, one in each screen, and playing them simultaneously. I carried that idea around in the back of my head for a while until I decided to start fleshing it out for a PC game. The idea eventually grew into Linus.

One very rewarding thing is seeing professional designers coming up with ideas very similar to yours and turning them into real commercial games. I was almost finished with Linus when I heard about a DS game called Contact which displays two different worlds on the two screens using two completely different art styles for each. Even though the gameplay is very different – it’s an RPG in which you control only one of the characters – I had to immediately buy the game because of the similarities. Also, Square Enix just announced a new DS game in which you control two characters simultaneously, one on the top screen, one on the bottom. But rather than your commands being mirrored in both screens like in Linus, you control the characters separately – one with the d-pad and one with the stylus.

It’s very interesting to me to see how professional designers play with these similar ideas. It’s also quite gratifying. It makes me feel like I was on the right track with my design.

7.Why is it such a hard and complex game?

At the time of me writing this, out of the thousands of downloads from my site and from the other places that it’s been picked up and hosted, only fourteen are listed in the online Hall of Completion. (Though I’m guessing it’s just that most people don’t care enough to go online and type in their completion code…)

That being said, I knew from the get go that this kind of game wouldn’t appeal to everyone. I’m sure that a lot of people download the game because of the promise of something unique and then start to play it only to find out that the gameplay and logic puzzles don’t really appeal to them. But that’s the benefit of making a freeware game. My only real customer is myself! Sorry if anyone found it too hard.

8.What should we expect next of xii games? More innovative thinking? A sequel to the almost traditional but excellent Spooks? An action game? Erotic interactive fiction?

I’ve got several ideas which I’ve trimmed down to two to decide between. I want to do something longer than Anna or Linus and tell a full story. One of the two ideas relies on me finding an artist or two who are willing to help me realize the game, so we’ll see about that. (Any artists out there want to help me out?) But you can be sure that there will be some innovative thinking included in the design. I wouldn’t make a game that didn’t have something unique to offer.

As for the sequel to Spooks, Erin is still working on the story, design, and art. It’s coming but it’s a ways off. And whether or not I’ll be coding it or xii games releasing it is still up in the air.

And I think I’ll leave the erotic fiction up to the fans. I don’t know if you’ve read the recently released “Linus Bruckman Tosses Mortia a Bone,” but it’s quite tittilating.

9.Any thoughts of releasing a commercial game?

10.Now for the final/double-feature question. Enjoyed any of the recently released adventure games? How’s your Wii doing?

Totally loving my Wii. WarioWare: Smooth Moves has to be the most fun I’ve had (and the dumbest I’ve looked) in quite a while. The one downside of the Wii is that my wife consistently beats me in tennis, and so of course that’s the only game she ever wants to play!

Cheers!

Thanks for taking the time to interview me!

Thanks for taking the time to answer, thanks for the games and good luck!

As the modern day video game industry continues to grow, the games from the original boom period of the early 1980s have entered pop culture status.

Among the ranks of Pac-Man, Mario and Donkey Kong is Q*bert.   The title character of this 1982 arcade smash has continued to live on almost 30 years after his debut, from references in television shows such as Family Guy and The Simpsons to gamers still aiming to be the all-time world champion on the title.

According to Warren Davis, the programmer who brought Q*bert to the video game arcade screen, the lasting impact of the game was not expected.

“It’s nice to hear that Q*bert is still remembered by some people,” Davis told Arcade Game Examiner. “Sometimes it seems like Pac- Man and Donkey Kong get a lot of attention and Q*bert is just fading off into obscurity.”

The initial popularity of Q*bert resulted in numerous home releases, plush dolls and more.  It also became one of a handful of video games to become cartoons, as CBS Saturday Morning cartoon Saturday Supercade included a Q*bert segment alongside animated episodes of games such as Frogger and Donkey Kong Junior.

“I wasn’t all that impressed,” Davis revealed. “It was a nice attempt to create a back-story for the characters, but I didn’t think it really needed one. It was also a nice attempt to market the character and help it reach a bigger audience, but I’m not sure that it had any effect.”

After Q*bert, Davis continued to work on video gaming titles including classic arcade shooters Revolution-X and Terminator 2.  While these titles differed greatly from his early 80s hit, the goal was the same, he said.

“My approach isn’t all that different.  Whatever the genre or style, I try to find a way to engage and challenge the player in an entertaining way,” Davis said.

In addition to game design, Warren Davis has also entered acting, appearing in television shows such as All My Children, House M.D. and the Practice, as well as films such as 2008’s Yesterday Was A Lie.

“Acting is something I started doing in college for fun, and at the time I was hired by Gottlieb, I was also studying and performing improv comedy in Chicago,” he said. “Luckily, I was always able to fit in acting on nights and weekends while my day job was making video games. After a few years, I found myself working in bigger and better theatres and eventually realized that it was something of a second career. Nowadays, I’m more interested in acting and directing than writing software, although I still dabble on software projects that interest me.”

Q*bert has once again entered the public eye in competitive video gaming, including the recent attempt in New Jersey by gamer George Leutz, who saw his world record attempt end after 36 hours when the power cord was jostled.  Davis, who learned of the attempt through Arcade Game Examiner, spoke to Leutz shortly after the sudden game over.

“I felt absolutely terrible for him, but he seemed to be in as good spirits as possible,” Davis said. “He had a great group of friends there to support him, and you can’t really ask for anything more than that, can you? I congratulated him, and told him that next time he tries, I’ll try to be present via Skype so I can watch.”

Even though Davis has made a mark on screens across video gaming, movies and television, he turned down the opportunity to plug his upcoming projects.

“I’m not much of a self-promoter. Maybe I’ll develop that skill someday,” he said.

Anyone who is a fan of classic gaming has to be a fan of gaming music. Even though some of the music from the 8-bit generation was simple, often it was well done and entertaining. I think most of all the music stuck in our heads and just as we wanted to push it out, we realized it was a pretty good tune.

Meet Seth and Michelle two people who loved classic video game soundtracks so much they began creating their own music and have performed across two continents. Obsolete Gamer was lucky enough to see them live at E3 2011 and even recorded a bit.

Click here to view the embedded video.

After the event, we had to interview them and they were kind enough to answer all our questions.

What was your first computer and what got you into using computers?

Michelle: My brother is who got me into using computers because he had a C64 and would let me play games on it.

Seth: The Commodore 64 was the first computer I could call my own. My neighbor Oscar had one and I’d spend countless hours watching him play his, especially Adventure Construction Set by EA. Hearing the music and watching the graphics etc, I had to get one. I begged my Dad to get my brother and I one and he eventually did.

What do you like more, consoles or computers?

Michelle: I grew up playing games on the C64 and the Amiga and I have the fondest memories using the computers because I would play games like Zack McCracken and the Alien Mind Benders, Maniac Mansion and Little Computer People and I still enjoy playing those types of games today.

Seth: I grew up with computers (C64/IBM/Apple II) and never owned a console myself until I got a game boy in 1992. I enjoy them both equally now, however computer’s had the best RPG’s hand’s down over consoles. Games like Wasteland, Bard’s Tale, Dragon Wars, Ultima’s etc were either unavailable or watered down/changed for their console versions.

What is your favorite sound platform to work on (SID, etc)?

Michelle: I use my Game Boy because it’s the most portable.  My favorite sound is the SID though.

Seth: I love working with all the chips like an orchestra, but the Commodore 64′s SID chip will always be my favorite.

Name the top 5 musicians or musical groups that inspired you to make the music you make today!

Michelle: DEVO, Depeche Mode, Gwen Stefani, YYYs, The Doors

Seth: DEVO, Vince Clarke (Depeche mode/Yaz/Yazoo/Erasure/etc), Alan Wilder (Depeche mode/Recoil), Kraftwerk, and Jean Michel Jarre. There are also chip music composers like Dave Warhol, Martin Galway, Kennith Arnold, George “The Fatman” Sanger, and Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka that inspire me from a chiptune perspective.

What do you think about people’s desire for all retro stuff (video games, as well as if you want to make stuff like movies such as The A-Team, G.I. Joe, Transformers, etc.)

Michelle: It’s cool that people are into the retro stuff, but it’s also making it harder to acquire items I want.

Seth: I think it’s fun, but yeah, ebay is getting more and more expensive as we compete with collectors while trying to acquire more gear! lol

What was the old console or computer that you wish you had back in the day but couldn’t afford?

Michelle: My family had all of them, so I was lucky.

Seth: Amiga 500 I wanted pretty bad but I knew my family could never afford it. Now we have an Amiga 1200, so dreams do come true!

What is your favorite kind of music to sample from?

Michelle: I don’t use samples.

Seth: We don’t sample any music or sound effects. Everything you hear is from us controlling the chips of each computer or console directly with software to make original music with.

8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, or 64-bit and beyond… which do you like the most, and what do you like the most about it?

Michelle: 8-Bit for it’s simplicity.

Seth: 8 Bit 4 life~! It’s powerful enough to run games, graphics, and music without over doing it.

What is your favorite medium for distributing music and why?

Michelle: CD Baby because they do all of the work.

Seth: MP3 because we don’t have to make them by hand and mail them out all over the world. haha

What do you like the most about your fans?

Michelle: They are very unique people and are interesting to talk to.  They are also very supportive of my music and I really appreciate that.

Seth: Our fans our really great people! Some are fans of gaming, some are not, but they are all about the music!

You can check out their website 8-Bit Weapon and find and purchase their music here.