By Benjamin Schlichter, 11/26/08

BSchlichter@VGChartz.com

Today, as a VGChartz.com exclusive, I got to sit down, and play 20 questions (14, actually) with developer/president Nathan Fouts, of Mommy's Best Games.

You may have not heard of Nathan before, but you've most likely seen his work. Before parting ways with Insomniac, he developed on well-recieved titles such as 'Resistance: The Fall of Man' and the 'Ratchet & Clank' series - 3 R&C titles in all, as well as Postal 2 (which wasn't an Insomniac title, FYI).

After parting with Insomniac, he's went on to found an independant studio in Mommy's Best Games . Weapon of Choice is the first game from his studio, so we're excited to ask an up-and-comer about the state of Community Games on Xbox Live, and the XNA development platform.

But before we get to the interview, we want to thank Nathan for taking the time out of his busy schedule to answer random questions. You can check out Weapon of Choice on Microsoft's new Community Game's platform, exclusively for Xbox Live.

And real quick, about what WoC is:

Weapon of Choice is a high-energy, side-scrolling action game with unique weapons and playable characters used to fight a myriad of amazing monsters. Dynamically branching levels are tied together by fighting an intriguing story with multiple endings, giving the player tons of replayability and chances to master each operative's Weapon of Choice.

Oh, and a picture of WoC - Can't forget that!

Now the questions:

Mrstickball: Was Weapon of Choice developed entirely using XNA? If so, how is XNA as a development platform?

Nathan: Yes, Weapon of Choice was developed on top of the XNA development suite. The level editor, the model builder, and the animation editor were also built using XNA. It’s been a very smooth experience using the system, even considering it’s evolution from 1.0 to 3.0 as the XNA dev team added new features.

Generally, I love being able to approach new aspects of the game’s development and think ‘Okay, today, I have to make the game save system work’. Then, I do a little reading in the XNA help section, and within a few hours, I already have something working. The past alternative required writing hardware-related code from scratch, which I find pretty time-consuming and not personally as enjoyable as gameplay code. From the standpoint of just wanting to work on the game, XNA is a great platform.

Mrstickball: How is XNA compared to the other development platforms? As an accomplished designer for major Playstation 3 titles 'Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction ' and the critically acclaimed Playstation 3 launch game 'Resistance: Fall of Man ', can you compare the two?

Nathan: The biggest difference between using XNA and working with a team in-house like at Insomniac is that you don’t have the same level of support. With Microsoft working on the low-level XNA code, you have to rely and wait upon them to fix things. The good news is there were very few things that needed fixing on the low-level end as far as Weapon of Choice ’s development was concerned.

The flip-side to this is that when you only have code updates every few months or longer the code is stable. Working with an in-house team can be a mixed blessing because constant updates of low-level code can often break the gameplay side of things.

Mrstickball: How was developing your own, first title for the Xbox 360 ? What was the development time for Weapon of Choice , and what kind of staff was involved in bringing this great shooter to the Community Games platform?

Nathan: It was a great experience overall and was simply mountains upon mountains of work. Weapon of Choice was in pre-production for about 4 months during which several gameplay prototypes were written along with the editors. The Death-Brushing gameplay was prototyped early to ensure it was as fun as I’d hoped and to have the longest time to tune it.

Production on the game took about 8 months.

As far as development staff, I did the original concept, design, programming, texture art, animation, and sound effects and my wife acted as the producer. I had Hamdija Ajanovic create all the music, and AJ Johnson wrote the story and dialog. Jack Mayer helped layout and design a few levels and Marc Hernandez helped program a few of the enemies. Finally, Brian Lawver helped with some environment textures and Tim Porter helped with some texture processing.

Mrstickball: How long did Weapon of Choice take to develop, from start to finish?

Nathan: About one full year though if you treat each hour I worked on the game as a pancake and set all those pancakes side by side in a row, I’m pretty sure they’d stretch from here to Pluto.

Mrstickball: Your wife worked with you on 'Weapon of Choice', What has it been like working with your wife in a video game company?

Nathan: It’s been great, and the best part is she’s actually starting to get good at playing games! She can play through most of Weapon of Choice on Hard which definitely takes some skills. The best part about having my wife involved is she understands when I working late on the game, I’m pushing that much harder to better than game and ultimately benefit our company and our future.

Mrstickball: Explain the certification process on your Community Game. Do the certification standards for a CG vary as opposed to an Arcade title? Note: We've heard a lot about XBLA's certification process being difficult at times, so this was my 'question of the interview'

Nathan: In Community Games the certification process is called ‘Peer Review’. This requires several other CG developers to download the current build of your game and test it to their satisfaction. Basically the developers are checking to make sure it doesn’t crash in various scenarios (such as swapping memory cards after a storage device has been picked), doesn’t have explicit content, and is in the fact the game it claims to be in the screenshots and the ratings descriptors. All in all, it takes about 24-48 hours for most games to clear peer review. 

I only know about ‘Cert’ from a few friends that have finished XBLA games. It seems to be a much more grueling process than the Peer Review process for Community Games. In general this is an honor system but has seemed to work quite well. Though some things are still being ironed out as with any new method, I think Community Games developers as a whole have done a grand job utilizing Peer Review .

Mrstickball: What was the inspiration for creating Weapon of Choice ?

Nathan: As with most games, there was inspiration taken from all forms of games and other media. Every time I played a science-fiction game that took itself too seriously, the idea for the story grew stronger inside me, like a parasitic worm in my brain contracted from eating too many street tacos.

Mrstickball: Have you ever played Gunstar Heroes , for the Sega Genesis?

Nathan: Yes! I think the ‘board game’ level is probably my favorite. It’s like a mini-game full of bosses! I generally prefer the Genesis version but the recent GBA version had some nice improvements to the game (including an even better game-board level!)



Mrstickball: How many copies of Weapon of Choice need to sell to make the title break even, or at least viable from an economic standpoint?

Nathan: Over 20,000 will allow us to drag ourselves around in a catatonic state until we pass out somewhere in an alley. Over 50,000 will allow us to proudly march forward as we forge our next great game!

Mrstickball: How well has Weapon of Choice sold, from any information you can divulge? Are they within your forecasts?

Nathan: It’s a touch too early to tell, but that hasn’t stopped us from trying to divine sales numbers. Basically we look on the marketplace.xbox website and sort by Full Game which shows where our game ranks in relation to Live Arcade games. When then look at VGChartz sales estimates for those same Live Arcade titles from the past week and try and guess from there.

Let’s just say I’m not crying in my Big Bite Mini Wheats each morning, but I’m also holding back on installing that 52” HDTV in my bathroom (to reference the recent Kevin Smith movie).

Mrstickball: Based on your current experiences with the Community Games platform, do you plan on making any future games on the CG platform? What about Xbox Live Arcade ?

Nathan: With Weapon of Choice, we squarely aimed all our big guns at Community Games. We are pleased with the process and our optimistic about the future. We are in pre-production on our next game, with the intent of releasing it as a Community Game some time next year.

Mrstickball: What was the easiest and most difficult aspect of bringing Weapon of Choice to the Community Games market ?

Nathan: Easiest was dealing with low-level things like reading controllers and accessing memory cards. Hardest was deciding just how many over-grown, pulsating udders a Teat Walker really has.

Mrstickball: What do you think of the Community Game platform? In your opinion, will it be a viable platform for indie developers in the future?

Nathan: I think it certainly has the potential to be amazing. I love the Wild West feel of it. I was more excited and scared about the Community Games launch than I was for the PS3 launch.

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Aaand that's the end of the interview. Big thanks to Nathan Fouts of Mommy's Best Game.

A few more pictures - Make sure to download (and buy) Weapon of Choice for just 400 Microsoft Points!