An interview with Caspian Prince of PuppyGames

Welcome to our interview with Caspian Prince (I wonder if his parents were Lewis fans?). Caspian (Cas) is one half of puppygames, creators of retro-remake games. Puppygames’ games have a unique style that really deserves more attention. Enjoy!

Phil:

Anyone who visits your site (www.puppygames.net) will quickly understand that you have chosen to create “retro” games. But rather than simply reproduce the original inspiration for your titles, I get the feeling that you have a very modern approach to the aesthetic of the games. Can you explain how you came to achieve this particular style for your games and why you have chosen to recreate a very retro experience rather than experiment with newer game play styles?

Cas:

The games we chose to make – currently that’s Space Invaders reincarnated as Titan Attacks, Robotron 2084 reincarnated as Ultratron, and Paradroid reincarnated as Droid Assault – are all classic games of their time. But go back and play them now on an emulator and it soon becomes clear that there are more faults with the game design than positives. Both Space Invaders and Robotron were primarily designed to extract a steady stream of 10p pieces from players, and it shows in every aspect of their implementation. They’re punishingly difficult and generally downright mean, and of course, they look incredibly lame by today’s standards.

Paradroid is a fantastic game in idea but horribly limited in scope by the Commodore 64 – and also with some fundamental flaws, coming as it did from an era where people were still trying to emulate the experience of the arcade machine, although it moved the game on a long way. The Amiga/ST versions of later years unfortunately didn’t fix the fundamental problems in game design with Paradroid and ended up in the end just being hobbled once again by the hardware.

What we’ve tried to do is distill the perfect essence of each game, throwing out all the unpleasant baggage of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and essentially make the most perfect implementation of each idea that you can possibly achieve, whilst sticking to some fundamental technological criteria, the reasons for which will become apparent. We have simply learned from all of the mistakes in game design made over the last 30 years and applied many of the lessons learned to the basic, simple concepts that the games are.

Phil:
You guys have been going for a number of years now, can you please tell our readers how your company came into being, how did you get together and decide to create the games you have produced to date?

Cas:

It was quite a complex series of twists and turns that led us to the games we have today. Chaz and I have known each other since secondary school, 25 years now. We started out in 2001 or so with grandiose plans for a multiplayer 3D game. That was of course a lesson in itself. We scaled back our ambitions.

After a couple of complete duds – the thrice cursed Alien Flux and Super Dudester – we were fairly desperate to actually make some money on all our hard work. Not even profit at this stage! We just wanted to actually have games that people bought. So we settled on this weird low-resolution retro look at first simply because it was really quick to draw. The game designs we settled on were almost picked at random. I loved Space Invaders and Galaxian and Robotron, so these games were naturally the first ones we tried making.

The creative process between me and Chaz is excellent – we bounce ideas off of each other constantly, so that by the time we’ve finished a game, it rarely resembles much like it started out to be.

The other reason we’ve stuck with the retro look is that it’s timeless. Play one of the games today and you’d never have any idea when it was made. It could have been yesterday, or it could have been 10 years ago. They’ll still look, feel, and play like that in 10 years time, and hopefully nobody will be complaining about how crap they feel on an emulator one day.

Phil:

My impressions from speaking to you and reading what you post online, is that whilst your games are very high quality and feel very polished, you struggle to gain the kind of recognition that you need to really achieve commercial success. If you were starting again from square one, do you think you would pursue the same kind of games? Do you think that targeting another platform, like XBLA might not help you achieve the recognition you deserve for your creations?

Cas:

We’re already on XBox360 – Ultratron360 came out last December. Titan Attacks 360 should be coming out in time for Autumn I think. We made no money at all on 360 so far with Ultratron. There’s a possibility we’ll make a bit more with Titan Attacks but it’ll be unlikely to even cover a night out.

As for recognition – well… I don’t really know why we aren’t getting a little more coverage than we are. We make products that are completely unique on the internet, not just in style, but in game play as well. I haven’t yet seen any other developer pull off the neo-retro trick yet, so we sort of exist in a niche occupied only by ourselves. In theory that should make for a lucrative niche where we’re the biggest fish in a smallish pond. The fan mail we get is positively gushing. I think we just need someone famous and influential to gush in public.

Phil:

The development of games in Britain has taken a huge hit over the last decade, with all of our publishers going out of business and the relentless move towards more “international” feeling games. How do you view the “British” aspect of your games? Do you even think about the history of games made in britain when you create your games? Is there a “British” feel to games anymore?

Cas:

The British bit is the best bit Nearly all of our main influences today are British developers such as Jeff Minter and Andrew Braybrook. You can probably tell our games are British because they’re nothing like the usual fare from the rest of the world. Droid Assault in particular.

There’s a general feel to Stateside games where someone comes up with an idea and then just adds more of it. So a game with tanks shooting each other becomes a game with 50 different kinds of tanks with 40 different weapons with all sorts of stats, and then usually it’s skinned in pretty much the same style as mostly everything else. FPS and RTS games seem particularly prone to being just the same old idea but with some upstart young game designer coming along and changing all the weapons and units in his favourite game to be what he wants them to be. It’s not really new stuff. I feel like I’ve played it all before but this time there’s nothing making me want to carry on.

As for the state of the industry – well, the funny thing is, I hardly get to play any games these days. Too busy writing them, or looking after my baby daughter. What that means is that when I get hold of a game I’ve rarely read or heard anything about it except sometimes from a friend. I’m glad I tried BioShock, but I couldn’t tell you if they were British or not. It’s got a British feel to it though.

Phil:
Given you make decidedly retro games. I have to ask, what is your favourite game of all time?

Cas:

Almost impossible to answer I’m afraid, I’d have to pick several. Paradroid, Doom, Defender and Soldat would be among them. There are plenty more modern games I’ve played and loved but they’ve not yet had to stand the test of time. Let’s see how I like them in 20 years.

Phil:

You are a strong advocate of the java platform for the creation and distribution of your games. Does this act as a marketing point, or offer you some commercial benefit, or is it merely a convenience for you based on your experience with the language?

Cas:

A little from all three. If I’m honest now, I don’t advocate Java much anymore. Apart from the fact I don’t want the competition, all of the most important promises that Sun Microsystems were supposed to deliver on have never materialised. Instead of being able to get my games easily onto Playstation and XBox, I have to have them ported. I can’t even write for iPhone. And the Java situation on Mac OS is irritating as hell – we’re still stuck with 1.4 as a target, which is years since gone the way of the dodo.

Apart from that, we are getting commercial benefit from Java – the fact that we release simultaneously for Mac OS is a massive bonus, and in fact where nearly all our income is from. We get almost next to no Linux sales – no surprises there.

We are beloved of Sun Microsystems too, being one of about 3 companies that have actually managed to show Java in a positive light in the games industry. So there’s some marketing kickback from that, but it is almost immeasurably small in real terms.

And of course, the reason we stick with it is, it’s because it’s what I’m good at. I could spend a year or two getting as good at C++ but in all that time I’m unlikely to produce anything brilliant.

Phil:

If you could offer any words of advice to other indie developers thinking of starting up their own business in Britain, what would it be?

Cas:

Mostly – don’t. Go and do it somewhere much cheaper. Especially if you’re thinking about writing games. The path to profit in games development is incredibly steep, and we’re not entirely sure why, but mostly I suspect it’s incredibly saturated. This I find a little strange. How has such a situation of oversupply in the market arisen – especially given the incredible costs and barrier to entry? It’s not like you can just decide to learn programming one day and produce a game. It takes years. Where have all these programmers and artists suddenly sprung from?

Phil:

As an indie, you tend to have a very personal relationship with the customers who buy your games. How do you find this relationship? Do you tend to try and divorce yourself from the audience so you can create what you personally feel is good, or do you tend to take their feedback to heart?

Cas:

If only we had an audience! Right now we just write the games we like to write, and at the end of the day, I notice that everyone who’s ever been successful long term as an independent developer writes the games that they want to play. If we’re lucky there will be a whole bunch of people out there who are like us and eventually we’ll build up some sort of following and fan club. We do listen to our fans suggestions. In fact one of the key bits of genius in Droid Assault – the use of the other droids as “lives” – was made by a random forum suggestion over at Javagaming.org!

Phil:

If you were to experiment with a different style of game, or even a different format or platform, what would it be?

Cas:

For me, I think I’d be pretty interested in turn based gaming. I’m also quite interested in iPhone and Android development, but not interested enough to actually get around to doing it. Perhaps because I can’t afford a phone.

Format wise – well, we’re not sure exactly how many more games we’ll squeeze into the “retro 320×320″ style that we currently have. I mean, we have a million ideas, but I must admit, I’m not really very talented at all at games design or programming. What you see on our site is the 10% of the stuff we do that turns out well. The rest is sadly wasted effort, frustration and tears. I wish I had a natural knack for it.

Phil: finally, if you have anything to say to readers about what its like being an indie, feel free to express yourself!

Cas:

If you like being utterly broke, if you can’t stand working for anyone else any more, if you love playing your own games, if you’ve got self motivation and determination, and if you can take more criticism than you’ve ever had before about just about every aspect of your entire life, then indie is for you!

Thanks to Caspian for that great insight!, please be sure to visit www.puppygames.net for more information and to try and buy thier excellent games.

Tags: Interviews

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 10:08 am and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.