GamersInfo.net

GamersInfo.net: What does it mean when you say Outpost Kaloki X was designed specifically for the Xbox 360? Isn't this an adaptation of a PC game?

Steve Taylor, Lead Production Manager: The history of the game is this: A long time ago we designed (and prototyped) what we thought was a pretty cool tycoon game specifically for console play. Up to this point most console tycoon games have been ports of PC titles, which has resulted in some fairly awkward interfaces. We designed a control scheme and a certain focus in gameplay that from the start was not really for PC play. Unfortunately, convincing a publisher to pick up an external project is pretty tough, and it's even worse when the genre is not a traditional console category. After trying with little success to get a publisher to help fund the full game, some industry friends of ours convinced us to release the game independently as a downloadable title for the PC. So we reworked the control scheme to be appropriate for keyboard/mouse, did a lot of work on our "prototype" and turned it into a PC game.

Flash forward a few months. The PC game won a couple of awards and seemed to be well liked. We talked to some friends at Microsoft, they liked the game, and they offered the chance for us to develop an Xbox 360 version.

This has been a fantastic opportunity for us because it's a chance to return to the original vision we had for the game and make a lot of changes as well. We brought back the original control design and adapted and fine-tuned it for the Xbox 360 controller. We also revised the gameplay to be more appealing (we hope) to the Xbox 360 audience. We developed large chunks of new technology specifically for the Xbox 360 including rendering systems, sound systems, and more, taking advantage of the powerful hardware as much as we could with our limited resources. In addition, the game has new and reworked art, audio, effects, and game elements. There's more than twice as much level content in this game as there was in the PC game. On top of all that, we worked hard to integrate the cool unique features of Xbox Live and Live Arcade, including achievements, profiles, and leaderboards, among other things.

GamersInfo.net: What is the plan for downloadable content for Outpost Kaloki X?

Steve Taylor, Lead Production Manager: The downloadable content includes gamer pictures (available now), new individual levels, and new collections of levels. Some of this content will be free, and some will cost a very small number of Microsoft Points. The idea with the free levels is to give the people who have already bought the game some fun new variations to try out. The levels that cost a few Points to buy are more complex and have a more new content (like new characters, new stories, new gameplay elements). One of the new content packages is a little strange, and we hope people are as entertained playing it as we were while developing it.

Outpost Kaloki X content packages will become available over the next few months. They'll show up in the Live Arcade interface and can be downloaded from within the game as well.

GamersInfo.net: Who made this game happen? Was it a side-project that people contributed their time to, or was this a fully funded expensive production? Was it all NinjaBee people or were other companies involved?

Steve Taylor, Lead Production Manager: The credits are long and include a lot of people who made contributions large and small. Some donated time, some donated money, some worked really cheap, and some worked at regular wages. For some of us, this was a labor of love and we hope the game sells enough to justify what we put into it. We also had some key people who believed in the game (and the company) enough to loan us money to help get it made.

Some of the people who worked on the original prototype and the subsequent PC game were not still at the company when we started the Xbox 360 game, but they feature prominently in the credits because of their strong contributions. Some people came in late but pulled a lot more than their weight as the game neared completion.

In the end, the game was done by NinjaBee staff with a few contractors (for things like localization and audio) as necessary.

And, very importantly, Microsoft believed in it enough to contribute extremely valuable resources and time, without which support the game could not have been made, even if we had approval from them to do it alone.

In particular, the original people at Microsoft who got behind the game were Ross Ericson and Cherie Lutz. After that, we started working with Katie Stone and Tony Harlich on a very regular basis. Those two pretty much lived and breathed Xbox Live Arcade for many months before it game out, and the quality of the titles coming out for the service is largely due to their efforts. Testing on the project was done by VMC, so we interacted a lot with Noriko Fritschle, Jason Wohlfeil, and their talented team of testers. For rating and release details, we worked with Julie Pitt, who was tireless in setting up a solid release plan for Outpost Kaloki X. There were a ton more people involved in Live Arcade and with our project in particular, more than I can name, but these are the ones whose names make my blood run cold when they appear on my caller ID... :)

GamersInfo.net: What is the plan for releasing the game in other languages and outside the U.S.?

Steve Taylor, Lead Production Manager: We put a considerable amount of effort into localizing the game into Spanish, German, French, and Italian. We had originally planned to do other languages (including Japanese, Chinese, and Korean), and I'm still sad that it didn't work out, but we simply ran into money limitations, and these languages are a lot harder for us to do.

The game should be released everywhere Live Arcade appears, and we hope the extra work we did on the various languages results in a great experience for a much broader group of people. In any case, the localization was thoughtfully done, and I'm pretty happy with the results. It's a strange game sometimes, and I think the strangeness came across well - but what's even more appealing to me is that the translators were not afraid to introduce new humor and strangeness as appropriate to the languages they were working on.

GamersInfo.net: What sets NinjaBee apart? Will all your games be like Outpost Kaloki X?

Steve Taylor, Lead Production Manager: All our games will definitely not be like Outpost Kaloki X. We like this game, we had a lot of fun doing it, and we would be happy to do more games like it. At the same time, we have plenty of other ideas that we think deserve to see the light of day. The next game NinjaBee is working on for Xbox 360 Live Arcade is completely different from Outpost Kaloki and the team working on it is a somewhat different group of people.

What sets NinjaBee apart, we hope, is our commitment to bringing original and deep games to the independent game world. Each game should be something interesting, high-quality, and with our own unique sense of humor and style.

GamersInfo.net: What do you think about the other Live Arcade titles for Xbox 360?

Steve Taylor, Lead Production Manager: I've been extremely impressed with the quality of all the Live Arcade titles, and I hope players take the time to try them all out. Wik and the Fable of Souls is just so wacky and high quality that I can't help but like it. Geometry Wars is a surprise - I just keep playing it! My son likes the Midway classics a lot, and other people at NinjaBee have their own favorites, of course. I think they're all worth checking out, and the prices are so low it should be an easy decision to unlock the full versions of at least a few of them.