Wildlife 12/5  
 
 
RSS feed:
view this weblog as RSS !



  
[ Features ]    
Mark Currie, the man behind the much anticipated Trash, knows a thing or two about making games. He started creating games in his early teens and had a big freeware hit with his classic helicopter combat game Chopper Commando 2.0. After dropping off the radar for a number of years he resurfaced at Sierra Sports and finally moved on to Microsoft Games. For various reasons Mark decided to leave the house that Bill built and make the games that he wanted to make. Once he and a fellow programmer formed Inhuman Games they began work on Trash, a real time strategy game that has been a receiving a fair amount of buzz from the 'mainstream' gaming press.

At the first annual Indie Games Conference Mark was kind enough to take time away from demonstrating Trash to answer some questions from the DIY Games editorial staff. What follows is a transcript of an interview that took place at the Indie Games Conference in Eugene, Or., on November 2nd.

- - - - - - - - - -


DIY Games: Who are you?


Mark Currie: Mark Currie

DIYG: Who do you work for?

MC: Inhuman Games

DIYG: What are you guys making?

MC: We're making Trash

DIYG: What's Trash?

MC: Trash is a RTS (Real Time Strategy) game that focuses on multiplayer gameplay set in a post apocalyptic world. There's three races, The Humans, The Mutants, and Intelligent Machines. They're all fighting over the primary resource, trash.

DIYG: How long have you been working on it?

MC: Myself I've been working on it 2½ years. I started 2½ years ago with a former co-worker of mine, who's the graphics programmer. Then about a year ago we took on three other guys.

DIYG: What's everyones position? How many programmers do you have?

MC: There's two programmers, myself and the other co-founder. The other three guys are working remotely, two artists and a sound guy.

DIYG: So far have you guys had much of a budget, have you spent a lot of money on it or are you just doing your own thing?

MC: Well, we haven't actually been keeping track, exactly, of how much money we spend but we've been basically living off our savings. Just working full time on this game. [laughs]

DIYG: So this is your full time job then?

MC: Yeah. This is my full time activity.

We have a guy working over seas in Yugoslavia and we wire him money monthly. I think it's helpful for him. The other two guys working from California are just working on the promise of future funds, like most indie developers.

DIYG: On your guys' website you've mentioned the upcoming beta, but that's been quite a while. What has held up the beta?

MC: [laughs] I've gotta keep reminding myself that this is going to be published. When we announced the beta we had a lot of responses. Within two months we have 4,000 beta applications. That was really a surprise.



DIYG: Was that because of you entering the IGF(Independent Games Festival) you think?

MC: Well no, what kicked it off was that Avault mentioned it and then from there it just spread like crazy.

So after we got 4,000 beta applications we said “Ok, we might be on to something here,” so we just want to make it as good as we can make it and we don't want to put it out there prematurely.

DIYG: When do you hope to have it finished?

MC: I dunno, we're taking one goal at a time. We're hoping to do some kind of limited beta soon. Limited as in two to three races. Then we'll see how the beta goes, we'll talk to potential publishers some smaller publishers or some indie publishers. We're going to see what they have to offer. That will dictate what goes on from there.

DIYG: You mentioned earlier when we were talking that you guys talked to a publisher already, was that a while ago?

MC: Yeah, we've had some smaller publishers contact us and ask about the game. One, I won't mention who, was a medium size publisher contacted us but they were'nt particularly interested so that just challenges us further. So we're just working that much harder.

DIYG: You said that you do this full time, that this is you're full time job. What happens if you release the game and it just doesn't happen like you guys want it to? Do you have a backup plan?

MC: The backup plan is to go back to work. Hopefully in the game industry, where I came from.

DIYG: What were some of the past game industry jobs you've had?


MC: I worked at Sierra, in the sports group on a football game. But that got canceled so I went to Microsoft to work as a contractor on Allegiance. I got some good experiences out of that but I was basically a small part on a big team. I just wanted to have more influence and I was just impatient I guess you'd say. So I just did it. My buddy, the graphics programmer, was unemployed and we thought it was a good time. It was during the tech boom you know [laughs]. Spirits were high, bank accounts were high.


1 2

   Lawmaker 12/11