We quiz Q-Games founder Dylan Cuthbert on indie development, nostalgia and, of course, all things PixelJunk

Could you give us a little background on the staff at Q Games, and what they bring to the development of the PixelJunk titles?
 
At Q-Games we have a unique blend of people from a number of countries.  Racers was programmed primarily by an American, designed by a Brit, produced by Japanese and tested by everyone.  Our studio director Yoshida Kentaro worked closely producing the game and he comes to us from working on the entire Panzer Dragoon series.
 
In three words, how would you describe Q-Games?
 
Innovative Quirky Technology.
 
How big is the team on PixelJunk, and how does that differ from other titles you’ve been in on the development of?
 
PixelJunk Racers had about three people directly assigned to it, and about 6 for the last month of development.  Monsters had 2 junior programmers for the most part, and then grew to about 6 people for the last two months, although we used the entire company to test and balance it in their spare time.  (When they didn’t have to have their arms twisted we knew we were onto a winner)
 
What do you see as the main benefits and drawbacks of being an indie development team?
 
The main benefits are true freedom to set our own milestones and do our own quality control.  The drawbacks are too much freedom, having to set our own milestones and do our own quality control.  It’s tough!
 
Unique titles like the PixelJunk series are an interesting case study in development processes. How did the concept arise, and how was it funded?
 
I was talking with Kawanishi Izumi who used to head up Sony’s Network Platform group at SCEI and he said he was worried about the lack of publishers signing up to do PSN titles and suggested I took the opportunity if I could, while no one else was taking the chance.  So I thought about it for a few weeks and decided that if I was going to do it, I wanted to it on my own terms, so I decided to take some of the ideas I’d been having for Full-HD 2d games and turn them into a series.  As for funding, Q-Games has been around since 2001 and I have been prudent; we are using our saved up pocket money from those years.
 
The speedy turnaround time for PixelJunk titles would be a hindrance to many developers. What do you think is the key to producing high quality titles in such a short time?
 
The key is making sure the game goes through a proper prototype phase where almost everything is decided about the game.  After that it’s just a matter of slotting the pieces into place.  For PixelJunk Eden, due to the esoteric nature of that title – it took about 6 months to decide its direction.
 
What is PixelJunk all about? What binds the games in the series together?
 
Innovation.  Even if the concept has been seen before we really try to innovate within that concept.  Sure, there have been plenty of Tower Defense games (it’s a whole genre), but after having played a lot of them over the years they still all feel like PC games.  I really wanted to create the same experience but for normal console gamers and that’s where our innovation came in.
 
For Racers, the idea of racing cars around, even on slot lanes, isn’t particularly original, but keeping the controls simple and sharp, and adding a huge ton of rule variations such as Fireball Frenzy, Sudden Death, Balloon Burst etc., really opened up the game to be a unique and addictive experience.  There really isn’t another game like it.
 
Was the inclusion of co-op (a truly brilliant one at that) in PixelJunk Monsters an after thought, or was multiplayer something integral to the title?
 
No, it’s something I wanted right from the beginning.  It just seemed a natural thing to do.  The ideas for the rules (shared gems, but separate money) all came out of the iterative development process we have here.
 
Is multiplayer a focus for the series? Are you looking to bring back offline multiplayer? Is there a future in offline multiplayer?
 
Why not?  The PS3 can support a large no. of controllers and offline multiplayer is fun to implement (no lag issues) so we definitely want to push it if we can – especially as, so far, the games have been 2D and perfect for multiplayer.  Eden is proving to be quite a blast in this regard too.  Online multiplayer in the future is a possibility, it all depends on if we start doing really well with PixelJunk, because then we can afford the extra production cost involved with making and testing multiplayer.
 
Given that relatively short production time, are there things you haven’t been able to implement in PixelJunk 1-1 to 1-3 that you wanted to?
 
We’ve pretty much been able to implement everything we wanted.  Tuning-wise, we wish we had made the beginning of Racers a little more friendlier and easier to learn as a lot of people seem to get put off at about that point, so we need to guide players in more so they see the addictive fun they could be having.  Some more exact descriptions of how to play the various modes would have been good I think.
 
How far do you think the series can go? Is it something you’d be interested in proceeding with indefinitely?
 
Until we run out of ideas!  We plan a no. of series with slightly differing themes.  Maybe series 3 will be a series of online multiplayer games, who knows?  Right now, we want to make 5-6 titles in series 1 if we can.
 
What do you think of the quality of the other games on the Playstation Network? Do these provide any inspiration? Are they the type of titles you think will make the Network more appealing?
 
Some of them are very good and inspiring, such as Everyday Shooter, Flow etc.  They cross over into art which is exactly what I like about certain video games.
 
What are the main differences in mindset between this and bigger titles?
 
Speed of turnaround and interation.  Our games are simpler so we can iterate ideas and implement them much faster.
 
Is something like PixelJunk a lucrative project for the studio, or is it more a labour of love?
 
A labour of love.  Hopefully it will become more lucrative and fund more PixelJunk titles, it would be cool if one of the titles was a big hit (Monsters is getting there perhaps) and helped fund series 2 substantially.  The goal is for PixelJunk to help let us make whatever it is we want to make, without external funding or losing ownership of our own games.
 
What kinds of titles influence the PixelJunk series? Is there a particular era you see as the golden age, and look to replicate?
 
All eras have been pretty cool, and we’ve tried to be influenced by the entire lifecycle of video games, from the 80s through to now.  I’ve been making games since the 80s though and I find that period to be very nostalgic, games were made in such a short time back then, yet they were mostly abstract, very cool and a lot of fun. 

Games such as Durell’s Turbo Esprit were the fore-runners to GTA and incredible for the time.  The innovation on 8-bit home computers was amazing and I’d love to see that kind of innovation see a resurgence, because right now the games industry is full of a lot of games that are basically very similar to each-other.  Just off the top of my head, on the ZX Spectrum alone there were games such as Gun-Fright, Jet-Pac, Driller, Skool Daze, Turbo Esprit, Southern Belle (stream train simulator), etc., all vastly different from eachother, in fact, back then I don’t really remember any talk of “genres”.
 
PixelJunk titles have a retro bent, it’s fair to say. From a market point of view, is there something past plain nostalgia that attracts so many people to them?
 
Simple controls and simpler looks, but in Full-HD, does give the games a retro look at first glance.  When you play the games though you realise you are playing something that is totally new to you.  That’s the goal with PixelJunk, we want to find new ways to explore 2D with the extra resolution.  
 
What is the studio learning from developing titles like Pixeljunk? Are there processes or idea you’re squirreling away for later use?
 
We’re re-learning that games can be made quickly, if people don’t procrastinate.  With big games people get laid back and procrastinate a lot, with PixelJunk we simple have to go ahead and make it, we need to iterate the ideas as quickly as possible if the game is going to end up any good.
 
What were the main difficulties with developing the PixelJunk titles?
 
Getting used to the speed at which the games come into full production was difficult, for most games that start up in full development (after the prototype phase), the end is a long way away, but for us, it is only a few months, and it flies by.  Sony were also surprised that we were basically hitting our target dates and weren’t used to getting fully completed games so quickly after they had only just received the prototype.
 
Do you think home development is on the horizon, or will you always need a studio to develop for PS3?
 
Home development is great for demos, but I think you need a studio with all the support it provides (testing/balancing/production), in order to make a truly professional looking game.
 
Would you say 1-3 [PixelJunk Eden] is any more advanced than the previous two titles? Were there any differences in the development process for this one?  
 
1-3 is more advanced yes, we use the cell processor far more extensively for the physics of the intricately constructed plants.  We also have pixel precise collision detection so you can jump and attach yourself to anywhere on the plant.
 
How has the console download market affected your attitude toward games as a developer?
 
Well, it has given us the chance to set prices on games more freely, and also to let us publish games ourselves. (in Japan)
So the download market is a lovely breath of fresh air that lets the truly creative people in our industry actually take some risks by themselves.
 
Are download markets the future of gaming, or a supplementary aspect to the traditional game-in-a-box? What would you like to see as an independent developer?
 
I think the market exists for both big-title packaged games as well as cheaper download-only games.  For the higher price bigger games cost, I definitely want a box and manual, and a disk gives me a more permanent “purchase” feeling.
 
Can you give us a typical timeline of the development process for a PixelJunk game?
 
1 Day
Brainstorming.
 
1 Week
Concept Art.
 
4 Weeks
First Prototype.
 
6 weeks
Decide whether to show it to Sony or continue prototyping.
 
8 weeks
Second Prototype.
 
12 weeks
Third Prototype – maybe by now it is good enough to show to Sony?
 
16 weeks
Move into development process, where we flesh out contents.
 
20 weeks
Carry on development process or move into Production process where we make sure we have all the elements that are required to make a “product”.  All the little things that people take for granted, such as screen-fades, options, little effects, sounds etc., are logged and implemented, in as much detail as possible.

Parts of this interview originally appeared in Play issue 167