Game Development At Villa Vanilla

Game Development at the studio Villa Vanilla

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/love-game-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and with me today are two special guests. How about you introduce yourselves?

Cuauhtemoc: I’m Cuauhtemoc Moreno from Villa Vanilla

Diego: Diego Garcia from Villa Vanilla, too.

Interviewer: What’s your website for your company?

Diego: Villa Vanilla, that’s double L in each case .com.

Interviewer: What kind of games have you guys worked on?

Diego: Well, flash games mostly and a bunch of other projects. That’s mostly about it. We just started like a year ago, so we’re pretty…

Interviewer: For your flash games, what kind of flash games do you guys make?

Diego: It’s flexible for right now, but we are always seeking for innovation even though it’s a little cliche. It’s like simple but fun, you know.

Interviewer: Do you release them on your own site, or do you try to get them on other flash sites?

Diego: We have currently room for sponsorships and licenses as most flash games do these days.

Interviewer: Sure. Are you thinking of doing your own multi-player flash games, or what’s the next step for these flash games?

Cuauhtemoc: The next step for flash games, of course, multi-players are one of the big possibilities. We have servers like [?] , so what we’re looking for right now is a haven for our own artistic needs and desires within this small, easily accessible and instantly playable things that are the flash games.

Interviewer: Can you talk about the artistic needs or desires that inspired you to make these games in the first place?

Cuauhtemoc: I can’t remember a stage in my life where I didn’t have a video game. Since the beginning of the computer, since the Atari ST I’ve always been with games. So, it’s always been natural for me to want to create one of them. Even when I was in school I was drawing levels in my notebook. I was drawing characters so it was like expressing our own inner worlds. It’s like trying to greet people with your own imagination.

Interviewer: And so, when you develop these games, do you have user testing or play testing, or how does that work?

Cuauhtemoc: Actually, Diego here, he’s the Quality Manager.

Diego: Yes, I’m in charge of actually just sending them to the testers so that they can test it, and I also test it. They write me their reports so that I can see if that’s true or test it, actually, and then send it to him so he can fix it.

Cuauhtemoc: It’s a cool team because with the time we’ve been developing games we have a pretty solid user base now that we can rely on for beta testing, opinions, suggestions and everything.

Interviewer: Do you keep in touch with your players because you talked about sponsorship so I would think that the games are then put on other sites. Do they never come to your site? How do you keep in touch with your players then?

Cuauhtemoc: It’s sites like hungry.com that rely on a whole community aspect within game shares, within forums about your game.

Interviewer: Sure.

Cuauhtemoc: That’s about it. For example, for the newest game we are making, we just put out a new thread about “Oh, we have a new game in the works. We’d like to beta test”. “Hey, a new game from Villa Vanilla. Of course, we’d like to test it”. So, it’s pretty interesting.

Interviewer: Awesome. Then, what’s in store next for your studio, and how are you going to take your artistic expression in the future, like are you going to experiment with anything different?

Cuauhtemoc: We’re conquering the world in… Actually, we’re looking forward for the next idea and contest.

Interviewer: Sure.

Cuauhtemoc: We’re actually partnering with the University of Costa Rica with a consciousness game and we are making this iPhone game that uses the camera to make use of your surroundings as a play field and a couple of projects and things. We’re still in the University right now, so it’s like balancing your personal and work life and it’s all priorities. It’s all priorities.

Interviewer: Sounds good. Any last words then for game developers out there?

Cuauhtemoc: Well, yeah, we’re actually from Mexico so it’s a new born scene game development so thank you all for your support and keep looking for our next product.