The Design Behind The IPhone Game…Radio Flare

The Design Behind the IPhone Game…Radio Flare

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

Or listen to it here…

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Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at the Independent Games Festival at GDC and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Fares: Hi, I’m Fares Kayali. I’m one of the two founders of Studio Radiolaris, makers of the music game, Radio Flare. Let me introduce the game.

Interviewer: Yeah, absolutely.

Fares: The game is a music shooter. It’s a shoot-em-up game with two dimensions where you control your ship and it’s exploiting the unique multi-touch capabilities of the iPhone. You proceed through the game and all your actions are synchronized to the game’s music. We’ve got a sound track which was produced by EJ and which you can interact with.

Interviewer: Do you guys have a YouTube video or video game?

Fares: You’re seeing it right now. We have a game play menu and we have hands-on video music.

Interviewer: What inspired the making of the game? How did you come up with the idea? Was it prototyping or was it something else?

Fares: It’s like, we both have a background myself from making music. Martin, my partner, came from media, art work, music and sound.

Interviewer: Awesome.

Fares: So it was quite natural to make games about the music, so we did a lot of prototyping and then we really did focus on different ways on how to interact with music other than replaying it.

Interviewer: Sure.

Fares: There are a lot of rhythm games actually, but we wanted to make games as well as giving you different ways of directing this music.

Interviewer: You know, you also did it on the iPhone. So, there was some nuance to the iPhone design space. How did you integrate those because to use this shooter game you actually have to use your fingers on both hands. So, how was that and how did you prototype that?

Fares: The iPhone really demands a unique approach to designing interactivity because you have a lot of opportunities here, of course, but you have to be really careful when designing those.

One of our challenges was how to keep the ship visible because you tend to alter the screen with your fingers in any game space. So, the approach was to design to have very clear symbolism in the game so you would always know where things are located.

Of course, we did a lot of prototyping on the interaction, so this was really, aside from the music, our biggest goal was to get the activity of the game right. So, we spent a lot of time until we were satisfied with how the game felt.

Interviewer: Did you experiment with other mechanics in the iPhone space? Did you experiment with the accelerometer or anything else? How did that go?

Fares: Actually, we do experiment with the accelerometer but for different things. We really wanted to make this game without the accelerometer because it’s not accurate enough for a shooter. Because you don’t have a fixed point, so everything keeps moving. Using the accelerometer, of course, you can apply a lot of [?] to it, but we really wanted to make this distinct. We didn’t want to make this about having your hands on it, like you have on a game pad, actually but still exploit those multi-touch capabilities.

Interviewer: Did you experiment with the mike or any other of the items in the iPhone hardware?

Fares: The mike, we did not experiment, actually. Of course, we are very intrigued by the new possibilities with the iPhone 3.0 so having access to the iPhone library we will definitely look into that.

Interviewer: So, you didn’t do anything with the mike, but did you try to look into – when you were talking about music, did you try other types of music genres, like, for example, I saw an instrument on the iPhone. I don’t know if you saw that, but people can actually play their iPhone as an instrument. And I wasn’t sure if you guys experimented with that or if you’re going to focus mainly on music or you’re focusing on different genres for the iPhone application.

Fares: I think we will definitely try different approaches to music, so this is really a new area. It’s not a new area but an area that in my opinion is very much diversifying itself right now. So you have those written games, which is one approach you can have.

Then, you have this approach where you treat the game like a musical instrument. Let’s facilitate how people can make music. There’s a little of it in this game as well because, of course, you don’t create the music in the game but all your actions are part of it. I think we will look to take this further. If you have instruments, then you can add a lot of playfulness to it, of course.

Interviewer: Are you going to experiment with more of the music genre? Are you going to also branch off in other genres? What’s the game plan for your studio?

Fares: I think for the moment we will keep in the music genre. After that we have several ideas up our sleeves, of course, and then we are doing a lot of prototyping at the moment. And I think we will have a title that is really about music and about bringing music to really capture an audience. We will have other titles that will be more about the unique capabilities of the iPhone than will be built around music. We’ll have to do music so that we’ll always focus on having good audio design in our games, but we might not only make games about music.

Interviewer: Have you experimented into music games versus music toys? Are you making the distinction, or do you just want a specific kind of goal oriented game for your music experimentation?

Fares: That’s a nice question. Actually, we both have a research background. We really are computer scientists, and we did some writing about the difference between musical toys and goal oriented music games. What we want to do with Radio Flare was to make a conditional game and to wrap the music around it, actually. This, of course, is a gamer’s game to a certain degree.

But there are really other approaches that I love very much. I am a big fan of Electroplankton which is a musical toy which adds this playfulness to making music. It’s not an instrument. It has many characteristics of an instrument, but it adds those characteristic of a game to it. I think this mixture is really intriguing, and I feel there’s much more potential for games, especially on platforms like the iPhone.

Interviewer: Really. I mean, why would music be more special on the iPhone, a music game be more special on the iPhone versus other platforms?

Fares: First, I think because this is a music player originally. Its ancestor is the iPod. So, this is a device where people are used to listening to music. People are used to putting on headphones, and so it comes quite natural to have games that have music in it.

The other thing is it has really unique capabilities regarding interaction, regarding interactivity so you have multi-touch. You have accelerometers. You have a microphone. So, there’s a whole lot of interactivity that you can exploit for directing this music. Because music has so many parameters, it’s really good to have a device that offers so many degrees of freedom. I think that’s why it’s a great device for games about music.

Interviewer: Awesome. And so, what’s in store then for the future of your studio?

Fares: I think you can keep looking for us to make games on the iPhone. We will explore, of course, putting our games on different platforms. We will have to see about that. You can definitely look out for new titles on the iPhone.

Interviewer: You also mentioned that you’re upgrading your current game with some more social features. Can you talk about that more?

Fares: What we will do is we will integrate it to the iPhone which is a social game platform made by the guys from AuroraFeint. What’s in store there, well, we’ve got player chess moves that are global game specific. Everyone’s got a profile.

A player wall where you can leave messages for other players, and then there’s the style prospect. We’re having leader boards. We will have achievements and have friends informed when they get scores. I think this will give a great boost to the social and to the competitive features of our game.

Interviewer: Where can they find out more information about your games? Is there a site? What exactly is it?

Fares: They can come to radiolaris.com.

Interviewer: How do you spell that?

Fares: Like the radio and laris, l-a-r-i-s, radiolaris.com. You can find all sorts of things there. You can follow us on Twitter as well.

Interviewer: Sounds good. Thank you very much.