Podcast Interview: Suggestions from a Prolific Experimental Game Designer

Chris, a prolific experimental game developer of http://www.interactionartist.com, talks about the process of making innovative games

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/chris-de-leon-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Chris: I’m Chris DeLeon.

Interviewer: What kind of games do you make?

Chris: So, all over the place. I released Topple for iPhone last year and developed for Ng:moco down here in San Francisco. I spent seven months making an experimental web game every day.

Also in ’08 I helped architect the build-your-own game system for playcrafter.com. I’ve made 42 developmental games in my life. I try to make at least 15 games a year. It’s been all of six years now, so I’m kind of all over the place. Right now I’m doing four iPhone games for a New York City publisher on a two month cycle.

Interviewer: OK, cool. What happened to Topple? I think I heard about that on the iPhone. What’s that all about?

Chris: So, Topple. I knew these guys from when I was at EALA and they contacted me and they’d be like, what are you doing? I was like, well, I’m working on a start-up down here and working on a free game and other games on the side. Like, I just finished an advertising game for a solar panel company, so they came to me to do a project for them. They wanted me to make a free app to sort of advertise for their Google name recognition to build on to, and I was like, it seemed like a good deal. I hadn’t done any iPhone development before, but I thought, whatever I have to learn.

So, we just jumped in. It was supposed to be one month project. It turned into a two month project, and since then it was voted the top 10 iPhone game by Wired readers. It got three million downloads according to the Topple 2 description which I had nothing to do with Topple 2 except the fact that it’s my code based menus and stuff. So, that’s sort of what’s happening.

Interviewer: Was Topple 2 a paid application, or was it a free application?

Chris: So, Topple 1 was a paid application for the first month or two. It was supposed to be a free application.which is things that I probably wouldn’t like talk about that as far as getting burned. Topple 2 was a paid app like three bucks on sale when it came out. Topple 1 was 99 cents when it came out, but it’s been good for the exposure that it reached the number two spot in paid apps. It even dominated the free space, so ultimately, it kind of worked out in my favor, I think.

Interviewer: Did you think about then doing your own iPhone app because they were like really on fire at that time when you released it?

Chris: Funny you say that. I made a fire app immediately after that. It’s called BurnIt and that’s self-published. The gist is there’s two things you can do with it. One of my experimental games I made when I was doing a free game every day or a web game every day at interactionartist.com was I had a game where you could draw with gun powder and touch the fire it would just rip through it. Speaking of the iPhone, you’ve got multi touch. You’ve got a good processor on the device, open Gui support stuff.

On BurnIt, there’s the lite version and the paid version. I didn’t have a chance to get the numbers back to see how they sell. Of course, you know when you work with your publisher, they keep all those numbers and stuff. On BurnIt, I got good exposure to the lite version. A while later, about a month and a half, it was doing awesome. It was a good experience with BurnIt.

I localized after sourcing, so I went to AltaVista and I did all the machine translation which I know is not good. That is not safe to put in an application. Then, I went on Facebook where I have 760 friends, and I was like, please message me if you know Greek, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Russian, Japanese. They got back to me for every language and I updated my stuff for free. So, I was working on the minimum stuff.

BurnIt is like drawing with gun powder and burning. The lite version lets you do that. The pay version, you can take pictures on the camera and scorch the photographs and burn people out of it. It can burn a smiley face on you or burn a beard on there, if that’s what you want to do. For a while my Facebook picture was with all my hair on fire and fire on my hands and stuff.

About a month and a half later I-Pyro, sorry, I-Burn came out, sort of a clone of what I did. I would say, not as good. Of course, I’m sort of biased. But it actually had menus in the first version. You can’t load photos. You can use backgrounds, but you can’t scorch them. It was more experimental like than it was transient art. It’s an appreciation of the fact that there was art, but the architecture was less. The Roman stuff is still around and then there was like paintings and things. What I liked about the fire stuff, you had to watch it. It was like fireworks.

Anyway, but with I-Burn what they’d do was permanent fire where you can just draw stuff and see things burning. I-Burn took off. Importantly, there was some market timing tricks that I didn’t know when I released BurnIt but I do now.

I-Burn became like the number two free app. Hey, that was fine. At least, I had a decent core idea even if the clone did better than my stuff did. When they bumped up to a dollar, sort of in protest, they brought it down to free for awhile but that was something extra, a few thousand dollars a day for awhile.

Actually it was through that, that jamesgames.com found my old interaction artist stuff, my old game-a-day experiment. So, then it got me a big boost in traffic on OJ’s games.

Interviewer: Sure. After that did you think of doing any more games for the iPhone?

Chris: Right now, I’m working on four iPhone games for a publisher in New York City.

Interviewer: Is there any reason to go through a publisher instead of doing your own thing?

Chris: Yes. So, first of all, a publisher is optional. It used to be super necessary. If you are using 20 to $30,000 dev kits and you need 30 of them and you need 60 to work for three years, you’re not fronting those costs. But, for iPhone. You need a $600 [?]. You need $300 iTouch.You need $100 cost. After $1000 you have everything you need to go for iPhone apps.

What I didn’t have that they can do is in terms of marketing and promotion they have consistent relationships that they manage with their viewers, their blogs. They’ve got a zombie event sponsored at this GDC to advertise one of my games. They’ve got a scale that I can’t in terms of exposure.

Also, in terms of portal capability only on the iPhone you’ve got the benefit like… If someone owns an iPhone, they spend money to entertain themselves. They will buy games. If someone owns a normal phone, all you know is that they know other human beings or that they are afraid of getting stuck.

It turns out, of course, in terms of percentages most people still don’t have iPhones, and the numbers are staggering on the platforms. And a publisher this size can help son porting connections o that I don’t have to rewrite the app in BREW, that kind of stuff. There’s the possibility for that business benefit to work out, too. Also, of course, take advance on costs that take some of the risk out of it.

Interviewer: Once you do these games, are you thinking about doing your own game then on the iPhone just for whatever, or are you burned out on iPhone or what?

Chris: I may or may not. Basically, I’ve got no particular love for the iPhone. I came to it because the Ng:moco guys really came and were like, we’re doing iPhone business right now. I was like, all right. I liked Neal at the time, and so I was, sure let’s do this.

After that, I had the skill set so I did BurnIt and these other things I’ve got because of Topple. I don’t know. Before I worked at flicker.com I had never done web programming. That came out really well. Then, of course, there’s my game-a-day stuff. I’ll do whatever I have to for the researchers.

Interviewer: You talked about doing an experimental game every day. Can you talk more about that, and what was the process?

Chris: I’d love to; yeah, yeah, yeah. So, initially I felt sort of upset, enraged and frustrated with the game industry as it is, partly because we’ve got this thing where it’s difficult to use and I’ve got to say – first of all, I am going to give all the credit to Jonathan Blow. Some of his pictures have been really inspiring to me. I feel like he’s one of the closest outspoken people I’ve got in terms of resonating with philosophy, so anything I say there is a chance that it might smear something he said. I think he’s an example of gays being drugs My thinking, it was like recipes. We really get no indie desserts, full of calories, no nutrition.

But the notion to me is that games is a damning word, but as soon as you say it is a video game people have associations of play and triviality and things you outgrow. There’s only so many things at a bookstore that you walk into that are fantasy romance novels and stuff for teens that kind of map to the category of mentality we use for games.

When you approach a book, there’s kind of several ways you can come to it. If you are going to approach a book because you enjoy it while you read it, like a Dan Brown guilty pleasure novel, or there’s reasons because you approach a book like a text book or like a philosophy or ‘how to’ or cultural studies or things out of the rest of the book store because you want to have read it. You know coming away from it you will be a more interesting person. You’ll have a better perspective on things. You’ll have a deeper understanding of things.

Meanwhile, there’s things you can only learn by experience.You’re not going to get it through a lecture. You’re not going to get through a text book. We build experience in a box. Any more, you don’t even need the clocks. We build experience and we share it.

The way we do it, like you don’t have to pay for it any more. If you don’t have a car, you’ve either got to buy the metal. You’ve got to ship it. You’ve got to transport it. So, if I can make something that’s out of clay then get it. I don’t care if it’s a philosophical argument. I don’t care if it’s a financial understanding. I don’t care if it’s about an interpretation of art. It’s just something.

Interviewer: Exactly.

Chris: Let’s say it makes them feel dead or alive. How can they better understand the negotiation? How can they better look after themselves and not get screwed by some low class mortgage people and all that kind of stuff. If someone can do this in five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes however fast they can get that rapid conditioning, you can trial and error. You can scientifically approach someone else’s idea and model of something. They would call their friends, but you should do this, to

o. It would make the whole world a better place.That could be a million people tomorrow. That’s sort of appealing, but there’s not enough research being done in that direction because what I like to go back to, with Command and Conquer just starting out with games and stuff. I was just a kid.. So, I was 11-years-old. I would go into a rental store. They wouldn’t acknowledge me because they assume I’m a kid who didn’t have any money.

I would go home and then spend days at a time like I’m going to conquer where I would have 2,000 credits in the bank and could invest most of that and increase my cash flow. I could increase defenses to raise my insurance level. I could buy information by sending out in every direction. I could try to offset my opponent and there’s a few important lessons there.

One, that was a level of management and dictation and strategy that normally like a generation ago you’d have to be a CEO with a MBA and some PhDs and stuff and like just dirt lucky. This worked for me to enable me to gain a lot of experience into those sort of ways of thinking in patterns because you know every little thing takes the same sort of grammar in different situations.

You’re not really learning how to do level one very well. You’re learning how to dynamically adapt to these situations. Just the fact that that can give infinite attention to somebody until they can get is a wonderful thing, but that we make these things in such a way that you’re not supposed to play it and get it and then put it back on the shelf like a book. You’re supposed to play it and play it and play it some more. Anybody that says games are addicting is an insult. I’m not in the narcotics industry.

Interviewer: Sure.

Chris: It upsets the hell out of me. That’s one of the feedback things about Topple. They’d be, like Topple, I hate you. You should play it until you get it. There are four concepts, four mechanics and sort of having the philosophy of neuroscience that most concepts that relate concepetually have to do with things we learn through material or our actions or more primitive understandings of our brain.There are more dynamic environments go in to learn that stuff, feeling good about those things.

Also, John Nest, he was my main sub-contractor. He’s the my box studio expert. He conributed to the open source communities for them. I couldn’t have done it without him. He had the core concept initially that was like we should be doing this sort of thing. I was like: yes. He also did some visuals on it. I thought I would throw that in there.

Interviewer: So, the games every day.

Chris: Sorry, sorry. The games and stuff. The aim was to figure out… The video games was a lot of work. When we say book, we don’t mean romance novel and if we did the history of literature would be slaughtered because we would rate what we did. We’d be like, it’s not a good book, and people would play Chris Crawford’s stuff from 1982 and say it’s good. It’s interesting but Balance of Power is not a good game. It’s not fun.

Right and that’s a problem. The problem is academia has tried to take us three steps back and label these things. They say Real Time action is simulation design. The problem is we see that the euphemism of video games is where we’re back to. Is this entertaining is the key question while we play it. So, my goal was rather than trying to name it and then do it, to do it and then name it.

I’m a strong believer in overproduction. When I was in Boom Blox, I would make 9-12 levels for every six that we would stick in the game.

Interviewer: Sure.

Chris: Because no matter who you are, the best 30 percent of your stuff is better than the worst 60 percent, 70 percent (damn). So, the intent was to just do something different every day, minimalistic. It’s part of the feeling, too

Some of these guys, I’ve got a ton of respect and love. John Mack, John Blow, all the guys at the indie community Cactus, whatever, they all do and say excellent things. And their work is incredible, but it takes them so damn long that we need those people making more stuff.

Interviewer: Exactly.

Chris: We need more that is coming to fruition and maybe we’ll have a little polish from market recognition. Somebody has been giving these people grants so they will have some time for things that aren’t built from iteration. We know how to do that part. We know how to recycle in the tumbler to shine the heck out of it so people will buy it.

That’s not necessarily to reflect the core value of some of our best minds it needs to be in in terms of making the commercial stuff, but we don’t really have a good outlet for that. And some of it, too, I’m very, very ‘doing it’ driven. I’ve got some issues with current games on academia.

Interviewer: Sure.

Chris: So, this is completely in protest to that. So, the gaming stuff, all over the board.

Interviewer: You just came up with an idea and just implemented it or just started experimenting.

Chris: What initially happened was I didn’t know Actions for three and I was going to need Actions for three for Playcrafter.com which is a [inaudible] for American Seal. He co-founded [?] at Carnegie Mellon, and so I hooked up with him and with Actions for three I made a version of Breakout for the Atari with it and part of that was from old Atari. People don’t really understand that Pong doesn’t work like they think it does and Breakout doesn’t work like they think it does. There’s rules about how the ball works with the friction and stuff.

And so, I wanted people to see that and to be able to play that, and so then the next day I was still toying around with Actions for three and I made another game which was kind of like experimental, some lines and some dots and you try to react to it. It was more conditioning and stuff.

The third day I made a little game illustrating some zombie concepts. Basically, when that comes out I made a game a day for three days in a row by accident.

Interviewer: Sure.

Chris: And then I was like, hey I’ve done one of these a day. I’m sure I can keep doing this. I’ve always liked working fast. I had no barriers because I wasn’t waiting for any rules to bottleneck. I wasn’t waiting for anyone else’s approval or sign-off. I was on the Internet so I could share it with other people. (I got distracted. Someone was walking by.)

Interviewer: Sure.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. As I said, basically, from there I sort of decided…

Interviewer: You just kept going.

Chris: I just kept doing it, sort of like the force kept running. Early in the first week, I had done a zombie game illustrated [?] top 10 list and it was a narrow line of sight. I’d run into the first person with a narrow, restricted view or press a needle with a camera on the shoulder because I don’t do that for a day.I just did a view frustrum with dot products.

Interviewer: Sure.

Chris: That keeps from seeing the enemy dots. Dots get angry. They turn red. They run into unbreakable stumbles so that you can accurately fire at the targets with evil dust. It’s sort of likea fidgety crosshair that’s hard to aim and hard to get it to fire. Again, it’s sort of evil and all these zombie games do these core things that makes them zombie games.

Otherwise, there are other games that have zombies in them. Hopefully, Survival Horror, because they get to the core of what makes a zombie thing. It’s some sort of illustration of game design stuff, games on principles. That was sort of a game for game designers. That’s the sort of thing that we get our audience, and it’s the part that got me going, too.

Interviewer: Did you focus on different… Was that one where the motivation is different audiences?

Chris: Yeah, yeah, different audiences and partly, too, it was trying to take a look… Oftentimes, we make games for the players. One of them was sort of like, “I’m in a bit of a niche mode of thinking. I’ve a vegan atheist”. In the United States neither of those ideas are particularly popular.

So, I thought for fun and giggles on commercials and things that people would see and they’d be like, it looks wonderful. I’m like, no it doesn’t. Or they’ll see something that’s for a movie, super duper religious. I don’t want to see it. I can’t tell you how much this doesn’t appeal to me.

I had some fun with a little project for people like me that was interesting. There’s not very many of us, where these little circles pop up with a word. If it’s a good word to me, you’re supposed to click as fast as you can. If it’s a bad word to me, you’re supposed to not touch it.

Interviewer: Sure.

Chris: So, like Jesus pops up. Don’t click that. Like turkey pops up. Don’t poke that. Also, there’s just some common ground. What else? Puppies. Click it. Japan. Good thing. Video games. Wonderful. And sort of, it was play that can be built for anybody. That can be built by a liberal and put in front of a conservative or built by a conservative and put in front of a liberal. Built by someone from the Middle East and put in front of someone in the UK. Realize that our gut reaction to things is very, very different than yours.

And somebody like you, you can write about it. You can talk about it. It’s really jarring that these symbols, these other words, these concepts that are super crazy and important to you and me means nothing to that person.

Interviewer: Did you experiment with any multi-player stuff?

Chris: Multi-player stuff? Not really. Part of us was like networking and testing and stuff. Part of it was I didn’t have any bottlenecks and to do multi-player you have to do, at least, tests with someone else.

Interviewer: OK. And so, how long did this go for, all these expeirments?

Chris: Seven months; 219 games were done. Near the end of it, so they were definitely not games near the end which, again, was part of my goal. I sort of did some random stuff. One was like comic stuff. You were supposed to be illustrating concepts through interactive probing. One was called Spectoids, just this random stuff on top of it.

That video game players don’t like, don’t get, think they’re pointless. Software engineers, at least, the few that I talked to really, really liked them and thought they were neat. It’s just this thing where sort of laughing on the screen between where you put the mouse and what these different sort of dots and things do.

There’s some ways to get things mathemataically to behave in very interesting ways, that you sort of warp the space and you can sort of figure out a laser and treat it like an instrument experimenting like it if I go from here to there it does this move. If you put it there, it goes in that move. You sort of toy with it, like if I was going to show how could I do the cool stuff for this particular toy.

Interviewer: Sure.

Chris: Near the end, it was sort of… It was also around the time that someone else.. I was at that GDC last year. I guess it was last year, wow, at the W and I walked in there and I was, hi I’m doing a game a day. I am also taking games on request because I was interested in what do if there are people, software engineers, think about games.

And so I made like a birthday game for some friend of mine in Los Angeles, a friend of my older brothers, and also I was like, are you interested in making a game for a day. I’ll give you credit for the idea. I’ll do it in a day. I don’t charge you a thing. I just want to make games for my friends.

He’s like, yeah, and this guy was drunk at the time. How about where you’re moving for the toilet and you’re going to throw up in it and if you don’t get there in time and like you vomit and your friends have to clean it up. If you get there in time, it’s like, “Yes, you did it”. I was like, OK. I’ll do that.

So, I did that and I impressed somebody else in the group who was like, I’ve got a silicone company and sort of spending my time doing advertising for them. Normally, I would not do advertising games. I was approached by NBC afterwards to do some, I think, Spanish-based baseball advertising. I was like, I don’t think so. They are trying to save the world, too. I got much love for that. So, that’s the first time I didn’t do a project. That was sort of the end of the game a day stuff for about a month.

Interviewer: How many hours did you spend each day doing a game?

Chris: It varied wildly. I had a full time job with some overtime with a start-up at the time so that made it tricky. I didn’t really get out a whole lot. I also didn’t sleep much. Anywhere from two to five hours a night is typically enough.

Interviewer: Sure.

Chris: Some of these things I would crank out in two hours. Some of these things I’d crank out, like on Christmas I think I made a maze type game or somewhere around there. I probably spent a good 16-18 hours hacking away and tuning it. It was supposed to be like some form of illustrated concept and stuff.

Interviewer: Did you document any of this on your blog or anything?

Chris: A ton of it, yeah, yeah. So, there was a corresponding blog for most of the entries. That went up probably for the first 5-7 months. It was mostly me talking to myself.

Interviewer: Did you finally get followers and stuff like that?

Chris: Two things. One, I would post for awhile. Near the end of it I started posting my game a day projects on Facebook, and that got me 50 people a day, like just people I knew. There was a great guy named Bez [sp]. I’m not sure I know his real game, but he’s in Scotland. He was the only guy who really consistently played each one and commented on my blogs and stuff.

Interviewer: Awesome.

Chris: So that was really cool. We did a neat connection overseas. Basically, the traffic for the most part before I started on Facebook was one to seven people a day. The traffic after, it was sort of near the end, maybe one to seven people a day, but I wasn’t doing it for anybody else. I was doing it to explore because I know there’s not really an audience. A lot of these are really frustrating. A lot of them are really, really hopeless. There aren’t any clues to. They’re really sort of painless or just flat out offensive to people and that’s OK. It could be a game like you’re slashing a Sesame Street and whatever, some messed up stuff in there.

Interviewer: Sure.

Chris: Basically, all of the week or two weeks ago jamesgames.com picked up the interaction on our stuff and just sort of out of the blue I checked my web stats out and I was like, five sixths of my web traffic came in the past 48 hours.

Interviewer: Awesome.

Chris: Ever. So, it felt good to have that happen.

Interviewer: Out of all the game designs, are you going to use any of them to hash out more fun ones. There’s two things. One, for a couple of them, yes one of the iPhone games I’m working on now is actually based on one of those game-a-days. The BurnIt game was built on one of those game-a-days, but for the most part and I had this argument a lot with the last people. When you write a poem, you’re not writing it as a prototype for a book. Like, it’s supposed to be small. It’s supposed to be simple.

It’s just like for the same reason why I like certain games that make sense on the iPhone don’t make sense on a Wii. There’s different expectations for what is going on that I thnk you wind up at a complicated point where it doesn’t make any sense anymore and you lose it.

Interviewer: Right.

Chris: Any more I don’t think you can release Tetra Sauna [sp] on a console. You can’t really release Tetra Sauna on a mobile.

Interviewer: Are you thinking of then doing this experiment again?

Chris: Down the line but, basically, what I ran into was two things. One, I need not to be doing this alone. Two, other people don’t understand what the hell I am doing when I’m out in left field which is where I happen to be, but I need a) more people and b) more people that are also way out in left field that no one else knows what the hell they are doing.

Interviewer: Sure.

Chris: Some of the people were disaffected and the fact that games right now are sort of assumptions of entertainment and, again, game being the deadly word. I’m not even sure that the stuff I’m interested in has been diagrammed where games are on the left, stuff you can do with the PS2s on the right and the middle is video games and the left is like card games, board games, sports like… I think they are mostly unrelated, especially what I want to do. Tthe rest of them have been diagrammed, and I know people that actually like that kind of stuff which is what I’m fishing for.

Interviewer: And so, what kind of games then would you like to be making? What would be your ideal situation because it seems like you’re not necessarily in it for entertainment?

Chris: Not at all, not at all. My larger interests are in things that help enable people to take better care of themselves and the people around them, to help them basically. I know it’s a little indirect, but ultimately I’d like to help find ways to help those people that feel desperate about life, help people feel less helpless, help people that feel…

Interviewer: More empowered, maybe?

Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah, more empowered. Just, in general, there are a lot of folks who like… There’s a few things that heck, we go back a long ways. There’s two things that sort of caught my attention. Number one, John of law school communication. He pointed out that never in the history of teaching education and so forth did they advocate a room with all students and only one teacher, but the reality of the fact is you couldn’t have practically one adult training each individually personally which we can do that now because the adult doesn’t have to be there.

Interviewer: Exactly.

Chris: That experience can be embedded in a way that we can get feedback. I think there’s a few fundamental concepts and learnings and things that some people get through good parenting. Some people get from being lucky and being in a church with a great pastor, great priest, great whatever; a temple or a synagogue.

Other people just flat out missing some really fundamental stuff that if they just had this, just a couple things to fill in the cracks would be doing way better off. They would be happier. They would feel way better about themselves, feel like there’s in a better place in life, and generally things would work out better for them. I’m just trying to find ways to make that salable.

Interviewer: So, with that said, what projects are you working on now that relate to that then?

Chris: So, a) I’m teaching on the side, giving lessons. I’ve got a 15-year-old student in Pittsburgh. I work with PayPal. I had a 24-year-old up the north that I was working with for awhile. He’s now shifted to iPhone games so he’s going to collect some point and I’ll sort of advise him on that. And I’ve applied to local [?].

Again, I want to train people from an early age, give them a huge headstart. When I worked on this stuff when I was like 12 U was alone in it. At this point I’ve done enough stuff in the industry that certainly I don’t feel like I need to be teaching college courses.

But, I sure as heck can give help and some direction to 12-year-olds and 15-year-olds so they can have plenty of time to experiment on their own and find themselves deep in left field. By the time they get older I’ll hire them and they can do some research with me.

Interviewer: You talked about just having other people work with you now because you’re done most of this independent, like alone. So, what’s the process you are going to use actually to get other people to work with you? How’s that collaboration? Have you already tried that?

Chris: Right now, I’m still on the iPhone. I do have nine sub-contractors.

Interviewer: Is it the same though? They are literally just listening to you instead of really collaborating.

Chris: No, no, no, not at all. So, the way I work with other people is sort of the [?] business, a lot of game creatives, whatever the hell. They come with something they want done and they find people like, do you do art? Here, come do the kind of art I want.

I find talented people and I try to find ways to play to their strengths. Whatever kind of music they do well, I want to do a kind of game that uses that well. So I did in college. It’s sort of basically what my assistant at game developers because a) no one is getting paid. Everyone is going to get their resume in for themselves which means you’ve got to find some ways to show off in terms of you get so much of your personality and character and your flair in that anyway because it’s not just people doing second rate versions of what they don’t do best.

Some of the ideas is just basically turning the ball on its head, turning the sub-contractor thing into a situation where apprenticeships, a chance to let people work off stuff to build a name for themselves between my coaching and their outside perspective trying to think one step further.

Interviewer: OK, cool. And so, you talk about finding games to empower people and stuff like that. Are you going to do more web-based games, like games that are leveraging the Internet or social types of games?

Chris: The Internet is clearly a wonderful thing. The fact that someone doesn’t have to know how to download and install something. The fact that it works off of your operating system, the stuff I’m thinking of doesn’t… You don’t need 8,000 polygram walls. The web is definitely a very, very viable candidate.

Interviewer: Sure.

Chris: At the same time it’s tricky. There’s a lot of free stuff on the web. A lot of people are going there for entertainment. If that’s not what you give them, they will turn right around.

Sometimes, you have to hook up the right people with it. I think the console games [?]. There is specific hardware for that. You are buying a toy and entertainment box that enables you, so then you have set cost. To justify the fact that that I spent 200 bucks on this, I’m going to buy some more games for it. I don’t know of some reader formats, some sort of hardware, some sort of…

Interviewer: What about cell phones?

Chris: I’ve been doing the iPhone stuff. Normally, other cell phones are a little prohibitive. iPhone reaches largely a wealthy affluent, mostly in control, kind of like every other situation in the market that it doesn’t do much to help it.

Interviewer: So, now what’s in store? What’s in store for you for the next six months for you in terms of experimentation and games?

Chris: Sure. First off, I’m finishing these iPhone games I’m working on now. It’ll happen in the next month, and that’s largely going to help me build a longer runway so I can volunteer at some high schools, so I can work with some more kids. Hopefully, I can teach at this camp in LA in Palo Alto. I haven’t heard back yet on that.

Some development on the side, of course. Let’s see. Right now, my head’s in the iPhone games, get some companies putting money in the bank and finding people to train and get in practice to get some education.

Interviewer: Do you have any last pieces of advice or suggestions for other experimental or indie game developers that just kind of want to be out in left field?

Chris: Yeah, yeah. First off, and I guess I’m going to speak mostly to beginning folks more for that than the ones that aren’t listening as much for advice, everything you need is free. You don’t really need a 3-D studio and all that kind of junk including lessons and nstruction and tutorials and stuff that’s out there.

Interviewer: It’s all on the web free, right?

Chris: It’s all on the web free. There’s no reason to not be doing this stuff, and I would also encourage people to not just specialize deeply in one thing. Know, at least, two skill sets fluently and functionally. Even if you don’t wind up using both of them professionally, it would still be good to be able to communicate with different kinds of people no matter where you wind up and what you wind up doing.

Interviewer: Thank you very much and what are the websites that people can visit?

Chris: Sure. Interactionartist.com is all the experimental game play stuff plus my hobby work and gamedevlessons.com is my little lesson site.

Interviewer: Cool. Thank you very much.