Interview with LargeAnimal Games

This month, for 2O2P Magazine, I was given the opportunity to talk with the folks at LargeAnimal about their "casual gamer" development business.

Large Animal was founded in January of 2001 by partners Josh Welber and Wade Tinney, both graduates of the MFA program in interactive design at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Since then, Josh and Wade have been lucky enough to build a team of incredibly talented and hard-working artists, programmers, musicians and producers. With this team, we've made games of all types; puzzle games, celebrity name games, role-playing games, action games and word games. In the fall of 2006, Large Animal will release our 50th game!

Large Animal has produced many great arcade style games such as RocketBowl, Bricktopia, and alphaQUEUE. They’re games are great for parents on the go, arcade fans, and puzzle solving fanatics.

Where did the company name “Large Animal” come from?

Well, we were initially called Game Kitchen, but then found out that there was a game company in the UK with an almost identical name. We decided to bite the bullet and change our name, to avoid potential confusion down the road. We wanted something memorable that would spark the imagination and that had an available web address. It’s incredibly difficult to find simple web addresses that aren’t already spoken for these days. After going through literally hundreds of possible names, we settled on Large Animal and never looked back.

How many people does Large Animal currently employ for game development?

We have 10 people on our team.

What type of atmosphere is Large Animal? T-Shirts and shorts, or business casual?

T-shirts and shorts, and ever since we got new wall-to-wall carpeting…slippers!

Is the Large Animal team more of a family or just a tight knit coordinated team?

A touch of both, I’d say. We’re not quite as close as say, my family, but we’re certainly more coordinated!

What occurred in your youth that made you decide “I want to make games when I grow up”?

Actually, I wanted to be a chef when I was younger. I played games, but I think it simply never occurred to me that one could have the job of making them. It wasn’t until I was in graduate school that I realized that it was what I wanted to do. I studied interactive design and realized that games were the most challenging and interesting design problems. Plus, the response that your work gets from users is FAR more rewarding than if I were making corporate websites or something.

Do you believe being based out of New York gives you any advantages or disadvantages? Do you work with clients locally or is most of your work over the Internet?

As far as I’m concerned, easy access to a wide variety of quality ethnic cuisine is always an advantage. There are also several very good art schools in the city, and a few good technology programs. The game development community is very small, but I see that as a good thing. Disadvantages? Expensive as hell. We don’t do much work-for-hire these days. It used to be our bread and butter, but now we work primarily on self-funded or publisher-funded titles. So far, most of our publishing partners haven’t been in NYC, but it’s never posed a problem.

Your webpage says to contact you about “custom game development” – can you explain to me what that means? You guys build games “on demand” for clients?

Hmmm…that means we need to update our website! We used to make lots of flash and shockwave games for clients, but as of about two years ago, we’re almost entirely focused on downloadable games that are sold to consumers. These titles are typically deeper than the client work we used to do and they also give us more creative freedom. Occasionally we’ll still do a small client game, but usually we turn that sort of work down.

What struggles do you face as an Independent game developer when creating new games for the public? Funding, team size, marketing, etc?

All of the above. I think all the struggles boil down to cash flow and resource management (kind of like an RTS!). Game development is a risky creative process; it’s not something you can plan out completely and predictably in advance. You simply have to iterate to some extent in order to get it right. So we’ve had to learn how to plan in a way that accounts for this variance.

Being a small company, do you find yourself working longer hours to compensate for a smaller team compared to big firms like EA, Rockstar Games, Microsoft, and the like?

As far as I can tell, we actually work more reasonable hours than the folks at those companies. Our team typically works like a nine hour day on average. My partner Josh and I will work longer hours, but that’s because we own the business.

Certain games that you develop are also available on the Macintosh, why aren’t all the games available on the Macintosh?

We’re working on it. We’ve ported over a few of our titles that were created with Macromedia Director, since that was an easy conversion. We’re now in the process of bringing over our C++ games, but that is a more costly project. Our goal is to have Mac versions of all of our titles by the end of the summer. In the meantime, I encourage all the Mac gamers out there to download Bootcamp!

Do you have any games on the Xbox 360 Marketplace, or plans to produce games for the Xbox 360 Marketplace?

We don’t have any games there now, but we’re working on a deal right now to bring one of more popular titles to that platform. The game will have a bunch of great new multiplayer modes, so we’re pretty excited.

You have e-card games, web games, and downloadable games. Which “platforms” do you find have the most success and offer the most business?

Downloadable games without a doubt. We see the ecard games as a way to encourage our customers to tell their friends about us. They also are a fun way for us to quickly try out a focused game mechanic. The other web games are intended to give players a small taste of what the downloadable version has to offer. We are currently working on a relaunch of our site which will offer much more in the way of community features and at that point, the browser-based games will hopefully become more of a revenue generator for us.

When you start a new game concept how long, on average, does it take to go from concept to release? Do you find it hard to avoid feature creep?

Most of our games are on a five to eight month production cycle right now. Typically, the concept has been floating around the lunch table for several months before we actually start production on it. If we’re working with a publisher, there is also a month or two of lead time before the project is “greenlighted”.

Feature creep is a beast that must be battled continuously and never truly dies. Informally, we all take turns playing the role of “creep cop”.

Bricktopia, a Lego themed breakout game, is new to your collection of cool games. What inspired you guys to build a Lego based breakout?

We’ve got an office full of former LEGO builders, so it was not hard to find inspiration in that brand. We’d built a bunch of small games for LEGO over the years, so when they approached us about co-publishing a downloadable game with them, we jumped at the opportunity. We pitched several ideas that involved adding a LEGO twist to some classic game mechanic. Bricktopia was the one that rose to the top.

I noticed games like Rocket Bowl use the Torque Engine from GarageGames. How much game development time is saved by using a 3rd party game engine like the Torque Engine?

Tough question. Since we’ve never rolled our own game engine from scratch, it’s hard for me to estimate just how much time was saved by using Torque. It was a significant savings, to be sure, and with each subsequent game that we develop using Torque, the time savings is more significant. We have a library of custom tools that speed things up, and our knowledge of the engine has also gotten deeper.

What game do you believe was the most difficult to develop out of the 45 games you have currently produced?

I’d say the game we’re developing right now is the most difficult, but I think I would have said the same thing if you’d asked me a year ago, or three years ago. There is always some new type of play experience or technology that challenges us, which is a good thing. Our current project has a strong content-creation and sharing aspect to it which is a real challenge to design and balance.

Recently you have been able to bring some of your games to the Mobile Phone by working with a few other companies. Is it your goal to bring more games to the mobile phone or was this just a good opportunity to test the waters?

We plan to bring our games to mobile any time it makes sense for the game. We think it makes the most sense to focus on developing for one platform really well, and we’ve been lucky enough to find some excellent development partners who are focused on mobile. Rocketbowl is available on most carriers already and Girls Inc. TeamUP will be rolling out in the next few months.

Your games seem to be targeted at an older age gamer or casual gamer. What do you think draws the older crowd to your games? Is it the short nature of the games, simplicity, or lack of massive time commitments?

Well, we’re trying to create games that are accessible to a broad demographic that includes our peers, our parents, and our nieces and nephews. We don’t want people to have to climb a steep learning curve, beating their head against a difficult control scheme or an impossibly difficult set of goals. People with busy lives don’t have time for that. We think games should be challenging without being frustrating. We want to make stylish games that empower the player and actively help them have fun, rather than beating them into submission. If we’ve attracted an older gamer, hopefully it’s because this design philosophy results in play experiences that fit into their lives better.

What makes a game fun to play?

Fun means something slightly different for everyone, so this is a very hard question. I think the most successful games have a general category of player or a category of fun in mind. The fun of solving a really difficult puzzle is completely different from the fun of annihilating waves of alien attackers. The fun of exploring an expansive world is different from the satisfaction of throwing darts. Good games are aware of which type (or types) of fun they are aiming for and hopefully every element in the game supports that aim.

Do you believe that games really have to sell for $59.99 or are big publishers just trying to make a little extra cash? Many people just do not want to pay (or cannot pay) an extreme high price for games that are not always top-notch in quality.

I can believe that its 20% more expensive to develop for the next generation consoles.

Large Animal is relatively young, founded in 2001, where do you see the company in five years from now? Growing larger and expanding into more complex games, or do you believe you have your vision set and its all about more high quality titles?

While we will certainly work on games that are larger in scope and more challenging to implement, hopefully this will not result in a more complex player experience. For us, part of making high quality titles is continuing to bring something new to the player, and to mask the underlying complexity and offer the player a play experience that is simple yet rich. That’s our goal and we’ll keep pursuing it.

As an independent game company do you find yourself trying to help new game developers that are trying to get into the market space? Do you offer any courses, or lessons on what you’ve learned as a team?

Several of us have taught at local colleges over the past several years, and we often have someone speaking at the various game conferences. I always enjoy speaking with folks who are just getting started, and I always learn from those conversations just as much as they do.

When you’re not developing games for Large Animal do you go home and play games for fun?

Not as much as I’d like! I have all the consoles at home and play both hardcore games like Halo and God of War, as well as more casual games like TopSpin Tennis (with my girlfriend) or Marble Blast on Xbox Live. I also enjoy board games like Ticket to Ride, Lost Cities, Puerto Rico, etc.

For anyone that is thinking “I want to make games” – do you have any advice on how they can break into the industry?

Go to GDC. It’s expensive, but worth it. Find the local chapter of the IGDA and get involved. If you do these things, you’ll meet many developers. Ask many questions and be a good listener. Identify the area(s) of game development in which you might make the most valuable contribution and start making things that will demonstrate this ability. If it’s game design, create design documents or paper prototypes. If it’s art, create screen shots or concept art, if it’s programming, create a demo that shows off your abilities. If you think you’d make a good tester, then get involved with the online beta test programs that most developers have. Basically, you need to demonstrate that your interest in making games goes far beyond simply wanting to “play games all day”.

Do you have any inspiring words for the young indy game developer just trying to make their first game?

Focus on finishing. In any creative industry, good ideas are a dime a dozen. The difficult part is executing on them. Ideally, you’ll execute really well on a really good idea, but even a well-executed but mediocre idea is more valuable than the best idea in the world that never gets finished.