Nnooo Answers Our Questions

We agreed that moving to Australia would be a great opportunity for both of us and so I invested my savings in setting up Nnooo. From there I started a dialogue with both Nintendo and Microsoft regarding making games for Xbox Live Arcade or WiIWare. At the time Nintendo had no formal plans in regards to WiiWare so we kind of got in early.

The dialogue with Microsoft became difficult for us as they require prototypes, full concept artwork and a full design document before they will green light anything (and you still need to fund the game yourself). For us this became a non starter as we cannot afford to make prototypes and then potentially have them canned.

Nintendo on the other hand was very refreshing. They basically asked me to pitch some ideas to them, with short descriptions (10 in all), we chatted about them and whittled them down to a smaller number which I then wrote some slightly more detailed outlines on. Nintendo then asked if I had signed an NDA, I said no, they passed one over, I signed it and the next day we were approved and in the WiiWare program (this was till before it had been officially announced or even named). It was all very refreshing.

Anyway in regards to Pop the idea itself came about over quite a long period. My partner had been playing a lot of Lumines to wile away time on various international flights which really got me thinking. What is it about Lumines which is compelling versus all the other games I bring home?! So with that ticking away in my mind and then the thought of working on the Wii I started to wonder what sort of games the Wii demographic would be after and would you be able to craft a Lumines like experience on the Wii using the Wii Remote?

I began looking at the various aspects of the Wii and what if offers the user in terms of controls and features. It struck me that the Wii Remote makes interfacing with a game really simple and in particular the ability to point at things makes interactions a lot more intuitive. It then struck me that classic light-gun games (point and shoot) and so forth are all really fun and would work really well on the Wii. However I wondered about firstly our ability to make a good lightgun game in a short period of time and also the appeal of it to the Wii core demographic.

That is when bubbles came up. I thought that bubbles are something everyone likes to pop and that popping them using the Wii Remote (by pointing and 'shooting') would be very intuitive and fun. I then looked back at Lumines to examine the depth or gameplay which was put into it. You need some amount of depth to a game or it will become boring quickly. The player needs to find out new things or be able to create new tactics.

So in essence I suppose the inspiration was my partner, Nintendo's new expanded audience and Lumines!

The game took about a year to develop including us getting used to the hardware. For most of that time it was just 2 of us with the others coming and going as necessary.

Pop seems to have used only the Wii remote control scheme, are you planning on expanding into other control formats for future titles?

We have plans for future games which make a lot more use of the Wii Remote. Pop was our first foray into Wii development so we didn't want to make a control scheme which relied too much on the motion detection and perhaps got it wrong. When we make use of the motion detection in our future titles we want to make sure it is properly realised and intuitive to use.

Did Nintendo's limit on hard drive space impact development on what you wanted to accomplish with Pop and will it affect future titles?

Not really. There are always limits to what you can do in any game and download size is just another one of those. Obviously we have to be more careful about our artwork and so forth but if you look at something like Lost Winds or Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King both of those titles have really great graphics and do a lot with the limited space on WiiWare.

Do you plan on releasing downloadable content for Pop and future titles?

We have no plans to release downloadable content for Pop but we would like to do so for future titles. We are still looking at and appraising this as we are unsure of how much demand there is for these sorts of things.

When was Nnooo games formed and where did the name come from?

We were formed in late 2006 and the name comes from the way I react to new cool things or when I am beaten in games (I cry No! in my scottish accent).

Was it difficult to make the transition to the Wii Ware service?

As this was our first title as a company it was a big learning curve but fortunately Nintendo have a lot of great examples and documentation for you to refer to. Having worked on games from the PS1 onwards I was familiar with the sorts of restrictions we could have so it made planning a lot easier.

Does the Nintendo Wii provide new challenges for your development team?

Each game we do I hope provides new challenges. We really want to make sure we put features in which capture the players imagination as well as being fun to play. These sorts of features are never easy and require a lot of subtle work to ensure the feedback and positive reinforcement are well maintained.

Do you plan on releasing titles for Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network?

At the moment we have no games in development for either platform. However we do have ideas we would like to pursue should either company be willing to listen.

Nintendo is the only company in the industry not to impose the use of demos on upcoming releases; do you feel demos do a future release justice to the consumer?

As a consumer I think demos are great because they usually stop me from buying the final game. As a developer I do not really see the point of most demos. This is mainly because making a good demo is very, very hard and is like making a small game in itself. A good demo needs to leave the player wanting more and build to a climax. A bad demo, which is most, is usually just the first level of the game (or somewhere in the middle with all abilities and maxed stats). The bad things about these demos is they either push the player through the tutorial (never exciting) or make the player feel so omnipotent that there is no excitement.

In regards to Pop I think a demo would be hard to create sales from as like tetris if you just have the first 1 or 2 levels of the game would that satisfy you enough and therefore not encourage you to buy the game? Ultimately I think both publishers and consumers need to realise that the point of demos is to create sales. Games companies are not making demos so that you can save money and don't buy the game, however I feel that a lot of consumers play the demo, say I get that and move on.

JJ Abrams made a great point about 'the magic box' in a recent talk he gave. Basically the excitement of the new is the unknown. We don't know what this game will be about until we play it and so we get excited. Now most demos completely break this by showing everything, this means that the player now knows what is inside 'the magic box' and is no longer intrigued. They will therefore not buy your game. As I mention above you need to create a demo which shows enough of the game but keeps the secrets still in 'the magic box' for the player to want to discover when they buy it.

So in essence no I do not feel that demos are necessary all of the time and that a bad demo will hamper sales much more than a good demo will create them.

Microsoft seems keen on delisting arcade games based on low review scores from MetaCritic, what do you think about that?

I think that in part it is a factor of how hard their online store is to navigate. I don't really understand the reason of getting rid of content unless you feel it is harming your image or cluttering up the store and making 'good' content hard to find. If the store were better designed I don't think this would be necessary. Furthermore I don't think any of the big 3consoleshave got the look and feel of their online stores right yet. Users don't want to; scroll through long lists of games, users don't want to look at a list of genres and guess what might be inside them, users don't want to look at a list of pictures which are blank until they update meaning they have to wait for a while before they can decide if this is the right place to be. The person who solves this will make online game sales go through the roof.

However I think the problem Microsoft face is they want to be the arbiters of taste on the 360 which means they approve each game for development.Ultimately this means that they take safe bets and safe bets can often be boring or just more of the same. Would franchises like Pokemon, Pikmin, Okami, Rez, Every Extend Extra have originally come about in that sort of climate?

For me online stores should be about taking risks. You don't need to worry about printing discs and so forth and all you need to do is host the content so what have you got to lose if someone makes a rubbish game? If you open the barriers you are more likely to get people taking risks and making something that will change the industry. If you close the doors and approve everything then you get design by committee and that has never created anything unique.

Can you shed some light on some upcoming titles that are in the works?

We are currently working on appraising the iPhone. We would also like to expand our WiiWare team for our next title and are looking for senior programmers with console experience!