JOE meets top Irish video game developers Open Emotion Studios

Fresh from the release of Mad Blocker Alpha on Playstation Minis, JOE met with Limerick-based Open Emotion Studios to discuss winning over Sony and the current Irish development scene.

By Emmet Purcell

Fresh from rave reviews for their recent puzzle title, it's full steam ahead for Open Emotion's company CEO Paddy Murphy, as the studio gears up for the forthcoming release of their platform title Ninjamurai.

We discussed the genesis of their portmanteau hero, the current Irish games development scene and Open Emotion's heavy, albeit perhaps unintentional, SEGA influences.

JOE: A lot of people out there might be ignorant to the fact that there are plenty of Irish game development houses out there at the moment, so for anyone that hasn’t heard of Open Emotion, could you give us the cliff notes of how you got started?

PM: Back in late 2009, myself and a couple of mates got together and said, “Well, we each have these individual skill sets – art, sound, programming”, and it went from there. It wasn’t really a gamble to start a games development studio. It wasn’t high-risk or high investment so we just started on small flash games.

We just kept making flash games every month to draw in a bit of revenue. Then we had a big success in June [2010] when one, Goldie’s Revenge, was bought by MTV/Nickelodeon. [It was] A very small amount but it didn’t really matter as it gave us the profile we needed and 5 million plays were attached to that game, so it gave us a great volume of people playing our product.

Around the same time we went to the UK to meet with Sony, who we had sent an application to become Sony developers. They approved us so we went over and had a chat with them face-to-face and showed them some of our ideas. They guided us and suggested we start on a PSP Mini, the Madblocker game we had made, and then escalate from there.

So when we came back from all that, we started working Madblocker. We made it in five weeks but beta testing took nearly two months [laughs], so we adapted to that and now on [Open Emotion’s forthcoming title] Ninjamurai the testing is taking a much bigger focus.

So anyway, Madblocker was released on the 19th of February and it's been getting great critical review scores. The sales haven’t been Call of Duty-esque but they’ve been enough to keep the roof over the head and things like that.

JOE: Since the studio originally started with flash games, do you think that’s something you will ever return to or is purely a launch pad?

PM: I have a lot of ideas that we could still use for flash games, especially when we have the assets created from our bigger games. Flash is a great way to advertise products - I’ve often thought of going back and making a Ninjamurai flash game to promote the actual PSP game. Not as a slapdash, pure advertisement game, but to put a lot of thought and creativity into it.

JOE: With your current work being on PSP Minis, was there any reason why you guys decided to get behind Sony more so than anyone else?

PM: Not really. At the beginning we sent applications to everyone. Nintendo rejected us the first time we applied but Sony got back to us within three days and said they were interested and then Microsoft, we never heard much back from them.

Not saying anything bad about them, as we’re still trying to get things on XBLA [Xbox Live Arcade] but it’s like anything, you get on one platform first and then other people see that you’ve done well and come asking you to develop.

JOE: A lot of indie developers these days are somewhat averse to boxed titles and see their future as purely in digital distribution, would that be true for yourselves?

PM: It’s definitely our short-term goal. The money that goes into a boxed title is pretty insane, not even on the development but on the marketing, the actual production of the disc/cartridge, the manual, the boxes, there’s so much cost for that distribution.

Don't mind the giant man-baby poking his tongue at you - you'll show him

We would like to get to the boxed game phase but we’re not going to jump the gun and put all our money into one boxed title, in case it doesn’t work out and we’re screwed.

JOE: Well I’ve played Game Dev Story on the iPhone and that’s where I messed up...

PM: Oh yeah? [Laughs] We’re also looking at stuff like the iPhone and Android – we’ve released Madblocker on both already, a slightly different version. Mobile markets are a great way to go but it’s hard if you don’t have a marketing presence because there’s so much out there.

JOE: So for anyone that hasn’t played the PSP or Flash version, how does Madblocker work?

PM: It’s very similar to games such as SEGA’s Columns. There’s a row of three blocks and you have to alter the rotations of them to line up four more of the same colour.

If starts off very simple, very much like those older puzzle games but then you start to unlock different power-ups. The Playstation one anyways, it’s got enemies, which is unusual for a puzzle game and it even has an end-of-game boss. So we did some stuff that wasn’t inherent to the puzzle genre.

JOE: So it was about putting a more interesting spin on something that people would see and automatically assume, “Oh, I recognise that”?

PM: That’s it. We wanted people to pick up and play it from the get-go, but we wanted people to see that there was a story too.

JOE: So Madblocker was released in February and Ninjamurai has no release date yet. I believe you’re aiming for May?

PM: We definitely want to get it out for May. We have a speculative date but I don’t want to release yet it in case it moves. We had that problem with Madblocker so we think once we know a definite date we’ll release that. As long as the beta testing goes better this time it should make May.

JOE: So in terms of influences, you’ve mentioned SEGA’s Columns for Madblocker. Ninjamurai seems to have a Shinobi-esque look to it.

PM: Definitely. Ninjamurai actually started off as nothing like it is now. It was just perpetual motion – you had no control over the character, all you did was jump.

JOE: Similar to [flash and mobile title] Canabalt?

PM: Yeah. It was basically Canabalt with an attack option. When we brought it to the Minis platform we thought, “that’s a bit simple for Minis”, so we expanded on that.

Our first thought was that if he’s really fast, he’s like Sonic, but we thought that if he’s a ninja, he’s got to be like Shinobi. So we went and looked at that and then incorporated all these elements from our old favourite platform games.

JOE: With all the SEGA references, does he ever turn into Ecco the Dolphin at any stage?

PM: [Laughs] No, no.  But the influences are Sonic, Shinobi, Mega Man. There’s a huge Mega Man influence, particularly in the difficulty, and there’s a Super Mario influence even in the character’s physics and how he moves.

JOE: I had read that Ninjamurai was originally going to be your very first title?

PM: It was. Way back at the end of 2009 we were talking with some friends and they asked, “Sure, what would you make a game about?”, and Mike, the artist, said ‘I don’t know, a Ninja Samurai? Ninjamurai?” We were just like, “That’s it!” We were sold - we had to make that game.

We must admit that it took us far too long to understand the significance of the name 'Ninjamurai'

So we thought okay, it’ll be like Canabalt, but even in flash it was so hard to make it what we wanted. We wanted it to be visually impressive and have depth so we kept putting it off and after Madblocker it was the logical next step, although it’s three times the project Madblocker was in terms of game design, assets. It’s been a great experience though.

JOE: You guys are maybe the best guys to ask about this – what do you think of the current state of the Irish games industry?

PM: At the moment they’re trying really hard, which is a good thing. The Government are trying hard to promote digital media and that’s a good step in the right direction. The problem is that I think sometimes they focus too much on the middleware side of things, rather than game development. You always hear Havok in the news, you always hear Demonware, because they’re the success stories. The smaller developers...

JOE: Might be riskier to be associated with if you’re a politician?

PM: Exactly, yeah. Others don’t get that media coverage. There’s guys like ourselves, there’s Digital Sideburns down in Limerick, there are devs all over Ireland but they’re very small and what they may need is that focus.  I do think they’re trying to improve though, they’re bringing together workshops to find out what devs need.

I think we’re a long way to becoming Canada, France or those kinds of places that have big indigenous games development industries but the foundations are being laid, which I think is the important thing.

JOE: So finally, what does the future hold for Open Emotion?

PM: Well there’s Ninjamurai and then in June we’ve have enough game, which is called Revoltin' Youth. We’re going to do more ports from there, maybe cut down Ninjamurai for iPhone or things like that. Then the goal is, if we’re stable enough, to go onto a PSN project or a DS project.

JOE: Or a 3DS project maybe?

PM: That would be my favourite. With Nintendo, it’s like the Minis – start at DSiWare and if it does well then go up to 3DS titles.

If we can just get Madblocker as DSiWare, then we can look to create a 3DS title. We’ve loads of ideas – that’s not the hard part, the hard part is putting those ideas into reality.

JOE: That’s excellent Paddy, thanks for the chat

PM: No problem.