Interview with Digital Eel The CMP Game Group (producer of Game Developer magazine, Gamasutra.com, and the Game Developers Conference) established the Independent Games Festival in 1998 to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers. They saw how the Sundance Film Festival benefited the independent film community, and wanted to create a similar event for independent game developers as well as the student population of game developers. I got the chance to talk via email to the Digital Eel team once again about their game Weird Worlds, nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and Innovation in Audio. This is the second time a game has appeared twice consecutively in an IGF competition, along with Gish from Chronic Logic which was a finalist in 2004 and 2005. Who are you and what was your role on Weird Worlds?
Wow, four consecutive IGF nominations! Welcome back and congrats on taking the lead for consecutive nominations. Has it gotten boring yet? :)
So what's got you guys stuck on Weird Worlds? What made you decide to enter Weird Worlds for a second time?
What additions to Weird Worlds do you think brought you back to the finals again this year?
We talked about mods in our last interview. How has that helped the game since then?
Have any user-created mods influenced your design and development of the game?
What was your most challenging production obstacle during development? How'd you overcome it?
How about from the technical side?
And the design side?
Highlight a problem during development that you could have avoided. What would you have done differently or what can you do differently to avoid the problem in the future?
What's changed in the way you guys have been developing games over the last year?
What's one thing that's stayed the same in the way you guys have been developing games in the last year that you feel has helped you most in doing your job?
You guys mentioned a bunch of ideas for future games last year - still thinking of any of them?
What else is in store for Digital Eel's future?
Interview conducted by Drew "Gaiiden" Sikora |