This has been a few months in the making, but Real Otaku Gamer has just scored its first interview. We will be talking to Frank Wilson, co-founder and CTO of Twisted Pixel Games. We will discuss the history of Twisted Pixel, favorite games and the design process. These guys are some of the most innovative game companies around today.
1. How long have you guys been gaming?
We’ve all been gaming our entire lives. My family had an Atari 2600 when I was a kid and I always spent as much time as I could playing it. The love for games just grew from there with every new gaming console that was released.
2. What are some of your favorite classic games?
Super Mario Bros 3 has always been one of my favorites. I also played quite a bit of Contra when I was a kid. The best thing about it was that I got it for free. My family bought a NES shortly after Christmas one year and on the ride home, I opened the box and found Contra still in the console. Apparently someone had returned the NES to the store and forgot to take out the cartridge.
3. How did Twisted Pixel get started?
Josh Bear, Mike Wilford, and I worked together at another game company making mostly licensed titles prior to starting Twisted Pixel. We all had dreams of making our own game company using our own ideas. The three of us found each other and unified the dream when we saw that game consoles had a market for downloadable games. We’ve all always been mostly console gamers and the scope of downloadable console games seemed like a good fit for us. Consequently, Twisted Pixel was born.
4. What is your design process like?
The whole company contributes ideas to our games. We come up with an initial design, however it’s always evolving based on new ideas that people have and what turns out to be fun or not fun. We don’t have any really strict rules for how we design a game. Mostly, we just want to have some cool characters that do some cool things. For the most part, we hope that if we think something is fun that there are probably others out there that do too.
5. Why did you choose the XBLA platform?
Initially it chose us. When we were first starting the company, we pitched ideas to all of the console manufacturers. Microsoft was the one that liked our ideas and was willing to give us a shot. Since then, we’ve established a great relationship with Microsoft and they treat us well so we’ve continued to build games for XBLA.
Part Two of this Article is coming in the next few days.