Interviews
Interview
with the Alternative Games Team
Producers of Full Moon in San Francisco
With Bob Freese
December 13, 2002
First of all
Hunchback_Man, thanks for the opportunity to talk with you!
Well, Bob, thank you
for taking the time out of your busy schedule to interview our crazy
team. 🙂 And here we are, ready to answer your questions.
Who created
Alternative Games, Inc. and was it created specifically to produce
Adventure 1 of Full Moon in San Francisco (FMISF)?
Alternative Games was
conceptually created on October 31st, 2000 by Dragon, Wizard, Reen,
Coofy, Thorr, and myself; and yes, it was Halloween :-). It was
then incorporated in late 2001, as several of our projects were
starting to materialize, including Full Moon in San Francisco and
Ambermont Online Magazine – http://www.ambermont.com . Alternative
Games was created as a way to communicate our ideas to the rest
of the world in an entertaining way, thus through games. “Full
Moon in San Francisco – Adventure 1” is in fact, not
only a crazy and entertaining game, but is also the artistic expression
of a message that we wanted to send out to the world. First of all,
we wanted to break stereotypes as much as possible, this may have
upset someone, sorry, but we found it very amusing. In Full
Moon in San Francisco the P.I. protagonist is a common person
who wants to give the best of him and is ready to do anything and
put all his effort to overcome any obstacle that may appear between
him and his dream of becoming a P.I. We’d like to encourage
people that any dream is possible to achieve with enough effort,
courage, and self-esteem.
Was the team
recruited, or were you mostly pals before the project started? I also
noticed that the major players use nicknames exclusively. How come?
The so-called “AG
Team” has actually been a team for as long as I can remember.
We’ve been good friends and have been playing pen-and-paper
role-playing games together and “ruminated” pretzels
since the punk era (I’ll leave it up to you to figure out
when that was!). At Christmas time in the year 2000, we recruited
the Greeno, the most evil man of the whole AG Team, who was supposed
to be our secretary and ended up instead being our anti-solicitors
body guard and reviewer. The use of nicknames at Alternative Games
is actually part of the whole “fantasy” and artistic
expression feeling that we want Alternative Games to have: it keeps
us in touch with our creative side the whole time!
Punk? Been
there, done that! (No- please don’t figure! – ugh!) Where
are you guys located?
Currently we’re
located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, but we’re expecting
aliens to pick us up at any minute now.
Hang in guys!
During the nearly two years in development, did the team work side
by side the entire time?
The AG Team worked side
by side ferociously the whole time, “destroying” any
obstacle that came our way and fighting against the unfavorable
weather conditions that kept us frozen cold in winter and boiling
warm in summer in our very crowded offices. During these two years
we have worked on “Full Moon in San Francisco Adventure
1” as well as on several other aspects of Alternative
Games and its line of products. It has been very challenging to
coordinate so many aspects of these activities, but also very fun.
Why do you
think Canada and Europe are producing good adventure games when the
US producers and publishers seem to be currently ignoring the genre?
I believe US producers/publishers/developers
left the adventure games in exchange for more profitable and higher
demand games such as first person shooters, action, and related
games. Moreover, there is a trend that “PC games” are
a thing of the past while console games are “the” games
you want to play, and unfortunately adventure games don’t
work too well with consoles. Canadian and Europeans publishers jumped
in and are trying to fill the gap left out by the US publishers.
And that’s
why you guys had the guts to create an adventure game? [Thanks!!!]
We chose to produce an
adventure game because our all-time favorite computer games were
adventure games, with Tex Murphy being on top of the list.
In addition, the way you develop and then play a “pen and
paper” role-playing game is very similar to the way you develop
and play an adventure game due to the detailed characters, story
line, and related adventure feeling. In our opinion, the main differences
between PC adventure games and “pen and paper” role
playing games are that in a “pen and paper” role playing
games you have the combat factor and almost no puzzles while for
adventure games is the opposite.
Could you please
give us a brief background of the major team players?
Dragon – He’s
a picky man, as well as a writer and businessman. Resembles a lawyer,
but he isn’t.
Wizard – He is dangerous and distracted. He usually creates
chaos and breaks laptops. He’s a self-acclaimed “fantasy
expert”.
Reen – She is an obsessive fiction writer. She can type 150
words per minute with 100% accuracy and she is the proud director
of Ambermont.com.
Coofy – She has an unusually abstracted personality, and she
makes a lot of noise. Coofy is an artist in distress who likes to
paint the desks in the AG offices without our consent when she’s
not busy with her artwork.
Hunchback_man – A person, mainly responsible for the unconventional
humor found in Full Moon in San Francisco, who is being
interviewed by Bob Freese.
Thorr – He’s full of ideas, concepts, and plots. He
loves investigations and loves using the brain.
Greeno – He is green, he’s “evil” and he
likes to read books and play games. He doesn’t get along with
Hick the Brownie (Santa’s elf), and Christmas is his favorite
holiday… (No wonder why!)
Love that Greeno
dude! <G>. Okay, onto the game itself. Who came up with the
idea of producing such a diverse and unique game – humor blended with
mystery, murder, the occult and some other very strange and whacky
stuff?
The game’s humor,
like I mentioned before, is mainly my fault, but the rest of the
team has worked with me heavily on all aspects of the game’s
plot including the fantasy/occult and mystery part.
I would love
to know how you and your team made this happen! Could you please highlight
the steps you took, from “original concepts” through “boxed
copy”?
It all started 2 years
ago, on a cold day of December in the year 2000, when all of a sudden
Thorr, Reen and I had the idea of making a computer game in addition
to the other games that we were and are currently designing. The
idea was approved and everyone agreed that we had the basic knowledge
and enough gaming experience to start working on a computer game.
Of course, we had to perform our researches and studies, reading
and studying books to get more information on adventure games and
their history and background, as well as studying possible programming
and technical solutions to make the actual game. Once performed
the research, we then developed the script of the game and at the
same time drafted up the skeleton of our game engine. We produced
a small demo that our brave beta testers tried out, and together
with them we were able to continue developing the game. While we
were working on the programming, our talented voice actors were
recording the various assigned scripts. After receiving the voice
over files, we then plugged them inside the game and after fighting
with some Window’s programming limitations we were finally
able to complete the game. And guess what happened then? We had
a huge party!
COOL! Were
there any unforeseen schedule setbacks?
LOL, it was a continuous
unforeseen schedule setback. 🙂
I understand
that Alternative Games has a FMISF game page at:
http://www.alternativegames.ca/fullmoongame/adventure1/
. What will our readers find there?
In addition to the website
link you’ve mentioned, we also have registered http://www.fullmoongame.com/
for an easier access to the game’s website. On the website
we have sample audio clips of voice actors from the game, as well
as screenshots, story-line information and a downloadable PDF document
with the story that precedes the game, and of course the possibility
to purchase the game, and much more.
Where can adventure
game fans purchase Full Moon in San Francisco – Adventure 1?
At the moment the game
is available for purchase through our online store at: http://www.fullmoongame.com,
but if players would like to purchase from their local computer
stores, we invite them to go and ask to their favorite stores to
order Full Moon in San Francisco for them, since Alternative
Games Inc. can sell directly to retailers. Most retailers only carry
games for which there is demand, so requesting our game would help
bring it to the retail stores shelves.
Well, Mr.
Hunchback_Man, on behalf of Just Adventure and its readers I’d
like to congratulate you and your team on the production of your first
PC game, and the first-hand insight you’ve provided us. Very
best wishes for the future!
Thank you Bob! Thank
you Just Adventure team! And thanks to those who have read this
cool interview! Happy gaming to everyone. 🙂
