Interviews

JA – Anything in your games that you wish you would have done differently or weren’t really happy with?

Steve Ince – I would have put fewer box-puzzles into Broken Sword 3.  🙂

Jonathan
Boakes – Yes,
lots! Far too much to list here. This is a Q&A, rather than
some postproduction evaluation. I will say, though, that I regret
not cleaning the outside toilets in Dark Fall 1.
They are filthy! And also, I am not happy that I left Parker stuck
in a cave, at the end of Lights Out.
The poor thing only has a crab for company, and the supply of
quality tea bags in 2090BC is shocking!

Britney
Brimhall – It
would have been nice having more people on the development team
– a lot of times, we felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of
work on
our plates.  But we’ve made it through, and I’m happy
with our results.

Tamás
Marosi Z. (Pierrot) – The
serial nature of Agon makes it possible
to develop continuously, to correct mistakes, the polishing of
the production, working on feedback and criticism. Only time
and physical possibilities limit us. Of course, everything could
have been different, perhaps much better, but I don’t
think we have released anything that we should be ashamed of.

Mikael & Eleen Nyqvist – Looking back at our first game, when we made the second one, there were some things that we wished that we had done differently. We’ll probably feel the same way when making the next game. 

Matt
Clark – I
very much wanted to create a ‘classic adventure game’. I
don’t believe in the ‘death of the adventure game’,
in the same way I didn’t believe that computers would replace
drawing with a pencil. (If anything, I use a pencil more today
than I did before.)

I wouldn’t
change the way Barrow Hill has
been created, and feel the game has the retro feel, and involving
atmosphere I aimed for. The visual styling, interaction and natural
texture, which were visualized, has remained intact. It has been
a fantastic and mysterious process.

Cos
Russo – Implementation
of copy protection.  Because of inexperience I did not
think about copy protection at all.  I think Alida has
been illegally ‘shared‘ and copied quite a lot.
 

Agustin
Cordes & Alejandro Graziani – Overall,
we’re very happy with the outcome of Scratches.
It has by far exceeded our expectations – and thank goodness
it did as we’ve put into it twice the time we originally
intended! However, there are several things we have learned and
definitely would have done differently. While the story, characters
and major puzzles were all devised in very early stages, it was
only until much later when I sat down to put together an in-depth
design document. Bad move. In retrospective, that document could
have saved us time and headaches as certain aspects of the game
had to be assumed and handled as temporary. It wasn’t
so bad and, on the good side of things, it allowed me to have
a
very rich vision of the game. For instance, a few puzzles were
either created or adjusted after Alejandro’s design of
the locations and the available graphics provided just about
the right mood to finish the writing.

All
in all though, next time we won’t do a thing (other than
concept artwork maybe) unless there’s a throughout document
written, but always leaving a few doors open or ‘blank’ scenarios
for the inclusion of later puzzles.

Another
thing that just hasn’t worked as I expected is the interface – but
I’m going to leave it there as I’m taking too much space
and everyone else must be booing at me.

Chris Brendel – As I stated previously, I was not happy with the final voice of the main character of Shady Brook, and I wish my first two games featured better graphics.  Hopefully, the graphics issue will be resolved in my upcoming game, Awaken.  Of course, it is my opinion that, no matter how perfectly a game turns out, the developer will never be completely satisfied with it.  We are our own harshest critics!

Bryan
Wiegele – In every game I’ve ever worked on
there’s always something that I wish I could go back and
change or add to. While I’m not sure it’s possible
to walk away from a game saying ‘THIS is exactly what
I wanted’ I do think it’s a good goal to get as
much in as possible given your time frame and budget. I think
it’s
a good feeling to come off of finishing a game full of ideas
that will work great in the next game.

Gey & Silvio Savarese – Hmm…
the issue is that everything can be always improved. As many artists
may experience, it’s very difficult to create something and
say, ok this is perfect – many times things go to
the garbage bin just because we realize they can be done better…
Also, as independent developers we have limited funds, hence many
ideas cannot be implemented as we wish. So we need to find a trade
off.

Michael Clark – Yes, I wish I had taken the time to do the ending to The Arrangement better.  I was in a hurry to get the game done, and rushed the ending through the quickest, easiest way I could, and that decision killed the game.  I learned that the creative process can NOT be rushed. 

Knut Mueller – There is always the wish to make things better. But this is the incentive for the next game.
 

Keith Nemitz – Yep, but then I just release a new version. Right now things are pretty smooth. I need to
take another pass on the art. I finally figured out how to get rid of the jaggies, correctly.