Shack Interview: GarageGames
Along with Microsoft's recent announcements regarding entry level Xbox 360 development, GarageGames also announced that it will be bringing its own Torque game engine technology to the XNA environment, allowing hobbyist and independent developers to start working on cross-platform PC and Xbox 360 development not only with an affordable development environment, but fully featured 2D and 3D game engines as well. I had the chance to speak with GarageGames CEO/CTO Joshua Williams and president Mark Frohnmayer about the company's announcements at Microsoft Gamefest and the implications of this type of development for aspiring developers and smaller studios, as well as what users can expect to see when they load up these tools, and what else GarageGames has in the pipeline.
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Mark Frohnmayer: We're about to release our first actual legimitate casual game that we developed in house. It just went into beta last week. We're about to release a new set of levels for Marble Blast Ultra on Xbox 360. We did a whole new set of multiplayer maps that are actually a lot of fun. Then we have another game that's in the early stages of development that's going to totally rock. We will give you much more information on that as we get closer.
Shack: Anything related to Tribes? I'm sure you guys get asked that every day.
Mark Frohnmayer: It actually is in a lot of ways a gameplay homage to Tribes, but it's a very different genre.
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That out of the way, nice interview. I publically stated (via a post on gamedev.net) my mild disappointment with GG/TGE, but there is no question that this is a fantastic opportunity for some people.
"It will be cool."
Eh?
Seriously, nix that stuff. It adds nothing at all to the interview.
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I'm very interested to see what these moves will mean in the next 5 or so years as far as new developers breaking into the scene.
There's something very compelling about developing for a console, and I think it's enough to get some people who only thought about making games to go ahead and do it.
Basically I'm jealous, I wish I had this as a kid. =)