Showing posts with label nintendo 64. Show all posts
The BeautiFun Team Stories - Lourdes Nicolich (Artist) Part I/II
This week we start our interview to Lourdes Nicolich, artist and co-founder of our studio. In this first part you will know more about her gaming background. Her life with games is really intense and she also has a great memory, so be prepared for an amazing travel back in time!
Lourdes: Almost could say I literally was born surrounded by video games. My parents loved them since the very beginning, even before they married they were absolutely fascinated with the first arcade machines. So before I was born they already had played Pong and Space Invaders arcades, then bought a Coleco-Vision!
As I was growing up I found out they had bought an Amiga and an arcade cabinet. My father installed some kind of connectors on it that allowed me to play Amiga games like if it was an arcade. I remember it was on that Amiga computer and with those arcade joysticks where I beated the first Prince of Persia!
We also had an MSX that worked with a cassette tape. Each game we wanted to play on it took a really long time to load! Many times the game would hang during the process, so my father, with infinite patience, had to use a screwdriver to try to re-adjust the cassette and plug it again.
Something curious I strongly remember is each and every title screen from each of the games we played at the time. Since I was a small kid, I unconsciously received the influence of my mother's passion for crafts and drawing. Always got astonished looking at those pixel art screens, they made my imagination ran free! One of the most memorable title screens for me was the one from Mad Mix Game, a Spanish game inspired by Pac Man. In that cover it seemed like the character was getting its own life and he wanted to jump out of the screen.
Another games I fondly hark back to are:
- Mickey's Runaway Zoo, an educational game I played while riding a train.
- Rodland, a beat'em up I played along with my sister. Remember we crafted really cool cooperative strategies to kill all the enemies around, and we finally beated the game, it was quite hard, especially because we couldn't save our progress and, once we died, we had to restart everything again from the very beginning.
- Cannot forget to mention Silk Worm, a side-scroller shooter starred by a heavy armed Jeep and a helicopter were my mother and I spent countless hours playing co-op mode, obsessed with the idea of getting further and futher without being killed.
- I was fascinated with Flashback, especially watching its introductory sequences. It was awe-inspiring to see how with so few polygons the game could transmit you a lot of feelings.
Jesús: So your family was a key factor in your gaming life. Could you explain a bit more about your gaming habits with them?
L: Yes, I used to play a lot with my parents back then, and I still do it nowadays when I visit them. My father was the one who started this hobby for video games and then my mother got really passionated too. My father loves pinball games and also plays FIFA from now and then. Lately he is pouring many hours into GTA Online with my sister and her boyfriend when they all come out of work. My mother loves platformers like Mario, puzzle games, and adventure titles like Zelda.
J: I see you love Mario games, I would like to know your opinion about how well Mario has aged since the first game came out.
L: I think they have kept the essence of what makes Mario an excellent platformer. And at the same time they have innovated in their playability. For example Mario Galaxy produced me a really exciting vertigo feeling. I also enjoy a lot when we play four people at the same time in any of the last Mario games (New Super Mario Bros Wii and the likes).
J: Here I asked Lourdes if she had tried that Nintendo Land mini-game called Luigi's Ghost Mansion with her family and friends. I had played it and really think it was bringing something new to the typical multiplayer gaming experience with the usage of the Wii U GamePad controller.
L: That kind of gameplay is not so innovative, it looks really similar to what had been implemented for Pac-Man Vs., a mini-game launched in 2003 that was included as part of Namco's R: Racing Evolution. Three players were controlling ghosts, that could only view a limited part of the map, and the fourth player was Pac-Man, that was controlled using the Game Boy Advance handheld. Pac-Man's goal is the classic one, to eat all the pills and also defeat ghosts on its way before he could be captured.
So there was a clear similarity between both games, and that's not something that should surprise us, since the game designer was nothing less than Shigeru Miyamoto himself!
J: I see you mainly played consoles during the last 20 years, can you tell me about the story of the different consoles you had?
L: Yes, the Amiga, as happened with all the other 16 bit computers, was dethroned by the PCs and my father was looking for the next big thing to give us for Christmas, it had to be something we could all play in the living room. He researched a bit and finally bought a Super Nintendo, he liked the graphics and the kind of games it offered at the time (1992).
Then we started renting Super Nintendo games, one each week, on a constant basis. So we easily ended making a great friendship with the owners of our closest video club, a couple around the same age of my parents that didn't take too long in adding us to their VIP clients list. That privilege allowed one day to be one of the first to try Donkey Kong Country, a game that my father was curious about after reading some magazine reports. He sent me to rent the game and as soon as I came back home I started playing, and couldn't stop! My father came back from work and when he saw the game he was astonished, petrified. He saw the whole evolution of videogames, and he couldn't believe that the Super Nintendo was able to handle those character animations, beautiful and detailed scenarios, that music, the smooth and responsive control... that was an instant buy for him (and me too).
Another really curious anecdote happened the day my father connected the console to our Hi-Fi system and started recording the game music. He asked me to play some games without being killed (so we had no FX in the audio), so he could record the music of each level to listen to it at anytime. We loved to listening to that music during travels or simply at home. That also created a great culture of listening to game scores in all the family. For example, recently I enjoyed very much the Castlevania: Lords of Shadows soundtrack.
As my father started collecting computers and consoles at a very young age, I was really lucky to be able to play pretty most of the systems available. We didn't buy all the consoles at launch, only the ones we really loved. We have been adquiring most of consoles followed by the one that offered the best games and stories. Since we got a Super Nintendo we were big fans of most of Nintendo titles, but also appreciate SEGA systems, games like Sonic or Ecco the Dolphin justify the purchase of a Megadrive or a Dreamcast.
J: Can you mention some games from the 90s that left you a strong mark?
L: From Nintendo 64 era I adore The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the story, the world, the depth in the gameplay, that beautiful music, it got me hooked. The game was full of surprises and mysteries, the hidden magic caves, the fairies... Was fascinated with the owl that magically teleported you to other areas of the game, Zora and the whale, the part when you meet Epona, the game is full of memorable details that really make up a superb experience.
Tomb Raider is another saga that I won't forget. I loved how Lara was depicted in the game, she was a mixture between an explorer and a warrior, and the game had also some sci-fi / mystic elements that fascinated me. Totally loved the challenges and puzzle resolutions Tomb Raider games always presented.
J: And during the last decade, which games have been the most significative for you?
L: I have been impressed by a few games to say the truth. First one would be Bioshock, where I loved that discovery feeling of exploring strange old worlds, the powers of plasmids was kind of magic and fascinating, a story that unraveled progressively. I was a bit afraid during the last part of the game, but my sister took control and she beated the game while I was watching and encouraging her. Something similar happened with the first Dead Space, but I also loved it!
Also, I cannot forget to mention the last two Rayman titles. Now I'm playing them both, when I get tired of Rayman Origins on the Wii I alternate with Rayman Legends on the PS3. The previous Rayman games (Rayman 1, 2 and 3, etc) were more adventure-oriented around a story (something like Zelda), and the last ones are more focused on pure old-school platformers, quite challenging and filled with tons of crazy fun!
J: As a player, how do you see the evolution of videogames and the state of the industry nowadays?
L: I have to admit I'm tired of those AAA games that aim to imitate films, to be more and more realistic while repeating the old gameplay formulas we all know.
But we still have some classic sagas like Mario, Rayman or Donkey Kong that, while keeping the same characters and mechanics, they are somehow fresh and still have the original high quality production values that made them so successful.
Now with us, the indies, things are really more diverse. Recently Jordi recommended me to play Deponia, Aniol told me about how cool Fez was. So I have to try them out! I'm used to play together with friends and family in the living room, so PC gaming is a bit of a problem for me. But somehow I will connect the PC to my TV, plug a controller and dedicate a good time to dive into the vast indie game catalog available.
Continues in Part II.
You can get in touch with Lourdes on Twitter, she is @llEvadne
Other interviews:
The BeautiFun Team Stories - Pol Urós (Programmer) - Part I / II
Pol is not currently working on BeautiFun Games. However, he's an awesome guy and he's still our friend, so here's his story for you to read.
This week we sit down with Pol, another of the four BeautiFun Games founders, to talk about his life and career as a gamer and also as game programmer. Welcome and hope you enjoy.
Jesús Fabre: How it all started?
Pol Urós: I love games since I was a really young kid. Up to the point that I wanted to create them even before I knew how they were made. Didn't know in which position I should aspire to work at, but later in High School I discovered I was good at Maths, Algebra and Physics, while, on the other hand, I was disastrous with with all things art-related. So I decided I wanted to be a programmer (I also enjoy to give some hints and feedback on game design issues to the team here at BeautiFun, though). Ultimately, that was the motivation to start studying Computer Science.
When I was a kid, I also remember how badly I felt when I asked a Nintendo 64 for Christmas and the Three Wise Men forgot aboutit, until they brought it year later. I remember I didn't ask them for anything else, only that, such a traumatic disappointment! To say the truth, I think my parents were a bit worried when they saw how much time I spent with games during my childhood. When I started my studies, they didn't truly believe game development was going to be something I could make a living of... but it slowly changed when they started seeing how big this industry is.
The first console I had was a portable one, more concretely a Game Boy, the classic white and thick model, on which I remember having invested neverending hours playing with Super Mario Land 1 and 3. I also played a lot the first Pokémon, up the extent that the cartridge's battery ended up draining. So I lost my savegame with all the Pokemons in the team at maximum level. Schoolmates told me I was the best player around, but it was not a matter of skill, but dedication and steadiness. Loved the stats and leveling system, also how to customize the attacks in order to find the ones that suit your character the best.
J: If it was during school season, I wonder how things were when holidays came.
P: I spent long summers with a Super Nintendo at my uncle's place, in a small village close to Barcelona called Sant Estevede Sesrovires. I have fond memories of Super Bomberman, a game with a great campaign, but what really shined on its own there was its four-people battle mode! I loved U.N. Squadron, a game so difficult that my uncle and me ended memorizing each and every pixel until we beated it. Remarkable games were also Aladdin, Looney Tunes and Magical Quest: Starring Mickey Mouse. But aside of arcade and platform games, I was a hardcore fan of RPG with deep stories like Terranigma, Tales of Phantasia, Secret of Evermore, Illusion of Time and Secret of Mana.
But if there is a gaming platform that has truly left a mark on me, it has been Nintendo 64. When I finally had it in my hands, together with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, it marked a watershed in the way I saw games could deliver real magic, allowing me to enter immersive fantasy worlds and defy my logic with really intricate puzzles. I came back from school with the one and only goal of playing so hard I could get to the next dungeon. Until one day I ended it and I was so sad, perhaps this is a bit weird, but I hardly could cope with the idea of knowing there was nothing new to see in that game. It wasn't until I played TLOZ: OOT Master Quest when I got the chance to somehow relive that feeling, but I got stucked in the third dungeon. There was no way to progress for me, and at the same time I prohibited myself to look into guides, I wanted to solve the riddles by myself.
J: Games were pretty hard at the time, for how long did you keep that "all by myself" policy?
P: Well, later on, I started to use guides with games like the ones from Final Fantasy series, but in general I always tried to beat the games the hard way, without extra help, the feeling of satisfaction is much more intense, even if you didn't get to the end of the game, you know that everything you accomplished is only thanks to your own effort, and that feeling was (and still is) priceless.
J: Could you tell me more about your experiences with the Nintendo 64?
P: One of the best memories I keep about the N64, comes from the time when I played Mario 64 along with my father, who was a die-hard fan of 3D movies (as Toy Story, I remember it was the big thing at the time), for him it was unbelievable to see that world in movement. It was like interacting inside one of those movies worlds. I cannot forget to mention two great shooters, Goldeneye 007 and Duke Nukem 64 also a fighting game, Fighters Destiny, loved to play those games with my friends. For a more indivualistic experience aside of Zelda games, Quest 64 (Holy Magic Century is the name of the european version of the game) was another RPG I rented for innumerous times (I'm sure I could have bought the original game with all that money).
J: We talked about consoles, but now you play mostly PC games. When and how that started?
P: I never had a PC until I entered the University, before that I always had a Mac since my father was a Mac lover. He works in graphic design and I always inherited his machine when it was getting outdated. Due to this, I learned English by playing Mac games, at the time it was really strange to find a Spanish translation available for a Mac game. Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis were two of those.
So when I entered the University I started using only the PC to both program and play games, I think is the best choice. I didn't abandon game consoles, had the Gamecube and the Wii, but they will never substitute the PC as a gaming platform. I love RPG, MMORPG, MOBA and strategy games. Some of my favourites are LoL, World of Warcraft, and I have always been a huge fan of Blizzard games. In Diablo II I played a lot with friends, shared our discoveries in the game, in Starcraft 2 reached Diamond league, now I'm starting to play Hearthstone (that looks fenomenal by the way)... I remember my love for Blizzard started in the early nineties, when I started playing a Warcraft demo from a CD included with a Mac Magazine my father had bought. That demo consisted of only two levels, but I ended playing them over and over, in all the possible ways you can ever imagine.
J: To end this first part of the interview. As a gamer and a developer, what do you think about the evolution of game industry? Is there something that worries you at the moment?
P: Nowadays I have some friends who talk to me kind of worried about Free to Play games and how successful this model is becoming in contrast with the traditional one where you have a to pay only once for a game and then get the full experience. I don't see Freemium model as evil, it's simply other way to do things. Certainly is not the kind of model I want to work on as a developer at the moment though, but I respect as long as it is being well done and the player is respected (in addition, i play a lot of free to play games! Hearthstone being one of them). In the end, I feel it's good to have different models trying to make their way in the industry, gamers will have more choices and each will end up choosing the one that best fit to them.
J: I believe freemium games are, among other things, a response from the industry to avoid piracy and maximize revenues. Even with some of them, such as Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga, we can see how many people really play games, usually much more than official sales figures say.
P: Well, you cannot pirate them in the traditional way, but there are ways to "hack" them and artificially modify some accounts to have super-high stats (some of them thanks to items you normally have to pay for) or simply making fake inapp purchases, so in the end the game will be unfair to the ones who are playing in a correct way. But i also think that this "hacks" are going to slowly dissapear cause the experience for the ones who pay is not fair, and i can see companies investing in security to avoid this scenarios.
J: Yes, recently I read Rockstar punished this behaviour in GTA Online. There were even players who made real money out of their hacks.
P: I remember Kevin telling us a really bizarre situation: In GTA Online, a user bought game money with real money, and other user stole it from him in the middle of the game. As it was an assault, in the middle of the street. There was a big controversy surrounding this kind of situations.
Continues in Part II.
Other interviews:
Aniol Alcaraz (Producer and programmer)
You can get in touch with Pol on Twitter, he is @daiflys
Other interviews:
Aniol Alcaraz (Producer and programmer)
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The BeautiFun Team Stories - Aniol Alcaraz (Producer and programmer) - Part II / II
Link to Part I/II.
Jesús: How do you see the game industry at the moment in relation to the kind of games we are making at BeautiFun Games?
Aniol: About the videogame industry, I have to say at the beginning we were a bit skeptical about how successfully commercial an indie game could be. Everyone was talking about casual and social gaming for mobile and Facebook, but after our experience with Nihilumbra (that's making a game we would love to play as traditional videogame players), things changed very favorably! Now we trust that keeping our efforts and passion, we can make our own road as part of this vibrant indie scene.
J: Nowadays, BeautiFun Games has grown and added three members more, so it almost doubled its size since it was funded, back in early 2011. How those changes have affected your roles at the company and what are the biggest challenges you faced?
A: I started to work as a producer without noticing that "producer" was the name for that kind of task. Focused on coordinating everyone's work so we all can get all done with the least possible delay. I also make sure that the result has the level of quality needed. More than order "what" we have to do, my main task is about the "how" we have to do it and what to change in order to get it on time.
About challenges, as programmer, I think one of the most difficult situations we had to face happened while developing Nihilumbra. Firstly getting used to work with the tech capabilities of a cellphone, since we couldn't read the textures from scenarios pixel by pixel, we had to sort-of invent a method using tables in RAM memory. After this issue was solved, we had to program the game physics and also create a realistic "painting effect" when the player touched the screen. The painting effect was specially tricky, since we had to recur to use polygons to represent paint stains, also those polygons had to be small enough in a way when the user is painting close to any surface border, there won't be any stain "half floating" where that border ends. Something curious that not many people know is that we had to add a limit to the amount of painting you had in the game. The purpose of this feature was to avoid a potential performance slowdown if the player started painting -filling with polygons- on all the surface available.
A: Surely we could have chosen an easier path to go and try to avoid facing those challenges, but in the end we followed the hard path since we believed that those features were sort of unique and nobody had technically created such experience with a touching device until that moment. In addition, the gameplay demanded it and it made full sense to all of us. Finally, we got our effort rewarded with good sales, and it was not only because of the technical achievements in the game, I believe it was thanks to the combination of great art, level design and narrative.
J: Aniol explained me some concrete dares he and the other two programmers in the team (Pol and Suey) had to solve, but trying to go for a more general question regarding programming, I ask him what part he loves the most of this side of his work.
A: I specially enjoy the starting and closing of projects. To create a solid technical base, and then polishing the details during last weeks of the development.
J: Can you go a bit into detail about what it means to create a solid technical base?
A: A videogame project is subject to many changes, that means you may need to adapt the implementation of some parts of the game depending on the variable needs of an artist, the game designer or even the musician. So to try to diminish the negative impact those changes have, as a programmer you have to code in a very tricky and strategic way with the goal of making your code as reusable as possible. This hability is very important here at BeautiFun Games, because our projects main direction are driven by the artists and designers, more than the programmers.
J: About Nihilumbra, is there an impressive moment for you when you look back at the first months after launch?
A: We received messages from people telling it was the best iOS game they ever played, that was mind-blowing. Also we got great comments about the PC version, something amazing who nobody expected was a fanart by a Russian fan called "~Nemesis~fierce", it mixes both universes from Nihilumbra and Journey! It is been a true honor to be compared with ThatGameCompany's masterpiece.
We try to leave a mark in gamers, like those movies you remember for a long time, if we achieve that, that will be a success.
J: I would also like to know how did you (the four funding members) met each other?
A: About Pol, as I explained before, I met him before thanks to our shared fondness for poker, but it was a coincidence that he also entered the same Videogame Development Course as me. In that same course I met Lourdes and Kevin... for the final project Pol went to work with Kevin's group and Lourdes was in the same working group as me. So it was only a matter of time until the core team of BeautiFun Games was born.
J: Now you know the members of the team after a few years of hard work, I would like our fans to start knowing them too. So what is better than asking you about a good quality of each one?
A: Kevin always gets his way. That's not a bad thing, because I always put a lot of spokes on his wheels, and consequently we end up approving only the best of his ideas.
Pol is always making your day easier, he hasn't only good mood, he also knows when is the best time to use it.
Suey works hard as hell, always running the extra mile to make a project go forward.
Lourdes is kind of a mother for everybody. I know it may seem weird to you, but its somehow like that. Aside of working really hard, she also takes care of the whole team. Something that makes her unique is that she is very versatile, working with the same passion on scenarios or an options menu.
Jordi is the fastests hand in the painting western! In a very short time he can draw something amazing.
And lastly you, Jesús, I think one of your best qualities is to be insistent and always wanting to get to the heart of each matter. I think that is a very good, since your job is to be like an explorer, somebody who stays alert about what we can do to spread the word out about our games and the studio, and at the same time putting an eye on the community to get feedback about how the world feels about us.
J: And what about your good and bad qualities?
A: I would say I work too much and also some people from the team tell me I have the bad habit of being tedious because I always remind them what is left to do. But I need to be like that, to try to establish a discipline that can be valid for everybody and some common rules in the team. This is the only way that, in the end, the processes will be streamlined. So my bad quality can be also my best one, since the purpose of that insistence is always to facilitate the work to others.
J: Before ending this interview, I don't want to miss the chance of asking what can you tell about our next game, Megamagic?
A: I can say we are going to showcase a few things about the game this March. Megamagic is nothing like Nihilumbra, well, somehow yes, since magic powers will be key. Gameplay-wise, it is going to be a mixture of action-RPG Zelda-like games and strategy mechanics... and also tons of awesome Magic! Won't be as dark and depressing as Nihilumbra, but we can warantee that the same "spirit" will somehow remain there. As it happened with Nihilumbra, we want to make the game accesible to all kinds of audiences. From the beginning, we will consider the casual and the hardcore gamer experience. Sorry, I cannot say many more things at the moment.
J: How much involvement will have the community in Megamagic?
A: Nihilumbra was a closed title, and we don't discard a sequel at the moment. With Megamagic we are creating a world that we can expand in this and future games, so all the feedback we get along the development process will be used to try to improve the experience.
The BeautiFun Team Stories - Aniol Alcaraz (Producer and programmer) - Part I / II
Today we start a series of in-depth interviews called "The BeautiFun Team Stories" in which members of BeautiFun Games will be talking about their past, present and future from quite a personal perspective. Jesús Fabre, our community and PR guy, will be doing and publishing one of them per week. So lets start with Aniol Alcaraz, our producer and one of our programmers, talking about how BeautiFun Games started, back in 2011.
Aniol: At the beginning we were only four people, and our most important goal was developing Nihilumbra, so we put all our efforts in that task. We needed an extra artist so hired Freya Horn, and that new addition to the team changed a bit the rhythm of our daily work. Somedays she came to the office, where we commisioned her the tasks she had to do and the rest of the days she was drawing at her own art studio.
When Nihilumbra's development was in the final stages, we thought our workload was slowing down, but no! We needed to prepare all the marketing material, send out press releases, answer tons of emails, etc. It was a super busy time! Then we started to work on our new project, and in paralel we were porting Nihilumbra to other platforms. Now with the recent success on Steam Holiday Sales and having our next project Megamagic on track, we can say the studio is enjoying one of its best moments ever! We proved ourselves we can make a living out of our games, and that makes us really excited about what this 2014 holds for us!
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| Nihilumbra's BeautiFun Games team back in 2011 |
Jesús: To manage an indie studio is a very hard task, not only in financial terms, also when it comes about coordinating the work of several and very different people. All of this in the middle of an industry that's constantly changing. BeautiFun Games was funded in March 2011, but they didn't know if it could be profitable until now, almost three years later...
A: Nihilumbra was expected to be finished in four months, but we didn't fully closed the project until the fourteenth! That was because we were unexperienced, but also its a proof of our philosophy as studio and an important factor that has brought us to be still here today: try to polish things to the maximum until we are truly satisfied with the result.
J: But, how to team up such a group of dedicated, self-exigent and hardworking people? Aniol explains me that, after finishing his videogame development Masters, he was really interested in creating something of his own, and eventually living out of it. So he went around to every classmate looking for the ones who also wanted to develop their own titles. Somehow he "recruited" a group of around fifteen students who met up each week to try to shape a game.
A: After some weeks of meetings, most people started to leave for several reasons. Ones found a job, others started to lose interest, and finally we were four people left, but still had the big problem that is the lack time to develop any full game with no money. Then I suggested I could invest my own savings to kickstart the studio. That phrase was something nobody was expecting, but as they gladly accepted, I did what I promised and in a month BeautiFun Games was born. Only four people composed the team: Pol, Kevin, Lourdes and me. We were quite lucky since we started seriously as studio once we had covered almost every position we needed, and also we were filled with lots of passion and dedication!
J: Aniol is now 28 years old, and Nihilumbra is the first commercial game with his name on the credits. Before that came to be, he did a Computer Science Degree and a Videogame Masters Degree. Something not many people know is that, during his Masters, he developed a prototype called "Once Upon a Night" along with Lourdes Nicolich (our art director and one of the studio founders) and also three other people, it was their final project.
A: "Once Upon a Night" was an ambitious project, clearly remember it was a hell of a work when we tried to close it. We used Ogre Engine, coding was done in C++, we had AI, shaders, I think they were too many new things to deal with at the same time! The main hurdle we faced during that project was the lack of coordination and timing. In addition, and as an advice to students that may be reading this, I would recommend everyone who is doing a game development course to always experiment with new ideas, and when it comes the time to create a full game, try to work on the features that can showcase your skills the better.
Also, one curious thing I discovered in that course was the role of the game designer and how important the design is as a discipline on its own. I clearly remember when Kevin (our writer and game designer) came up with a full design of a game he had been working at home, and that later became "The Creature".
While doing the MD course, one of the most important things I learned was how to technically polish a project and prepare it to reach the market. Also I enjoyed -aside of the game programming related subjects-, the 3D design and animation classes, in spite of not being my area. As programmer and producer it's always beneficial to know how this works in order to adapt yourself in the best possible way to the particular difficulties that can emerge.
J: As our conversation evolves, I keep discovering more interesting things about Aniol's past that help me understanding his present. Now I wonder about his hobbies and how they could have influenced other aspects of his life, like his professional career. So lets keep going back in time and learn something about ... card games!
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| Source: Tiendaitaca.com |
A: Since I was a very young kid I loved to play card games and board games. Was pretty good at one in particular called Magic, so started to participate in several qualifier tournaments for the World Cup. If you were good enough and got in, they flew you to the States to play with the best players worldwide, that was really a great experience!
J: Researching on the web, I even found that Aniol was not only a card game player, he also contributed to create a board game along with other two friends (Joel Calafell and Omar Sagol) called "El Mundo de Águila Roja", that was inspired in a famous Spanish TV Series. After asking him, he explains me that, at the beginning, they were supposed only to playtest the game, but ended up making a new one instead. All thanks to their passion for Magic...
A: Then a few close friends noticed that some Magic players were jumping into Poker, and convinced me to try it along with them. The first thought that came to my mind was that negative and dark image we all have from movies of mafia guys smoky rooms. But I started reading some books and found out it could be done if I practiced a lot. So decided to try it seriously and after a few months our team was progressing quite well in the tournaments. Up to the point that we earned quite a good money and even found an sponsor that covered all the costs to be in the European Poker Series, live tournaments... so I kept playing until I started the videogame development Masters Degree.
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| Source: PKPQ.com |
I want to remark that Poker is hard, you need lots of practice, and also enjoy playing it is a must if you want to win. I kept studying my Computer Science degree and playing Poker, until I finished my degree, and a bit later I decided I didn't want to play Poker for all my life, as wasn't enjoying as much as when I started and also didn't win or lose anything that year. In Magic, every now and then you can see new cards being released, but in Poker, in spite of being a deep and complex game, there was a point where it was too repetitive for me. So I started losing the enthusiasm, and in consequence decided it was better to quit and take on new challenges.
A: Challenges like videogame development. That said, the investment BeautiFun Games received was thanks to Aniol's success in Poker. But he strongly discourages anyone from following his path to fund their games.
I know it is hard to find funding for your game. You need to find out how to convince your potential investors to believe in your project and that, if they put money, its gonna make them get enough profits in return. Easy to say but hard to do, but never impossible, Aniol admits.
J: Next thing Aniol tells me is that he is not very aware of the decisions he took along his life, he always kept doing what he loved, and tried to do its best with the tools he had.
I cannot find the concrete reason why I decided to start studying Computer Science... As I loved games, I always loved computers too. When I was 13 or 14 years old (that's around 1999), I remember having developed a website where I posted game reviews. Also, due to my passion for videogames, I started to learn programming since my dream was to create my own game. I developed my own version of Mastermind, the problem was that I didn't know function parameters existed and it was quite harder than it could have been! -Aniol laughs- the programmers reading this surely will know how needlessly hard that was.
J: He recognizes to me that sometimes he starts projects that are too ambitious, being unaware about if he is gonna be able to finish them. But, in spite sometimes he can regret it, he always tries his best to finish what he starts and have something that he is proud of as result. Now I'm curious to know more about Aniol's gaming history. So I start asking him about how it started...
A: Videogames entered my life thanks to a Game Boy with two cartridges: Tetris and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, both of them really good! I also had a Nintendo 64. I remember Super Mario 64 was one of the games I was more impressed with. I loved those 3D graphics and how fluid everything was handled on screen, even today the game keeps its charm unbelievably well. But if there is a game from my youth that left me the most memorable times, it undoubtedly is Super Smash Bros and its multiplayer mode. You can imagine how exciting and disputed every match was when I played with my friends, whom I also played Magic and Poker with. That was real rivalry!
Maybe, after the titles I said, you can think I was a big Nintendo fan, but not really! For example, I never had a Super Nintendo, since I was enjoying my Mega Drive. I remember playing Sonic games a lot, specially Sonic & Knuckles with Sonic 3 (by the way, at the office we still listen to Sonic music, Chemical Plant FTW!). Remember the originality and freshness of Dynamite Headdy or Streets of Rage with its amazing multiplayer. Also I had a PSX, where I played gems like Wipeout, with its amazing soundtrack that fits perfectly with the frantic gameplay and it's futuristic universe. More games I truly enjoyed are Final Fantasy VII, Tekken, I can tell you I like practically every game genre, as long as the game is well made!
J: How much influence those classics you played during childhood has on the games you are developing now?
A: My background as a gamer helps me a lot, makes it easier to visualize if something I program will work once added to the game. Also, like everyone, I have game ideas. Here at BeautiFun we listen to Kevin's (sometimes crazy) game ideas and then everyone of us adds his personal touch to the main purposal.
J: Curiously, Aniol is not the only Magic and Poker player in our team...
J: Curiously, Aniol is not the only Magic and Poker player in our team...
A: The first BeautiFun team member I met was Pol Urós, back at the university. We knew each other from Magic and Poker circles, since he was an amateur player. He recognized me from a Magic website (recently Aniol had won the Spanish Magic championships) and one day he approached while I was at the faculty snack bar and we have a good friendship since then.
J: Is it something usual to do this transition from Magic to Poker?
Well, it is really not so usual. There are many other players who come from other games, like Chess, Backgammon, and for example, I remember that one of the best players back in the days was ElkY, who was really good at Starcraft. He liked Poker and started playing professionally, back then Poker was more profitable than games at the time, and also the skills were similar (high degrees of willpower and discipline). Now the egaming scene is much more important than it was 3 years ago and there are pro-gamers that can make a living out of it since the awards are much bigger. Playing Poker is not much different than playing a videogame professionally, you have to be very analytical and adapt to the other opponents, so it was attractive to professionals from other areas of gaming.
You can get in touch with Aniol on Twitter, he is @AniolAlcaraz
[The rest of this interview is available in Part II, where Aniol talks about the hardest technical challenges at Nihilumbra, and also will give us his feedback about the rest of the team and our future project, Megamagic.]
Tag :
alcaraz,
aniol,
beautifun,
cerdà,
computer science,
elky,
game boy,
game design,
games,
kevin,
lourdes,
magic,
megadrive,
memories,
nicolich,
nintendo 64,
poker,
pol,
the creature,
urós,
