We've heard about the history of
Beat Me Up and its impending sequel. For this week's interview I thought I'd ask Will about his own programming past; school, work, and going solo. I've also pulled a little more art from my sketch book to point at and laugh.
AA: Tell us a bit about your own game making history: When did you first learn to program and how long have you been doing this?
WP: I remember being a kid and playing a lot of video games mostly on the NES. At the time, my mother had a top of the line 286 computer at home for her work. I was obsessed with the Mega Man series and also had a 5 1/4in disk of Mega Man for the PC (that was incredibly hard I might add). I remember my mom telling me that there was a way to make your own games on the computer and she bought me this book on BASIC programming. I took it up and began writing my own games aspiring to make the next Mega Man game. This was 1993, so that's about 15 years ago now.
At the time I was living in the back country of North Carolina and since I was twelve I couldn't go anywhere without asking my mom for a ride but she was always at work. Thus there really wasn't much to do aside from play in the woods, play video games and my new hobby of making games. Over time I just kept doing it and got better at it and taught myself new languages. I remember being eighteen and getting totally stuck though on how to make 3d games. That was my main motivation for going to DigiPen. DP taught me everything I ever wanted to know about it and then some, heh.
AA: Any shocks when you started at DigiPen? The programming course is legendary for culling the herd.
WP: My college friends still all talk about orientation; Claude Comair (the founder) sat us all down in the main auditorium and said "Look to your left; Look to your right. When you are done, they will not be here." Sadly it was very true... only about a quarter of us graduated. I also remember on the first day having my programming ego totally shattered by Claude from him asking a bunch of ridiculously hard questions about C programming. I really did love the courses though; there weren't any general ed classes to get in the way of what I wanted to do. Every class had something that I really enjoyed.
AA: So, you survived DigiPen and hit the real world. Was it difficult to find a programming job?
WP: No. The game industry pretty widely recognizes DigiPen and if you're interviewing at a game company that hasn't heard of them then you need to seriously question whether to accept an offer there.
AA: What sort of work did you do before you struck out on your own?
WP: A friend of mine somehow convinced me to make cell phone games. The pay was good for the game industry ... but making games on cell phones is frustrating and hard for stupid reasons. I decided to take my knowledge I gained about cell phone programming and bring it to a startup named Loopt after that but I inevitably ended up missing making games. But at the point where I wanted to go back to making games I had come to the realization that I didn't want to make other people's games; I wanted to make my own so I saved some living money up and decided to take the rather tall dive into starting my own game company.
AA: Before going Indie yourself, had you done much in the Independent Development community before?
WP: As far as small groups are concerned, we had to make at least 1 game every year at DigiPen in a team. One of the games I worked on, Scrapped, won the IGF student showcase. Aside from that I've always made games on my own.
AA: Onward to the future. Andrograde is the name of your own start up. Where do you hope to see the company in the next few years? Aside from still existing of course.
WP: I want to keep the company small; I don't like the idea of managing large numbers of people. I just want to make enough money with the company to pursue my passion of making quality games and pay the people that work with me well. I don't want to get in the 'theres not enough money so we have to pump out a half baked game every x months' mentality.
AA: That certainly sounds sensible. It's all an exciting prospect and based on the latest build your first Andrograde game, Beat Me Up Too, is looking pretty good. Before we wrap things up for this week, do you have any advice for budding game programmers out there?
WP: Don't lose touch with your vision; it's way too easy to get caught up in the details of making a game and forget the big picture. I find that taking occasional breaks from development for maybe a few days to take a breather really helps bring in new perspectives when you come back to it.
AA: Thanks again Will.
I also promised some more art this week so I've peeled a couple more pieces straight from my sketch book:
Let me first introduce you to Andrograde. Yes, we even beat up the company mascot.
And to celebrate Independence Day and the up coming election. I present to you Politician Guy.
Finally here's a mock screen shot staring Alien Guy. Time for some revenge!
Developer Journal part 1
Developer Journal part 2
Developer Journal part 3