What was your experience with video games in your younger years?
"I had all the bigger Nintendo 64 games made by Rare. Probably my favorite one during that period was Banjo-Kazooie. I went to my cousin’s house a lot, and since he had a Super Nintendo, I got to play games like Ninja Turtles and Super Punch-Out. My younger years had a lot of games. It was much later in my life when I got into design and programming." Do you have any long term goals in the industry? "I want to make experiences that make people smile. I’m more about the ‘toy-approach’ like Nintendo is. You can create a game with a big story, a whole bunch of different types of interactions, a meta, and all those types of things, but I’m more interested in does each moment of gameplay provide enjoyment? Is it intrinsically fun to just move your character, or to interact with the UI? I think every step of the way should be like a toy, and that brings me back to my main goal, which is to make toys that make people smile in digital spaces." |
Can you talk about projects you have completed?
"Stompster the Monster was subtitled ‘The Apologetic Monster’. Its target was creating a fast-paced, humorous action game all about this monster. The only difference is he’s intending to save everyone, but in trying to save everyone from an alien invasion, he inherently destroys more than the aliens ever could. In that humor was the target of giving the players fun. It’s just a giant sandbox of trouncing innocent victims, but your monster doesn’t want to actually do it, so it’s a fight between agency of the player and agency of the monster, because he cries and loses control the more you kill. "Another project I worked on was my thesis project, Avian, or Bird Game, as people call it. It’s a photography game similar to Pokémon Snap, except it's a sandbox-type game so you can walk around and jump and whatnot. It was an experiment to look at the differences between goal-oriented players and exploring players, so what a player does in-game that indicates they’re interested in achieving goals, VS understanding the systems of the world and how they interact. There is, of course, Raising a Rukus which is a VR adventure film with branching paths, in which you follow the twins Amy and Jonas through a magical adventure of dinosaurs and fun times with their dog Rukus." |
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