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Interview with American McGee Part 2

We continue the interview with American McGee…

T: Big Head Bash, Crazy Fairies and Akaneiro are all “Free to Play” titles. What draws you to this model? What opportunities do you see in it? and what’s your own definition of Free to Play? 

A: I like to think of it like a ‘pay what you want’ model. You can get into any of our games and access 100% of the content for free – though you have to exchange your time in order to do so. Or, if you don’t feel like waiting, you can pay for access to those things you don’t feel like earning. That means it’s up to the players whether or not – or how much – they pay. If they feel like the game is worthwhile or the content is interesting, they’ll pay for it. If not, they aren’t out of pocket. It also provides a wonderful way for us to maintain a connection with the audience and provide constant updates to the content and game play. Coming from the world of console games, this is probably one of my favorite aspects of the model (which is really more related to being an online game in general.) Continue reading “Interview with American McGee Part 2”

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Interview with American McGee Part 1

To celebrate the release of Toy Glider and to spice up the blog a bit I thought I start a series of interviews with other developers from the game dev community. Who’s better to start than somebody who has been making games for a long time without any signs of slowing down. Enter American McGee.

T: Beta testing Akaneiro, regularly adding content to Big Head Bash as well as Crazy Fairies and now  planning your Kickstarter Campaign. You’re keeping yourself busy. How do you manage all these projects at the same time?

A: Over the years the studio has developed an internal culture that expects and rewards multi-disciplined people who are comfortable wearing lots of hats and jumping between a variety of tasks and projects. At times it can feel a little disorienting to keep track of everything that’s going on – but no one has ever complained of boredom from repetition. For everyone in the studio the balancing act requires decent organizational and prioritization skills. We all try our best to maintain basic tracking sheets with an understanding of priority based on feedback from the studio at large. We hold a weekly meeting where we assign resources for the next week – and from that basic resource planning flows the detailed planning that makes each department hum along for another week.

T: Over the years, I’ve noticed that you have a very refined daily routine. Could you share a bit how you developed it and how has it evolved over the course of your career?

Continue reading “Interview with American McGee Part 1”