SAE Magazine 12-2

C uauhtémoc Sentíes, coordinator of the Animation & Videogames Department at SAE Institute Mexico, interviewed Brian Provinciano and Leonard J. Paul during a series of conferences given in Mexico City as part of “Devhour”, an event created by The Mexican Forum of Videogame Developers. Brian Provinciano has been developing games for about 15 years, he began as a hobby at home and then he started working in the industry. He has worked on every platform, with every console, from PlayStation, Xbox, Game Boy to the Wii, but two years ago he went independent. This summer, his long awaited “Retro City Rampage” will be out with the help of Leonard J. Paul with the audio design. Brian, tell us a little bit about “Retro City Rampage”? Retro City Rampage is kind of like Grand Theft Auto meets Super Mario, meets Metal Gear, meets everything in a big comedy mash up and it’s multi award winning. There’s been worldwide recogni- tion and it will be coming on Xbox live arcade, WiiWare and on a few unannounced platforms later. It will appeal to everyone who’s a fan of Grand Theft Auto, a fan of classic games and a fan of comedies and it’s a nostalgic stand up, a parody of the whole culture of the videogame era from the 80’s and 90’s and you can think of it like, if you were going back in time and you were play- ing those old games but you have the freedom this time to go back to the Mario Bros universe and steal cars and use shotguns and things like that, that’s what happens in the game so it’s really funny. People will be able to download it and it’s going to be available worldwide in all languages so eve- ryone can play it. It’s been a huge labour of love, I’ve developed almost the entire game myself with the exception of some additional help with the art, “You can develop an entire videogame by yourself” although I did a lot of the art myself as well and an additional help with the audio. So it’s been a long process and it’s possible to create your own game by yourself but I definitely recommend people to work in a team and my future games will be in bigger teams as well. What about your work experience on the leading platforms in the market? I’veworkedonallsortsofgames,fromsmallgames to medium sized and triple A games. The triple A games have a 30 million dollar budget and the ex- perience is very different, depending on what your passion is you may be driven to one or the other, I personally prefer working on smaller games which is very good today because the market for smaller games is bigger and bigger and bigger. With triple A games the difference is that you are working on a smaller part of the game, so if you are a programmer you might just be working on the artificial intelligence. If you’re working on a smaller game you could do the whole game, you could potentially programme and design, maybe do a little bit of the art and all of that. To me that’s a lot more fun. Advantages and disadvantages of working on your own projects. Going indie is definitely a risk thing and it is a lot of work. As an indie developer you will be work- ing far more hours than you would if you were working for another company. ➤ 66 People & Business // Videogame Creators Index

SAE Magazine 12-2

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