IG: How are you looking to evolve the Vicious Engine?
EP: Right now, it's a secondary part of our business. We primarily make games and make an engine on the side, unlike a company like Epic. We're sharing our technology like other companies, but with us, you don't have to buy any other middleware. You also don't need a huge amount of programmers to get it to work, so the DL titles are easy to do with our tech and they can create a title across all their platforms but the DS. We've had over fifty titles done under our tech and that's pretty good for a secondary effort; we've started moving in Japan, and we've made deals with Sony for India and South America and we've gotten our tools into Europe and it's been used for games with 'edutainment' titles and serious games.
Eric Peterson
WH: Many of these games have been developed right out of the box, which is how many indie developers have to do things.
EP: And the reason they can do that is that we've made the engine versatile; we've done a puzzle game, a Marvel card game, or a third-person action title like Robotech, licensed kid titles that get done in under 10 months and even a FPS, which lets people say, 'I want options for engine and this tech works well.' We originally geared it towards third person action, which is a majority of the market. The fact that they can use our engine across all platforms is pretty big. You only have to concentrate on making a game, rather than the programming, and be creative.
IG: As I'm sure you're aware, a Robotech sequel, Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, released a couple years ago. Would you ever want to do another game in the Robotech franchise?
EP: I would love to do it tomorrow! It wasn't like my childhood series to watch, but I understand the anime fans and they're hungry for product. [Robotech] hasn't made it to current gen systems; there hasn't been an entry on PS3, Wii or Xbox 360. They're going to want to have it because they're hardcore fans, and we'd love to give it to them. It's an opportunity that could sell and the first game was a wonderful experience for us.
WH: Were we 20 people when we did that?
EP: Not even – we were 16 and later grew. There was a lot of passion for the company and we had a lot of Robotech fanboys, which helped! We had a collector's edition and it was a lot of fun making it. We had some great marketing for it and some positive reviews and eventually sold a half million copies.
IG: What about the sequel you made, Robotech: Invasion?
EP: We were told for Invasion to make a Halo clone. We wanted to make it a Battlecry sequel because we knew the fans wanted lots of missiles, Veritech fighters and cel shading. You take that out, you ruin the license.
IG: Yeah, to a lot of fans, the Macross saga is Robotech; far fewer have watched the third series with the transforming motorcycles based around Genesis Climber Mospeada.
EP: We probably sold the expected amount of copies to those fans, but there are more Veritech fans out there and they buy into the Robotech legacy, but many of them don't remember the second series based on Southern Cross and probably even fewer remember Genesis Climber Mospeada.
IG: What are you looking to do in the future with Vicious Cycle?
EP: We're going to do what we've been doing. We have our formula, we know the kind of product that we make and we're happy with it. We enjoy getting to dabble; it's not for everyone and some people like to do AAA titles, but we like diversity and we enjoy working with the licensed titles, whether it's Dreamworks or Universal - anything that sounds fun, really. I mean we've done Dead Head Fred, which was given Writers Guild of America's first award for video game writing. It's been fun to explore those things.
IG: It seems like there's a chance for Vicious to take a unique place within Namco Bandai.
EP: I think there's a really a good opportunity, between what D3 has done bringing over OneChanbara and EDF along with Vicious efforts like Dead Head Fred and Matt Hazard, to establish itself as an indie brand within Namco Bandai.
WH: Yeah, I mean, there's still a lot more of those titles by D3 published over in Japan, so there's plenty of opportunities to bring them here.
IG: Thanks guys.
4 Comments
June 12, 2010
Interviewing the President of a Company that has stood in good stead for the past 10 years (and still going strong!!) in spite of the hard times in the industry as a whole, Vicious Cycle's Eric Peterson must be one happy person! It is very enlightening to speak to such people and learn from them the strategies they had to take and work on, to keep the boat afloat! Their Matt Hazard sequel is something to really look forward to!! four locos
June 18, 2010
"Here, we thought that PSP was going to be this kind of an older audience handheld; something that was a little bit more savvy and slick and sexy, definitely geared towards the mature audience, and that's why we made Fred more of a mature game."
This seems like they might not have been paying attention. I'm also willing to say it was partly/mostly Sony's fault for how they have handled the PSP as a platform. Regardless, Sony made it clear to me, at least, that they were targeting a younger audience -- and I'm just an observer.
There was the ill-fated "All I want for Christmas is a PSP" campaign in late 2006. Then they specifically announced they were trying for younger gamers in Spring 2007.
Dead Head Fred came out in August 2007. Granted, they would have begun work on it much, much earlier -- but the writing was on the wall at least 8 months prior to release.
I don't mean to be down on the Vicious guys, really, but the quote I cited above, in particular, seems oblivious to the events of that period.
July 4, 2010
but still the ps3 has more games with higher metascores when compared to the x360's high games with high metascores
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July 19, 2010
This article helps a lot. Thank you..
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edhardy