Interview with Nick Waanders of Slick Entertainment

About a year ago, a short time before formally becoming one with the essence of 4Player Podcast,  I previewed Slick Entertainment's XBLA game Scrap Metal after demoing it at PAX 2009.  Its been a little while since the game was released and I thought it was a good time to catch up with the guys at Slick Entertainment to see how things were progressing.  Developer Nick Waanders was more than happy to open his bosom of knowledge to my quivering lips of questioning.

(Waanders) We've been playing games for a long time, so I think it's inevitable that some of the retro gaming experiences surface in our games. A trend of the last few years is to add more and more features to a game, and therefore requiring more and more buttons. I can't stand a game where all the buttons on the controller are mapped to a function, and some of them even have two functions when you hold the button down. It can be a great game, but while playing I keep pressing the wrong buttons simply because I can't remember all of the functions (maybe I'm just getting old ;) ) The retro experience seems so much simpler to get into, a few buttons to learn and off you go! We try to keep the number of buttons you have remember to play the game to an absolute minimum, so the game is easy to get into, yet hard to master.

(4PP) Player created levels became a big part of N+, do you see this type of level editing possible in Scrap Metal and can we expect to see any of that in any future DLC?

(Waanders) The Scrap Metal levels are all custom built in 3D Studio MAX because of their complexity. We decided not to build a level editor for Scrap Metal, mostly because we are only two guys making the game, and it didn't fit in our schedule. We have had requests for a level editor though, so we may do so in future versions of the game.

(Waanders) Scrap Metal is a top down, vehicle combat racing game so it is definitely a niche game. There are only so many race game fans on xbla and only so many who like vehicle combat games on top of that. With that in mind we are optimistic about the reception so far. Scrap Metal was a labour of love for both of us and our minimal goal was to be able to fund another game after Scrap Metal and it looks like we will be able to do that.

(4PP) Vehicular combat games once held a very lofty place in gaming with titles such as Twisted Metal and Vigilante 8. Only now are we starting to see this come back as a genera which is getting some development time.  After Scrap Metal we are now seeing games like Split Second and Blur which employ vehicular combat as part of their racing scenarios.   Is this a genera that Slick Entertainment will be revisiting in the future due to new found market demand?

(Waanders) One of the reasons we started our own company was so we could develop the games we like and to continue to challenge ourselves in different areas/genres. If we would do another combat racing game in the future it would be because we came up with a concept we really love and not so much because there is market demand. Market demand is really hard to determine and we think it is much more important to be truly excited about the game you are working on instead of trying to go where the sales might be. We are not good enough businessmen to be able to predict sales anyway :)

(4PP) Whats next on the plate for Slick Entertainment, is there anything planned for E3 2010?

(Waanders) We're working on our next game right now, but we haven't got anything to show or tell yet. All I can say is that it's going to be awesome. :)

Scrap Metal is available on Xbox Live Arcade

-Joseph-