An interview with SuperMassiveGames

GamingBolt recently had an oppurtunity to sit down with Geraint Orchard-Bungay, online publishing director at SuperMassiveGames to find out more about their upcoming projects.

Hi there Geraint, we have a few questions for you regarding SuperMassiveGames.

1.    Firstly, you recently announced Big Match Striker is one of your first tailor-made PC games. How did you go   about developing a game for a platform that you weren’t used to?

Well so far, we have been developing games exclusivley for Sony, and Big Match Striker is going to be our first ever self-published game. The inspiration really came from CEO Pete Samuels who’s a huge football fan, and wanted to create a game that reflected that. We actually had to get permission from Sony in order to publish the game ourselves, and that was back in 2008, so the game has been under development for some time now.

2.    What made you turn your attention away from PS3 indie games and into PC football manager-style games?

We aren’t exactly turning our attention away from Sony-published games. We currently have several Playstation Move projects running, such as our upcoming Move Party. Big Match Striker is another separate outlet for the team. We decided that this kind of football-manager-esque game would work best on the PC, but we aren’t directly vying for competition with other big names firmly established in the same genre.

3.    What kind of (community) features do you have planned for the game?

We understand that the community features are very important, and it has been one of our key focuses in the development process. The game really comes in two parts; the game itself, which will be downloaded, and the website dedicated to the game itself, which should be going up in mid-July.

There’s going to be a ton of community features on the website itself; a weekly podcast, opinion pieces, football news, and each user will have their own profile where they can write their own pieces and blogs. This will be moderated, but as long as it’s mildly football related, there shouldn’t be any strict editing. Profiles will also be able to be linked to users’ Facebook and MySpace profiles.

4.    Move Party is another one of your ongoing projects that was demonstrated at GDC. It makes great use of the PS Wand for bug swatting, balloon popping and more. Would you mind giving us the inside scoop on any other minigames you have planned?

Unfortunately, this is all being kept closely under wraps by Sony, but keep an eye on E3 next week.

5.    Do you have plans to utilize 3D for Move Party?

[Laughs] Again, we can’t disclose anything here, but you should definitely keep an eye on the Move Party! stalls at E3.

6.     How has the experience been, developing a game specifically with the Wand?

There aren’t very many studios with our kind of expertise and experience on developing with the Playstation Move, or Wand, and we have been working with the technology for some time now.

7.    It recently slipped out that SuperMassive may be working on development for Killzone 3, can this be confirmed?

This is completely unkown to me, no one I know has had anything to do with that. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just another internet rumour.

Thanks very much for your time!