Sometimes, massive corporations and indie talent get along just fine.
Brad Borne credits Electronic Arts with helping turn his Flash game Fancy Pants Adventures into a full-fledged downloadable console game, which EA will release on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this spring.
"It's a convergence of two philosophies," Borne told Wired.com in a phone interview. "I'm trying to make better games and EA is trying to make more accessible games."
Fancy Pants Adventures, which Borne first started designing during college, is a simple, charming platformer with a distinctive art style that Borne says "resonates with people really well." The game has garnered over 100 million plays on various Flash sites and spawned several sequels. The console version will be based on the upcoming third iteration of the game.
Ironically, EA's take on the Flash game came about because of a big-budget blockbuster.
"EA contacted me and said they were big fans of Fancy Pants Adventures," Borne said. "They said they were doing Mirror's Edge and wanted a [Flash] game to go with it."
A few e-mails later, Borne was working on Mirror's Edge 2D, which he designed on the Fancy Pants engine. When he finished the game, Borne kept in touch with EA executives, updating them with what he was designing next. Eventually, they decided to collaborate.
Borne developed prototypes and sent them to Brazil-based game development studio Over the Top, where a team built the console version of Fancy Pants from the ground up.
"I did have a ton of control," Borne said of the collaboration process. "At the end of the day, EA let us make the game we wanted to make."
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