Four indie game developers have launched a Kickstarter campaign to help take four cult prototype multiplayer games to PlayStation 3, in what they are calling the indie answer to Wii Sports.
[partner id="wireduk"]If all goes well, Douglas Wilson, Ramiro Corbetta, Bennett Foddy and Noah Sasso plan to launch their respective games – Johann Sebastian Joust, Hokra, Super Pole Riders and BaraBariBall – digitally via the PlayStation Network by autumn 2013. They already have backing from Sony, which is set to provide support for the marketing behind the eventual launch, but the four developers want to ensure they have enough cash to develop the simple multiplayer games aesthetically (except in the case of Joust, which has no graphics and involves an epic battle to jostle a player's controller out of their hands) and plan to hire coders to make the transfer to PS3, and, eventually, to Mac, PC and Linux.
Grouped together, these four games are Sportsfriends, a "quadrathlon-tastic package" that celebrates gaming at its best and most engaging: a competitive and performative spectacle. It is the coming together of a vision Foddy has for getting more real sporting passion into gaming. Speaking to Wired.co.uk in September at the annual Hide&Seek conference, Foddy presented the Olympics as the emotional ideal of gaming, saying: "Nobody cries after losing a video game... it's what we struggle with, making the outcome matter."
And this is what he's hoping to achieve with the games launched via Kickstarter. By using crowdfunding to raise the money, the quartet hopes to prove to investors, other developers, games giants and the gaming public that there is a real desire for the re-emergence of these kinds of passion-fueled tactical games that put the real-life players in focus as much as their digital counterparts.
"By self-publishing this compendium, we want to show that the gaming public does indeed care about local multiplayer; that the future of this medium concerns more than just fancy graphics, but also innovative design and replayability; that sometimes, the best games of them all are the simplest," the Kickstarter campaign statement reads.
"We want to draw attention to what's happening in front of the screen, between the human beings playing and watching. Unlike your typical 'bundle' of games, we want to release something more tight-knit – one package of multiplayer games that all embrace a similar design philosophy. The four of us made our games around the same time, and we've all influenced each other. By collaborating on one project, we hope to make something that transcends any of the individual games."
The idea is that by tweaking the graphics and design, as well as the overall gameplay, they will create a series with cohesive similarities running through that could make Sportsfriends something of an indie brand, ready to challenge traditional sports gaming giants like EA.
All the games will be transformed into more detailed, complex and heart-thumpingly tense versions of the original prototypes, all of which have had great success at events and exhibits across the globe. Foddy's Pole Riders, for instance, will become Super Pole Riders. It brings the "awkward physics-based controls of the single player game QWOP to a local multiplayer battle," explains Foddy, who promises to top his Olympic and unicorn-based keyboard games by introducing a satisfying new finale in Super Pole Riders: "you'll be able to impale your opponent on your pole, and wave his lifeless body around as a kind of club".
Excellent, and a small glimpse of the Foddy sadism we saw on stage at Hide&Seek, when he played a series of epic Olympic fails, while smiling, and asserting: "I'm not just taking pleasure in people suffering – though that's a major component; the Olympics breeds this kind of drama and human suffering on an epic scale and that's what's inspiring about this to me."
Indie gaming fans will likely contribute if only for the impressive perks on offer. Depending on how much an individual donates, they could receive the alpha version of each game shortly after funding ceases (around December or January), their names in the game credits or everything they need to play Mega-Grip (a Bennett-Wilson collaboration which has seen players jumping around on modified dance pads at art galleries across the globe).
Ahead of the launch, Wired.co.uk caught up with Foddy to find out how the group hopes to change social gaming, why the 80's was the multiplayer heyday and what the best bit of an indie multiplayer revolution would be (people losing money to their grandmothers in Hokra grudges).
Wired.co.uk: Is this the culmination of what we were talking about the other month – getting Olympic-style emotion into play?
Bennett Foddy: Exactly. All four of these games can be played by four (or more) people at the same time, in the same room. Not everyone can run a game in a public space with an actual crowd of spectators, but once you get four players on the same couch, it immediately starts to feel like a real sport. You're cheering each other on, trash talking, throwing your controllers around. When you play a game with three friends, face to face, the outcome of the game matters so much more, and the excitement level is a million times higher.
Wired.co.uk: How do you plan to change the games for the new platforms?
Foddy: I'm building a new version of Pole Riders called Super Pole Riders, which is going to be a much more polished version of the original game. It'll have a four-player mode, multiple arenas, and I'm planning a 'sudden death' mode where the poles are replaced with spears, hammers and poleaxes. I'm super excited to be able to make a 'real' version of the game that isn't limited by the limitations of Flash and the computer keyboard.
Ramiro and Noah are planning to update Hokra and BaraBariBall with new graphics and gameplay modes. I know Ramiro has an eight-player mode of Hokra in the pipeline, and it's been pretty amazing in testing. For Joust, which doesn't have any graphics, we've got some plans to develop an amazing soundtrack. But the real challenge for Joust is to get it working on as many platforms as possible, with as many players as possible – one of the things that's been holding it up is that it's hard to get PS Move controllers working with Windows and Linux... We have to do a bit of work on them first to iron out the kinks and get the level of polish people expect.
Wired.co.uk: If it's a success, what's the next stage of your strategy to boost the local multiplayer game?
Foddy: We really want to develop the brand, if it turns out there's a lot of interest. We actually know a number of other indie developers with games of this kind in the pipeline, and we'd love to become the Epyx of indie local multiplayer games.
Wired.co.uk: Why did you choose Kickstarter and what are some of the campaign's best perks?
Foddy: Honestly, this is kind of an unprecedented product. The game designs are already proven, and we believe it makes business sense to package them and sell them together – but we could never prove beyond doubt to a bank or traditional investor that people will pay for these experiences. Kickstarter solves that problem.
We have some really nice perks for people who support us. $15 gets you the games and a copy of Jan Willem Nijman's amazing minimal tennis game, TENNNES. For twice that you also get access to the alpha versions of the PC/Mac/Linux builds before the release. And at higher tiers, we have some crazy things, like an all-in-one ultra-rare 18-player Joust kit, and also our ridiculous trampoline-based wrestling/innuendo game, Get On Top (you even get the trampolines!).
Wired.co.uk: What will the money be going towards specifically, if you've got the Sony backing for the PS3?
Foddy: We want to bring these games to computers as well, but obviously Sony's not going to help us to do that, so a bunch of the Kickstarter money is for getting the games into a releasable state on Windows, Mac and Linux. Each of these games is currently bound to a single platform – Flash for Pole Riders, OSX for Joust, and Windows for the other two. For a professional multiplatform release, we need to hire coders, since we're all designers. On top of that, it's for adding content, like a great soundtrack and new features to the games. We think this is an amazing project, and if enough people agree with that, it's going to become a reality.
Wired.co.uk: What do you hope to achieve in the long run for local multiplayer gaming?
Foddy: I've been obsessed with videogames since I was about two years old. And I can say without reservation that all of the best experiences I've had with games have been playing them against a friend or family member, sharing the same screen and the same space. A game has so much more meaning in the context of a real human relationship, and each individual match has more meaning when you can see and hear the reactions of your opponent and read their body language. You can laugh together, gloat over your victories, all that stuff that's impossible in an online multiplayer or singleplayer game.
When I see people playing our games at events like Wild Rumpus, Fantastic Arcade or Babycastles, it's clear to me that we have to bring back local multiplayer games to where they were in the 80s and early 90s, before the internet took over the multiplayer world.
Wired.co.uk: You refer to Sportsfriends as being the indie Wii Sports – what do you think you can achieve, that the Wii couldn't?
Foddy: Everyone remembers the ridiculous success that Wii Sports had when it came out. It had a really positive effect in terms of expanding the pool of people who are willing to play a local multiplayer game, putting it in the mainstream. And it's fun! But I always felt a bit uncomfortable playing those games with friends because, with the exception of the tennis game, they're not very deep. They're easy to pick up and play, but you can't reach any level of expertise. The outcome of a Wii Sports match is always too random, partly due to the limitations of the Wiimote and partly by design.
I think the real strength of the Sportsfriends games is that each of them can be picked up and played by a complete novice, but you can get to a very high level of skill. They're so much more accessible than tournament games like Starcraft or Street Fighter, but you can get that same do-or-die competitive spirit when you play them. While there are a lot of real-world games that have these characteristics, like pool or darts, there haven't been so many in the digital arena – games that you can play against your family, but that you can also get super competitive about it and treat them as actual sports. I want to hear about people losing money to their grandmothers in Hokra grudge matches!
