The Voxel Agents are an independent development team, consisting of five core developers and four part-time staff. Originally began in 2009, The Voxel Agents’ Simon Joslin, Tom Killen, and Mathew Clarke won the ‘48 Hour Game Making Challenge’ two years in a row. The team recently welcomed Henrik Pettersson and Yangtian Li into the fold. The Voxel Agents’ Train Conductor games, available on iOS for iPhone and iPad, and coming soon to Android, has been downloaded more than 3 million times and won a slew of awards around the globe.
PALGN recently sat down for a chat with The Voxel Agents’ Simon Joslin.
PALGN: How did you form the Voxel Agents, and what experience did the team bring from previous work in the industry?
Simon Joslin: It started with Matt, Tom and I chatting at university about how cool it would be to work together on games we love. That was back in the heady uni days when anything seemed possible, even multi-platform MMO games with a team of 3! We all agreed it was best to get industry experience first and learn the ropes. We did that, then won the 48 Hour Game Making Challenge two years running in Brisbane, and everyone kept encouraging us to start something. I’d just left Halfbrick and moved to Melbourne, and so I managed to convince Matt and Tom to move down and kick it off with me.
Since then it’s been a blast, and just recently we’ve had two new people join the team! Henrik Pettersson, an award winning game designer from Sweden and Yangtian Li, who paints the most gorgeous characters and scenes, who was originally from China. They’ve already brought such amazing inspiration to the studio and it’s been great fun working on new game ideas with them. We can’t wait to show the world what we’re working on!
The Voxel Agents: Yangtian Li, Henrik Pettersson, Matt Clark, Tom Killen and Simon Joslin.
PALGN: What was inspiration for Train Conductor?
SJ: We spent two relaxed days sitting on the banks of the Yarra River coaxing creative gems out of our minds. Our favourite method is to place restrictions on the brainstorming sessions; sometimes we have to dream up a game based on three random words, other times we limit it to a particular game genre, and sometimes we’re only allowed one input style (like flicking with the finger). All ideas are good ideas at that point and we enjoy chasing different directions regardless of the restrictions, but the restrictions really encourage creative thinking.
At the end of that riverside session last year, we had more than 50 ideas! We culled the list to just six, and then spent two weeks making each into a very dirty prototype. The murky Train Conductor concept shone very brightly and it was a group favourite to play. Once we knew it was the one, we explored the core “train connecting” gameplay further for another two weeks before we started from scratch to make it for real. We produced Train Conductor (Australia) between July and December 2009. We enjoyed working on it so much that HAD to make a sequel. (You can check out sketches from the early days of Train Conductor in the media panel below.)
PALGN: How did you get into gaming and what are you playing at the moment?
SJ:I was a late comer because I had to combat parental supervision. I convinced my parents to buy a PC on the premise of “education”, and then softened them up with games like SimCity. It wasn’t long before we were playing Doom on the LAN.
I’m currently playing scores of iOS titles, and I’m about to dig into Frozen Synapse.
PALGN: Is Melbourne a good location for making video games?
SJ: It’s the best! I am certain we have the most socially active community of developers in Australia, thanks to the fantastic IGDA, as well as the best government support of any state. Plus, is there a better Australian city?
PALGN: Do you ever see people playing your games in public?
SJ: One time I was lucky enough to spot someone on the tram playing Train Conductor and I couldn’t stop watching them play. They probably felt a bit strange from a stranger watching them play, but it was really cool to see our game out there in the wild.
I’ve also receive excited phone calls from friends when they spot people playing Train Conductor, which is really cool. Seeing people enjoy playing our games is a very rewarding experience.
PALGN: Would you ever think about making a Train Conductor game based solely on Melbourne? If it did eventuate, do you think our government could learn a thing or two about maintaining a railway system?
SJ: It’s widely rumoured that the train tracks in Melbourne are actually made of chocolate because they seem to break frequently during summer. In our first few months in Melbourne the train system was completely unreliable, albeit the chaos was sometimes outside of their control. The culmination for us hit when the train tracks buckled on an incredibly hot 46.5 degree day! To capture the insanity, broken tracks appear in the Melbourne level of Train Conductor and you’ve got to route around them!
Trains do seem to crash fairly frequently in Train Conductor however so maybe it would be best if the Melbourne train drivers only played on their lunch breaks.
PALGN: How do you make a name for your game against the hundreds of other mobile games available?
SJ: We are a fresh young team with a very strong experimental background. Matt, Tom, Henrik and I all cut our teeth on the 48 Hour Competition, and between us we’ve won it 3 out of 4 years!
We rapidly develop lots of ideas, and pick the winners based on how they play. Long before we consider what it looks like or what the story is, we focus on what you do in the game (the gameplay mechanic), and how it will be an enticing and interesting challenge. This process has turned up something new and novel for us. Finally we spend an inordinate amount of time perfecting and polishing the game until it sparkles.
The players who appreciate what we do know that we pour our hearts and souls into each
game. They know we work on games we love and they feel it straight away. We believe truly inspired games are a labour of love.
PALGN: Do you think mobiles and tablets have finally become a legitimate platform for games development? At the same time, has mobile gaming made our cherished hobby a mainstream pastime?
SJ: You’re right on both fronts, and we fully embrace this development! It’s exciting that more people than ever are appreciating the joys of gaming. Our aim is to develop games everyone can enjoy. The more people that enjoy our medium, the more we can take it to new areas and explore the weird, fantastic and special. A larger player base means more avenues for developers to pursue and more gaming choices for players to experience.
PALGN: World of Warcraft is synonymous with gaming addiction. Have any cases arisen from Train Conductor?
SJ: Funny you mention that! Just recently we went through some statistics that the game records, and we found that there is a player out there who has played the New York level for more than 200 hours! That’s like playing for more than eight days straight without rest! This person deserves a Train Conductor medal of honour! Unfortunately, since the statistics are anonymous we can’t actually contact them, but we raise our Secret Agent Fedoras to them!
PALGN: Is it fair to say that with the advent of the tablet device, Apple and other companies have given a means to hundreds of game developers?
SJ: Absolutely! The new platforms have levelled the playfield and removed many of the barriers to entry. It’s even better for independent developers than the advent of the internet because players in 2011 are accustomed to paying for content and aren’t afraid of digital distribution, so their embracing it and giving us a channel to release. The iOS App Store is a really well designed system that works equally well for both developers and players alike. There are more indies now than ever before, and these new platforms have played a massive part of that upswing.
PALGN: What benefits come with being a smaller studio and developing mobile games?
SJ: There are many benefits and we liberally enjoy them all Our favourite part is that we have complete control over what we do and we have the freedom to explore the ideas we get excited by. Right now we’re having fun returning to the brainstorming sessions and prototyping scores of ideas. Henrik and Yangtian have added so much to the team and we’re exploring ideas we never would have before!
Another distinct benefit is that we share roles and collaborate extensively. The shared model produces more refined solutions, and it means that no two days are the same for any of us. We’re really enjoying the small studio life and we’re really happy to stay this way.
PALGN: What challenges have you encountered developing games for tablets and phones?
SJ: We got caught out by the resolution difference between iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4/iPad. Because we’d built Train Conductor 2 before the iPhone 4 / iPad announcement we weren’t prepared, and then it arrived just shortly before we launched. Fortunately sales of the game were fantastic and we were able to continue working on the game and updating it for the high resolution screen, and we’ve still got more updates coming.
PALGN: Once a game is finished, how do you go about listing on an application store?
SJ: The submission process for the App Store (iOS) and Google Marketplace (Android) is really quite straight forward. You type in your details, upload a finalised build of the game and upload some screenshots. The difference between Android and iOS is simply that Apple check over your game to ensure it suits their standards, where as Google is a lot more relaxed. Both have their pros and cons so I won’t get into that argument - we do enough of that in the office.
PALGN: Do you think the future of video games development in Australia could rest solely with mobile games?
SJ: Good question. Yes... it could, but that future would be bleak, and reduce Australia to such a niche of development. Furthermore it would be a waste of talent as people with console and large-scale experience would be forced to move elsewhere. We need a rich ecosystem that contains both the massive productions and the small mobile productions. They equally contribute to a healthy ecosystem of developers and I wouldn’t want either to disappear.
PALGN: What can we look forward to seeing from you in the future?
SJ: Some very exciting games!! With all this fresh inspiration happening and rampant collaboration I think we’re going to have a killer year!
You can read more about the Voxel Agents at http://www.thevoxelagents.com.
Thanks to Simon Joslin, the Voxel Agents and Bev Chen for making the interview possible.
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