Developer Interview: Oliver Schulze (Magnetic Mind)
Yesterday I posted an article with the official trailer for Magnetic Mind. The article has now been posted all around the internet and has been viewed over 4000 times.
Magnetic Mind is a run and jump platformer which is inspired by Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet. There has been both positive and negative reactions to the trailer with some praising it’s great production values and interesting game mechanics and others feeling it is a little too similar to LittleBigPlanet.
Oliver Schulze is the project leader for the game and we have been fortunate enough to conduct this interview with him and find out more about the game, his thoughts on the reaction to the game and more.
(Note: English is not Oliver’s first language so a few lines were edited)
IndieGameBlog.net: Firstly could you give us some background information on you and the rest of the development team?
OS: The team consists of 3 people. My Brother Philip Schulze (age 19), who is responsible for the 3D-Models, Texturing and other graphical things. Daniel Steiner (age 18), who composed the music for Magnetic Mind with his keyboard.
The 'Garden' level.
And me, Oliver Schulze (age 30), who is responsible for the whole project, the game engine, some of the 3D Models and the programming. We all have different backgrounds:
Philip is a Product Designer and is working in his real job also with 3D models and makes product presentations for his customers.
Daniel is training to be a hospital nurse at the moment. He is composing music in his free time as a hobby.
I am the manager of the company Agorum Software GmbH, that develops and sells the open source document management system agorum core. There I am mainly responsible for the whole development department.
We three are all enthusiastic XBox-gamers and it was one of our dreams to make and publish a game that can be played by many others.
IndieGameBlog.net: Your first Xbox LIVE Indie Game is called Magnetic Mind, how would you describe it?
OS: It is not the first game we made for XBox. 2 years ago, we submitted “Crystal Glyder” to the Dream Build Play 2007 competition. But it was in an early development state and didn’t win anything. Here are some screens of it. http://crystalglyder.blogspot.com/2007/06/finished-yeah.html
We never finished it, because the game engine was very quick and dirty coded, maybe I’ll go over it, clean it a bit up and publish it on Indie Games…
In Magnetic Mind you play a little guy, who finds himself in a real world, where everything is huge. The guy (player) doesn´t know what happened because he lost his memory of the last few days. The player controls the guy through this world and has to find out what has happened to him.
It is a Jump and Run game, where we tried to make the graphics as polished as possible. Within the game there are many physics puzzles. Sometimes the player has to combine things to find a way through the levels.
IndieGameBlog.net:What was the inspiration for creating Magnetic Mind?
It had been always been a dream of mine to create a game that could be played by a wider range of people and that is what Microsoft offers us with the Indie Games Channel, a great thing I think!
A screenshot from the 'Kitchen' level.
One day (after our first game Crystal Glyder) my brother (Philip) came to me and told me that he wanted to make a new game with me. At first I didn’t want to, because of the great effort you have to put in when creating one. But after playing around (again) with XNA and some animation functions we brought the character to life. I felt a great urge to create a new game with it.
Half a year before beginning I thought about a game that behaves like a 2D Side-Scrolling Jump and Run but with the great visuals and possibilities of 3D graphics. So when my brother came to me, it was very clear, that we wanted to make such a Jump and Run Game.
IndieGameBlog.net:The game has recieved both acclaim and criticism for being similar in style to LittleBigPlanet, what do you think of the reaction?
Yes, it is true, LittleBigPlanet inspired us. We knew that we wanted to make a 3D Jump and Run that behaves like a 2D Sidescrolling Jump and Run. That was before we heard anything about LBP. Over time we tried several style things for the game, how should it look like, how should the control be, etc…
One day, I saw a video about LBP and I was fascinated by the great use of the Depth Of Field Effect. So I wanted that for our game. The bricks and the fence, you can see in the garden-level, got also a little bit inspired by it. But, no one of us has a Playstation and nobody played the game till now (I did a little bit, but only at a booth at a game exhibition)…
So, what do I think about the reactions? At first I couldn’t believe that someone seriously tried to compare our small indie game to something huge like LBP and it made me a little bit proud. Then I saw comments, that said, that our game is from Microsoft and should show, that LBP is possible on a XBox, and that they are a company that only copies things and so on…. That made me a little bit angry, because that people just added comments without reading the article. I don’t like such flaming, it is to undifferentiated. They criticise things they don’t know about. These comments are as good as no comment.
Another screenshot from the 'Kitchen' level.
Some also mentioned that the music was ripped from LBP, Daniel, who is responsible for the music, never saw LBP and I think the music is very different.
But on the other hand, I was happy to see so many other people in the comments, that have a clear mind and that used their brains before posting. They considered the whole thing from different sides and not only from one.
Again, to clarify this: we are not Microsoft, and we are not hired by Microsoft. We are just 3 “normal” guys, that had fun, making a funny game, because that is our hobby. Not more and not less! And of course, Magnetic Mind is not comparable to LBP and it is also not meant as a rip-off, it is just inspired by it!
IndieGameBlog.net: What makes Magnetic Mind unique?
Well, very difficult quesition. I think it is the combination of everything. Great visuals, combined with physics and some puzzles, where you need your brain to get further. We also tried to get a unique style, where we tried to model and render everything as realistic as possible, as you can see in the kitchen level. So we already tried to get a little bit away from a comic style and wanted to put our guy in a real large world. Then there is the key element of the game, the Magnetic Mind. With that the guy could transport things through the level and can build up ways to get further in the levels. This key element will be enhanced in later versions of the game. We plan some things for it: for example, that you need some kind of energy, that you have to collect, to carry larger things. And there are some other ideas we have for it to improve the gameplay and uniqueness.
The Trailer
IndieGameBlog.net: What do you think of your chances in this year’s Dream Build Play competition?
I do not think that we will win (sure it would be great). There are too many other really great games out there. My hope is, that we get into the top ten. As I said above, this is just a hobby and we make this for fun and we applied to the competition to see, where we stand compared to the others – really only for fun!
IndieGameBlog.net: Are there any upcoming Xbox LIVE Indie Games that stand out to you?
I have some favorites: Hollandia, Go Gimbal Go, Masters of Belial, Dust an Elysian Tail, RC Racing 360, Skiddy
IndieGameBlog.net: How do you find working with XNA and Xbox LIVE Indie Games?
Very good. Microsoft built up a very good framework, that makes it relatively easy to come to a first success. And it is very flexible, it is a great toolset to bring your ideas into a game. And the best thing is, you can develop on PC and nearly the same code runs on XBox. XNA is a dream for all Indie Game developers. With it you can develop great XBox Games with nearly no budget, you need no expensive development kits. A great invention I think.
IndieGameBlog.net:How long has Magnetic Mind been in development and when do expect it to be complete?
Pure development time is about 8 months from first 3D models and the first lines of code. But we collected many ideas with our first project. So we had a good start. In overally time we spent about 900 hours. In the last days before the deadline of the competition I spent at the weekends about 16 hours a day and between the week an extra time of 5-7 hours a day additional to my normal work. So there is much hard work that has gone into the project. We hope to finish in the summer of 2010.
IndieGameBlog.net:Any other thoughts/comments?
Best luck to the other competitors of Dream Build Play 2009. You all made a great job, I know the effort that is behind such a project. Sometimes this is at the border of humanity…
IndieGameBlog.net:Thank you for your time.
You’re welcome, and thank you for the opportunity of giving this interview!
I would like to extend my thanks to Oliver Schulze for giving this interview and wish him and the rest of the development team the best of luck in Dream Build Play and I can’t wait for the game to release (hopefully) next year.
Themocracy
[...] Edit 2: You can now read an interview I did with Oliver Schulze, the project lead on Magnetic Mind here. [...]
Great read!