Interviews

Daring to be different: Tag Games on the move from GTA to Granny in Paradise (and back again)

They're a bunch of gameplay mentalists

Daring to be different: Tag Games on the move from GTA to Granny in Paradise (and back again)
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| TAG Games news

Good things come to those who wait: at least that's what we've been telling an increasing persistent Paul Farley, MD of Tag Games (pictured). Unsurprisingly, he's been wondering whatever happened to the feature on Tag that would complete our round-up of interviews with Dundee's mobile game developers.

Of course, we've feigned injury, promised (and missed deadlines) and generally behaved like it's Christmas or something, before finally getting down to work. But, you know what the real issue's been? Paul's so talkative – 6,369 words of transcription later, we eventually just had to switch the tape recorder off.

Still, at least, he's provided us with plenty of material on a company that's looking to make a significant impact on mobile gaming in 2008.

Pocket Gamer: You've worked for some of Dundee's biggest console game developers, so can you give us a potted history of your early career?

Paul Farley: I graduated in architecture but didn't like it much. At that point, DMA Design was hiring level designers, so my first job was designing for the original Grand Theft Auto game. I worked on a bunch of other games there, but eventually got bored. I suppose as a career move I should have stuck it out and gone onto work for Rockstar. I'd probably be driving a Porsche now, but anyhow, a few of us left DMA and looking for a fresh challenge, joined Vis Interactive.

I went there as lead designer on State of Emergency, which did okay commercially – it sold about two million copies – but got hammered critically. Actually, I left before it came out. I learnt a hell of a lot, especially about running a business and how to manage people. It was both a good and bad experience.

How did you end up in the mobile games business?

I'd only been making games for about seven years, but after DMA and Vis, I was pretty burnt out. I'd had enough of spending three or four years working on a project I didn't have much creative control over. It's a lot of effort making console games. I was thinking about a change when Chris Wright from Digital Bridges [now I-play] came down to Vis to talk about mobile games. To be honest, I don't think I had a mobile phone then and considered the whole idea was madness, but I spoke to Chris and some of the guys at Digital Bridges and felt it was a pioneering company, so ended up getting a design job there.

What sort of games were you working on? Well, this was back in the early days of WAP, so it was stuff like Steve Jackson's Sorcery. There were also two Star Trek games, one of which was a MMOG persistent universe. It never got released. It was too ambitious, but that's what things were like then. There wasn't technology like Java. Everything was a bit of a struggle. I started working on SMS games, which from a game design point of view were incredibly challenging because you didn't have audio or graphics to hide behind.

Another game I was involved in, but never got released was a [boardgame] Diplomacy-style turn-based game called Tyrant. It started off on WAP and then went to Java, but as a connected, multiplayer game it was hellish to develop, although it was also one of the most fun design job I'd ever had. When I left I-play, I was heading up internal and external design.

How did Tag Games come about?

Jamie Bryant [Tag's creative director, who also worked at DMA] had been made redundant following the collapse of Vis, so I put him touch with Robert, who's now our technical director. He'd pitched I-play a game, which eventually become Dead Water. There wasn't any proper artwork, but I liked the concept of the rising water and escape from a flooded labyrinth. It felt a bit Tomb Raider-ish. There wasn't anything I-play could do with it though, but I mentioned it to Jamie.

We all met up to talk about the game. I had no real intention of getting involved. I thought I could help out with some advice. After a couple of meetings though, we got to the point where we said, 'We work well as team, we have a game that's almost there, how do you fancy starting something?' Obviously, it was a consideration for me to leave a secure, well-paid job, but I thought, 'Let's give it a shot.'

Was it a rude awaking to have the tables turned, becoming a developer trying to pitch a game to publishers?

We started out quite idealistically. We didn't want a brand or a licence for Dead Water, so when we showed the demo to people, it was a learning experience. It's not the best game in the world, but no other game had that mechanic, which made it stand out. All the publishers liked it, but their questions were: 'How are we going to sell it into the carriers?' and 'Can we put a licence on it?'

Why didn't you want to have a licence attached?

Maybe if we'd been offered a really big licence like The Poseidon Adventure, it would have been okay, but otherwise we wanted to do it ourselves. From day one of the company, we'd always said the long-term future of Tag would be about creating that one hit game and exploiting it. For us, the fact that 90 per cent of original IP fails is a pretty good hit rate. We'll take that, because then it's a case of making sure we're at least breaking even for the first nine games and making the most from the tenth.

But, of course, in the case of Dead Water, this left us without a route to market, so we started putting together deals with as many distribution partners as we could. We have about 35 deals, which gives us distribution all the way from China and Australian into western Europe.

Given that attitude, how have you ended up working on licensed games such as Granny in Paradise?

Dead Water proved to be a real experiment in terms of getting a game to market. We're going to break even on it but if we had a deal with EA or I-play, we would have done ten times better, so we've changed our approach to something more balanced – mixing original titles with licences and work for hire.

We licensed Granny in Paradise from Sandlot Games, who released the original casual PC version. We were actually after one of its other licences. We were naive about the whole casual games thing, really. When we were offered Granny, we said, 'Granny what?' But after having a look at it – it's really colourful, sort of a cross between Lemmings and Lode Runner – we thought it would work well on mobile. It's due to be released in the spring and Mobliss will be publishing it.

Lots of mobile developers are now looking at the synergies of cross-platform development, such as mobile and PC. What's your view?

Mobile will always be at the core of what we do. All our games will be on mobile but we're looking to supplement it. For example, we're working on a licensed product that will be developed on PC and mobile. I think flexibility is especially important when it comes to making original games, though. It's really hard to do them on mobile. It's probably easier to do them on PC, even on DS or WiiWare.

We're actually applying for official developer status with Nintendo at the moment. I think Nintendo wants to give small developers a chance to come up with some great new games. We need to get the official development status and then we'll see, but it's all about having options. Right now, we don't want to become typecast just as a mobile developer. If you have a great game, the platform shouldn't matter. That's our approach.

Does it feel like you're being driven out of the mobile market because there are so few opportunities for original games?

No, it's just the mobile market is very brand and market-driven. People buy what they know when it comes to downloading from the decks. It's still early in terms of the market's development though. It will be another five or ten years before mobile consumers start to research games before they buy them. After all, games only costs £5, which doesn't help you break original IP. But you shouldn't think original IP isn't important to the mobile industry. Publishers know it can be very profitable. A good example is I-play's My Dog, which was the last game I worked on there. It's sold incredibly well.

Your big original hope for 2008 is Car Jack City. What can you tell us about it?

The backstory is you owe the mob a million dollars and you have to pay them back a bit every week. It doesn't matter how you do it. You can deliver pizzas or drive taxis if you like but there will be high value procedural-generated criminal missions provided, too.

Of course, people will say it's just GTA on mobile, but while we're taking GTA as a starting point, we're looking to see how we can develop the concept for mobile. For example, you'll be spending most of your time in a car, so the game's handling has to be spot on. Secondly, it has an open structure, so you can go anywhere in the city, do what you want, and choose your own destiny.

But we're taking a sort of 'GTA meets Animal Crossing' approach, where the game links into real-time. If you have to meet someone at the casino at eight o'clock tonight, you'll have to go back into the game at eight o'clock to play that mission. We think little things like that will encourage people to play a couple of times a day for ten to 15 minutes

I hope it will be the game people who want GTA on the move, would like. I was talking to someone the other day about Liberty City Stories on the PSP. That's not how I'd want to play GTA on the move. I'd want something like GTA but that's fresh and that I don't have to play for four hours at a time.

Finally, aside from making money, what's the long-term goal for Tag?

Our attitude is, 'What are we going to do differently this time?' We try to bring that into every project we do, whether it's work for hire, original or a licensed project. Unlike some mobile developers, we're not a technology company. We'll use technology to make the game we want to make rather than developing a piece of technology and then thinking, 'What sort of game can we make with this?' Our mentality is more about gameplay than anything else. I think a lot of that heritage comes from DMA.

For us, presentation is important, so are visuals and audio, but first of all, the game's got to be fun. Everything else flows from that. For example, GTA wasn't the most polished game but it was more than the sum of its parts. I think that comes from the attention to detail and the love you put into making your games.

Our thanks to Paul for his time (and patience). That concludes our Dundee burgeoning mobile developer scene round-up, then, but don't forget to check out our other interviews with Dynamo Games, CobraMobile and Digital Goldfish.
Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.