Erin Robinson Interview

I reviewed Puzzle Bots last week.  It’s a lotta fun.

Now, as threatened, here’s the interview with its developer Erin Robinson.  I was far too busy being successful to interview her myself so I took ten minutes to actually build a real robot and actually really send it to Chicago to ask the questions instead.  Here’s a transcription of the magnetic tape I pulled out the back of it and played on an old 4-track somehow. 

Initiating Questionator 4000 start-up program. . .

Running diagnostic . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
PROBING QUESTION ARCHIVE . . . . . FOUND
FASCINATED NODDING PISTON. . . . ACTIVATED
INTERROGATIVE PITCH GENERATOR . . . . . oh-KAY?
DEATHSAW . . . . . . . [OFFLINE]
LOADING VOICE . . . . . . .

BEEP.

GREETINGS ERIN ROBINSON.  THANK YOU FOR TALKING TO QUESTIONATOR TODAY.  PLEASE CONFIRM IDENTITY – WHO AND WHAT ARE YOU?

Why hello Questionator! What a lovely toupee. As you have correctly deduced, my name is Erin and I’m a carbon-based independent game developer. I’m originally from Canada but now I make my life in the USA. One day I hope to be successful enough to move to San Francisco. That’s more or less the indie dream at the moment.

QUESTIONATOR BECAME A QUESTIONBOT DUE TO PARENTAL INFLUENCE – QUESTIONATOR’S PARENTS WERE BOTH WELDING TORCHES.  IT WAS INEVITABLE.  HOW DID YOU BECOME AN INDEPENDENT GAMES DEVELOPER?

When I was a kid, I played as many shareware games as I could get my hands on. I started drawing pictures of the games I wanted to make, and they grew steadily more complex over the years. I won’t say it was inevitable, but the odds of my becoming a game developer were pretty high. I always believed I’d make a game, which was optimistic, since I never learned to program and the only art tool I had was MS Paint.

As luck would have it, my housemate in university was a huge adventure games nerd as well. She had me play “5 Days a Stranger”, an indie adventure which rekindled my old game-making urges. A bit of googling revealed a group of obsessed hobbyists who wouldn’t let the adventure genre die. I knew I had found my tribe. I opened up MS Paint and started looking for a team. And 8 months after we started working, Spooks was done.

YOUR PREVIOUS WORK INCLUDES ACCLAIMED AGS ADVENTURE SPOOKS. IT IS ABOUT A GIRL WHO IS DEAD AND QUESTIONATOR DEDUCES IT MUST BE A STATEMENT ON THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN BEINGS AND VAST SUPERIORITY OF ROBOTS.  FROM WHERE DO YOU DRAW YOUR INFLUENCES?  ARE YOU INSPIRED BY ANY GAMES IN PARTICULAR?

I try to surround myself with things that I suddenly become interested in. While I was making Puzzle Bots, I started researching old mechanical devices. I’d order groups of broken pocketwatches on eBay and take them apart with little screwdrivers. That was the inspiration for a level we call the “Mechflower,” because prior to that I had planned to make a level about actual flowers.

As far as other games though, I am not that picky! I love most indie games. I play a few of the more popular mainstream titles. I guess I look for games that meet one or more of these criteria:

1) It’s on PC.

2) It gives a holistic and immersive sort of experience, not just a gameplay gimmick or a rehashed FPS.

3) I can finish it in my lifetime.

QUESTIONATOR KNOWS ALL.  CAN YOU RECOMMEND ANY ADVENTURE GAME STUDIO [AGS] GAMES FOR READERS THAT DO NOT?

Happily! Here are my all-time favourite AGS games: Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy, The Winter Rose, 5 Days a Stranger, The Blackwell Legacy, What Linus Bruckman Sees When His Eyes Are Closed, Automation, Emily Enough, and the remake of King’s Quest II in VGA. Another oft-overlooked title is The Great Stroke-Off! (not what it sounds like…it’s about minigolf).

There were also the three games I made before Puzzle Bots: Spooks, Nanobots, and Little Girl in Underland. They are all freeware and available on my website. Questionator might find Nanobots enjoyable, although most Earth humans found it too hard.

YOU HAVE RECENTLY TEAMED UP WITH FELLOW HUMAN DAVE GILBERT AT WADJET EYE GAMES.  PLEASE RELATE AN INTERESTING ANECDOTE TO DESCRIBE HOW THIS OCCURRED.

I had worked for Dave back when I was a student, doing the background art for Blackwell: Unbound. By the next year I had graduated and was responsibly working at a lab. He approached me to develop an original title of my own, and I jumped at the chance. For a while, the checks I was getting to develop the game were actually more than what I was making at the lab. I thought I’d won the nerd lottery.

YOUR LATEST GAME IS CALLED PUZZLE BOTS.  IT INCLUDES ROBOTS.  THIS CAUSES QUESTIONATOR’S EXCITEMENT SIMULATOR CIRCUIT TO EJECT COOLING FLUID IN INEFFICIENT QUANTITIES.  CAN YOU TELL QUESTIONATOR MORE ABOUT IT?

It’s about 5 little robots who run amok when their human inventors aren’t looking. Eventually they stumble upon an evil plot that they have to foil, despite their tiny size. It’s lighthearted and cartoony, and one reviewer even compared it to a playable Nickelodeon cartoon. I’ve heard favourable reviews from PC gaming veterans, casual gamers, and 7-year-olds alike. It’s actually been incredibly heartwarming. :) There’s a part of me that’s still going, “What exactly did I make, here?”

QUESTIONATOR IS IMPRESSED BY PUZZLE BOTS’ QUALITY, NOTABLY THE MUSIC AND VOICE ACTING.  WAS IT A CHALLENGE CO-ORDINATING THE ACTIVITIES OF SO MANY FRAGILE HUMANS AND THE CURRENCY TO MAKE THEM ALL FUNCTION?

Thank you! Managing a team via internet is like juggling while blind and overcaffeinated, but we manage to make it work. I learned a lot about project managment. And how to make the people at your bank stare at you awkwardly when you walk in, because you need to make another wire transfer to a country they can’t pronounce.

QUESTIONATOR’S AMBITIONS ALL INVOLVE ASKING QUESTIONS AND RECEIVING REGULAR MECHANICAL SERVICING.  WHAT ARE YOUR AMBITIONS AS A DEVELOPER?  ARE YOU ATTRACTED BY ANY OTHER GENRES?

To me, the most alluring thing about games is getting to create entire self-contained worlds. When I think about the Myst series, I remember them less like games I played and more like places I visited. Not even films have that same effect on me. What I would like to do is keep making games that take you to strange, surreal, or just quirky locales. And I’m definitely thinking about how I might try that with other genres.

QUESTIONATOR WOULD LIKE TO KNOW IF YOU HAVE ANY THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE, OR PRESENT, OF INDIE GAMING.

A lot of people have compared indie games today to independent films in the 70s. All of a sudden filmmakers could afford the tools to make their own decent-quality movies without nearly as much overhead.

The same thing has happened with game-making tools. And I don’t think there’s ever been a better time for people with original game ideas to strike out on their own. The indie games community as a whole is growing up; just a couple years ago, there wasn’t even a name for it. And today we have things like the Indie Fund, which is a group of established independent developers who want to fund up-and-coming developers.

I could ramble on about this for a while, but Questionator keeps looking at his watch. Basically, there’s a lot of risk involved in doing your own thing, but sometimes if you get your variables right everything works out.

FINALLY, PLEASE TELL QUESTIONATOR YOUR FAVOURITE ROBOT. 

Ooh, tough question! Well, when I was about 8 I asked my dad to take me to a demolition derby/monster truck rally that was coming to town. Right before intermission they brought out this thing called Robosaurus that picked up entire cars and ate them. Or maybe it just gummed them a little, but the effect was pretty spectacular. I’m sure I still have the poster of Robosaurus that I paid for with my own loonies. It’s too bad I didn’t think to get it autographed.

QUESTIONATOR IS SAD YOU DID NOT SAY QUESTIONATOR.  INITIATING SELF-DESTRUCT.