The Rock, one of several enemy types in Q-Games' PixelJunk Monsters 

In Part I of our two-part Q&A with Q-Games founder Dylan Cuthbert, he explained why he wants to turn Japanese players on to the pleasure of RTS games with his forthcoming title PixelJunk Monsters (which debuted last week in Japan) and why PSN games haven't yet caught fire in his adopted Japan. In today's Part II, Cuthbert discusses why Q-Games wants to keep its development costs low and the number of shipped games high; what draws him to collaborating with artists who work in other media; and why he thinks Sony has become so interested in smaller games. And as a bonus, Cuthbert shares with us exclusively some details and insight into the direction of his next game, codenamed PixelJunk 1-3.

In an interview with God of War creator and Eat Sleep Play co-founder David Jaffe, he told me the following about the cartoony look of his first PSN game, Calling All Cars:

I've really been thinking about "What did I learn from that experience?" And one of the things I learned was that you have to design your game--and that includes mechanics and thematic--to speak to the audience that owns the system. I had made this assumption, which was an incorrect assumption, that because the game was $10 people would be like, "Ah, it's cartoony. I usually buy military hardcore stuff, but you know what? I'm going to give it a try. It's just ten bucks." It would be an impulse buy.

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The reality of it is--and I know that this happened with a number of people who bought the game--but nowhere near as many people were able to get over the thematic hump being unappealing to them, because they're looking for games that are testosterone-fueled. The number of people who got over the hump because the price was so low was significantly lower than the number of people who responded to that game in exact same way they would if it had been a $60 game, which was "Thematically this just doesn't appeal to me."

My question is this: How concerned are you that the visual aesthetic of PixelJunk Monsters may not appeal to the largely hardcore audience that has bought the Playstation 3 thus far?

I am definitely concerned that the market is forcing us to make games that look very similar to each other and this is primarily because the cost of making a game is so high, i.e. the looks and styles have to be consumer-friendly in order to sell as many units as possible and break even.

This is one thing I am trying to avoid with PixelJunk--by keeping the development cost down, and keeping the number of games we produce high, for each game, we can go with the style that we want to play with at that time and give people a much larger range of visual styles than they are used to at the moment. A cool sub-set of people are beginning to understand our stance, and hopefully that sub-set will grow just large enough for us to earn enough money to fund more of our ideas. Of course, this doesn't mean we won't make a flashy, sparkly "consumer-friendly" game at some point--we most definitely will--but what it means is that we can give each of our games our fun, unique look without being subjected to pressure in the creative process to simply make something that is glitzy and sells in order to get the development cost back. At the end of the day it is the consumer that wins, because they get a greater choice.

I suppose it is the difference between making indie films and Hollywood blockbusters. I think it is better for everyone to have a wider range of cheaper games and ideas, than just a small number of expensive ones that you end up being disappointed with anyway. Of course, I love the blockbuster games as much as anyone else out there but I also love to see new ideas and crazily creative stuff too. Right now, I can only see the really outlandish creative stuff on my PC, but I see no reason why that market can't exist on the PS3 too as the PS3 has some great technology that is standardized across the board (whereas the PC has to deal with differing levels of tech). I really hope people start embracing the cool stuff out there like Everyday Shooter, flOw etc., the price of these kinds of experimental titles is ridiculously low when you think about it and we need to encourage it!

One problem with Calling All Cars, is that it was too pretty, i.e. from the get-go when you boot that game up you are presented with overly slick graphics, animations, music and sound and that makes everyone feel they are playing a full-price game, but at the end of the day, it is a budget game so people end up disappointed. This isn't David Jaffe's fault as such, but it is something about the indie market we have to be very careful about. Games like Everyday Shooter are perceived from the start as indie titles and accepted far more readily. I think it's a big learning process for us and the consumer. It's a brand new market and quite exciting really.

What lessons have you learned from PixelJunk Racers that you've been able to apply to PixelJunk Monsters?

User-friendliness! PixelJunk Racers was made mostly by Europeans (and one hard-core American freelance programmer) and we tuned it a little too much to our own skill set, which of course is much higher than most people's. We toned it down a lot at the end, but we should have toned it down further--as a result the game is very challenging and fun, but primarily to the harder game players out there. Once you get the hang of it, it's an extremely addicting old-school game that anyone can enjoy (and great for parties!).

For Monsters we tested it back to back with lots of different people and tuned the difficulty to a tee. It is challenging to play it perfectly but lighter users can also get through it, just with less perfect scores. Each stage was hand-tuned by analyzing the results of hundreds of hours of play by a huge range of people.

Why is Q-Games focused on making games whose play space occupies just a single screen? What are the benefits of this to you as the developer and to gamers?

LCD screens look awful when they scroll 2-D games around. They are fine for larger objects and 3-D views, but older 2-D style games with lots of big 2-D surfaces scrolling around tend to blur a little too much. Scrolling isn't ruled out for the future, but I love the fact that in full-HD there is just such a huge amount of screen real-estate and I want to try and get the player to feel that. 1920 x 1080 is a large amount of pixels to play with.

PixelJunk Racers was code-named PixelJunk 1-1, and PixelJunk Monsters was code-named Pixel-Junk 1-2. There's already an image for PixelJunk 1-3 on your Web site, what can you tell us about it?

PixelJunk 1-3 is as-yet unnamed but we have collaborated with a rather cool artist in Kyoto called Baiyon who is a DJ, musician and illustrative artist to develop some really interesting technology that creates illustrated "life" (that he has designed) that is also synchronized to his music. The game is a total experiment, but rest assured it is going to be very unique and a lot of fun, and it isn't going to be a "rhythm" game.

For PixelJunk Monsters we also collaborated with a Japanese music group called Otograph who made for us a very unique sounding ambient soundtrack.

In the future I want to experiment even more with this kind of collaborative effort as I think it is important to mix in art and culture into games if we are to be taken seriously.

How seriously are videogames taken in Japan compared to other pop culture media, like movies, music and manga?

Videogames used to be taken far more seriously than they are now; over here the gaming culture was affected adversely by advancing mobile phone tech., which back in the late '90s and early '00s was years ahead of the West. Suddenly people were playing (not games) with their phones and being more sociable than before, which isn't necessarily a bad thing for the human race. However, the Japanese still think of themselves as a kind of gaming mecca because they have a few god-like presences. In reality though, gaming has become less central and more a standard commodity; the Wii and DS have proved this with their huge demographic range. People want to play games, but without the huge investment of time and money games used to take up.

You could look at it the other way around and consider that games are taken so seriously here they are a "standard" in everyday life. There is just an increasingly diminishing core of hard core game players and increasing number of light, casual, "least-possible-investment" players. Nowadays, games are played with the same nonchalance and in the same quantity as videos are rented, and the casual player just wants a 2-3 hour fix that they can throw away afterwards, unfortunately. This might lead to a different scheme--as in the purchasable items we are seeing more of--but I hope we will see a resurgence of smaller, cheaper experimental games like those on PSN and like those we are making for PixelJunk.

Why and how do you believe that collaborating with artists who work in other media can both improve games and help evolve people's perception of games?

Well, it all depends on the artist of course! I feel that making games should be approached from an artistic standpoint, otherwise we are destined to produce sequel after sequel just to get the cash in. One thing that Miyamoto-san [Nintendo game design chief Shigeru Miyamoto] says that I actually disagree with is "making games is not an art-form, it is a business," but what's funny is that the games Miyamoto-san makes are art. It's as though he doesn't realize it, but the way he makes games--from my experience anyway--is the way an artist or creator makes things. His games have infamously never really been limited by time-frame or monetary concerns and he is famous for his "up-ending of the tea table," where he'll cut things out and totally replace sections of the game or simply cancel the game altogether. If that's not the creative process in action then I don't really know what is.

Anyway, I meandered a bit there, but artists have a view of the world unhindered by any particular genre; they might not even play games but they can produce stunningly awe-inspiring pieces of work in a number of media. To make games we need inspiration, and rather than take inspiration from existing games which is fairly restrictive, I feel it would be great if we could open our eyes and take not just inspiration but collaborate more with other people from outside the industry. The original WipEout on the PS1 was a great example of mixing artists (The Designers Republic) with gaming and inspired a lot of people. I'd love to work with contemporary artists such as Jim Woodring and Mark Ryden, as they have some crazy characters that would be perfect for making a game around, but more extreme abstract art such as the kind of stuff produced by Tomato is also something I want to somehow get into games. Even math has an artistic side, as shown at this link. PixelJunk 1-3 is abstract and beautiful--now we just have to mold it into a fun, addictive game.

Of course, wanting to make this kind of stuff and finding publishers that will fund you to do it are two different things!

As you point out, it's hard to get publishers to fund these more artistic games. So best as you can tell from the various meetings that you've had with Sony producers and executives, when you look at the range of PSN titles that Sony has backed in addition to your own--flOw, Flower, Everyday Shooter, Echochrome, Loco Roco Cocoreccho and more--why do you think Sony has been so receptive to these kinds of games? And as a developer who's interested in making these types of games, do you feel as though the foundation is successfully being laid for these games to survive and thrive, or do you worry that this is merely a whim of publishers, and that this current interest in smaller and more experimental games could all disappear overnight?

Well right now, the interest in smaller and experimental games is still microscopic, so I hope it doesn't disappear before it grows a bit more! I'm hoping that the efforts of Sony, especially Santa Monica Studios to encourage smaller developers will pay off by creating an audience that are truly interested in innovation and fun. As I often mention, not every game needs to be the blockbuster "Hollywood movie" type. Historically, Sony has always been open to slightly weird titles, especially so in the PlayStation 1 days, but because development costs grew so much during the PS2 era, those smaller experimental titles began to disappear. Thanks to PSN and a cheaper price point we are seeing a resurgence and personally, I think that's great, because I want to be able to play a greater variety of games and not spend over 50 bucks on each one.

At the end of the day though, whether this works or not comes down to the consumer--we really need them to support these titles with their wallets and not just their hearts. It pains me when I see comments online such as "if this was two bucks cheaper..."--what exactly does that mean? People spend a lot more than that every day on fizzy drinks which are far less satisfying and they don't improve your hand-eye coordination like games do! Right now we are lucky if we break even at the low price points we are setting. We need to find a way to make people feel more at home with purchasing titles online and increase the cash flow a bit so we can keep the prices low. Jeff Minter's infamous rant a week or so ago shows some of the frustration indie developers are having with the new market.

For Part I of our Dylan Cuthbert Q&A, click here.