LostWinds, a WiiWare game developed and published by Frontier Developments

To get a sense of the thought process behind making a WiiWare game ahead of the service's May 12th debut, we spoke by phone with Frontier Developments founder David Braben. His company's first such title, LostWinds, aims to put "the power of the wind in the palm of your hand" (using the Wii remote) as you guide young Toku (using the nunchuk) on a series of adventures to lift an evil curse placed on the land of Mistralis. Also on the call: Nintendo of America director of project development, who began to chime in halfway through the interview with some explanations that clarified the differences between how Nintendo has chosen to approach original downloadable games as compared to Microsoft and Sony. Read on.

David, what is your WiiWare project?

David Braben, Frontier Developments: It's a game called LostWinds and it's about the idea of a wind spirit that has been hidden away by a nasty guy called Balasar. But essentially looking at it as a game, it really allows us to do new things on the Wii. We now have Wii in the marketplace for a year and as a developer it takes a while to come to grips with a new system like the Wii; the wonderful combination of the remote and the nunchuck. It's an opportunity for us to do great things with the game.

It's the first game to come out of a process that we have internally. One of the great things about working as a software developer is it's full of really enthusiastic people who really love games and so they're itching to try out new ideas. And so we created this--what originally started off as a Game of the Week project where people would propose games and as our managing director described it, it's a bit like dipping a piece of meat into a piranha tank and anything that's left has to be pretty tough. [Laughs.]

So in that sort of fantastic but critical atmosphere, we put out these game ideas, and people suggest ways of doing it better and ways to modify it and all that sort of thing. This is the first game that survived, if you like, that process, but also had grown from lots of people's suggestions about how it can be made to work really well. And the Wii is absolutely perfect platform for it.

Who's the main character? What's the goal and what's the game play?

Braben: The main character is a guy called Toku, a young boy who's discovered this wind spirit that's trapped in a stone. You control both Toku using the device called the nunchuck. He's actually quite vulnerable, in terms of where he can go--also there are things in the world that are threatening--but you also control the wind spirit that he's able to release which is called Enril. And the wind spirit is controlled by the Wiimote.

By moving the Wiimote around, in different shapes, you can create gentle breezes of wind or strong gusts, or even by twisting it around, little sort of water sticks. The game overall is designed to be a really sort of graceful, beautiful experience where you're using these essentially two separate characters in combination, and that brings us all sorts of possibilities in the way the game works, which makes it feel very fresh.

And what are the gestures for the breezes and the gusts of wind?

Braben: Well, there are several ways it's used. The speed with which you move the Wiimote affects the strength of the wind, but also you use the buttons on the controller to affect it. So it's a combination of moving the remote around--it's very, very simple--and whether or not you press the A button whilst you're doing it, it changes the effects of the wind.

Is the A button a special attack or a modifier?

Braben: It's essentially a modifier. It means that, for example, if you want to you can do things like sort of sucking up water from a water body and depositing it on a plant. The way you do the different moves to create these different things, as I said, simply depends on where you press the button. To be honest you need to see it to experience it.

One of the beauties about the whole WiiWare process is it enables us to do games that would be very hard to describe and that's actually part of the problem that we're experiencing now. It enables us to try out new techniques very quickly and explore those in a way that we wouldn't necessarily do in a conventional game. So what I'm saying is that it's actually a lot simpler in practice than it sounds like when you're describing it. Does that make sense?

How would you describe the visual aesthetic of the game?

Braben: A beautiful world where--we're trying to establish a graphical style that doesn't necessarily immediately refer to other styles, but where all of the objects in the world interact in a way that's sort of delightful. So I suppose it's a magical land, is what we're trying to get across, sort of idyllic, but where there is no more wind. The wind has been taken away and you are the wind coming back. So you've got all sorts of beautiful sort of dust motes in the air and things like that.

Did you approach Nintendo or did Nintendo approach you? How did you become part of the WiiWare program?

Braben: Actually, I'm trying to remember. We're a software developer that was already developing on Wii and I believe we showed the early concept of this project to Nintendo and it went on from there.

When did you show it to them?

Braben: Possibly around the summer of last year.

At that point, were you already intending it for WiiWare? Or was it something you were considering as a disc based release?

Braben: We were already intending it for Wii, but at that point, the concept of WiiWare wasn't really around. But certainly it's the sort of game that's absolutely perfect for WiiWare, and very quickly we were discussing it as something that could go out under WiiWare.

So was it that Nintendo suggested this would be ideal for WiiWare? Or was it that you found out about WiiWare and then said, "You know what, this makes more sense for WiiWare than retail?"

Braben: I think it was one of those amazingly fortunate events, that the two came together at about the right time--about the same time. So I'm trying to remember, to be honest, which came first. Certainly very quickly it seemed obvious that WiiWare was a very good way to go.

So how big is the game looking to sort of be in terms of sort of memory size and how long is it going to be? Is it going to be something that's sort of smaller? What's the scale of the game?

Braben: There are, I believe, 22 areas in the game. We've designed the game to be--I mean the problem with the game design is that people often say, "How many hours will it take to finish?" And it's one of those cursed questions, where the answers bound to be wrong in some way. Comparing someone who is a very experienced tester who knows solutions to all the puzzles in the game and rattle through really quickly, whereas a typical player might take longer. We hope people will spend a long time playing through the world, but there is a lot to see, and certainly it's a good few hours of fun is what we would hope.

Are there any file size restrictions that you're dealing with in terms of the game?

Braben: I certainly don't want to answer details on the WiiWare service because I don't think it's appropriate, but it's not a major issue. The fantastic thing is the fact of [WiiWare] being there. I don't know if Tom wants chip in there.

Tom Prata, Nintendo of America: As it relates to file sizes, we are encouraging developers to make a game that is more compact in nature, and not have to let's say compete on--as it relates to the very large volumes--filing up maybe lots of disk space like you would see in a conventional retail type of product. The reason for that is that we want the WiiWare development to be more cost effective and have low barriers to entry to allow the content creators to create with that type of risk.

With that said, as it relates to more compact games, I think it's easy for people to assume, "Well if it's small then maybe it doesn't have enough game play," or maybe "Bigger is better, and we really don't feel that way. As an example with Virtual Console we have 200 classic games, some of the best games ever developed they're all a very compact size. So we'd really like the developers to focus on the game ideas and the gameplay and the innovation as compared to being so concerned about filling up a very large space.

David, have you already figured out pricing for this game?

Braben: We know roughly what price, but we're not announcing that yet. It's a very interesting question.From the point of view of WiiWare, the fact that it is a very different setting, working out the price is not straightforward. But that's something we're not releasing yet.

Prata: If I may, as it relates to price, WiiWare, like Virtual Console will support a variety of different prices for the consumers in terms of Wii Points. So we'll have content that is--just like we do with Virtual Console--for let's say NES or Super Nintendo 64 at different price points.

Braben: Well, just to answer that, our feeling is a developer is that WiiWare is probably going to be a very much broader appeal, certainly from our perspective. So we're very wary of using the Virtual Console pricing as a guideline.

Do you mean in terms setting the price for your WiiWare game higher or lower? Because by all accounts, the Virtual Console games have been pretty popular at those price points.

Braben: Oh, I'm sure they're very popular. That's not my point. My point is that of the appeal of it may be subtly different. One of the very interesting and really powerful things we've been seeing with Wii is that, as with all games, initially you create an appeal to what we call core gamers. But Wii is great because it's going to a much broader audience. There's a lot of appeal to people who may not have historically been gamers. That's really what I'm sort of getting at. To me it's a big plus--it's not a minus at all. But with that in mind we're carefully considering what price to go at, considering essentially how aggressive to price, and whether that effects people's perceptions.

Will there be a demo?

Braben: No, I believe not. I mean I think the intention--I mean Tom may want to answer that.

Prata: The intention is that the creators will create the game and we'll make it available on WiiWare after it passes certification. But we really don't want to impose kind of too many restrictions on developers, or too many requirements. As an example, in many cases we don't want to say just because people can connect to the Internet that they have to make a multiplayer via the Internet version, or Wii Connect 24 modes, or take advantage of all the types of features that are available.

The key for us is not to impose too many restrictions on the content creators and allow them to create the content that and the features that they think are more suitable to express their vision of the product. And creating demos or having demos as a requirement is a very costly type of endeavor, so it's not a requirement from Nintendo.

Tom, can people put demos up if they want?

Prata: We haven't made the decision on that.

Braben: Just to sort of back this up: this is one of the things that we're considering in respect to how we're going to price out our game. We want it to be attractive and we don't want it to be a block to people going through it. We think it's a game that will sell really well by word of mouth. We want it to essentially, therefore, not to be a big sort of undertaking price wise.

Part of the reason I ask this is that there's a lot of sort of discussion that's sort of ongoing about pricing and demos and things like that. If you look at casual games on the PC, the model that they've sort of gone for is free with advertising support; try where you get a trial period, which is effectively a demo; and then you can upgrade to buy, or you can just buy it outright. It's sort of all about conversion rate, how many people can you convince with the free trial or the demo to go to the paid product. But there's a feeling in the casual game market that this really necessary to convince people to pay for these games--especially since there's not as much coverage of casual games or small games so there's not as much information available to consumers as to the quality of the games.

A lot of the enthusiast press doesn't review these games. Ad even though even the prices are fairly low on Xbox Live and Playstation Network, sometimes people are wary of trying these games. At least with the Virtual Console games, those are known games, known quantities--they're classics, so people know of them. Do you think it's as simple as having an aggressive price point to get people to drop their money if there's no demo?

Braben: Right, absolutely not. That's not the intention, but one of the things that I think is very interesting about the WiiWare service is there will be a lot of additional support and information, which maybe Tom can talk about.

Prata: One of the things that we're working on is relates to a channel that was launched in Japan and it's called Everybody's Nintendo Channel. We are currently working on making that available in North American and European markets. Essentially what that is, is it's a way to communicate to consumers about the various types of content, and that will include WiiWare as well as retail products, Virtual Console. So the idea is that we're able to directly communicate--and our content creators are able to directly communicate--to Wii consumers.

As it relates to "Try before you buy," I do know that is something that is a staple towards the PC download space . For us, you know, really our intention is not to compare to what other people are doing, it's really what Nintendo is trying to create and what Nintendo feels is a good experience for the consumer. So the combination of the content and what the creators want to create, together with this new Nintendo channel that will enable consumers to directly get information about games--we feel like there'll be quite a bit of information available for them to make a purchasing decisions.

David, when is the game going to come out?

Braben: We're hoping the game will be a launch title, but I obviously can't say when the release date's going to be. I can hand over to Tom.

Prata: We'll probably have to get back to you on the release date for WiiWare. [Note: the interview was conducted prior to Nintendo sending us the press release.]

Braben: The point being, I think it's really exciting for us. We want to be part of the service from the start.

Well, thanks so much for your time, gentlemen.

Prata: Okay, thank you.