MasterAbbott sat down and interviewed John Raptis the director of Raptisoft Games.  We ask John a variety of fantastic questions about Raptisoft and their newest title Solomons Keep!  This is one of our best and most detailed interviews we’ve had in a very long time.  Now we don’t have a picture of John but he wanted to let us know that he is married, and lives in Northern Michigan with his wife, two kids, three dogs, and two cats.

Now with all the formalities out of the way lets get down the buisness.  Enjoy the interview 😉  Happy reading

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Question 1 – Tell us a little bit about Raptisoft.  How were they created, the origin behind the name Raptisoft, when was it first established, and how many employees does it have today.

Well, Raptisoft is simply mylastname-soft.  It probably wasn’t the wisest decision, since it’s not an easily remembered or spelled or pronounced name, but it was the only thing I felt “close” to.  Some of the names I rejected were about as funny and catchy as a fish.

I started it up in 2001 to sell my game “Eggsucker.”  There’s a bit of a history behind this; I originally wrote that game in 1997 for my wife (she enjoyed playing a similar game at an arcade in Ann Arbor, Michigan).  I had spent so few skill points in “Business Thinking” at that point in my life that I wrote the game… then did nothing with it.

But in 2001 the tipping point happened: I got a mortgage.  I am a bit of a fanatic about debt—I hate it with a passion.  So I quickly rewrote Eggsucker, and set it up for sale on the web.  I felt a bit guilty about it not being a completely original game idea, so I sold it as cheaply as the ecommerce provider would allow: $5.49.  I was hoping to make $50-$100 a month to put on my mortgage.

Well, in its first month it did a little better than that, and I was pleased.  Then in its second month, the floodgates opened!  It doubled my monthly salary at my day job, and then continue to do that for a few months.  Around the six-month point, Popcap games wrote me, offering to publish it.  For some reason they had a problem with the name “Eggsucker” and it was renamed to “Dynomite.”

As for employees… it’s just me, and various consultants.  I do all the coding, artwork, and sound effects, and I hire people to do music and voice work.  Oh, and I should also mention my wife, who plays what I write and generally lets me know if something in the game is tripping her up or spoiling the fun.

Question 2 – What do you believe have been your greatest challenges designing games for the mobile phone market ? Especially games for the iPhone/iTouch and now iPAD.

Without question, it’s the memory space and video card speed, compared to working on PC.  I’ve become used to having memory and speed to spare.  Suddenly, on the iPod, you have to go back to all the 3D card tricks of the 90’s, like batching triangles and reducing your texture swaps, and you have to watch your memory usage.  I don’t enjoy that much.

But it’s all made up for it by having a touchscreen.  While I sometimes wish Apple made a gamepad-type cradle that you could seat the iPhone in, I’ve found through playing around that by using the accelerometer or touchscreen controls, you can come up with control schemes that actually change and improve gameplay.

For instance, in Solomon’s Keep… I don’t think I would have done the secondary skills or the levelup system the way I did if I wasn’t designing for a small screen that could be touched anywhere.  But I was really happy with the way they turned out!

Question 3 – What do you believe is the main reason why the Raptisoft games are such a success ?

Heh, not every Raptisoft game is a success.  My game Boonka (available at Sandlot Games) and my game Hap Hazard are enjoyed by tens of people worldwide.  Boonka especially represents the most development time for the least love I’ve ever done in my life. J

But the ones that are successful… I think the only reason can be because I really *work* these games.   I play them over and over.   If something isn’t fun, out it goes, no matter how good of an idea it was.  I think many programmers are loathe to do that because something was a lot of work to put in, and they’ll be damned if they’re taking it out.  I know their pain… but I have this other pain that I experience when I leave something like that in.  It’s the pain of my wife telling me, up to sixteen times a day, how she likes the game fine, except for this one little thing that keeps getting in her way.

And then, after all the playtesting and balancing, I am so used to the game, and I’ve gone through it so many times, I’m bored with it.  I hate it.  I play it, and I get gloomy, and I say, “nobody’s gonna want this.”  So I start throwing in other things to try to spice it up.  That’s how you get design decisions like “every single level is going to be completely different in Hamsterball” or “the final boss is going to torment you every step of the way” in Solomon’s Keep.

So I guess the one word answer to this question is “insecurity.” J

READ THE REST OF THE IS FANTASTIC INTERVIEW AFTER THE BREAK

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