High Voltage on The Conduit, The Grinder, Animales de la Muerte and much more
Joshua Olson, producer of The Conduit on how SEGA/High Voltage feel about the reception of the game…
“Sega was very pleased, and we were very pleased. Like I said, with an original IP introduced into a market that is down, sales have been very good, so we’re very happy.”
Olson on whether High Voltage intends to enhance the art/character design if there was a sequel to The Conduit…
“I think that’s a very fair criticism. Looking at The Conduit, you’re not really sure that you’re in the world of The Conduit. Like you said, it’s kind of generic. You could be anywhere. I think that was driven a lot by our push to make The Conduit in D.C. in realistic-looking environments, we wanted to make the graphics look as real as possible. But on the flipside of that, it tended to make it look a little generic, a bit mundane. If you’re playing Halo, or look at a screenshot, you know you’re in Halo. I don’t think that’s the case with The Conduit. It’s a very valid criticism that we took to heart and we’re hoping to address in future games.”
Olson on whether hackers/spawning issues were patched online…
“We work pretty closely with Nintendo, both on the exploits and the cheater front. We ban cheaters. We detect them and find them. We worked with Nintendo as well to solve some of the network issues, and the spawn issue — the “black ring.” We found out about it, determined what the issue was, and we worked to address it. It’s much more complicated with Nintendo to try to figure out a patch solution, or a way to get your code back out there into the wild, but it’s something we’ve worked on.”
Olson on the new direction for The Grinder…
“We looked at titles out there; there’s plenty of FPSs on 360 and PS3, and we went multi-platform. We saw that there was a market for a title that we did called “Hunter.” It was on Xbox, GameCube and PS2 back in the day. And a sequel to that’s a constant request from fans, from press. We really liked this universe. We kind of had The Grinder be a spiritual successor to that title, which did very well for us.”
Olson on the status of the Wii version of The Grinder…
“We’re planned for it, then we switched to Infernal Engine; the focus has been on PS3 and 360. We’re very interested in pursuing Wii titles. We think there are great opportunities out there on the Wii. We’re kind of still defining–the engine does work on the Wii–we’re defining what the Wii SKU will be.”
Olson on what fans have to do to get the FPS version of The Grinder (or even both versions) on Wii…
“Send us emails, post on the forums, make a lot of noise… We love FPSs, especially on the Wii. Making Conduit was a great first step for us. The thing with The Conduit was we were learning the tech, and at the same time making the game. There are a lot of things we would love to clean up and polish up, but we’re really proud of it. We think it was a great first entry into the genre. But there’s a lot of room for improvement too, and we recognize that. FPSs on the Wii are very, very viable, and something High Voltage is very interested in. Right now, nothing is off the table.”
Olson on whether the sales of mature games on Wii impacted the development of High Voltage’s titles…
“I still think there’s a market on the Wii. I’m very curious to see how Red Steel 2 does; I hope it does well. Modern Warfare Reflex has done very well. The Conduit did well. But I think there is a market there. I think people want to generalize and say they don’t do well on the console, but that’s not exactly true. In terms of the changes to The Grinder and Tournament of Legends, that more came from internally, from us as a team. As I mentioned, creatively we could do more with the change of direction. I hope people can appreciate the new direction.”
Olson on whether High Voltage will be moving more towards independent games from the ground up…
“That’s our goal. That’s more of a bigger business-development question. But definitely, internally, a company-level and a team-level, people want to work on their own games. We love a lot of the licensed stuff we do, but there’s a certain extra charge and level of excitement that you’re working on something that you know is yours, and you don’t have the luxury of hiding behind the license and you have to make a great game that can stand on its own. There’s the extra level of stress and the challenge of making sure it’s something people care about and want to play and hopefully is something a little more enduring. Yes, it’s something we’re very interested in.”
Olson on if there are plans for more WiiWare games…
“We’re always looking. WiiWare titles did well for us. We’re used to a certain team size. So I think it’s something that’s nice for teams, if you’re on a longer project, a bigger team, then switch to something that’s small, and lean-and-mean, and a shorter dev schedule. It’s definitely something we’re looking at. We were the number one maker of WiiWare games for a while there. We did Gyrostarr, Blackjack, High Voltage Hot Rod Show, and Evasive Space. So we have four titles out there. We’re very supportive of WiiWare.”
Olson on the status of Animales de la Muerte…
“We’re not full time on it, but we always go back to it and continue to work on it. We think there’s a great game there, so, one day.”
Olson on any interest in the DS…
“There’s a large segment of the company that is very interested in DS. At lunchtime, wandering around the halls, there are a lot of DS games being played. That being said, we’re not going to announce anything specifically.”
Olson on whether there’d be any way High Voltage could approach Nintendo about developing a Kid Icarus title…
“I played Kid Icarus as a kid and loved it, and it keeps on coming up enough. We talk to Nintendo a lot; we’re a great partnership, so we’ll see.”
Olson on a sequel to The Conduit…
“Nothing officially. We loved the world, we had a very strong foundation with The Conduit, and we’d love to revisit it sometime soon. We have more stories to tell. We think FPSs on the Wii, that’s there’s definitely a place there, we carved out a great niche on the Wii. So, stay posted.”
