Ninjatown Interview

01 Oct 2008 at 11:09:54 by

Speaking to Shawn Smith, the man behind Shawnimals, we discuss what the inspiration behind the game was, how it came into development and what Shawnimals fans expect from the new game.


Ninjatown is based on Shawnimals.  What gave you the idea to take the Shawnimals brand and create a game for the DS?

The original idea for Ninjatown came from some very general “making a Ninjatown game would be cool” discussions with my friends at Pickle King Productions, a game production company. But the idea really took a step towards reality after I was introduced to Jeremy Pope by the PKP guys. He’s a freelance producer and years ago produced GTA3, Max Payne 2 and some other high profile stuff.  We were just talking games we’d been playing, and the fact we were geeking out on Desktop Tower Defense, the DS in general resulted in Jeremy telling me of a concept he had… and it happened to be a great fit for the world of Ninjatown. We hit it off and started crafting a design doc out of enthusiasm for the idea.


Why did you specifically choose the DS?

Our concept was always based on the benefits of the DS, specifically the stylus. Touching the screen is key for this game. It’s been pretty amazing to see how close we’ve stayed to the original vision for the game. I guess Jeremy and I are just obsessed with the DS… maybe a result of being busy people who need to sneak in shorter gameplay sessions that we used to? Besides, this style of game lends itself so much to stylus usage, and you can do some fun stuff with the microphone!


How long has Shawnimals been going?

Since 2001, as a hobby back then. Its grown organically since then… total word of mouth. For years we hand made our toys and dealt with designer toy stores direct. But these days we’re too big to work that way, so we focus on the creative and work with other people to get our stuff out there into the world.


How do you go about creating a game around an already established brand?

Well, obviously I don’t have the limitations of a mega Disney brand or something. Shawnimals and Ninjatown are still pretty niche, fitting into the designer toy world… so we had a lot of leeway to flesh out the world of Ninjatown, with the game. We had a general backstory and a lineup of characters, and that all translated really easily to the game. Working on the game has really helped us flesh out the world of Ninjatown, and fill in so many blanks.


Did you have to come up with the storyline for the game?  Does this follow the story of the comic Ninjatown, or is it completely different?

The basic structure of the story, yes, but we all collaborated on making it work for this game specifically. I worked on the dialogue as well with the talented Robb Telfer at Shawnimals. We recently put out a Ninjatown comic book with Devil’s Due Pop, which I also scripted with Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani from Tiny Titans fame, but the story of the game is not the same. Both take place in the world of Ninjatown, and most of the characters are the same, but they are very different tales. I never planned it this way, but I love the fact that Ninjatown is open to go in all sorts of different directions. There is no strict narrative that fans insist on us sticking to at this stage, so we can play around with it.


How do you approach developers with your idea? 

I didn’t do it – Jeremy brought in Venan, the developer, after we had fleshed out the design document. He had worked with them in the past on other projects. Luckily they were into the game idea, as well as the characters of Ninjatown! The guys at Pickle King pitched the publisher SouthPeak, and the rest is history. Hope its not too confusing all these people that were involved… it was way simpler than it sounds!


Do you own any games consoles?  If so which ones and what are your favourite games?

Admittedly I don’t own all of them. I just don’t have time to rock every new release, like I did back in my EGM days.  For the last few months it seemed like all I did was play new Ninjatown builds… but other than that, other DS games and a lot of classic stuff online (NES and SNES!). I can’t say I have any favorite games right… ask me in January after I’ve had some real time to play!


Did you think that Ninjatown would have worked as a RPG or even an MMO as well as strategy?  Or is the beauty of it just in the strategy aspect?

I think the world of Ninjatown could work within almost any genre. Maybe hard to envision an FPS, but RPG, MMO, turn based RTS… hell, a card trading game would probably work with Ninjatown. Ninjatown soccer would rule! But what got me excited about Jeremy’s concept was that there was no other game like it yet on the DS. As a gamer I wanted to be involved in this mutation of the tower defense style, because it felt right. I had zero interest in slapping the Ninjatown logo on some lame derivative game – whatever we do it has to make sense for the Ninjatown world, and Ninjatown-ify whatever the genre is.

   

There is a lot of talk about games being a bad influence on children today, and games like yours help entertain children without having too much gore or aggression.  Do you think that children are older than they are when it comes to games?  Is it hard catering for a market that are used to playing GTA or Call of Duty, even with their parents’ consent?

I think Ninjatown is a throwback to the days of when gaming was innocent. I’ve said before that I think the design and look of the NES games of the late1980s was an influence on my art style today. Those games you play when you are a kid, when you will play for 20 hours straight, are permanently etched in your brain!  Imagining a kid playing Ninjatown today, I know its just good safe fun without it being saccharine – I like that. Relatively simple but addictive, creative gameplay, fueled by what I think is a pretty funny story composed of adorable ninjas. I think ultimately it's about responsibility, especially with parents, but also enforcement of the game rating system at the retail level.


Is this the start of the Ninjatown series, or is this just a one off game?

I certainly hope there are more Ninjatown games! There are many, many ideas being fleshed out right now for fresh stuff. But it’s not up to just me. As of right now I just have my fingers crossed Ninjatown on DS is well received!

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