1) Congratulations with the release of your first own studio game. You guys must be thrilled. Any last minute things that need to be worked out or is it time for a release party?
Everything with the game itself is wrapped up now, just a lot of rushing around with marketing and promotional work and praying that people actually enjoy playing it!
2) Can you tell us about why you guys decided that it was time to start working for your own? The steps you took and how it all came together.
We all left Rare around the same time and I guess to summarize the main reasons we were looking for something new to do and wanting to make some games that we wouldn’t get the opportunity to do at Rare. We’d all been there more than 10 years so it was a big change.
We could have all gone off to work at different companies, but realizing that all four of us were looking for something to do it seemed a great opportunity to try actually creating something together. We got started on some prototype work for Xbox since that was what we were familiar with and reached out to contacts, looking for some funding.
We all knew Ken Lobb when he was at Nintendo and Rare was with Nintendo, and then we knew Ken when he was at Microsoft and Rare was bought by Microsoft, and he ended up as a big help forging the deal for Fusion after we set up Starfire. We just can’t get away from him!
We supported ourselves for the first 8-12 months of development so it was fantastic when we got a contract signed and knew the funding was there to keep working on Fusion and finish it.
3) What are the benefits from working with a small team and being your own bosses?
Well it’s cool being in charge! And we can all totally customize anything we want – PC specs, chair, the whole workspace and make sure it’s perfect for us individually. On the game side we each get a bigger input and can make sure the things we want to see get in there.
4) How much does Starfire Studios depend on a hit? I can imagine that with having your own studio, the creation of a first game can result in a lot of pressure. If so, how do you cope with that in a fashion that it doesn’t interfere with the creative process?
Well the more successful it is, the easier things will be in the future. The biggest problems come from actually running a business and having to handle things like accounts, legal contracts, pitching to publishers – all these interfere with actually making the game, and you have to try and minimize the time they take up.
5) As we look at your past productions, none seem to be in the genre and line of Fusion Genesis. When did you come up with the idea for this game and decided that you would create a game in this genre.
Very early on when we were considering our team size and skill sets – spaceships seemed like a good fit. And we were interested in MMO style games but wanted to avoid running servers ourselves so experimenting with some dynamic matchmaking seemed interesting. Hopefully on the next game we can expand the team a bit and do something with characters and animations.
6) Did Microsoft only publish Fusion Genesis, or are you guys an internal MS studio?
We own the company ourselves, so we’re not part of Microsoft, but it was great to continue working with them given our close relationship. They also really helped with some areas of development like the cool UI, story writing and engine optimizations.
7) I played Fusion Genesis for a couple of hours now and it feels absolutely huge and complex. I have a feeling that a regular gamer will need some serious playtime before they figure out about all the options. Did you intend to focus on not creating a casual game ?
Hopefully there are different options to appeal to different gamers If you like a fast blast shooting things up, then maybe you’ll like the warzones. If you want to level up and collect impressive ships and weapons then you can do that. Or if you’re interested in the story then try playing the different factions to discover what is really going on. Hopefully players can find something for their tastes 
8 How long did you work on the title?
Overall it was 2.5 years – a bit longer than we originally planned but the game kept growing
9) As the game looks like a mmo, how do you keep players interested once they witnessed all the things in the game’s universe?
Hopefully the Warzone and the Dark Legion Invasion will be interesting to keep playing as they are like mini-games on their own. The Warzone provides player vs. player team combat, while the Dark Legion Invasion has waves of increasingly difficult AIs to pit your skills against and try to reach the harder difficulties.
10) Could you give us any insights about how you handled the production process from the first drafts to the final product?
It was a very iterative process while moving steadily from the start (with nothing) to the end (originally just a vision). So as anything (e.g. graphics, features, technology) was added to the game we’d consider if it was good enough, or if it needed improving or redoing or if it should be completely removed and done a different way. We were following a plan but had to be prepared to adjust and adapt a lot along the way. Often times you don’t know how well something will work or what implications it will have until you try it – so you get a basic version in first and then keep iterating and refining over time. For example what should the controls and viewpoint be? There are several in the final game, but we tried out many more
11) How big is the development team and what are the team members functions? Who designed the in game 3d models, who the visuals, interface, voice-overs.
There are 4 of us at Starfire:
Chris: design, software (mainly gameplay) & producer stuff
Mark: software (mainly technical)
Phil & Ross: designed & created all the graphics
The music was composed and created by Steve Burke (an old friend from Rare who is now freelance).
And some SFX were done by James Stant (also ex-Rare).
Microsoft helped out later on with story writing and a makeover of the interface, plus some performance optimisations. They also provided the voice overs, localization and tons & tons of testing!
12) One of the benefits of xbox live arcade is to create ‘smaller’ games. If you got the opportunity to do another big budget full release xbox game, would you do it or would you rather stick with a smaller team to develop arcadegames.
XBLA is cool for trying out new things as there is less risk with a smaller budget. But obviously the full big budget games have higher quality and more content. We can certainly think of more games of both types we would like to make in the future – we just need the funding
13) Will there be dlc?
Nope there is not any planned currently. But we have a ton of ideas we’d love to be able to add if we ever got the chance. Or perhaps they will appear in another future game.
14) How does the windowsphone7 variant fit into Fusion Genesis? Please tell us more about the WP7 version.
Fusion: Sentient is a cool separate game in it’s own right – very RTS-like where you control Sentients in their ground based form and level them up. Sentients can then be swapped & traded both ways between Fusion: Sentient on WP7 and Fusion: Genesis on XBLA. In Fusion: Genesis the Sentients take control of drones which fly around your ship in formation and help boost your powers in various ways e.g. with special offensive or defensive abilities. Obviously higher level sentients are more powerful so being able to move Sentients between the two games can make you more powerful in the other game much more easily. By playing both games you also learn more about the storylines threading through the Fusion universe.
15) Whats next? Same category, dlc, a follow-up or in ’old-old-rare tradition’something completely else?
“And now for something completely different” – is very probably it! We’re incubating a few ideas, so we’ll see which emerges.
16) Now that you have worked quite some time on this game for your own, do you miss your old working desk at Rare?
I have to say I prefer my current desk as the hardware is setup perfectly for me What I do miss is that the social aspect is smaller when there is only 4 people in the company. And I also wish I still had access to all the Microsoft internal software resources.
17) If you learned one thing from Rare on how to run you own studio, what would be it?
If you learned one thing not to do….what would be that?
Don’t do interviews … oh …!
Many thanks for all your answers and we wish you the best.
