• Developer name: Brian Robbins
• Company Website
• Company Name: Fuel Games
• Apps at the App Store:2
• Location:Denver & Ontario

About Dev

Tell us a little about you, and your current company.

I am the Studio Head for Fuel Games Denver, the Denver-based production studio for Fuel Industries. Our main office is based in Ottawa, Ontario where we have a team of almost 100 people. We’re a branded entertainment company that develops cutting edge electronic entertainment for a variety of audiences and applications. Some of our most recent projects have been  All Girl Arcade, a tween-girl focused entertainment site, the Fairies & Dragons digital Happy Meal for McDonalds Europe, and Tinker, a free Windows Vista Ultimate Extra game.

Our Denver studio is currently focused on iPhone development though we’re actively evaluating other new platforms as well.  Our overall goal is to build games that are designed for, and take advantage of, the platforms they are built on. We don’t want to just port games that don’t make sense onto the iPhone or any other device, we want to build games that feel at home where they are.  We have several projects currently under development that should be coming out over the next few months.

About your background: what did you do before taking up iPhone development?

I have been creating web-based games for almost 10 years and the vast majority of that time has been spent working on smaller and innovative platforms that let us experiment with gameplay and ideas that traditional console or large-scale PC development doesn’t allow for. I get the most enjoyment from finding new ways to entertain people and create ways to interact with games that nobody has done before.

About your Work:

What apps have you developed so far? Tell us about your apps in brief.

Our first iPhone game was Spinner Prologue and its follow-up, Spinner Deluxe. This is a simple game where you rotate your iPhone in order to direct the arrow through a maze. The goal is to navigate the entire maze without touching any of the walls. This title launched last July and has been downloaded over 800,000 times.
Our most recent game is Sushi Toss which was just released in early February. This is the first in a series of All Girl Arcade titles that we will be bringing to the iPhone. In it your goal is to toss Sushi from the chef at the bottom of the screen up to Jessy, one of the All Girl Star Squad Gamers. This has been one of our most popular games on AllGirlArcade.com and we feel like it translated very well to the iPhone platform.

We also just recently announced a skateboarding game we’ve been working on in conjunction with Vans. The game, called VANS SK8 - Pool Service, features two of Vans’ premier riders, Bucky Lasek and Omar Hassan. The core gameplay allows you to play as Bucky or Omar as you skate, jump and grind around a fully realized 3D pool environment. Players will be able to customize their board and wheels as they progress through a series of 10 events in what we believe will be one of the first console-like full action sports games on the iPhone.

How do you go from idea to app? What’s the process?

Once we have an idea for a game that we think will be successful, we start fleshing out what the game experience will be. Typically this means concentrating on the core game experience: what the player is actually doing the majority of the time while playing the game. In the case of Pool Service, this meant thinking about and brainstorming ideas for how the player navigates the pools, performs tricks, and truly plays the game.

When we have some ideas for what we want the gameplay to be, we’ll start working on basic prototypes to get the gameplay working as early as possible. At this point things will be rough, but we can start to get a feel for which of our ideas actually translate from paper and words into compelling gameplay.

While these gameplay tests are happening we’ll be working on fleshing out more of the meta-game: the long-term goals of the title. Again using Vans as an example, if the gameplay is how you skate around the pool, swipe to perform tricks, etc. then the meta-game is the career mode, events and achievements that you unlock which surrounds the core pool-skating gameplay.

As we refine the game and meta-game we start to build out the graphic treatments, audio and fill in the rest of the application. At this stage of development we’ll have the most people working on the project refining the base gameplay, incorporating the meta-game, and polishing up the entire experience to get the final game ready for release.

The last step in the process is putting in final polish elements, making any final tweaks to the gameplay, and ensuring that the game runs smoothly and delivers the overall experience we’re trying to achieve.

Any exciting stuff you are working on? Give our readers a hint of what to expect from you next.

The most exciting title I’m able to talk about right now is our Vans skateboarding game. We’ve spent a lot of time making this into something we think people are really going to love, and we can’t wait to hear what players think of it.

Beyond that we’re working on a few things that bring other platforms and technologies into the always connected, touch-screen and accelerometer driven iPhone. There’s some extremely exciting possibilities there we’re taking a look at and I should be able to share more about them in the coming months.

Do you develop for other platforms? How do you compare the iPhone development platform with other platforms?

Fuel Industries has developed for a large variety of platforms ranging from web and PC titles, through to console development. With everything we always try to take advantage of what the platform has to offer. One of the things that we love about the iPhone is that we can build small titles, experiment with gameplay and focus on finding the best ways to bring fun to the player.

Tell us something about how users are responding to your apps. What’s the most flattering comment you have received? Or the weirdest?

So far we’ve been very happy at the response our applications have received. Even our simplest title, Spinner has gotten rave reviews, and people seem to love the simplistic experience we tried to deliver. Perhaps the most flattering comment that I’ve seen so far was in response to our recent Vans gameplay test video, where several people commented that they thought it would make the first game title they would actually purchase!

About the App Store:

Name two iPhone apps you consider are cool, excluding the apps you’ve developed. What makes these apps stand out?

Shazam has been one of my favorite apps for showing off the iPhone to my friends. I’m a tech guy and always have some kind of gadget that I’m excited about, but nothing has been able to beat the pure coolness factor of being able to show off my iPhone by holding it up to the radio and having it tell us exactly what song is playing at the time.

Touch Grind is also a good one because they’ve set a high bar for us to compete with on iPhone skateboarding games, though we’re going for a different gameplay experience than they have.

Any message to your fellow developers?

Keep up the great work! There’s a lot of really incredible games and applications out there and it’s good to see what everyone is coming up with. Together we’re all finding new ways to entertain people and at the end of the day that’s the most exciting thing for me.

Thanks Brian for your time