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How did Infinitap born?

Posted: Sat Oct 26, 2013 1:32 am
by Stefan8000
hi,

i want to know, how and when dir infinitap reach the light of the world? have you, matt, worked anywhere else before that?

regards,
stefan

Re: How did Infinitap born?

Posted: Sat Oct 26, 2013 1:15 pm
by matt
Hi Stefan,

After college I worked at Heavy Iron Studios with Daniel Sass (who is programming on Neverending Nightmares). I was there for 2 years and then High Impact Games for 3. I started 24 Caret Games in 2008 with Justin Wilder (a coworker from both High Impact Games and Heavy Iron). Eventually we brought on Joe Grabowski to do the art on Retro/Grade.

I was running out of money during the development of Retro/Grade, so I took some mobile contracting work to help make ends meet. Justin wasn't interested, so I formed a new company, Infinitap Games. Joe worked on it with me as did Chris Ewald.

After Retro/Grade finished (and was very unsuccessful), Justin had to get a paying job, but I decided to try one last time with Infinitap Games. I drafted Dan, Chris, Joe, and Joe's brother to help with Neverending Nightmares.

That's my basic work story!

Re: How did Infinitap born?

Posted: Sat Oct 26, 2013 2:22 pm
by RightClickSaveAs
Sorry if this was covered elsewhere, but what's your main technical background Matt? Are you primarily a programmer?

Re: How did Infinitap born?

Posted: Sat Oct 26, 2013 2:25 pm
by matt
Yeah, I have a computer science degree and was the lead gameplay programmer at High Impact Games. Doing gameplay programming well takes game design skills, so I feel pretty comfortable with design as well.

Having a background in programming is the best way to go indie because without programmers, you can't make a game. The interactivity is what makes a game and that has to be programmed (or scripted, but that's fairly similar).

Re: How did Infinitap born?

Posted: Sun Oct 27, 2013 12:00 pm
by RightClickSaveAs
Oh cool, I thought I'd heard you mention being a programmer on one of the videos but I couldn't remember for sure. That makes sense to have that background, I'd imagine someone would have to be one hell of an artist and/or animator and/or writer to start an indie game without that skillset.

I was never good at programming, I took a couple courses but I just don't have the math brain required to do it well. I remember as a teenager wanting to get into level design, in the early FPS days of games like Duke Nukem 3D and such, where you could create the majority of the game content on your own within the level editor. Now I don't even know if that specific thing exists, maybe in some of the big studio titles, but I'd imagine you'd also have to know how to do texture art, modeling and scripting to be any good.

Re: How did Infinitap born?

Posted: Sun Oct 27, 2013 8:19 pm
by matt
"Game designers" on big studio titles sometimes have no artistic or programming skills whatsoever. They just make docs, maps, and provide feedback. It seems like a lot of more designers are doing scripting though, which is a form of programming. A lot of big studios use Unreal, which has a visual scripting language that might be easier to parse.

Indies need at least one person on the team who can program - otherwise they don't have a game. While I'm sure he can do some programming, Brandon Chung (of Blendo Games) was a designer (and never a programmer), and often makes games in open sourced id tech. 30 Flights of Loving was in Quake 2 and Quadrilateral Cowboy is in Doom 3. He has a brilliant art style that doesn't require a ton of art skills.

While Unity is a popular solution, having a AAA game engine seems promising if you want to do very little coding although still scripting. Basically, you can make a "mod" and charge for it if you are using old enough tech..

Re: How did Infinitap born?

Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 7:53 pm
by Cridone
It's very sad to see that Retro/Grade was underrated and 24 Caret Games died immediately as it was born, because I don't just see a company as a name to stick on your games; I see it as this team, or one person, who worked hard to achieve that company name. And seeing them die when they've only released on game is just sad.

Personally, I always had the idea of company names in my head (a thousand of them! All with little special logos I thought of), so seeing Infintap not being successful and falling like all the other indie companies would really make me heart broken.

So I hope your next game after Neverending Nightmares is just as successful or maybe even more! :3

(I probably sound like I'm sucking up to you, but I really mean what I said)

Re: How did Infinitap born?

Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2014 11:30 pm
by matt
Sometimes in indie development teams last just for one game. 2D Boy (creator of the legendary indie game World of Goo) went on to work on games separately.

I hope Infinitap can be around for a very long time! I am trying to build a company that will last. We have plenty of plans for the future! It can be tough to keep an indie studio running (as I learned with 24 Caret Games), but so far, things are going fairly well with Infinitap. :)

Re: How did Infinitap born?

Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 3:22 am
by Cridone
I feel pretty silly for not asking this in my old reply, how did you come up with the name Infinitap Games?

Re: How did Infinitap born?

Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2015 9:51 pm
by matt
Well, it is a lame story, and one that I was hoping to ret-con if I could. The totally ret-conned explanation of the name is that it that we have a tap to the infinite, but the ACTUAL story is much lamer. Infinitap was actually formed in 2011 when I was still working on Retro/Grade because I needed money, and I was presented with a f2p mobile contracting gig from some friends who found success in that area. Justin (my partner for 24 Caret Games) wasn't interested, so I needed a new company.

I didn't put a lot of thought in the name. Most popular mobile companies had "tap" in the title, so I was boring and came up with something with tap in the title. I asked my wife what she thought, and she didn't hate it, so I created the LLC. hahah

It was supposed to be a little side contracting thing, but my partner quit 24 Caret, so I needed a company that was just mine, and I already had one set up. :)