by: John Olin

November 09, 2005

One of the overlooked parts of Xbox 360 is definitely Xbox Live Arcade, but we finally get to know a little bit more about the development, and so on it what might end up being a huge part of the entire Xbox 360 experience. So we got a chance to ask Steve Taylor, CEO of Ninjabee Studios and Wahoo Studios some questions about his company’s extremely unique Live Arcade title.

XE: Why was Ninjabee Studios founded, and what was the intent of the studio?

Steve:NinjaBee is the independent side of Wahoo Studios. Wahoo Studios focuses on traditional contract development for publishers, and NinjaBee is the name we use for our independent and self-funded projects. The intent of NinjaBee is to create deeper, higher-value independent titles.


XE: What exactly is Outpost Kaloki X about?

Steve:Outpost Kaloki X is a humorous space station tycoon game, with humans, aliens, good guys, bad guys, trade, science, building, destroying, and a whole lot more. Fundamentally, it’s a light-hearted tycoon game designed specifically for the Xbox 360.


XE: How did the game end up on Xbox Live Arcade?

Steve: We originally designed what we thought was a pretty interesting console tycoon game. We pitched it to a bunch of publishers, and were eventually convinced by industry friends of ours to release the game on the PC as an independent title. Outpost Kaloki for PC was well received by critics, which made it easier to show to a couple of key people at Microsoft, who had enough faith in the idea to ask us to do an Xbox360 game. This was a fantastic opportunity for us because we had designed the game to be a console experience in the first place, and to us this was a chance to return to the original vision of the game while adapting the idea to the unique and awesome features of Xbox360 Live Arcade.


XE: How do you think the competition will stack against Outpost Kaloki X with a marketplace, which is relatively new?

Steve: Speaking specifically of Xbox360 Live Arcade, I think the game will compare very positively. There are some exceptional games on Live Arcade, and we’re very excited about the overall value of the service. I’ll certainly be buying Live Arcade games myself. In my horribly biased opinion, I think Outpost Kaloki X is up there with the best of them. In addition, Outpost Kaloki X is very different from every other Live Arcade title! It stretches the initial portfolio of Xbox360 games tremendously, and we think it will have a lot of appeal for someone looking for something unique.


XE: How does the partnership work? Do you keep the game on your own servers, or does Microsoft give the game a certain amount of space? Is the game given limited bandwidth for download?

Steve: In a lot of ways, this game was developed as if it were an internal Microsoft title, and Microsoft treats it the same as all the other titles available on the service. How to handle bandwidth is totally up to the Live Arcade team, since they run the service. The Live Arcade team has some strong rules and guidelines about how games play and what kind of footprint they have on the system, and we had to work within those guidelines. For instance, the final game has to be within a certain size unless there’s a very good reason to make an exception. At the same time, we had a lot of autonomy in how to meet those goals and essentially complete freedom in fundamental game design.


XE:What is different about developing a game for Xbox 360 than the PC?

Steve: Hundreds of things! But our background is mostly in console game development, so for us this felt more natural than the PC work we’ve done. Developing for the Xbox 360 takes a different approach and different technology and resources than developing a PC game. The system is very powerful, and we worked hard to take advantage of as much of the system power as we could, within our budget and time limits. Graphics, file systems, game storage, audio, etc. – all of this was very Xbox360-specific technology developed for this game. Actually, the most unfamiliar (and therefore some of the most interesting) aspects of developing this game were the Arcade and Live features (such as Leaderboards and the downloadable aspect of the game).


XE: How much will it cost to download the game?

Steve: Microsoft gets to talk about this, not us.

XE: Can we expect more games from Ninjabee Studios?

Steve: Absolutely! NinjaBee is currently working on another very cool (and completely different) title, and we have a number of other projects in various stages of conception/production. However, we’re a fairly small studio, so only a few projects are actively being worked on at a time. We’re also very excited about and proud of the projects Wahoo Studios is currently working on for traditional publishers.

XE: You have eight years experience in the game industry--what other titles have you worked on?

Steve: A large number of our team members are experienced game developers, so if you collect them all together, they’ve worked on 30 to 40 unique game titles, including things like Starcraft: Brood War (PC), Rampage World Tour (N64), Rainbow Six (N64), BioFreaks (PlayStation, N64), Advent Rising (Xbox), and a whole lot more. We’ve worked on more than a dozen different platforms, from handheld systems to high-end consoles, which has been a fantastic adventure for us, and something we hope to continue doing for a very long time.


XE: Thank you for your time!

Steve: My pleasure! Thanks for the opportunity to talk about the game!

Look out for Xbox Evolved’s review of Outpost Kaloki X soon.

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