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XE: How did your job at Wideload Games come about and what do you do there?
Matt: I write a lot of the stories and dialog for the games and coordinate the efforts of other writers who do contract work for us. I also direct the voice actors and work on the music with Mike Salvatori.
Recently, Wideload’s President Tom Kang appointed me Editor-in-Chief of GRRnews.com – the Animal Kingdom’s online news outlet that is sponsored by Hail to the Chimp.
My job at Wideload came about after I left my previous job at Bungie, where I had worked with Alex Seropian for eight years. We both ended up in Chicago and when he started Wideload he invited me to be part of it. In other words…it was a lucky break.
XE: A lot of people out there either know nothing about Hail to the Chimp, or they are confused about it—what can you tell us?
Matt:The basic premise of the game is that the king of all the animals, the lion, has been deposed after a scandal – and the rest of the animal kingdom decides to ditch the whole monarchy concept and embrace the democratic ideal. Animal elections are a little more rough-and-tumble than the human variety, but the one thing they have in common is that the winner is usually the candidate who has the most clams. Although in the animals’ case, it’s not just a figure of speech; they are literally collecting clams, which are like the Electoral College of the animal kingdom. You play one of the ten animal candidates vying for the Presidency; your goal is to meet your opponents on the campaign trail, in a variety of locations with different election rules, and grab enough clams along the way to win the highest office in the land. All of this is reported live on GRR News, the animal cable news network: talking heads talk, pundits bloviate, and the proceedings are occasionally interrupted by advertisements for animal hair care products.
XE: When did the idea for Hail to the Chimp come about?
Matt: Matt Segur, who is a programmer and designer at Wideload, first described the game idea to the rest of us at a Wideload Game Design Party about six months before Stubbs shipped. At the time it was called “Happy Happy Fun Animal Party” or something like that, and it was just a bare-bones idea for the central gameplay mechanic. Later, after Stubbs shipped and we wanted to start working on a new project, I came up with some different scenarios to serve as backstory/flavor for the game. The “presidential race as televised on animal CNN” was the one that seemed to work the best. The working title for the game at that point was “Animal Panic” but we spent some time trying to come up with a new name that would encompass all these disparate ideas, and “Hail to the Chimp” was the eventual winner.
XE: The game is a party game, and traditionally party games have been a hit or miss affair, whom would you say this is geared towards?
Matt: I think all of our games are geared toward people like us – we’ve all played lots of games, we know what’s out there, and we want something a little different. There’s no game that can be all things to all people, but we think Hail to the Chimp does a good job of being simple enough for casual gamers to understand, complex enough for hardcore gamers to appreciate, and amusing enough to keep both groups entertained.
XE: What makes this better than other party games out there, or is it just a party game wrapped up with political satire?
Matt: Hail to the Chimp focuses on an easy-to-grasp gameplay mechanic with a lot of depth. Rather than throwing a bunch of minigames into a pot and hoping a few of them turn out to be fun, Hail to the Chimp winnows the gameplay down to the fun parts and lets you explore them in a variety of gametypes. Some of those gametypes are recognizable variants of time-tested multiplayer favorites like King of the Hill, and some are completely new. It’s not like any other party game I’ve ever played.
XE: Why team with Gamecock Media?
Matt: We’d known Mike and Harry (founders) for a long time. They’re both nice guys. Their plan for a developer-friendly publisher was a good fit for us; we’ve had to bail on other deals because the publisher wanted too much creative control over our games and/or our intellectual property. From the start, Gamecock has been very supportive of what we do and how we do it.
XE: Who will win in 2008? Hilary, Giuliani, Colbert, or Paul? Colbert and Paul on the same ticket perhaps?
Matt: One bittersweet side effect of working on Hail to the Chimp is that I can no longer take any human politicians seriously. The ones in our game are so much more appealing. My vote goes for Ptolemy the hippo.
XE: So how does Gamecock’s E.I.E.I.O. differ from the other industry shows out there?
Matt: What we like about EIEIO is that it's focused on the games, not a publisher spending-war on crazy circular displays that blast off into space or sound systems that would give the Who a headache. Unlike E3, EIEIO gives us a chance to show the press and retail what we've been working on in a much more relaxed and appropriate setting.
XE: Any plans to bring Cyclomite to XBLA? What can you tell us about it?
Matt: The beauty of the Shorts games is that they’re small enough to be deployed on multiple platforms in a reasonable amount of time. Wideload Shorts team is open to exploring any platform that makes sense, so it’s entirely possible that Cyclomite will end up in more than one place. We’ll have more to say about it in the very near future.
XE: Any other XBLA titles for this year?
Matt: Too early to say…but watch the skies!
XE: Just one last question—Stubbs the Zombie was a great start for you guys, I personally loved it—when can we expect to see Stubbs 2?
Matt:I’m glad to hear that – Stubbs is near and dear to all of us, and we’ve heard from lots of people who would like to see more of him. I can’t say anything specific right now, but it’s safe to say he’ll be back. They say you can’t keep a good man down, and that goes double for the ones with an insatiable hunger for brains.
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