OMG Nintendo

Since Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People was a WiiWare game so big it had to be five games, it seemed fitting to give it two interviews as part of the "one year of WiiWare" feature. This time we're talking to Telltale Games's Mark Darin, Lead Designer of the Strong Bad series. Darin has since moved on to other projects at Telltale, ones he says he's not allowed to speak about yet. He's evasive when asked about whether they might be for Wii or WiiWare, of course...

The interview starts behind the cut. Click onward if you want to read about the ideas Telltale had to leave on the cutting room floor, why Telltale likes using licensed IP so much, and why Telltale wanted to bring Strong Bad to Wii to begin with.

OMGN: So where did Telltale get the idea to go after the Strong Bad license? 

Darin: Telltale is always looking for new licenses that fit our episodic model and we knew that the Chaps had a crazily popular Web cartoon that already had a kind of episodic model. There were a lot of people in the office who were fans of it already and we found out they were fans of ours. So we decided to strike up a relationship, to create a story-based game and just thought it would be a really nice collaborative relationship. They were very excited.

OMGN: I've always been curious about this-- why does Telltale always look for licenses instead of developing original IP of its own?

Darin: It just fit our company at the time and we're constantly growing, but we wanted to get some licenses that people were familiar with, since episodic gaming at the time was kind of risky. So instead of starting off with an original IP people might be hesitant to get into, we want to give them something they're familiar with and feel comfortable with saying, "Yeah, I want to be a part of this ride." And as we move forward and get more recognition and people understand what episodic gaming is, we can start looking at original IPs. We don't have anything right now and we have a lot of really great licenses.

OMGN: So what did you differently with Strong Bad, in terms of game design, than you might do with a PC-only project?

Darin: Since I was lead designer, one of the things I knew I wanted to do differently, and knowing we would be on WiiWare, was design with a console audience in mind. So we wanted to design things like the Videlectrix mini-games and add collectibles and kind of an achievement-based thing so players can see their stats, which were a staple in console gaming at the time. I think we were fairly successful. So that was really my mian focus, which was the straight adventures we'd do in the past, give them a little something else to do.

OMGN: At what point did the game become a WiiWare project as opposed to strictly a PC project?

Darin: I believe we knew that right from the beginning to talk about doing a WiiWare project, we went in pitching the Strong Bad game at that time. So we knew we were doing this for Nintendo from the beginning.

OMGN: What was Nintendo's role in getting the game ready for WiiWare early on?

Darin: I don't know specifically what their role was in getting the game ready. We worked with them on how we were going to get the game out to the audience, I know there was a lot of interest with Nintendo and we wanted to be in that launch window. Nintendo thought it would be good for htem to have something like this right out of the gate. As far as actual game development Nintendo didn't contribute. They had a very nice submission process and review and wanted to know what was going into the game so they didn't restrict our designs in any way. They're very open to the independent developer doing what they want to do.

OMGN: Was it difficult keeping the game within the WiiWare size limits?

Darin: Only a little bit, actually. We were always concerned with that initially, 40 MB is a really small size to work with, but the tech side of our company was really able to squeeze everything down and really fit it into that footprint. There was never a point where we were struggling. We knew from the outset what we were designing for and I still can't bleieve how they did it, but they did it great! It never caused the designers any grief.

OMGN: What was your reaction when firmware 4.0 hit and sales doubled?

Darin: We had a little celebration, we were really happy to hear that because we know one of the things working against us was that limitation for keeping games on Wii. So some people weren't getting all fo the Strong Bad games but now people that were hesitant were buying 'em up.  So there was general excitement about that. WiiWare is open up wide to us now that the limitation is lifted a bit.

OMGN: Did you have any idea that Nintendo was going to be adding the enhanced SD card support to the new firmware, going into GDC?

Darin: Not really. We had heard the rumors circulating around that something was going to be released. It wasn't something we were given inside knowledge about.

OMGN: Will we see more Telltale content on WiiWare again in the future?

Darin: Yeah, we're open to WiiWare. We've liked working with WiiWare quite a bit and we would love to do more games on WiiWare. If we get the opportuntiy we absolutely will.

OMGN: Would you go back with a new Homestar Runner game? 

Darin: We'd really like to go back with the Homestar Runner license, but we're giving the Chapmans a break. It's a big strain on them, but it's certainly not off the table.

OMGN: Any chance of Strong Bad appearing in other forms on Wii? Say, a disc collection?

Darin: I don't know what the status of that is either. I know it was something we were looking into, but I don't know where it is at the moment.

OMGN: Strong Bad was an interesting property for Telltale to license. What other sorts of licenses might you pursue in the future?

Darin: We're always looking for licenses that have good stories and good characters. The focus of the company is telling stories with really good memorable characters. We pitch a lot of different things from television shows to comics so it could really come from anywhere as long as we feel satisfied that it's going to tell a story.

OMGN: Is Telltale more interested in humor licenses than other sorts of IP?

Darin: We like to have fun in the office and we have a lot of funny guys who are designers and writers so it's a nice comfortabe area. We're sticking with that in the time being but we don't want to restrict ourselves. We would like to get something a little less silly or frightening as long as it's got those good characters and we can tell it in an episodic way.

OMGN: So, I'm a big Bone fan, and I've been wondering: any chance of Telltale revisiting that IP  in the future?

Darin: That one I don't have a whole lot of informatiion on. I think we don't have any plans to go back right now. I don't think that's one we're considerng going forward with. We've got a number of other licenses we're excited about right now. I think the Bone games originally didn't quite capture the audience we were looking for. So we've moved a little bit away from that.

OMGN: Is there any chance of seeing Wallace & Gromit appear on WiiWare? 

Darin: I'm relatively certain it would not appear on WiiWare. The games themselves are much too large to fit into the WiiWare size. I don't think we could shrink those down to fit into WiiWare. Of course, I'm not the one who makes the decision about whether it goes to WiiWare or not. Now, I don't know if they're thinking of doing a Wii release at retail or not.

OMGN: So, as a final question, what was the most challenging aspect of designing the Strong Bad game? 

Darin: When we first sat down with the Chaps we brought them to our studio and spent a few days just brianstorming the kind of stories we'd want to do, and what would be the kind of stories you'd see on the Homestar website. The Chapmans are so great, they really acted ike surrogate game designers with us. They were there every day and they'd take a look at scripts and give feedback or, "That's not quite what Strong Bad would do, let's try it like this." It helps keep things really genuine. So keeping it to the things the Chapmans would do, that was easy.

I think maybe one thing we talked about doing that wasn't really possible to do, since there's different versions of the characters like Old-Tmey Strong Bad or Strong Badman, we thought about sending Strong Bad through different dimensions. We just weren't able to pull it off because of the time and size constraints to fit it onto WiiWare, to duplicate all the worlds in their different incarnations.