Next Q&ERA! Submit your questions to Axiom Verge's Thomas Happ and Dan Adelman

[Q&ERA]

Q&ERA offers an opportunity for our community to learn more about the gaming industry from those that are part of it. This involves batches of questions, submitted by users and then selected by staff, which will then be given to industry members to answer. Our intent is to bridge the divide between the gaming community and the gaming industry. We want to encourage engagement between those who talk about games and those who make them. (Note: Questions will be curated as interviewees won't have time to answer every single one. Also, there may be certain topics that interviewees are not able or allowed to comment on.)

Introducing our guests: Thomas Happ and Dan Adelman, the people behind Axiom Verge!

About the game: Axiom Verge was created as a love letter to the original Metroid. The story is about a scientist named Trace who awakens in the alien world of Sudra. Axiom Verge is available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Wii U, Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Tom Happ

Tom Happ is responsible for all of the game design, programming, music and art behind Axiom Verge. Working alone, he began development on Axiom Verge in March 2010 and spent five years developing the game. The game was finally released for PS4 on March 2015. It would later be ported to other platforms such as Wii U, Switch, and Xbox One. Before Axiom Verge, Tom had previously worked on Triple-A games such as Grey Goo, NFL Street, and Tiger Woods.

You can follow Tom Happ on Twitter over at @AxiomVerge.

Dan Adelman

As the producer of Axiom Verge, Dan Adelman provides Tom with assistance in business development, marketing, and negotiating.

From 2001 through 2005, Dan Adelman was the Business Development Manager for Microsoft's Xbox business where he helped launch Xbox Live Arcade. During his time at Xbox, he negotiated contracts with third party publishers for Xbox content, including deals such as "Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic" with Lucas Arts.

From 2005 through 2014, Dan Adelman was the Head of Digital Content and Development at Nintendo of America. During his nine years at Nintendo of America, Adelman launched and managed four digital distribution platforms: WiiWare (Wi), DSiWare (Nintendo DSi), Nintendo 3DS eShop, and Wii U eShop. He also played a role in the launch of the Wii's Virtual Console service. As Nintendo's indie chief, he helped discover and foster major indie games such as Shovel Knight, World of Goo, Retro City Rampage, the BIT.TRIP series, Super Meat Boy, Cave Story, and many others.

You can follow Dan on Twitter over at @Dan_Adelman.

How to submit questions:

To submit your questions to Thomas Happ and Dan Adelman, please send me a private message titled, "Q&A - Axiom Verge".

In your private message, you may ask up to two questions. To send a pm - click on a user's profile page and then "start a conversation."

This is not a live format! You must submit your questions properly for them to be considered!

Deadline to submit questions:

March 2nd, 2018 at 5:00 AM GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)

 

[Q&ERA]

What type of questions may I ask?

You may ask Tom and Dan any questions related to Axiom Verge.

You're also free to ask Dan any general questions about his time and experiences spent at Microsoft and Nintendo of America.

Reminder: To submit your questions to Thomas Happ and Dan Adelman, please send me a private message titled, "Q&A - Axiom Verge".

 

[Deleted member 3321]

Last time on Q&ERA, Chucklefish answered your questions about Starbound, Stardew Valley, Wargroove and more!

If you missed it, those questions and answers can be found in the archives here.

 

[7threst]

Just wanrwa to say that Q&ERA is such a great concept, great work :)

 

[Deleted member 16039]

My, this forum is amazing ! Congrats to the Era team !

 

[Extra Sauce]

Tom, do you know which game you are working on next? If so, when are fans likely to hear about it?

edit: Submitted now. Sorry for being that ass who doesn't read instructions...

 

[AztecComplex]

How viable was the WiiWare platform? The Wii's anemic online infrastructure as well as paltry storage made me never want to venture into buying WiiWare games and stuck to VC because their sizes were neglible. Was it difficult to court developers and publishers for WiiWare?

I still want to play Castlevania The Adventure Rebirth but for some reason it continues to languish on WiiWare and soon will dissappear unless Konami ports it! I cant imagine that game being a big hit, even for WiiWare standards.

 

[Why would you do that?]

Oh, I'm looking forward to this one. I bought the cartridge on Switch and I really enjoyed it a lot. It came with some cool extras, too.

Interestingly, Axiom Verge introduced me to Monogame, so I've been using it in my own personal projects ever since. I'll probably ask a question or two regarding this choice of technology.

 

[Red Arremer]

Sent in my questions. Thanks again to the ERA team, as well as Tom and Dan. :)

 

[Davidion]

I've no question but this is a great thing to see. <3 Axiom Verge

 

[Servbot24]

Submitted: How did you personally manage the long development process? Did you have to hold another job, and how was it managing your time and staying focused/motivated?

 

[SweetNicole]

Tom, do you know which game you are working on next? If so, when are fans likely to hear about it?

Click to shrink...

Reminder you need to PM questions to the Q&ERA account if you want a chance for them to be asked.

 

[Skip2baloo]

Awesome! Submitted these 2 questions:

Question 1: In the time where Metroidvania and Souls-like games are common in the indie scene, how confident were you that Axiom Verge would be a success or how concerned were that it would fail?

Question 2: After swapping from AAA games to indie titles, could you imagine to go back to AAA productions?

 

[Based0ne]

Holy cow speak of the devil, just rebought the game (multiverse edition on switch) and an remembering why I fell in love with the game. Will be asking a question once I'm off work!

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

Oops - Submitted the question properly now

 

[Prevolition]

Perfect timing. I'm playing through the game for the first time as we speak! (On Switch. It's glorious)

 

[Popetita]

I would love to know if they have plans for ng+. The game is perfect for it.

 

[Kickmaster Kim]

Submitted my question, let's get in.

 

[sabrina]

Yo, Tom is such a good guy. He really loves the indie community and bringing attention to projects that look cool. I have nothing but good things to say about him, and on top of that he also made a really good Metroid game >:D

 

[Jonneh]

Hi Dan, considering you have a long history with digital ecosystems, including previous eShop, I was wondering what your impressions are of the current Switch store?

 

[winkyface]

Submitted: How did you personally manage the long development process? Did you have to hold another job, and how was it managing your time and staying focused/motivated?

Click to shrink...

Nice question.

 

[SasukeTheRipper]

This is great! I am going to buy the Switch version anytime soon :)

 

[Kickmaster Kim]

Submitted: How did you personally manage the long development process? Did you have to hold another job, and how was it managing your time and staying focused/motivated?

Click to shrink...

I guess this is a good substitute for what I asked. I am really surprised this game was only made by two people. That's insane to me. I've been trying to make one myself for years and been failing. Got a team right now and getting some progress.

 

[TheFacelessBot]

Hi,

I just have one general question for you guys. Back in the 80's and 90's making a retro style game was an expensive process I assume cz making games was never cheap. However, in the modern times how much does it cost to make such a game? Compared to the 80's and the 90's.

 

[4859]

Hope I did this right. Saw no option for a pm on my mobile on the linked to page, only an option to 'start a conversation'. So that is what I did to submit my qestions:

I feel like I need to explain where I'm coming from with my question, as this is my personal terminology for this concept.

Which I call hard lock, and soft lock, progression design

To elucidate, i will explain what hard/soft locks mean to me.

Hard locks are very straight forward so they are first. A hard lock is a very specific progression gate, where the player literally can not pass, without the item. So say, a certain weapon, that destroys a certain block, or opens a certain door. A very binary progression gate.

A soft lock is more systemic, or analog in nature. This would be something like the iten granting the ability to jump higher, or double jump, wall jump, or glide after jumping... of course there is more than jumping, your teleport power fits well here. Or the ability to walk on walls or ceilings, or maybe a grappling hook, or freezing enemies turning them into makeshift platforms.

Items the player can use anywhere, as a general use utility, as opposed to just a key to open a disguised door only to be used one specific way. Which tend to be used by players in many unanticipated ways (to the extreme ire of pre botw nintendo) creating their own playstyle and forging their own path through the game, via sequence breaking.

The ease of design usability and player predictability for hard locks is a definite boon, and the need for extensive testing on soft locks is bound to be tedious.

But I have noticed quite consistently that time and time again the metroid likes/metroidvanias that stand the test of time/stand out from the crowd have always been the ones that had strong soft lock design for at least one or two powers. They also tend to have vastly superior world/level design, as you literally have to change the landscape to make soft locks work, but merely need to have a locked path for a hard lock to work.

As franchises in this criminally rare design genre tend to progress, they start having less and less and less soft lock design, as more of the progression is handled by the easier to implement hard lock progression gating. Losing favor with the fans, and leading to the first games were the best syndrome. The games seem to live and die by their powerups. When the powerups get stale, become to many hard lock based, or basically become cosmetic rehashes of prior concepts, fans start picking up on it.

1. What if any, are your personal terms for these two different but necessary solutions to progression design in metroid likes?

2. What struggles did you have balancing hard lock and soft lock design, do you feel its going to be harder to have engaging new soft lock design in future titles?

 

[Why would you do that?]

Hope I did this right. Saw no option for a pm on my mobile on the linked to page, only an option to 'start a conversation'.

Click to shrink...

In Xenforo, a Conversation is the name for a Private Message. So that's the right place to submit the question.

 

[Shan]

Looking forward to the Q&A, i looooooved this game.

 

[Thatguy]

I just beat this boss last night. You can hide on a shelf in the bottom left and just shoot exploding shots to beat it. Just dont move and all his bullets hit the wall around you. >:D

 

[Deleted member 3321]

The deadline to submit questions has passed. Big thanks to everyone who submitted questions.