“We like to make games using parody and satire, so we’re always challenging ourselves,” said Shaun Britton during Casual Connect Asia 2014. “We really think about a sentimental sort of game-play as well, so we design games that look like they were designed in the 80s. People will look at the games that we’ve got and enjoy the experience because they had a game that was similar.”
Shaun Britton is one half of the two-man team that makes up Clicker Interactive, an interactive design agency based in Melbourne, Australia. Britton does the art and design while Bill Trikojus, the other half of the team, is responsible for the coding and development. The business began when the two met at Swinburne University of Technology, where they both teach game design. They both had a keen interest in old retro games, especially those from the 1980s, and decided they would start making games, as well as teaching others to do it.
Balancing Act
Britton finds that his work is very much a balancing act between game design and academia. He teaches game design and animation during the day and designs games after hours. He has discovered these complement each other well, because effective design teaching comes from practicing designers imparting their knowledge. He says, “At the university, we are constantly surrounded by discussions about best practice techniques from peers, the latest use of technology from design departments and current gaming community trends from students.”
For many years, Britton worked for Warner Bros. and Walt Disney, surrounded by the best in storytelling, animation, and character design, a background which has given him a huge advantage in Clicker Interactive. At these companies, he had intense training in design from the best designers in the business. As a result, he still has a very international involvement in the character design industry and an attention to detail in everything he does in character and game development.
Clicker Interactive is still a new business, but there already has been considerable interest in what they are doing. They won a grant from Film Victoria, a government film body in Australia; they expect this will make a big difference in moving forward with their game releases. Britton states, “We’re very proud of what we’ve done so far, and to receive this sort of help really cements our confidence in the business we are doing.”
Britton’s simultaneous careers, teaching animation and designing games in the mobile game industry, leave him little time for other interests. He insists, “I still try to design characters every day, but with so much on, character design sometimes turns into more of a hobby now!” But he does make time to play a few games to make sure he knows what he is doing with game development.
Recently, he has been playing Minecraft on Xbox 360, finding it a great game to play with his son. They both enjoy the time spent together building in their worlds. The retro feel of the game appeals to him, while the mix of construction and danger makes for a unique experience. He prefers, as a character designer, to play games with strong characters and great graphics. The Halo and Oddworld series are games of this type that stand out for him.
More Mobile Opportunities
Britton sees more opportunities coming in mobile game development as the use of higher resolution tablets grows. “Even in 2D game design,” he says, “the opportunities to develop characters and environments with greater detail is very exciting. When we did our first two games, we tested them on various tablets, and the experience playing on the tablet with double the resolution of the others made all the hard work worthwhile.” Because they are experimenting with retro handheld “demakes”, the modern, lighter tablets made the game experience “seem more like the original handhelds, especially when we used one closer in size to the original devices.” He insists that lighter, more powerful tablets allow designers to present players with what they intend to show them, and not have to compromise on the quality of the gameplay and the graphics because of the technology at the end of the process.
Britton will now be looking closely at what is possible with these newer, more powerful tablets and mobile devices. He expects that these devices will have the capacity to support many of the design choices that have been challenging in the past, including added character animation and animation effects, more detailed characters, backgrounds and levels, and more sophisticated gameplay. He maintains, “Even with the 2D graphic presentation in retro games such as ours, the higher resolution and lighter tablets mean that our games are played in the best possible environment.”
Britton believes the greatest impact for the games industry in the next few years will come from these tablets. He says, “The use of tablets for more than just mobile gameplay looks interesting, such as, for instance, the tablet feature in the console game Watch Dogs. Imagine a tablet used to enhance these sorts of AAA games, by giving a player control over a portion of the gameplay, or displaying maps or other elements. Tablets used as windows to display virtual or augmented reality as part of any sort of gameplay is an exciting advance as well.”
Comments
