Hi guys,
I
am very happy to bring to you all today an interview with the wonderful
James Marsden, owener of FuturLab. He is the reason we all have the
wonderful series that is, Velocity. There is no excuse for you not to
have played it as it is truely amazing, and it has been part of PS+! I
hope this interview gives you an insight into the working mind of James
and FuturLab, I would pay particular attention to the last answer!
1: Was it daunting taking the Velocity series onto next gen?
It
was a little daunting trying to find the right people, but honestly
once we hired the team there were no worries, at least from me.
2: Is there any more DLC planned now Critical Urgency and Dual Core have been released?
That’d be telling…
3: How did Velocity 2X come to be part of the Instant Game Collection for the PS+?
Our
goal has always been to make our partners look good, and in the case
of the Velocity series, it’s been making PlayStation look good. Of
course we care about the players, but our business relies on companies
like PlayStation coming back to us for great content. Velocity 2X,
which was predicted to be a GOTY winner by us, and ultimately proved to
be, given away for free made PlayStation Plus a really great deal.
That makes Sony happy, and ultimately leads to a stronger relationship
between PlayStation and FuturLab. There’s also the benefit of huge
exposure that we couldn’t have created by ourselves.
4: All the games you have released have been on Playstation platforms, have you every thought of making the console jump?
We’re
interested in building long term relationships based on quality and
trust. Up to this point we’ve found Sony to be the most welcoming of all
platform holders, so it’s been easy for us to make a call about who
to work with. Doors have opened to us since the success of Velocity
though, so we’ll never say never.
5: Have you thought of expanding Velocity into other areas, such as graphic novels, or maybe a film?
We’d
love to do that, but really those kind of things need mainstream
success and a huge amount of financial backing; neither of which we
have!
6: Where would you like to see FuturLab in 5 years time?
We
are good at generating new ideas with relevance, depth and artistic
integrity, so I’d like to see a portfolio of successful game franchises
under our belt, not just Velocity.
7: What academic route did you take to end up in your current position?
I had no idea
what I wanted to do when I left school. I followed a friend to Art
College purely by accident, and discovered that I had some value for the
first time. I followed that path to a Fine Art degree, but I’m no
artist as I can’t draw very well. It was only after leaving University –
completely unemployable – that I realised there was a huge opportunity
in web and Flash development. So I taught myself how to write code,
and started FuturLab to make Flash games. It was a golden era for
creative people back then, as there was so much advertising/marketing
money sloshing about as people fought for attention on the internet.
8:
Did you ever feel you had bitten off more than you could chew with the
Velocity games when you co-wrote and co-produced the soundtracks as
well?
Nah,
I had at least a decade of untapped burning passion, and it flooded
into my work. I was so excited to be working on music with Joris de Man.
9: How did you find out you were getting the GOTY award for the PS Vita category from Gamespot? How did you then feel?
I just saw that someone had tweeted about it. After sticking my neck out about it just a few months earlier, it felt good! Confirmation that we know what we’re doing! =)
10: When can we expect the next major announcement from FuturLab?
Soon.
There
you go guys, what do you think the announcement will be? Thanks again
to James for doing the interview with me, and thanks to you all for
reading it!
Ed
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