Here at GameCyte we had the opportunity to sit down with Ethan Einhorn of SEGA. Ethan recently presented the tech demo for Super Monkey Ball on the iPhone during the announcement of the iPhone’s SDK, and he took the time to share his thoughts on Super Monkey Ball, the iPhone, and casual gaming with us.
Ethan Einhorn: My role currently at Sega is Associate Producer; and if you don’t know what an associate producer does – that’s a role that’s basically a creative auditor. So we’re working with development teams, and ensuring that they deliver a high-quality product. We have milestones that come in, which are just updates on how the game’s coming along, and we determine whether or not it is in line with getting the product to market.
So it’s valuable to really have a strong handle on what makes a game great, so that you can ensure that the product being made for you is hitting that level of quality.
One of the things that’s great about casual games is that in a really good casual experience, you understand almost immediately what you’re supposed to do in the game.
There’s no ramp-up of 20 minutes, detailed tutorials; it’s just pick-up-and-play. That’s what’s valuable in terms of trying to bring new gamers into the fold.
If you look at a traditional gamepad, that’s a really complex device. Learning how to use it is like learning how to type. Now, if you have typed for years, it’s second-nature if someone puts a keypad in front of you, but remember what it was like before you knew how to do that. It’s the same thing for people who do not understand how to use a traditional game controller. So what Nintendo has done with the Wii; what they’ve done with the DS; what Apple is doing with the iPhone, creating interfaces that are just innately easier to understand is terrific, and I’m really excited about that.
When it comes to the mobile phone space, I think that the iPhone is going to be a really significant step forward. One of the biggest challenges working on mobile phone games is that you have a lot of compatibility issues to worry about, and beyond the software concerns it’s also the hardware concerns of, “What is the button configuration like?” on all of these different devices. It’s uniform on the iPhone and the iPod Touch – it’s one device that you know that you’re programming for, that you know will work, no software compatibility concerns, and that’s very exciting. You combine that with the level of power that is definitely competitive with dedicated handheld gaming machines, and you have potentially a revolution on your hands in handheld gaming.
Super Monkey Ball really was an actual choice for the iPhone in terms of what types of properties we’d like to experiment with on that device. When we started talking to Apple about it, there was just a collective excitement, because talk about a great way to capitalize on that accelerometer. It just – it’s an actual fit. When people hear about it, it’s something that excites them, gives them a reason to really check out the iPhone as a unique gaming experience.
The proof of the power of the iPhone is in the demonstration that we were able to provide. Look at that and tell me if that would surprise you from a performance standpoint running on a dedicated, handheld game console. It’s right up there. It absolutely matches the experience that you’d get with that kind of device. Many people are going to buy an iPhone or an iPod Touch simply to take calls or listen to their music; this is a great opportunity to grab those consumers and say, “Hey, games are great; games are fun; try it on something you already have,” and for hardcore gamers, it’s terrific to be in a position where finally you can actually just carry one device that will do everything you need.
When we started on that two-week trek to get Super Monkey Ball up and running on the iPhone in demo form, it was incredibly easy to work with the SDK. We were working with the development team that had not worked with Cocoa and OpenGL, and it’s pretty astonishing that they were able to make that level of performance happen that quickly. That bodes really well for what we can do in the future on a device like that.
Sega and Apple have a terrific relationship; we’ve had a lot of fun working on the Super Monkey Ball demo, and it would make sense to take the next natural step – but we haven’t announced anything at this time – We also are really excited to see what other Sega properties would make sense on that platform. So, there’s a lot of discussion, and I think fans are going to be very happy.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:06 am
Hi,
I saw your Super Monkey Ball interview and wondered if you would be interested in reviewing 2 new THQ games for iPhone –
Namely de blob (out now) which is in the top 50 Paid Apps and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (out in 2 weeks) which we hope will be top 10.
We are also relaunching a much bigger and improved Phone Saber Unleashed in September.
If so, could you let me know the email to send screens and game information.
Thanks