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feature :: a visit to firemint

A Visit to Firemint

Anna and Yug visit the Melbourne mobile phone game developers Firemint, talk about their existing projects as well as upcoming ones such as Bigponds Project Joystick.

A Visit to Firemint | Interview with Robert Murray, Kynan Woodman and Ronald Haupt

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On arrival in the city to meet Yug, I was unsurprised to find a message letting me know he’d be late. Typical. When we did meet by the steps of Flinders Street Station, I was also unsurprised to find he had no clue on where the studio was and how we’d get there. Me to the rescue once more.

Because of my awesome organisational skills we arrived a good twenty minutes early. Yug felt awkward – he doesn’t seem to feel very comfortable being early (or for that matter, on time) for anything so my powers of persuasion wrangled a couple of hot chocolates for the meantime.

On arrival, we were shown a comfy couch next to an impressive array of awards the studio had received since its conception in 1999, though most were post-2002 from when the studio began specifically focused on mobile gaming.



Anna out the front of the Firemint offices


In the last few years, mobile gaming has really kicked off and the Firemint studio in Melbourne is considered one of the world’s leading independent developers. They’ve won the GDAA Best Mobile Title three years in a row with Star Trek: The Cold Enemy (2005) Madden NFL 07 (2006) and The Fast and The Furious: Fugitive 3D (2007) each appearing on various mobile platforms. Fugitive 3D was described as “as close to a console racer as mobile has right now” by IGN Wireless and after spending a bit of time with it, it is. I didn’t realise that mobile phones had graphics capable of looking decent. And with most games not much more than a megabyte in size, it’s amazing how much they can fit into such a small package.

We were met by Rob Murray, the CEO of Firemint and Kynan Wooman who begun to show us into the actual studio away from intimidating achievements. Set up is pretty cool in a “funky-not-a-real-office” kind of way. Desks get moved around as teams swap over and work on different projects, ensuring that the guys don’t get too bored stuck on the same game for months on end.



What is it with Melbourne developers and natural sunlight?


While being shown around, I had the pleasure of having a pencil thrown at me. Quite maliciously the attack was too, by the local forumer adamtehgreat who works as a Principal Artist, although I didn’t know what he looked like! So when I saw this face grinning at me I assumed he was the one guy who wasn’t in on the joke and had ruined the “pretend no one did anything” feel the room had. So I made no fuss and placed the pencil on the table beside me, despite my bruised pride. Apparently I was supposed to retaliate in a similar fashion but what if I had been wrong?

Yug disappeared for a bit, taking photos of their little kitchenette thingy for goodness knows what reason. Saying hello to everyone and generally being the extremely friendly person he is. I was quiet, I think I said a total of five words during the entire visit, but then Yug kept up appearances for me and I was the silent observer, saying nothing but seeing all.

We were shown the door that led into the top sekrit Project Joystick room (Firemint is the developer that will be producing the winner’s game) with a special sign just for us! How special did we feel to see that this room was off limits especially for Australian Gamer? Pretty special. For those unsure about why this is such a big deal, you can head back to AJ’s posts here and work it out yourselves ^__^

There were a lot of secret projects going on apart from Project Joystick; their original IP - Mega Monster, and a number of other licenses from big publishing houses were going on, and we even got to peek into the secret life of Firemint employees who had a bit of a competition – making a game in a day with a secret ingredient – fish. From the ones we were shown some of the stand out ones were: Slaughter Fish (see the fishies go splat!), a Scientology one that had something to do with Tom Cruise being hunted by fishmen, a fish trawler and one very similar to space invaders. Just a little something that seems to keep the life of the studio pumping.



One of the various casual fishy projects


/> We also met up with Ronald Haupt who is Senior Producer at Firemint, he lent me his mobile (Nolkia N95) to play a bit of Fugitive 3D while Yug did some talking. I don’t remember what they were saying, I’m pretty sure it was important but I got a bit distracted =/ The controls were almost too easy, but for a mobile phone game, it was perfect. Usually, mobiles aren’t the greatest of portable gaming devices, the key input itself is a nightmare to get around, yet if it’s kept simple enough it ends up enough to keep you entertained for a good while if you’re waiting for a train or for Yug to finish talking. Somehow it managed to keep me busy til Yug was ready to start the interview.




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