Exclusive Interview | Crossbeam Studios Talk 'Orb' With C3

on 16.02.2006 at 10:32 User Icon

Posted by Mike Mason (Mason) Number of Comments

Comments: 1 Number of Reads

Reads: 8860
Tag

Tags:

Interview | Shin'en Talks Art of Balance (Nintendo WiiWare)

Preview | Ace Attorney Investigations Miles Edgeworth (Nintendo DS, Hands-On)

Endless Ocean, Crystal Chronicles Fail to Crack UK Top 40

Miyamoto Confirms New Hardware Development

Exclusive Interview - C3 'Orbs' in on Crossbeam Studios Entertainment
Mike Mason & Adam Riley :: Thursday 16th February 2006

Recently, we carried a news piece on Orb, a game devised by independent developer Crossbeam Studios with a release aimed towards Nintendo's Revolution. We got in touch with Greg Szemiot of Crossbeam to talk about Orb and their thoughts on Revolution...

Cubed3: Please introduce yourself, your company, and describe your role within the team.

Greg Szemiot: My name is Greg Szemiot, I am the Founder and one of three Lead Designers and Directors at Crossbeam Studios Entertainment.

C3: How many people form Crossbeam Studios? How is the workload, considering your state as an independent developer and the scope of the project?

GS: In total, considering all the teams, around 17 people. The Orb team accounts for 12 of those people. With a team so small you think we'd be trying to do some smaller games... I mean, teams like Retro Studios have 30 people, Silicon Knights has 75 I believe split between 2 teams, The Zelda team I'm told is 60 people. We're trying to create a game of the same quality as those teams with half the people, it's a lot of work, a lot of pressure, and we've all been under stress, one of our concept artists even developed hives at one point... We'd like to have more people to help ease the pressure, so anyone out there with some talent feel free to contact us.

C3: Orb is intended for Nintendo Revolution. What platform do you have in mind for your other titles, 'Darkness' and the as-yet unnamed title? Could you say a little bit about each of them?

GS: This is kind of an interesting question, because just after James Bond and I decided to move to Revolution, I told Greg Nichols, the lead designer on Darkness and he said he'd love for it to be on Revolution as well. However, Darkness is still in design, it's actually been in design longer than Orb (doesn't help that Greg Nichols is the weapons system designer on Orb). As for the unannounced title...it's a FPA (First Person Adventure,