Marc André Ueberall

The Interview Line-Up is starting to roll again. I profiled Norbert R. Möhring of SANID last month and this month I have Marc André Ueberall of Big Black Block. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to grab some of Marc’s time this month for indeed, he is a very busy man. In between writing articles for makingGames (a Magazine and Online Platform for the German Gaming Industry), and creating games for submission for the animago AWARDS 2009, he is also active in the German Gaming Industry and a hands-on man in all aspects of his company, Big Black Block. As busy as he is with his professional life, Marc is equally involved in looking after his personal one. Balance is very important in our lives and it’s great to see that uber-geeks, such as Marc, do lead balanced lives. Marc has just recently gotten engaged with the stunning and equally bright “awesome Steffi”. I have not met Steffi (nor have I even met Marc, yet), but I have come to refer to Marc’s fiancee as the “awesome Steffi”, perhaps because that’s how he refers to her.

Strangely enough, or not so strange really, I first connected with Marc on Twitter. We happened to be both at the GamePlaces International Conference 2009 back in June (flickr photos). I was, of course, tweeting the conference and caught his tweet from @BigBlackBlock saying that he was there too. I tweeted back but then got lost in a stream of tweets (mostly mine).

We’ve been following each other ever since, but not in a “stalkish” kind of way. Marc’s been extremely helpful with a lot of my “behind the scenes” projects (like so many other people, as well) and I’ve gotten to know him as a very professional, insightful, talented and extremely helpful individual. I wanted the chance to pick at his brain on a few topics that have been circulating in my head. This interview is a teaser interview and is just the first of a series of interviews I’ll be having with Marc.

With that said, I would now like to introduce you to Marc André Ueberall of Big Black Block. Here is the interview.

1. First things first. {hi}rollerz has participated in this years animago AWARD, listed in the category Interactive/Games. October the 29th is literally just around the corner. Are you nervous? Excited? Confident? Give us some emotion here.

Absolutely … all of it! We got extremely nervous this morning reading the tweet from the animago officials that they sent out the tickets for the finals today. This is our first attempt at this whole award business and just participated because {hi}rollerz had been suggested by a third person. When it comes to the confidence I think I’m a realist when I say that I do have confidence in our entry, but our competitors are not only very good indie game studios but also some majors players with AAA titles that everybody knows. So let’s see what the next weekend comes up with.

2. Can you tell us a little about {hi}rollerz? Don’t make it a novel now, just something quick to get our readers’ curiousity up.

{hi}rollerz is a very tricky game about rolling a ball, parcours above the clouds and twisting the gravity if necessary. The gamer controls the ball by increasing and decreasing the rotational force and tries to maneuver it through all checkpoints to the finishline. Sometimes the gamer has to switch the gravitational attraction to climb walls or avoid falling into the void. The game features a free mode and career mode, 20 achievements, 50 pre-made levels and an ingame editor for the players to build their own maps. The maps – as well as the map ratings, points and times – are uploaded to our server for others to play. Of course nobody is forced to participate in the online part of {hi}rollerz.

3. You founded Big Black Block in 2005. Four years later, has the company changed its focus in terms of game development or have you pretty much stuck to the original business model?

I think that everything has to change – not because something is bad, but to evolve and “grow up”. There are numerous examples of “stuck” business models that have been resigned because they didn’t work out and I would be very upset if BigBlackBlock was one of them.

Here is a good example on how we are changing continously. The first game released by BigBlackBlock was in pure C++ using the Ogre3D engine. When Microsoft released their beta of the XNA Framework and all the possibilities for indies to do Xbox 360 games came up, I started to play around with it. The power of the XNA Framework was so stunning that I decided to drop C++ and move to C#. Until the release of {hi}rollerz I worked on the inhouse engine called Elder.Core to get a solid base for the games and it reached the 8 milli
on mark on the SLOC scala recently (SLOC means Source Lines Of Code). The team grew and we are currently working on some smaller casual projects … and have something really big hidden in the depth of our HDDs!

Hidden? Ooohhh I love it.

4. What are your personal thoughts on Console Games vs. Browser Games?

I’m not a browser-gamer but the current state for this sector is really interesting. Sometimes the browser games are a little underestimated because they don’t need (or should not need) huge hardware resources and are structured extremely simple to attract a wide range of users. I think that you have to split the gamers into more than just “casual” and “hardcore”. We have the “hardcore-gamer” playing on the PC using his/her mouse and keyboard – that’s what I am. Then there is the “console-gamer” playing console stuff exclusively. Next comes the “casual-gamer” playing the well known coffee brake games, who is very much like the “browser-gamer”. Both of them provide the genes for the newest invention called the “mobile-gamer”. So if we need all those names and lables for our customers … isn’t there a need for all types of games?

Indeed. You are right. That’s a good point you brought up.

I remember a talk at the GamePlaces International Conference 2009 when Klaas Kersting spoke about his company Gameforge. Their success is one of many examples on how you can go really big with browser games.

Ah, yes, I remember that talk too. I was on Twitter and saw your tweet. That’s how we connected remember?

5. Are you on Facebook? Do you think Social Media Platforms have influence on the popularity of a game?

Yes I am, and to be honest I’ve never had that much contact with this social networking stuff before participating in Facebook. I actually joined because everybody talked about the marketing-factor of social networking and wanted to take a closer look. Now – with a little background – I can say that it really helps to push your game when it becomes the topic in some Facebook or Twitter posts. You can reach an unimaginable amount of potential gamers on those platforms just by throwing in some screenshots and comments to attract the reader. And best of all: it’s free marketing for your product and company.

6. Farmville, created by the developers of Zynga, is the most popular online game on Facebook. A Press Release from Business Wire is quoted as saying that Farmville, “is the largest and fasting growing social game in history with more than 11 million daily active users. Since its launch on June 19th, 2009, FarmVille has attracted more than 1 million new daily active users a week, on average.”

What are your thoughts on Farmville’s phenomenal growth and popularity?

That’s amusing because I had a conversation with one of my team members just some days ago. He said that when you hide all messages about Farmville, Facebook is “speechless”. I think that Farmville in particular is a good example of the wow-effect. The first wow goes to the popularity of the game. The second wow goes to the users who are playing it like “Wow, I never thought that he/she would play a game like this”. Take a look at Facebook, everywhere you can see those happy little earthlings trading ugly ducklings and lost turtles, requesting larger estates and showing off their medals and honors. It’s absolutely amazing how popular this game is.

Lol … I’m on Farmville and I love it.

7. Here’s a statement taken right out of Big Black Block’s “About Us” page,

“We are dedicated to the creation of casual games and middleware for the next generation
console Microsoft Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows platforms.”

Will the company branch out to other game platforms? Does Big Black Block currently have games for the mobile platform?
If yes, what are they? If not yet, how far into your roadmap will you be implementing development for the mobile platform?
Maybe a better question would be, Will Big Black Block develop games for the mobile platform?

To branch out to other game platforms is a double-edged sword for a small studio. We would love to release games for the Wii and PSP Go Marketplace but we’ve got an old saw in Germany: “Man kann nicht auf allen Hochzeiten tanzen” whichs means that you can’t juggle too many balls at once. You cannot concentrate on making games when you have to digg into countless APIs and prepare a code base for your projects.

Our main focus will stay on our engine Elder.Core for the Windows and Xbox 360 platform but it never does any harm to think out of the box. I really appreciate that Nintendo and Sony recently opened their doors to the indie developers like Microsoft did years ago with the XNA Framework and the XBLA market.

The big advantage of the mobile platform is, that you can use Java which is the major language of German universities … like it or not, you HAVE to use it. That takes the initial skill adaption training away from the mobile platform and Android in particular.

Wow, I didn’t know that about Java and being a mandatory (computer) language in German Universities. That explains a lot then.

8. I heard through the twitter grapevine that you just got an htc Hero? How are you liking it?
(Feel free to say as much as you want about the Android OS)

That’s right. I absolutely love this device. I really had a hard time with another “next-gen” mobile phone and gave it back to the retailer some days after purchasing it. It wasn’t even able to do Twitter and Facebook or simple QR code scanning out of the box and I had to use some Java based clients which weren’t working very well on this device. The reason I decided to take an htc Hero was the Android OS. I’ve heard so much good arguments for using Android that the only unanswered question was which device to take. Call it luck or whatever, it’s a Hero! When I got the first contacts to the Android community it felt like being home … where all the geeks play – not a hang-out for design-addicted techies you can find in other communities iDon’t want to name. (The notation was not on purpose, just a jerk while typing)

Roflmao. Sure.

Believe it or not … I’ve recommended the phone to my friends and family and they really love it. Just two hours ago I got an email from a friend of mine and he said that he bought a Hero, too. Ok htc time for some commission.

htc?! Are you reading this?

9. The million dollar question here is, will Big Black Block be developing games for Android?

I bought the htc Hero three days ago and digged deep into the API specification and watched all Google IO 2009 event videos about Android. Take it as a teaser but the chances to play an Android game by BigBlackBlock is very, very high. I can promise you … if there will be one, you will know it first.

Aw, come on, don’t tease me like that.

10. Now that you’ve gotten the Android Bug .. will you be planning on attending DroidCon 2009 in Berlin? It’s the first Android Conference in Germany.

I would love to, but we currently have so many fixed appointments that I don’t know whether we can manage to come or not. In case that we can’t come there, I hope that you will cover the event for those who were absent?!

You bet I will. That’s what I do. I’m the Android PR Gal.

Thank you so much for your time Mr. Marc André Ueberall of Big Black Block! Good Luck with the animago Awards!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hope you enjoyed reading this interview. If you would like to get in touch with Marc, you can follow him on twitter @BigBlackBlock or email him at marc.ueberall@big-black-block.com.

Remember, this is only Part 1 of a series of interviews with Marc André Ueberall. I’ll be following Marc’s progress, as well as Norbert R. Möhring of SANID. Stay tuned when I interview “zero”.