was a little over his head on this one. I would not have made a good choice as lead
designer either because this type of game was unfamiliar territory for me. Besides, I
like to program and I would not have been able to do anything except design as the
designer. Even then I would have had to have several others assisting me in laying out
levels, tuning, et cetera. But I was not even leading all the programmers because there
was a tools group doing the
rendering engine and all the
work making sure the game
ran on the Xbox and
GameCube as well. Scot
Amos, our producer, served
as project lead. He was really
good at motivating people and
even better at enthusiasti-
cally pushing our product —
much better than I could do.
He did a marvelous job.
But there were things I
would have done differently. I
certainly would have pushed
our original idea for a side-
kick. She was called Eyesore.
She was to add sex appeal and humor to complement our bumbling mad scientist.
Why do you thinkDr. Mutodidn’t fare better commercially?
I wish I had a good answer to this. I am afraid that we just did not get critical mass in the
market. There were many platformers coming out at Christmas 2002 and we were up
against some very well-done and well-advertised products. The industry claims that
platformers did not do as well in 2002 as they had done in previous years. However, I
believe the reason has to do with the gameGrand Theft Auto. Because this game had
such huge sales it naturally took sales away from other games. I contend this game is
really a platformer, shooter, and a driving game all in one. If you lump this game into the
platformer category, then you will see that platformers actually did quite well.
What are you working on these days?
I am doing cell phone games for a start-up called GenPlay Games. There are several of
us from Midway Games West (originally Atari Games Corp.) working together now. I
have just finished my second game, which will be out shortly on Verizon and Sprint.
I like the cell phone game industry in that the games are smaller and more arcade
like. By that I mean the audience is looking for a more casual gaming experience. I also
like the fact I can get back to doing programming and game design without managing
other programmers. This industry will of course change as the cell phones become
more powerful. 3D chips are already on their way into cell phones. It will not be long
before we see the latest console games running on cell phones. The marketing of
games is already getting to the stage where licenses or some name recognition are
needed to get the attention of the carriers and players.
106 Chapter 6: Interview: Ed Logg
Dr. Muto