When people hear CHILE, some may think about spicy mexican food, those who about the country probably will immediately link it to Eastern Island’s mysterious Moais or the exquisite wine, or the beautiful women, but certainly nobody would think about video-gaming. Well, this may start to change soon once Zeno Clash is released. This much praised indie game (Finalist at Independent Game Festival in the Excellence in Visual Art category and soon to be released through Valve’s Steam) is the child of ACE Team, a small video-game studio based there at the south end of the world. Andres Bordeu, game designer and one of the founding fathers gave us an exclusive & extensive interview. He told us about what is it like to be an indie game developer studio in a highly competitive market, and how Zeno Clash is making its way to the mainstream.

: First of all, thanks a lot for giving us an interview, we really appreciate it.

ACE: Happy to answer your questions!

: Well…. hands on! Let’s first talk a little about ACE Team ….
You guys are from Chile, and develop games…this situation reminds us of Luke Skywalker’s words (complaining about Tatooine) “If there’s a bright center to the universe, you’re on the planet that it’s farthest from.” Chile seems to be far away from the epicenters of game development, namely Japan and USA. Why did you decide to get into game development?

ACE: My brothers (Carlos & Edmundo Bordeu) and I were interested in games since we were kids. Unlike most gamers, we were as much interested in how the games where made as we were in playing them. We soon got in to mod development and labeled ACE Team as our mod group. We had built some long term projects/mods for DOOM and Quake 3 when we were contacted by a scouting agency which was interested in our last project – The Dark Conjunction. That was the point when we decided that we wanted to turn our time consuming hobby into a profession.

: In Japan and USA there are several schools, mainly technical colleges, where you can study Game Development. We don’t know if Gaming can be studied in Chile. If not, how did you get acquainted with the necessary skills and technical knowledge to develop games?

ACE: In Chile there are no places where you can get a full Game Development education. There are several technical institues that teach 3D, but they´re generally more oriented to advertisement and/or post-production. Some colleges have a few classes focused in game development, but they are very basic. There’s also an institute that is recently teaching game design, but I don’t know of anyone that’s working professionaly that graduated from that school. There’s very little occupational field for game development in Chile. There’s basically two ‘established companies’: ACE Team and Wanako Games (which is part of A2M from Canada). Most of the people at ACE Team are self-taught. My brothers and I learned a great deal of video game development when making mods. You basically have the same problems professional developers have when you’re making a mod, and you’re using several of the same tools. We’ve worked with the DOOM2 engine, Quake 2 & 3 engines, Touchdown Entertainment’s Jupiter System and the Source engine before going pro.

: If compared to behemoths such as Capcom or Konami, ACE team is very tiny. Do you consider yourself in a “David versus Goliath” stand or is it something like a “Live and let live” situation?

ACE: I think the second description fits better with our point of view. We’re not aiming to compete with AAA studios. We’re an indie team making an indie title. It would be unrealistic for us to generate the same expectations of a large budget game. We also won’t need our game to sell the same amount of copies that a Capcom or Konami game would. Big games like Resident Evil 5 or Street Fighter IV need to sell millions of copies to be a commercial success. We need to sell considerably less. If we sold the same amount of copies that Street Fighter we’d all be set for life!!! On the other hand Zeno Clash is something totally different from other first person games, so it’s definitely not a substitutable product. If we were making another World War shooter, we’d be in the tough spot of competing with Call of Duty. But if our consumer likes what he sees in Zeno Clash he won’t find it anywhere else.

: What are the advantages and disadvantages of small team development and the current geographic situation?

ACE: I think small teams have much better communication between their members. I’m sitting right next to the programmer (David Caloguerea) and the animator (Gabriel García), so I have a great view of what’s going on day by day. If I need anything I just have to walk up to the person and talk with him. Bigger companies are much more burocratic and you have to move through channels or processes to get things done. Of course that’s necessary for a big company, but in my experience communication never works better than with a small cohesive & motivated group. Talking about motivation, I also think everyone feels more commited with the project when you’re a small team because each individual’s work is a large portion of the product. If you’re working in a huge company like Capcom, maybe you get to work on incredible titles like Resident Evil, but what percentage of your work is part of the whole game if your team is a 100+ group? (I’m assuming the teams behind games like RE are quite big).
From a geographical point of view, there are some advantages and some disadvantages. Being so far from the epicenter, as you mentioned, makes the business efforts and PR efforts a little harder. Luckily the internet is so widespread that you can practically operate from your e-mail for most things. One of the advantages we have is that the cost of life in Chile is relativily lower than many 1st world countries, so the investments we have to make are smaller. I imagine that an equivalent team operating in the USA would spend more than we do.

: Can you tell us something about the latin-american game development situation?

ACE: As I mentioned previously, there are only two ‘larger’ game companies in Chile: Wanako Games and ACE Team. All the rest of the game companies make cell phone games and they’re really, really small. I’m not very up-to-date with the rest of the scenario in latin-america. I know for sure that after Wanako was acquired by Vivendi and later sold to A2M they turned in to the biggest company in Latin America. There’s also a recognizable company in Colombia (Immersion Games), who developed a game for the Ageia Physx card (CellFactor).
We’re a small company, but I think it’s not an overstatement when I say that Zeno Clash is the most ambitious project ever developed in latin-america.

Let’s get into Zeno Clash… let’s set the mood…

…Deep underground, in the lowest levels of ZillionMonkey’s Headquarters, there is a place where only a few enter and fewer get out unharmed, those who can live another day can tell about the dreadful creature chained to the dungeons’ walls asking those who pass by…

: The game is deliberately “..a refreshing deviation from traditional fantasy games.”. Having said that, we wonder if there are supernatural elements throughout Zeno Clash. The atmosphere of the teaser and the disturbing character of Father-Mother support this assumption. Or they just have not been shown yet?

ACE: There are some supernatural elements that have not been shown yet, but we’ve been very careful when including supernatural elements to the game. Before Edmundo started elaborating the story there was a concensus that we wanted to avoid magic. We have no magical items, spells or potions. We avoided the clichés of the fantasy genre. Thus, the backbone of the story focuses more on the tangible relations between the characters. In Zeno Clash there’s no “magical sword” or “ring of power”. Ghat (the protagonist) is not “the chosen one” and he’s not trying to save the world. He’s just a guy caught in the middle of a conflict with his family.

: In the gameplay video we saw Ghat got engaged in melee with two enemies in turns tops. Is this to keep the first-person combat “realistic” or are there other reasons?

ACE: The melee combat system allows you to focus on a fighter through a tag system. The tag system (similar to Zelda’s lock-on system) allows the player to perform more complex moves like eluding and deflecting hits. However, when the player is locked to an enemy it doesn’t mean he cannot be attacked by another one. The player can lock & unlock as he finds suitable. The behavior of the AI is quite diverse, and many times you’ll find yourself running away from a loose skull-bomb or an enemy that is aiming at you while his buddy was distracting you into melee. If you’re facing many enemies and there’s weapons scattered around you’ll certainly not stay in the same place for long.

: The UI was criticized by some commenters. What is your response?

ACE: I think that the people that critisizing the UI or HUD are people who thought the game was a shooter. The UI was designed to convey the feel of a fighting game. Zeno Clash is hybrid game. It’s a mix between a first person shooter and a brawler. Something like ‘Dark Messiah’ meets ‘Double Dragon’. We added other UI elements to enhance this perception. We included versus screens that slide in before a fight starts (much like a fighting game). When people play the game I think they’ll recognize these elements and welcome them. We don’t think of Zeno Clash as a First-Person Shooter. Zeno Clash is a First-Person Fighter (with some shooter elements). Maybe after Zeno Clash people will come up with a new abbreviation for these kind of games. FPF perhaps?

: Is Deadra a playable character at any point in the game?

ACE: No, Deadra will follow you through most of the levels, but she is never playable. Just like Alyx Vance in the Half-Life Episodes, but not as involved as her.

: Did Valve contact you or vice-versa? How long did it take from the onset of the development to sign up with Valve and what are the important moments of the journey? Have you talked with other companies?

ACE: We contacted Valve first. Zeno Clash was developed first as a private mod and we delivered a demo build to them after working on it for a long time. They were very impressed with the demo and this lead to the distribution agreement through Steam. We must have worked over a year before having the demo ready. After the agreement we expanded the team and set out to build the game as a full commercial title. We’ve talked with a lot of other companies through the development process. The game will be available through Steam & Direct 2 Drive as well. A retail version will be available in the ex-URSS territories through Noviy Disk. We’re currently talking with other interested parties to see if we can bring Zeno Clash to retail in other territories.

: How was working with Valve? What can kind of support did you receive (technical, constructive criticism, etc.) or were you completely left to your own devices?

ACE: Zeno Clash was developed with 100% freedom. Valve has given us a lot of support from a technical point of view and they’ve also sent us some constructive criticism, but always with the premise that the last word comes from ACE Team. The design choices and features have been left in our hands. We are an independent company and we’re not tied to any requirements from them. We’re very happy with Valve’s relationship with their licensees. They told us from start that their policy is to leave the design decisions to the developer, because the owner of the game will always come up with the best choices because they are much more involved with the game.

: Are you considering console port(s) (including mobile, namely iPhone and clones) of Zeno Clash?

ACE: We’d love to port Zeno Clash to the consoles, like the XBox 360. The Source SDK is built so it can work in the 360’s environment, so the port wouldn’t be very painful. However making a handheld port would involve building everything from scratch. We’re a small team and we don’t have the manpower to port the game to multiple platforms. We’re definitely interested in the iPhone and other handhelds, but if we develop a game for such platforms it will be a completley different game.

: Two more questions to finish… Perhaps it’s a little early to ask but … What comes after Zeno Clash? What can we expect from ACE team in the future? Would you like to migrate or remain in Chile?

ACE: We’ll definitely stay in Chile. There are no barriers that prevent us from expanding our business and there’s no incentive in developing from another country. We’re happy with all the attention we’re getting here as well.
In regards to our next project, maybe it is a little early to say. If Zeno Clash is as successful as we expect it to be we’re definitely interested in doing a sequel. The scope of that sequel may vary depending on how positive is the response from consumers. We’d like to make it a bigger game where people can explore more of our bizarre world. We have a few other ideas stashed in our heads, but nothing that we’ll be sharing soon.

: Finally, what valuable experiences can you share with other indie developers out there? There are Zillions (sorry for the self-reference) of people who may want to develop games and don’t know where to start. Can you tell us a few practical advices beyond “push hard, trust yourself and be creative”?

ACE: I think the most valuable lesson we learned from Zeno Clash was to be able to identify and elaborate our game’s key features or selling points. Back when we were developing mods we oftenly made the mistake of building before thinking of the edge that would make our project stand out. I’ve seen many titles developed by relatively small companies that don’t seem to have any outstanding feature that will set it apart from its competition. Some game genres are falling in to standards because the larger companies are avoiding risk. This is an opportunity for indie devs because they can put their efforts into ideas that the big brothers are not willing to explore. I think that a lot of innovative titles are coming from the indie game group. To close with a final statement: In the competitive world of game development, new companies have to dare to break molds to excel among giants. Where there are new ideas there is a market and where there is talent there is industry.

: Thanks for your time. We hope we can interview you again in the future, maybe you as “Goliath” by then. We wish you the best. Let’s keep in touch.

ACE: Thanks to you! We’ll most definitely be around for future interviews.