Last week, Erik the Editor-in-Chief at The Married Gamers sat down with Brent Fox, the Art Director and co-founder of NinjaBee.  They discussed the history of the company, their games, and what they’re working on.  TMG has been nice enough to share their interview with us.

ERIK: I appreciate your time for doing this. I’ve just got some questions for you that I put together from the staff at The Married Gamers and we’ll go from there.

Brent: All right!

E: When you helped create NinjaBee, what was your vision statement for the company?

B: That’s a good question. I guess our main goal as a group that started in the beginning had worked previously at a video game company that was fairly successful and things were going well for a long time and then things went not so well and our main goal was to be able to basically make our own mistakes. In other words, if something went wrong, we didn’t want it to be because somebody else made a bad decision, but that we made the decisions [to] go the directions we wanted to go and have that independent ability to do the kind of games we wanted to make. So it was mostly about trying it out on our own and hopefully be more successful, but at least if we failed, we failed because of our decisions and choices and not somebody else’s.

E: And has it changed since the company’s beginning?

B: Not completely, but I think we’re in a very different place. Back when we first started it was survival mode and anything to earn some money, and you know, get some games out and stuff like that. And now we’re at least in a place where we feel like we have some options. And more choices we can make. And I think we are definitely in the mode where we want to do our own thing. But our old thing turned out to also be good for business.

In other words, we get to do strange, different, a little bit cutting edge or different games than the mainstream retail market. But never get multi-million dollar budgets because they’re a little unproven and we like to push that.

First of all it’s interesting to us. And second of all we’re trying to compete. If we tried to make a Halo knock-off we’re never going to compete with that. [laughs] But if we do something completely different then of course we can compete because there’s nothing to compare us to.

E: I’ve noticed that the games you guys have created have been extremely unique and a lot of fun to play. How did you come up the name NinjaBee?

B: We actually, the group of us sat around in the basement office, and threw out a bunch of ideas. We had some criteria that we came up with beforehand that we wanted to use. For example, we had to be able to buy the domain name. It had to be short, memorable, people wouldn’t have any confusion on how to spell it. It’d be really useful if it had a nice image to go with it so when you’d see it it reminds you.

We actually came to the point where we liked the idea of combining two words together. And so we made a list of a whole bunch of words in column A, words in column B, and one of our programmers came up with a little program that we entered all of those words into and it’d make all of these combinations and check the web domain availability and spit out words that were actually available. So we talked it over and voted and sat around for a while until we all settled in of NinjaBee.

E: With you being a smaller company how do you compete with the bigger companies out there?

B: It’s a lot of what I was saying earlier. If we compete head-to-head, if we made the exact kind of game, they just have more money. And they can polish and shine, and do fancy stuff. So, the way we compete is by being innovative and different, and trying things that they definitely wouldn’t try. In fact, some of our testing points in the things we do is we come up with a new idea, talk about it and everybody is not sure it’s going to be a great game? We describe it and they’re like, “Hmmm…I’m not sure if I get it.” That’s, in a way, good for us.

If they say, “Cool, that’s going to be awesome.” They’ve probably heard of something similar. And we’re [trying to go] down a path that’s going to lead us to something different. So, we definitely try to do something different, at least that won’t be done by the big guys. Not crazy different, it’s just got to be something the big guys won’t touch because it’s too risky, or whatever different.

E: Andrew, when we were touring, mentioned that you just released the first trailer for Ancients of Ooga? Can you tell me, what type of a game is that?

B: Anybody who’s familiar with our previous game Cloning Clyde, we’re calling it a spiritual successor to that. Meaning it’s very similar in a lot of aspects. However it’s not a direct sequel to that. Different characters, different setting, different set of features. Stuff like that, but it’s got the same feel to it. What that is, it’s a side-scrolling type of game. Basically you’ve got to figure out how to get your character to do the things you need to do, with certain puzzle elements to it.

E: Okay, so that partially answers the next question that a few fans wanted to know. Is there going to be a Cloning Clyde sequel?

B: Maybe there’ll be a direct sequel in the future, but for right now, we’re doing this one (Ancients of Ooga), again it’s not really a sequel, but it’s as close to a sequel you could get. Yet, it’s different, more advanced, and it’s definitely shinier and prettier.

E: So would you say that fans of Cloning Clyde would feel comfortable jumping into this game and are likely to enjoy it?

B: Definitely. If you liked Cloning Clyde this is your game. That’s for sure.

E: What about a sequel to Outpost Kaloki?

B: That’s a good question and we’ve certainly talked about it. So the games we have, that we’re working on right now, that we’ve announced, in addition to Ancients of Ooga, we’re also working and actually really far along in the process of is a game called A World of Keflings. That we think of as more than just a sequel to A Kingdom for Keflings.

Therefore we are doing two of them right now. A Kingdom for Keflings was by far and away our most popular title. So, in looking at it and deciding which one to do a sequel for it was logical to build on that since it was already a more popular game. We’ve certainly talked about doing sequels and things like that for Outpost Kaloki, but right now we’re definitely not in the process of doing that, and it’s certainly a possibility, but it’s also very interesting to us to come up with new stuff. And so, it’s sort of that battle between coming up with something totally different or build on it.

For a period of time, we did work on a similar game for Namco. It was going to be a retail title called Spacestation Tycoon, and we did a lot of work on that, worked on it for a long time, and it was looking really great, but it never got released.

E: So, Ancients of Ooga is expected to be released first?

B: Yes. I can’t say definitely, because we have to go through all of the approval processes, and the timing of all of that, and then, even after that, Microsoft will let us know when it can be released based on the schedule of other games and scheduling, things like that.With that, I can say we’re really close on Ancients of Ooga, but we’re still not close enough that we have a date yet.

E: I see that you have released avatar clothing themed around A World of Keflings. Is that game still expected to be released this year?

B: Yes. Our definite goal was this year for sure. I would be surprised if it didn’t.

E: Now you already have some games for the WiiWare, iPhone with the Outpost Kaloki episodic games, and some of your recent titles have been released on PC, as well. Has NinjaBee thought of moving towards expanding their platforms, like the iPad, or producing retail disc games, in the future?

B: We have thought everything, for sure. In fact, that’s the reason why we’ve got WiiWare games and iPhone games. So far, our experience has been that Live Arcade is far and away our money maker. That’s where more games are sold.

Our iPhone games did okay. Our WiiWare games were a big money maker for us. And, so we want to be in many places, but sometimes for financial reason, we can’t keep losing money or spending lots of time and not earning much money, things like that.

E: Now, I’m not sure if there is a way to measure this, but, in your opinion, did the adding the avatar support into A Kingdom for Keflings help with the sales?

B: That’s a hard thing to quantify for sure. I’m fairly confident that it had a huge, huge impact. What that did was provide lots of promotion and visibility for our game. We’re on a list of Avatar games and there’s a smaller list of those games. What did most for us, I think, was that it got people to look at the game. Now, if the game stunk I don’t think people would have bought it, even with the avatar support. So, I kind of hope that the people buying the game with a high conversion rate is because it turned out to be a good game that happens to have avatars in it.

E: Now, I saw the list of developers for E3 this year. Are you not going this year?

B: We don’t have a booth at E3, but we’ll be there. At this point, I don’t think we’ll be showing any games, but that could change between now and then. But because we don’t have a lot of games that are at the point where we’re showing them, it’s not really smart to get a booth and show old games. If some of our games are shown, it’d be Microsoft deciding to show something there. But at this point I don’t think we have anything scheduled.

E: Cool, maybe I’ll see you there. And finally, the last question that I’ve got for you…

… do you have any exclusive bits of information that our readers at TMG might be interested in?

B: Hmmm. [Long pause]

I didn’t have anything planned to say, so I’ll have to think for a second.

We are working on a ANOTHER game, that is not one of those two mentioned. (Ooga and Keflings)

And, it’s not a Live Arcade game. I’m not able yet to say what platform it’s on, but we are working on something that’s not a Live Arcade game. And, it’s different than anything we’ve done in the past.

E: Awesome. That’s everything I’ve got for you. I just want to thank you for your time. It’s been a lot of fun.

And there you have it.