Interview: 8monkey Labs

[K_Dog]

We recently got a chance to ask Mark Doeden, the Director of Development at 8monkey Labs, a few questions about working in the gaming industry, various projects at 8monkey Labs (including Darkest of Days) and about gaming in general. I would like to sincerely thank Mark for taking the time to answer our questions.

Please introduce yourself, your name, position at the company, and what project(s) you're currently working on.

Hey Kevin, thanks for getting in touch with us. We're very happy to provide a little behind-the-scenes look at what we've been up to at 8monkey Labs. This is Mark Doeden, I am the Director of Development at 8monkey Labs. We’ve recently wrapped up the Xbox 360 and PC release of our time-traveling, action-shooter, Darkest of Days.

Was it surprising to see Darkest of Days number one on the Steam action game sales chart?

I wouldn't say "surprising" is the right word, but all of us around the office we're definitely stoked to see it. Of course, we all immediately took screenshots of our STEAM window for proof -- that is, just in case that spot was short-lived and we needed to prove it to friends and family. All of us around here are, first and foremost, PC gamers, and we're big supporters of STEAM and what it can do for the games community. It was a thrill to see our game that we've devoted the last few years of our lives to getting that kind of recognition on such a popular platform!

What duties does your job entail? What's it like on a day-to-day basis?

We’re a relatively small development team, and like many small, independent studios, each member of the team wears many hats. Since Darkest of Days’ release, our daily roles have switched gears quite a bit. We’ve been spending a few hours each day supporting our Marketing/PR efforts for Darkest of Days, keeping in touch with our forums, and resolving bug reports. The rest of our day goes to technical development on our Marmoset Engine. Our focus there has been split, preparing for a public release of our Marmoset Engine toolset and level editor, Habitat, and devoting a lot of time to the expansion of Marmoset in preparation of 8monkey’s project #2.

What brought you to the video game industry?

The four founding developers of 8monkey Labs were: Andres Reinot, Jeff Russell, Josh Larson, and I. Andres, Josh, and I got started in game development together in 2003 when we met while attending Iowa State University. We were helping a few of our professor’s start up a cross-disciplinary game development class. As members of that studio, we developed a game demo called Treefort Wars which went on to be selected as a top-10 finalist in the Student Competition at the IGF 2004. Our experience developing Treefort Wars solidified our desire to create games for a career. After we returned from the IGF, Jeff joined the crew and began prototyping games with us. We felt we had a great team and did not want to squander the potential we had together, so we decided to devote our last year of school to, first, graduating, and second, establishing our own development studio. We met the guys at Phantom EFX, publisher of Darkest of Days, that summer after graduation and a partnership was formed to begin development of our Marmoset Engine and our debut title, time-traveling shooter, Darkest of Days.

What advice can you give to people who have a passion for games and want to work in the gaming industry?

When approaching potential employers or clients, I’d advise not to dwell on the adage, “Must have a passion for games”. The fact that you’re looking for work in this industry already represents your passion for games. With the industry getting as large as of late, along with downsizing many have experienced in the recent year, studios looking to expand have the luxury of being quite picky about the qualified candidates they wish to add to their teams. Do some soul-searching and figure out what area of game development you excel at (whether it is art, engineering, Q/A, design, etc...). Take the time to sharpen your skills in that area and craft your portfolio around those strengths. Being well-rounded is a good thing, but first give the employer a clear picture of how you can most-effectively contribute to the team and/or project, and leave your additional skills to exactly that, “additional skills”.

Is there a current game that you're playing that you just can't put down? (Alternatively, what is your all-time favorite game?) What stood out to you the most when playing this game?

Right now I’m playing a lot of STALKER: Clear Sky. With DoD shipped, I’m taking some time to get caught up with all the PC titles I’ve accumulated on my STEAM games list the last few years. I’m really enjoying STALKERS’s environments with my graphical settings maxed out. Their side quests and artifact hunting provide a great retreat, roaming the land, watching their fluid day/night cycles, zone out for awhile, and not worry about being forced through a story. My favorite game of all-time has to be Thief: The Dark Project. Garret and I have a bond that goes way back. Thief was the first PC game I purchased for the very first PC I built for myself. The introduction of the stealth game mechanic was revolutionary and opened up a lot of potential for the first-person genre of gaming. I’m pleased to see that its gameplay and presentation of story still hold up in today’s market. I even replayed Thief II earlier this spring and enjoyed it just as much as when it first came out.

What led to the decision to create a brand new game engine rather than license an existing one?

We took some time to evaluate the other 3rd party engines out there, but we simply did not find a solution that provided the tools and technical features we needed to fully realize the vision of what Darkest of Days aimed to be. Andres Reinot and Jeff Russell, co-founders and lead engineers for 8monkey, came to the conclusion that developing our own proprietary engine would give us the most bang for the buck. This decision gave us the flexibility to develop only what we needed, when we needed, and allowed us to easily customize our art and level design tools to exactly what our team desired.

How did the idea of taking a fully automatic assault rifle to the past battles come about?

Like most features in games, it started in a brainstorming session with the simple phrase, “What if we could take an assault rifle back to the Civil War?” All of us loved the idea, but we also did not want to jeopardize the overall motivation of setting history straight. The original design for gunplay in Darkest of Days allowed the player to use a futuristic weapon in only 2 scenes out of the entire game. In those 2 scenes, the weapons were used for very fixed moments in time, as last-resort options, to redirect the tides of certain battles and help set history straight. In fact, the player was not even allowed to pick-up a future weapon dropped by an eliminated opposition agent. One thing realized through testing early on was that every player who got their hands on a futuristic weapon was significantly moved by that experience and loved the change of pace it provided when matched with period weaponry, especially when the player was greatly outnumbered by opposing forces. Using those findings, we injected more experiences with the option of using futuristic weaponry to give each time period a potential change of pace and allow the player to utilize an even greater variety of weaponry.

What's next for the Marmoset engine? Do you plan on licensing it? If so what audience would you see licensing it?

We don’t have plans to officially license the full Marmoset Engine, but we will be releasing Marmoset’s level editor, Habitat, along with Marmoset's Toolbag. These tools will be freely distributed and allow users to create their own levels in Darkest of Days, even prepare their own characters, props, and animations for use in their custom levels.

You recently released Marmoset’s Toolbag as a free download. What exactly would someone do with these tools?

Yeah, thanks for bringing this up. Toolbag is our collection of art tools created during the development of the Marmoset engine, packaged into a single application. It's most robust feature is a real-time material editor. It also features an animation previewer and particle editor, complete with Maya exporting tools. Toolbag gives artists an easy-to-use tool to practice with and enhance their skills in creating great-looking real-time materials and texture sets. It's also a quick, and efficient tool for artists to showcase their portfolio work. Marmoset's Toolbag has been available to the public since March, and we've had some great support of it in the artist communities. Several of the finalists the past few years for Dominance War, the massive online art challenge, have utilized Toolbag to showcase their work. You can check out our

MEGATHREAD

MEGATHREAD

on polycount.com to see what other artists have been using Toolbag for. This thread also provides extensive support and troubleshooting for utilizing Marmoset's Toolbag.

So now that Darkest of Days has been released, what's next?

Well, somebody told us we'd be able to vacation for a few weeks after we release our first title. I'll let you know as soon as we manage to do so! As I summarized above, for the PC, we have a Marmoset Engine tools update and Level Editor release coming in the next few weeks. We're really looking forward to seeing what some of our fans will be able to create using Habitat and the Darkest of Days content. In addition to the tools, there will be another Darkest of Days enhancement that we'll also be announcing in the coming weeks. Beyond Darkest of Days, we are working on a few major enhancements to our Marmoset Engine, which will position us quite well moving forward to expand onto more platforms and also keep our focus on the Direct3D 11 release and the new hardware that supports it. This next iteration of our engine will be supporting 8monkey's new IP, uber-secret project #2, that is currently underway.

8monkey Labs has just completed the Xbox 360 and PC release of their time-traveling, action-shooter, Darkest of Days. If you haven't already heard about it, Darkest of Days takes the player on a journey through various times in history, exploring the Civil War, WWI , WWII and more. Darkest of Days is available from Steam, Direct2Drive, Phantom and through game retailers. A demo is also available from Steam and the official Darkest of Days homepage.

[Rage1]

wow from what I've heard and seen Darkest of Days was a terrible game.

Good write up though KDog!

[Craig]

Excellent insight into a really cool company. Great job Kdog!

I've actually heard the opposite about DoD Rage. I hear it's a pretty cool game that is trying to do quite a bit as a gaming experience.

[Rage1]

I think the engine itself will be very successful. Look forward to seeing other tiltles that come from it.

[FuzzyLogik]

pretty cool from a startup game developer!

//lol looks better then the game I tried to make (and never finished) so it's still pretty neat

[DennyCrane]

Terrific interview, Dog. It's groups like this that make me refuse to believe the Doom & Gloom people who think PC gaming is dying.

[bacon_x]

Cool

great interview kdog

[No-Fear]

excellent interview..I haven't play DoD yet but I will sure try it out now...

[joe]

Great interview K_Dog! I also really enjoyed checking out the megathread concerning the Marmoset Toolbag, there's a lot of cool stuff in there.