Developer Spotlights:
TriXie Gets The Whole Experience
When I show up at the WXP offices, in the uh, atmospheric Pioneer Square area of Seattle, the place is pretty empty. It seems the lads had spent the previous evening celebrating the success of Greg Hastings' Tournament Paintball with some visiting Activision, Inc. folks. Bar-hopping turned into wheelchair-jacking and devolved from there to an all-night poker game.
Back: Mark Cvetkovich, Denise Buckley, Darren Shoen, Patrick Moynihan. Front: Jeff Connelly, Sky Kensok, Michael Delp, Floyd McFeely.
Greg Hastings' Tournament Paintball has sold 275,000 copies and is consistently one of the most-played games on the XboxLive™ service. I asked the two questions I know you're aching to know, and here's the skinny: No, there won't be any downloadable content. Yes, they are already working on Greg Hastings' Tournament Paintball 2 (which will have downloadable content).
Though the three main partners in WXP (Jeff Connelly, Sky Kensok, and Patrick Moynihan) are just in their early thirties, their success has been 10 years in the making. Sky Kensok and Jeff Connelly grew up together in Spokane, Wash., a couple of self-described "punk-rock skateboarders."
Ten years later, there is still a laid-back, skater vibe at WXP, but these guys have—through trial and error—become very savvy businessmen.
The History of WXP
Waaaay back in the early nineties, Kensok and Connelly started WXP (“The Whole Experience”) in Connelly’s basement in Spokane. They moved to Seattle and took some freelance work doing graphic design.
In 1995, they took out a loan, bought two silicon graphics computers, and rented office space in Pioneer Square. It was a tiny office, about 8 by 10 feet. They didn’t have any work lined up, so they would lay on the floor all day cold-calling companies and asking, “Do you need any 3-D work done?”
Kensok and Connelly recreate the early days of WXP.
They got some jobs doing an animation for Hewlett Packard and working on a Microsoft SoftImage port to Windows NT. Between jobs, they honed their 3-D skills. When they didn’t have work, they made up their own projects.
Their big break was through Zombie, which was developing a multiplayer military PC game called Spearhead. WXP landed the art contract. After that, through Zombie, they got a gig creating a motion-based simulator for Disney. It was called Cyberspace Mountain Rollercoaster. It was the first simulator that could rotate 360 degrees in both pitch and roll.
Kensok and Connelly met Patrick Moynihan through Zombie. Moynihan was a freelancer working on terrain. He bought into WXP, and the three of them became partners. With the money they made from Cyberspace Mountain, they hired their first programmer and convinced another Spokane skate punk, Lyndon Sumner, to be their art director. Sumner is also a partner in WXP.
WXP began developing its own graphics engine. They had a game in mind that they wanted to make. It was called Experienceand would be an “alien action-RPG” featuring a character called Quagmire. The guys still intend to make this game someday.
In the meantime, NVIDIA was very impressed with WXP's nascent technology and would send them what Kensok calls “Frankenstein hardware.” Sometimes they’d get four or five new drivers each day. They were also getting pre-Alpha versions of DirectX from Microsoft. When WXP ran short of funds, NVIDIA ponied up some cash.
What they ended up with was “a really, really nice graphics engine and amazing toolset.” What did they call it? SPED for “Special Editor.” No, really.
The guys took their NVIDIA tech demo to the Game Developers Conference in 1999, where they ended up with the booth next to where id was showing off Quake III.
Sierra On-Line was impressed with what they saw and asked WXP if they’d like to work on a project they had. Connelly tells the story: “We said, ‘No, not really.’ Then they said, ‘What if it was Lord of the Rings?’ We said, ‘Okay.’”
WXP took on the project of The Lord of the Rings™: The Fellowship of the Ring—this was before Peter Jackson’s movies came out.
The company ramped up its staff from 5 to 28 and moved offices twice. When a 6.8 earthquake hit Seattle in 2001, leaving the WXP building condemned, the company moved offices, replaced broken equipment, and got back up and running in less than a week.
This flexibility proved useful when, halfway through development, Sierra came back and told them that not only did they want players to be able to play as Frodo, but they should also be able to play as Gandalf and Aragorn. Oh yeah, and the ship date would stay the same …
The guys wanted to quit a lot of the time. Moynihan would sleep under his desk and one day, after working 38 hours straight, Kensok reports that he went home and cried, he was so tired.
In the end, they’re proud of the game they made. “It didn’t get great reviews, but we care more about what the gamers think. It sold a lot of copies, it looks gorgeous, and it sounds great,” Kensok said.
Still, the creators of WXP weren't anxious to sign up for another stint "working for the man." They didn’t have another gig lined up, so they had to reduce their staff back down to six people.
They then hooked up with Seamus Blackley (one of the creators of the Xbox®), Mark Hood (a producer from Sierra) and their Capital Entertainment Group. The revolutionary theory behind CEG was that game developers, instead of selling a publisher on a game concept and demo and then being beholden to them, would take the game to a playable point before shopping for a publisher.
With Blackley and Hood, WXP did a prototype for a game calledGuardian. They showed me the demo, and it is a-freakin-mazing. The game deals with an unseen world of demons and spirits coexisting with the real world. A unique part of gameplay involves stealing people’s thoughts. It was incredibly cinematic and compelling. But, Connelly said, “It was so out there that it wasn’t very much fun. It was more like a movie.”
So, while Guardian didn’t quite take off, WXP took the lessons they learned from CEG and put it into practise.
Enter Greg Hastings
The story goes like this: Greg Hastings is sitting on his couch in Philadelphia playing Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer. He says to himself “Why the f*** don’t I have a game?” Through a convoluted friend-of-a-friend network, Hastings connected with WXP.
Hastings was extremely persistent—even taking the WXP crew to play paintball and introducing them to paintball pros and equipment manufacturers. He flew to Seattle 30 times during the making of the game.
Remembering CEG’s strategy, WXP decided to wait before approaching a publisher. The developers funded the project though the paintball industry instead of the games industry.
Kensok remembers, “We hit every professional tournament. We’d take four Xbox consoles, then ten. When we got multiplayer working, we actually got a standing ovation.”
The industry was psyched about the project. Everyone wanted in: the pros, the manufacturers, the whole paintball industry. In the end, they didn’t even have to pimp their game to publishers. “Activision cold-called us,” said Connelly.
Kensok, Connelly, and Moynihan all used to handle the art, but they are expanding their roles. They make business decisions by committee. Moynihan is the main contact for the publisher, which he likes because he enjoys learning new things.
Kensok did all the music for Greg Hastings' Tournament Paintball. Because they didn’t have a sound guy, he also did all the licensing for the soundtrack. He worked his mojo and got them all for free. He also built bunkers and levels.
Connelly did all of the first-person and third-person character animation and all the gear. For the sequel, he’s focusing on fundraising.
While the WXP guys work on Greg Hastings’ Tournament Paintball part deux, they blow off steam with their band Super Geek League (SGL). Connelly, Kensok, and Moynihan are all in the band, along with frontman Floyd McFeely and stage manager Denise Buckley. SGL shows tend to feature such delights as stripping nuns, fire dancers, Jesus in clown shoes, and a toilet paper launcher.
Super Geek League recently had a show at the Seattle club Neumos. The reviewer in Seattle alternative paper The Strangercalled the show “the most f***ed up carnival from hell ever imagined.” If you’d like to see Super Geek League in action and live in the Seattle area, they’ll be at Chop Suey on March 24, 2005.
If you can't make the show, look for the guys when you playGreg Hastings' Tournament Paintball on XboxLive.
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