• Kung Fu Chaos Contest
• Epic Records Contest

The Makers 3:

Designing Kung Fu Chaos, Part One

Tameem Antoniades, the designer of this Xbox exclusive from Just Add Monsters, Inc., takes time out of his busy schedule to share some of what went into the development of Kung Fu Chaos.

When Tameem and his partners, Mike Ball and Nina Kristensen, started their game development company, they wanted their first project to be truly special. They did market research and analyzed sales charts. Through the course of this, they realized that, as Tameem says: "Making a game these days is tougher than ever because there are just so many games out there competing for the same audience. It saddens me to note that people tend to only buy sequels and big-name franchises, which is the reason why there are so few original titles being released these days. This can be quite demoralizing when you are trying to make something new."

The folks at Just Add Monsters, Inc. began by looking for a springboard off which they could dive and make their own spectacular splash in the console gaming industry. They found it when they noticed that people like to play games with friends and families. This launched them onto the idea of doing a multiplayer game.

Next, they broke it down even further. Tameem explains: "Because we couldn't afford a license, I thought it would be important to pick a theme that people can recognize ... hence the old-school Kung Fu theme of Kung Fu Chaos. Mike wanted to appeal to players who weren't familiar with the 70's theme, so he came up with the idea of the movie theme. It all just clicked together and seemed to design itself after that."

The Challenges
They had a great idea, but would that be enough? No. They then had to pitch the game to investors and publishers, and that required presentation materials. "Coming up with cool ideas is easy," Tameem explains, "but writing a design bible that takes into account the budget, timescales, man-power, and technical and art limitations is really, really hard! I spent about five months solid writing down the ideas we had into a bible for programmers and artists we didn't yet have.

"On top of this, we were working out of Mike's tiny spare bedroom, living off our meager savings with no guarantee that it would amount to anything." In order to sell the game, the Just Add Monsters, Inc. team created a one-page advertisement in the style of a movie poster. They used that advertisement, a trailer (film footage), and a 15-page document that described their vision for the graphics, gameplay, characters, and levels when they approached game publishers. Tameem says: "[We had to take our presentation] around to publishers, who give you 10 minutes to pitch before showing you the door. That could get pretty hard sometimes."

Ten minutes to make or break a dream. Amazing!

By Martyn Rose