Interview | Joe Danger

RM: After spending time with Joe Danger, it’s clear that the game is all about having some fun and setting some high scores. Do you think this comes from the dynamic of you guys as a team? You all seem to be very close…

SM: We’re close in every sense of the word. We’re crammed into a tiny room, knocking elbows. We’re a tight little band and we kind of feed off each other in terms of design. We’re probably supposed to be suffering for our art, but it’s actually really good fun. This is what we’ve always wanted to do and I kind of think, if you aren’t having fun making a game, then the game probably isn’t going to be much fun either.

RM: Joe Danger hasn’t even been released to the public yet, and you’re already garnering a great deal of interest. As we get closer to release, are the nerves setting in?

SM: Oh my God. Absolutely! We have invested so much into this game, emotionally, creatively, financially, it means everything to us. We sit in our little vacuum, working day and night, crossing our fingers that someone will like what we do. If someone is playing our game, they become the most important person in the world to us. We are making the game we want to play, but we want other people to love it too. I lay awake at night, just picturing my friends playing it at home.

RM: You’ve literally just heard about being nominated for two awards at IGF, the award for technical excellence and the Seumas McNally grand prize. How does it feel to be recognised to this extent?

SM: Getting any nomination for the IGF was genuinely, totally unexpected. When it happened one of the others texted me in the middle of a night, and I thought it was one of their cruel pranks. We’re so incredibly excited about going to GDC and showing people the game, I can’t even describe it. For any indie like us, it’s such an incredible struggle to actually make a game that it’s an overwhelmingly feeling to get any sort of encouragement. Getting to see people playing our game is our motivation for everything, so being able to exhibit to folks at GDC is incredibly exciting.

RM: How close are we to being able to play Joe Danger in our homes, and how long has it taken to get here?

SM: Close… so close. We want to get Joe Danger out this Spring. There’s lots of work to do, and there’s lots yet to announce. We’re very excited, but it will have taken two years to get to that point and we can think of nothing else these days.

RM: Do you have any plans for DLC or expansions for the game?

SM: Right now, we are putting everything we have into this game. If people want more, then that would be so amazing. We have so much that we’d love to do. When you make a game you always dream of just how far you could push the concept before it breaks. We’d love that opportunity, we would want to be really adventurous and surprise people with where we go next.

RM: What’s in the future for Hello Games?

SM: We are of course 100% focused on Joe Danger at the moment, but honestly, we spend every waking moment making, playing or talking about games. We really don’t talk about anything other than games we’re playing, ideas for Joe Danger and what other things we want to make.

We still have a few ideas from when we first sat down and brainstormed with toys right at the beginning. They float around and we often lose a morning excitedly arguing about a new feature that one of us has thought up for one of the other projects. There are some big, crazy ideas in there that we hope we get the chance to make. Ideas that are very different, I think. By Daniel Lipscombe

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