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This week Tik Games' brings Hoyle Texas Hold 'em to Xbox LIVE Indie Games. If you happened to be one of the people attending PAX 2009, you may have seen this game at our booth! We chatted with Mitzy McGilvray all about what went into bringing this game to the Indie Games channel!
Could you describe Hoyle Texas Hold 'em for anyone who hasn’t seen or played it, yet?
Hoyle Texas Hold ‘em delivers the very best of Hold ‘em style poker for the Xbox 360. You can choose to play with up to nine friends or against any combination of AI and LIVE players. Customize your game type by choosing limit, no limit, spread limit and table limit style games. It has full support of Microsoft Xbox 360 Avatars so each player can show off their unique personality and style.
What made you want to make this sort of game?
We love Texas Hold ‘em at TikGames. In fact, we love it so much that this is our third Hold ‘em game! The first one was released for PC about four years ago. It was called Tik’s Texas Hold ‘em. Next, we created Texas Hold’em for Xbox LIVE Arcade. As the Xbox LIVE platform has matured, we had many new features we wanted to introduce to Texas Hold ‘em. The Indie Games channel was the perfect venue for this new Texas Hold ‘em game.
What games influenced or inspired Hoyle Texas Hold 'em?
There were many games that influenced this game. First, of course, was the original Texas Hold ‘em game for XBLA. We read the community forums, asked lots of questions and came up with a “wish list” for new features.
Next, we looked at a bunch of other great games including our own Domino Master, as well as such XBLA classics as Uno and Bomberman. We considered all of these to be good examples of light multiplayer live games.
What games are you playing now (other than your game!)?
I’m all over the place in terms of games. On my Xbox 360, currently I'm playing Lego Rockband, Domino Master or Bomberman with my family.
Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of the new Wolfenstein 3-D on Xbox 360 too.
Can you tell us more about the other things you’ve worked on?
TikGames has released over fifty games in the last 5 years. Some of the more popular games include the original Texas Hold ‘em on XBLA, Domino Master, Interpol and Minesweeper Flags. Additionally, we have a great line up of PC games including County Fair and Cinema Tycoon. You can see a full listing of the games we’ve made at the Tik Games website.
What made you want to use XNA Game Studio to make Hoyle Texas Hold 'em?
We chose XNA Game Studio as we really liked the indie approach to making games and the robust feature set of the SDK. Because this is an Indie Game, we did not need to go through the same formal concept approval process required for core XBLA games (part of their portfolio management). This allowed us to go build the game we wanted to make and get it out more quickly.
What other tools or programs do you use to help you make your games?
In addition to the internal proprietary tools and technologies that we have created over the last few years, one of the greatest tools we use is Adobe Flash. We model all art and animation in Flash so we can see the game come to life before our engineers implement it. This lets our artists have more control over the visuals and our engineers get a “blue print” for how the game should look before they even start coding.
How many people are on your team?
At one point, the team had 24 people! It ramped up and down depending on the workload. It also takes a lot of testers to QA a 10 player game.
How long did it take you to make Hoyle Texas Hold 'um?
In all, we worked on this game for almost year. About six weeks of that was spent in design, four weeks in creating “look and feel”, about eight months in full production and the rest in QA.
One of our priorities here was not to create a “one off” game, but to build an infrastructure to support future Indie Game development for Xbox LIVE.
Can you walk us through a usual day for you and your team?
TikGames’ operates with an internal, off shore team. This means we have team members around the world. We run on a 24 hour day.
For Hoyle Texas Hold ‘em, we had artists, engineers and managers who’s sole responsibility was focused on creating a great game.
As the Executive Producer for this game, I have several other games that vie for my time. I typically stretch my work day to cover all major time zones. It gives an advantage that I can communicate with all key team members for at least a good chunk of their day.
My day usually goes something like this:
Early morning – work with team on GMT +3 time zone (Eastern Europe), then work my way around the world back to GMT -7 (home) time zone. My work really varies. One hour I might need to design a game feature, the next write some text to appear in a game, and the next might be to prepare a full game proposal for our “next big thing”.
What’s next for you?
Speaking of “our next big thing”…..Omaha anyone????
If you'd like to check out Hoyle Texas Hold 'em or any of Tik Games' other titles yourself, you can do that now on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace!
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