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5th Cell Scribbles Path for Everyone
[caption id="attachment_14843" align="alignnone" width="225" caption="Jeremiah "Miah" Slaczka"]
[/caption]
28-year-old game designer Jeremiah Slaczka, the lanky yet steel-faced co-founder of Bellevue's 5th Cell Studios, is exhausted.
“It's been a crazy month,” he says, explaining that his worldwide press junket for 5th Cell's new puzzle game, Scribblenauts, wrapped days earlier. Makes sense that he's getting so much attention; Scrabblenauts is 2009's most ambitious, talked-about video game this side of your typical Halo s and Calls of Duty. His six-year-old company finally has a mainstream hit, and with that, Slaczka is mustering what little stamina remains to assert himself as the Seattle game industry's most brash personality.
When asked why he started a games company in Bellevue, the Chicago native jokes, “We hate LA.” When recalling recent questions about “business mentors,” Slaczka rolls his eyes: “We know nothing about business. I was a star-eyed kid [when I started 5th Cell].” And he spares no vitriol for the publishing/distribution side of the biz. Among his few comments about publishing that remained on the record, he called the industry a “dog-and-pony show”--
Thankfully, Scribblenauts puts the money where his mouth is. The game's slogan is “Write Anything, Solve Everything” (“I love hooks,” Slaczka says).
Here's how it works. The opening level tells players to fetch a star off the top of a tree. Your little character, a kid with a rooster-red hat, can't jump that high. Instead, rooster kid comes equipped with a magic notebook: Type most any word on the Nintendo DS's touch screen, and that word will come to life.
Type “ladder,” and you can climb to the star. “Beaver”: Watch it gnaw the tree in half. “Time machine”: Go back in time, fetch a T-Rex, and return on its back to easily reach the top. The game has over 22,000 words, each done up in charming, hand-drawn style with insane programming to link them all together, and the slew of do-it-yourself content has made this imagination wonderland a viral hit.
Search Twitter and YouTube for every-three-minute updates from fans discovering new words in the game ("keyboard cat," "philosoraptor," "narwhal." The game even decides the age-old question: Pirate or ninja?)
Idea, execution, and style rarely meet in equal parts in video games, especially those made by small studios. Slaczka takes pride in his feat.
“Nintendogs [a virtual pet game by Nintendo] is the best-selling video game this generation,” he says, “because everybody loves puppies! We'd succeeded with niche audiences with our previous games, but this time, we wanted [Nintendogs'] same, huge audience. When we initially talked to publishers about Scribblenauts, they'd ask, 'Who is your audience?' We answered, 'Everyone.'”
Publishers would rephrase the question incredulously, with questions about target demographics, and Slaczka kept repeating the same answer: “Everyone.”
Flush with cash from 2006's million-selling game Drawn to Life —another "do-it-yourself" creative game—5th Cell self-funded most of Scribblenauts' development, thus dodging the headaches of doubtful publishers (they eventually allied with Warner Bros. Interactive). After the game's release last week, which handily topped Amazon.com's gaming sales lists, the company finally has what it calls a “bargaining chip” to further fuel its independent streak. Momentum's on their side; a sequel to Drawn to Life launches in a few weeks, and the 36-person team is already neck-deep in a new, secret project.
All this comes from a company that insists it “doesn't make games for money;” that builds each of its games from the ground up rather than “re-skin” old hits; that doesn't have a limitless budget to make spit-shined, years-brewing games like neighbors Nintendo and Valve. None of those facts have proven to be hurdles.
“You can't get our games from anyone else,” Slaczka beams. “Nintendo doesn't make our products. And nobody on our staff has ever left [5th Cell] to work for another studio.” That final comment hangs in the air without explanation; if he had his own magic notepad, this would be when he'd write the word Scribblenauts and silently push the pad in my direction.
[/caption]28-year-old game designer Jeremiah Slaczka, the lanky yet steel-faced co-founder of Bellevue's 5th Cell Studios, is exhausted.
“It's been a crazy month,” he says, explaining that his worldwide press junket for 5th Cell's new puzzle game, Scribblenauts, wrapped days earlier. Makes sense that he's getting so much attention; Scrabblenauts is 2009's most ambitious, talked-about video game this side of your typical Halo s and Calls of Duty. His six-year-old company finally has a mainstream hit, and with that, Slaczka is mustering what little stamina remains to assert himself as the Seattle game industry's most brash personality.
When asked why he started a games company in Bellevue, the Chicago native jokes, “We hate LA.” When recalling recent questions about “business mentors,” Slaczka rolls his eyes: “We know nothing about business. I was a star-eyed kid [when I started 5th Cell].” And he spares no vitriol for the publishing/distribution side of the biz. Among his few comments about publishing that remained on the record, he called the industry a “dog-and-pony show”--
Thankfully, Scribblenauts puts the money where his mouth is. The game's slogan is “Write Anything, Solve Everything” (“I love hooks,” Slaczka says).
Here's how it works. The opening level tells players to fetch a star off the top of a tree. Your little character, a kid with a rooster-red hat, can't jump that high. Instead, rooster kid comes equipped with a magic notebook: Type most any word on the Nintendo DS's touch screen, and that word will come to life.
Type “ladder,” and you can climb to the star. “Beaver”: Watch it gnaw the tree in half. “Time machine”: Go back in time, fetch a T-Rex, and return on its back to easily reach the top. The game has over 22,000 words, each done up in charming, hand-drawn style with insane programming to link them all together, and the slew of do-it-yourself content has made this imagination wonderland a viral hit.
Search Twitter and YouTube for every-three-minute updates from fans discovering new words in the game ("keyboard cat," "philosoraptor," "narwhal." The game even decides the age-old question: Pirate or ninja?)
Idea, execution, and style rarely meet in equal parts in video games, especially those made by small studios. Slaczka takes pride in his feat.
“Nintendogs [a virtual pet game by Nintendo] is the best-selling video game this generation,” he says, “because everybody loves puppies! We'd succeeded with niche audiences with our previous games, but this time, we wanted [Nintendogs'] same, huge audience. When we initially talked to publishers about Scribblenauts, they'd ask, 'Who is your audience?' We answered, 'Everyone.'”
Publishers would rephrase the question incredulously, with questions about target demographics, and Slaczka kept repeating the same answer: “Everyone.”
Flush with cash from 2006's million-selling game Drawn to Life —another "do-it-yourself" creative game—5th Cell self-funded most of Scribblenauts' development, thus dodging the headaches of doubtful publishers (they eventually allied with Warner Bros. Interactive). After the game's release last week, which handily topped Amazon.com's gaming sales lists, the company finally has what it calls a “bargaining chip” to further fuel its independent streak. Momentum's on their side; a sequel to Drawn to Life launches in a few weeks, and the 36-person team is already neck-deep in a new, secret project.
All this comes from a company that insists it “doesn't make games for money;” that builds each of its games from the ground up rather than “re-skin” old hits; that doesn't have a limitless budget to make spit-shined, years-brewing games like neighbors Nintendo and Valve. None of those facts have proven to be hurdles.
“You can't get our games from anyone else,” Slaczka beams. “Nintendo doesn't make our products. And nobody on our staff has ever left [5th Cell] to work for another studio.” That final comment hangs in the air without explanation; if he had his own magic notepad, this would be when he'd write the word Scribblenauts and silently push the pad in my direction.
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