Interview: Barry Meade From Fireproof Games on The Room Two's PC Release - Article
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 05 July 2016 / 5,108 Views
When The Room graced mobile devices worldwide in 2012, many traditional gamers were taken aback by how crisp and intoxicating it was. It certainly set a standard that most other mobile games have failed to match.
With The Room Two set to be released on PC this July 5th, I decided to catch up with Fireproof's Barry Meade to find out what the PC release will mean for Fireproof and its fans.
Hi Barry! Thanks for taking the time to talk about The Room 2, which is of course launching on PC this week.
No problem!
First of all, as a game that was so centred around the advantages of mobile platforms, how difficult was it translating the control scheme to a keyboard and mouse for PC?
To be honest, I think the thought of losing touch screen controls in place of keyboard and mouse was worse than the actual implementation. We knew that the game's touch controls were a big plus for mobile players but a lot of that was down to the generally bad state of touch controls on mobile. So we just tried our best with PC, just like we tried our best on mobile and, after we released the first game, our rating on Steam shot to Overwhelmingly Positive. So, as it turns out, our worries were unfounded. As long as we put the effort in to making keyboard & mouse also feel nice to use, we didn't have to worry. The game is carried by the content after all.
You can tell from the game's screenshots that the graphics have received a major upgrade. How difficult was this to do? Were models already that high resolution to begin with and down-sampled for mobile, or did you have to remake assets?
Ha, if only they were that high-res :P
The reason the game was successful on mobile was because we built to the strengths of the mobile platform. So in order to do right by the PC we had to take the same approach. Almost every asset in The Room Two has been created as new for the PC with higher poly counts, hi-res textures, more elaborate FX and lighting tech. So we don't 'port' across platforms so much as 'rebuild' for them. We think that's necessary, otherwise you're not putting the respectful amount of work in and probably don't deserve much success.
Considering that The Room Three is approaching its first birthday, did it feel weird going back and working on the second entry again?
In some ways it's weird yeah but I'd say it's mostly been pretty satisfying seeing our favourite parts of The Room Two come back to life in such fancy new clothes. When you're creating stuff, you're so busy getting it working you can't see the woods for the trees. With this more calm and deliberate rebuild on PC I think we all actually appreciate the game a bit more now. We see it for what it is. I always loved The Seance chapter of TR2 and to see how lovingly it's been recreated for PC is just a joy.
Apart from the improved visuals, can players hope to find any other new features or content within the PC release?
Naturally we have Steam achievements and trading cards stuff but that's standard. In our case The Room Two was so highly rated by our players, we didn't worry it was lacking in content or that the content was a problem. New content is difficult & expensive to make and test and is also very time consuming. It would have taken months longer to come out & destroyed our budget for the game. Instead we wanted to take the content we know players really enjoyed and re-imagine it for the power of a PC. This was the same approach we took with the first game and PC players really appreciated that so we hope players will appreciate the craft we put into this newer version too.
Do you hope that players of the iOS and Android versions find the PC release of The Room 2 and consider it the definitive edition?
That would be great to see but we don't mind either way. I think it's more important that players on PC feel that the version they have reflects their platform the best and so that's what we concentrate on, just like we wanted the mobile game to be the best on mobile too. We have heard from a few players who play the game on both platforms and they've been very happy with the improvements on PC. So as I say, it's really our players who have let us know we're doing the right thing and given us confidence to make the second game for PC.
There’s usually quite a lot of anger from the Steam community at mobile games being ported to the platform. How do you think The Room as a series manages to avoid this backlash from a (usually) very vocal community?
Honestly, we worried a lot about this before we released The Room, which was our first PC game. We'd read the horror stories from some developers and for sure it made us fearful. However we were determined to make The Room on PC as well as we were able so that, simply put, our players would have very little to find wrong with our efforts. That's really all you can do to avoid these issues - your very best work. If we gave it our all then people could say whatever they liked, we would know we did right by the platform. All those fears melted away once we released. The forums are amazingly complimentary and our rating remains Overwhelmingly Positive. We hope that The Room Two can live up to that.
Finally, with The Room and The Room Two both on PC, how long do you think it’ll be before the third instalment graces the platform?
We're a bit untraditional as a games company. We don't make plans, we have goals. That means rather than plan out the next few years, we make business decisions quite quickly, based on what's happening at a given moment. So when we released The Room, we didn't schedule for Two and Three. Our attitude was: let's do our best, release the game, and see where the chips fall. If The Room does well, let's think about Two. If Two does well, let's think about Three. It's down to the players. If they like it, we'll make it. So far it's worked out for us!
Barry is the co-founder and director of Fireproof Games. He can be followed on Twitter @Fireproof_Barry.
A graduate in Computing which was centered around Gaming, Dan is a games developer and writer. His first game, Twixel, was released for iOS, Android, PC and Mac in 2015, with a second game in the pipeline. A lover of all things games, Dan has been writing for VGChartz.com for over 2 years, attending conferences and interviewing developers to get the best content for VGChartz readers. His favourite games include Asura's Wrath, S.T.A.L.K.E.R and the Halo Series. Dan can be followed on Twitter at: @Caesoose
