We have a quick interview today with Tobias Frisch and Sebastian Mittag about The Inner World which was review recently for our Mobile area by Ken Appleby
What were some of your goals when creating The Inner World? :
Sebastian:Our goal was to create a world, which starts living and becomes a place for all kind of characters, metaphors and ideas glued together by Robert’s and Laura’s story. There are many layers of different interesting topics, like religion, the monitoring state, science etc. But we don´t want to act like a moral authority and point fingers. Everything is very subtle (sometimes even obvious) and always driven by our urgent need to tell stories and characters in a humorous and at the same time hearty way. The Inner World is our heart-project and not driven by numbers, sales or anything else.
Building off the last question did you guys as a studio achieve those goals and what would you have done differently if there was anything unaccomplished with The Inner World?:
Sebastian: We achieved those goals, because I am very happy with the finished game. Sure, some polishing here and some shorter dialogues there... But at the end, it became more complex character-, riddle-, and world driventhan I expected.So, nothing to complain about. And you know, usually I should complain, just because I am German. The more important point is, that we don´t want to do those crunch-times again. It is not very healthy. But I think we learned to do that.
Will we be heading back to Asposia anytime soon with a direct sequel or maybe a completely different story?:
Tobias: We were asked a lot about a possible The Inner World 2. There’s enough content still untold. What happens to Robert & Laura? What about Gorf and Gorfelina? Does the tailor ever get free of prison?We don’t suspend a sequel, but there won’t be a TIW 2 as the next project. We first need to see, how The Inner World is accepted, loved and of course – how successful it’ll be.
So everyone out there enjoying it does raise the chance!
What is an average day at Studio Fizbin?:
Tobias: That really depends on what you’re doing at Fizbin. For me as Producer for project and the company as a whole, it’s a lot about talking to the departments and get overview information about the project. In general it’s a lot about communication, internal as well as external. There’s also lots of Planning and analyzing involved. Other team members are working on the game design or a concept for some contract work. But we’re all together in one office, so ways of communication are really short, hierarchies flat and fast.
From what I have seen from your website the atmosphere around the team that worked on The Inner World was fun and professional. How important was that when creating the game? :
Tobias: You’re totally right and this was and still is extremely important. Sometimes, especially to survive those horrible crunch times, it can be hard to work on a game. So, fun and a relaxing atmosphere are two of the most important factors. If your need to concentrate hour after hour, five minutes of a fierce nerf gun battle is the best what helps keep concentration and motivation high! When I was hired, the three told me, besides skill, they always look for the personality behind. And they’re so right about that!
One of the problems that gamers run into while playing games on their mobile devices is that some games will crash or not load because their device is not the latest model, how important was it to the studio for bringing the game to the most platforms with having any operating system compatibility issues? :
As mentioned earlier, compatibility and testing in mobile devices is a very crucial step in developing. At least we knew from the start that we can’t handle testing and therefore securing the quality we wanted on Android devices because we just can’t run tests on so many different devices and configurations. We’re too small. The decision for iOS only as mobile platform was made early. Still we underestimated the workload. In addition, during the development process the new iOS 7 was released with totally new requirements. In the end we took a risk and released the game tested as good as possible by ourselves. But the sheer amount of iOS devices (the new iPhone 5S and C came out) and different configurations, settings etc. out there overwhelmed us.
It’s really hard because we wanted to make the game possible to as much people as possible. But we had to realize that this is not possible for a small team. Now we’re still working on the next update, which should make some major improvements about issues we only learned about because so many players not only complained, but helped us with information about problems. So, thank you, all out there for your help! Next time, we’ll do way better!
Finally, are there any upcoming projects that gamers should be keeping an eye out for, and what can you tell us? :
Tobias: Of course there are other projects and ideas going on. Soon, maybe in early March, you should keep up your ears, because we will start showing you new things. It gets a bit darker, a bit more action, a bit more hardcore. More to come soon!
THANKS to you for the interview! That was a lot of fun! Hope you’ll like what we do next!
Further details about The Inner World can be found here and our review here
