Grimm's first assault on Happy Ever After ended in September, but developer Spicy Horse and publisher GameTap are already entrenched in the next season of American McGee's Grimm, the episodic series that follows the mean-spirited exploits of eponymous protagonist Grimm. Big Download recently caught up with Grimm designer American McGee to discuss the highs and lows of Season One, as well as how the idea for Grimm came about, the process of selecting fairy tales, and a tease of what we can expect from Season Two.
Q: Tell us about Spicy Horse. How did the company get started?
We formed the studio a little over two years ago. It started with just two people – myself and our Art Director, Ken Wong. Ken's the guy responsible for creating our very cool logo. Without that logo we wouldn't be as cool as we are today – so we're very thankful to him for that. When we started, Ken and I were down in Hong Kong – but we moved to Shanghai to be close to the booming game industry - Shanghai is quickly becoming the game capital of Asia.
As for our different offices – we have a few people working in the US, but the main studio is in Shanghai. Here we have about 40 people inside our core team and another 20 people at a nearby art outsourcing company. An additional group of people are in the US: our Executive Producer/Lead Writer, RJ Berg and our Community Support person, Dawn.
Spicy Horse translates into "Ma La Ma" in Chinese. "Ma La" is a type of Chinese pepper that numbs your mouth so you can eat really spicy stuff. We love Ma La and spicy food, so we thought we'd put that in the name. The second "Ma" means horse, and we chose that because horses are cool.
Q: What inspired the inception of Grimm?
I've always been attracted to darkly imaginative narratives, characters, and locales. Children's tales frequently contain the wildest visions and imaginings – woven inside stories that deal with age-old beliefs, lessons, and truths. As a medium, video games have tremendous possibility for range of visuals, sounds, immersion. But too often it seems that the technology is leveraged to recreate known realities or times. Personally, I'd rather see the technology leveraged to transport us to places more interesting to imagine than a WW2 battlefield or Space Marine training camp. So, I focus my work on the rich universe of fairy tales and children's stories.
Q: What led to the decision to make Grimm an episodic series?
The model mirrors perfectly the current episodic model of television – and that was exactly the reason behind doing it. The idea first came from GameTap's VP of Content, Ricardo Sanchez, and was worked into the design and structure of the Grimm episodes from the start. The hope is that by formatting game content and release schedules to be more predictable and more easily consumable, we'll attract a broader mass market audience.
Q: Did you always see Grimm as an episodic series?
Grimm visits 24 of the world's best-known fairy tales - many of them taken directly from "Grimm's Fairy Tales". Being that we're dealing with so many individual stories, the episodic development and distribution model is perfect for us. I think I'll eventually need to write a book about why I love episodic development so much. It's created an environment inside our studio where there's never "crunch time" and there's never wasted time. We're always producing steadily and consistently. I think this is primarily due to how episodic content forces you to "chunk" development into smaller pieces than with a traditional boxed game product.
Click the picture to read the review of American McGee's Grimm: The Devil and His Three Golden Hairs.
Q: How did your partnership with GameTap come about?
It all started when I was contacted by Ricardo Sanchez from GameTap. We talked about his ideas to build episodic content - and I came up with a way to blend in some of my twisted fairy tale narrative. The result was Grimm. The partnership itself has been really great. GameTap has allowed our studio to grow and innovate in way that I think would be difficult for a more traditional publisher.
Q: Before you solidified your GameTap deal, did you ever consider releasing Grimm through other digital services such as Steam?
Grimm as an episodic concept didn't exist before GameTap came along, so doing something "before" would have been impossible. That being said, the game episodes are currently available to purchase on GameTap.com and TryGames.com via digital download for $3.99. It was a priority for both GameTap and Spicy Horse to make the game readily available to all fans, whether they are GameTap subscribers or just want to purchase single episodes. Announcements related to other digital distribution portals will be made in the coming weeks.
Q: What sort of process was involved in selecting fairy tales to use in Grimm?
We first ranked tales by popularity and awareness - out of hundreds in the collections of the Brother's Grimm and more. You'll notice that some tales aren't taken directly from "The Brother's" (we didn't want to skip over interesting stories for purity's sake - certainly not with a main character like Grimm).
Next, we had to separate out tales that weren't "game worthy" - these would be tales that too long or too short, didn't contain enough interesting locations or plot points.
Finally, we'd have lengthy design meetings to build an episode design around a tale - and sometimes we'd come out of these meetings realizing that a given tale simply wouldn't work in the"Grimm format. The remaining list of tales are the ones that worked the best and those are the ones you'll see in our episodes.
We formed the studio a little over two years ago. It started with just two people – myself and our Art Director, Ken Wong. Ken's the guy responsible for creating our very cool logo. Without that logo we wouldn't be as cool as we are today – so we're very thankful to him for that. When we started, Ken and I were down in Hong Kong – but we moved to Shanghai to be close to the booming game industry - Shanghai is quickly becoming the game capital of Asia.
As for our different offices – we have a few people working in the US, but the main studio is in Shanghai. Here we have about 40 people inside our core team and another 20 people at a nearby art outsourcing company. An additional group of people are in the US: our Executive Producer/Lead Writer, RJ Berg and our Community Support person, Dawn.
Spicy Horse translates into "Ma La Ma" in Chinese. "Ma La" is a type of Chinese pepper that numbs your mouth so you can eat really spicy stuff. We love Ma La and spicy food, so we thought we'd put that in the name. The second "Ma" means horse, and we chose that because horses are cool.
Q: What inspired the inception of Grimm?
I've always been attracted to darkly imaginative narratives, characters, and locales. Children's tales frequently contain the wildest visions and imaginings – woven inside stories that deal with age-old beliefs, lessons, and truths. As a medium, video games have tremendous possibility for range of visuals, sounds, immersion. But too often it seems that the technology is leveraged to recreate known realities or times. Personally, I'd rather see the technology leveraged to transport us to places more interesting to imagine than a WW2 battlefield or Space Marine training camp. So, I focus my work on the rich universe of fairy tales and children's stories.
Q: What led to the decision to make Grimm an episodic series?
The model mirrors perfectly the current episodic model of television – and that was exactly the reason behind doing it. The idea first came from GameTap's VP of Content, Ricardo Sanchez, and was worked into the design and structure of the Grimm episodes from the start. The hope is that by formatting game content and release schedules to be more predictable and more easily consumable, we'll attract a broader mass market audience.
Q: Did you always see Grimm as an episodic series?
Grimm visits 24 of the world's best-known fairy tales - many of them taken directly from "Grimm's Fairy Tales". Being that we're dealing with so many individual stories, the episodic development and distribution model is perfect for us. I think I'll eventually need to write a book about why I love episodic development so much. It's created an environment inside our studio where there's never "crunch time" and there's never wasted time. We're always producing steadily and consistently. I think this is primarily due to how episodic content forces you to "chunk" development into smaller pieces than with a traditional boxed game product.
Click the picture to read the review of American McGee's Grimm: The Devil and His Three Golden Hairs.
Q: How did your partnership with GameTap come about?
It all started when I was contacted by Ricardo Sanchez from GameTap. We talked about his ideas to build episodic content - and I came up with a way to blend in some of my twisted fairy tale narrative. The result was Grimm. The partnership itself has been really great. GameTap has allowed our studio to grow and innovate in way that I think would be difficult for a more traditional publisher.
Q: Before you solidified your GameTap deal, did you ever consider releasing Grimm through other digital services such as Steam?
Grimm as an episodic concept didn't exist before GameTap came along, so doing something "before" would have been impossible. That being said, the game episodes are currently available to purchase on GameTap.com and TryGames.com via digital download for $3.99. It was a priority for both GameTap and Spicy Horse to make the game readily available to all fans, whether they are GameTap subscribers or just want to purchase single episodes. Announcements related to other digital distribution portals will be made in the coming weeks.
Q: What sort of process was involved in selecting fairy tales to use in Grimm?
We first ranked tales by popularity and awareness - out of hundreds in the collections of the Brother's Grimm and more. You'll notice that some tales aren't taken directly from "The Brother's" (we didn't want to skip over interesting stories for purity's sake - certainly not with a main character like Grimm).
Next, we had to separate out tales that weren't "game worthy" - these would be tales that too long or too short, didn't contain enough interesting locations or plot points.
Finally, we'd have lengthy design meetings to build an episode design around a tale - and sometimes we'd come out of these meetings realizing that a given tale simply wouldn't work in the"Grimm format. The remaining list of tales are the ones that worked the best and those are the ones you'll see in our episodes.
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