Xbox 360 version of The Grinder

NWR: High Voltage was big in developing licensed games in the past, and even recently with Astro Boy. How does developing those games guide the overall company?

JO: They're still a very important part of the company. We've been around for almost 17 years now, which is a long time in the industry. It's a very different process on licensed titles, which have to release on a certain date, to go out with a TV show, or movie, or whatever. So the development process is necessarily different, and I think we do really well in terms of being on budget, hitting our dates, and as we switch to original IPs, it's a very different process. You have time to be a lot more iterative. You can play around with things more. It's really us internally driving the visions for it as opposed to following a licenser's guide for who the characters are, where the environments are, who the enemies are. It's an exciting direction for us as a company. You want to be the master of your own destiny. It's definitely something we're pursuing — more original IPs.

NWR: So you will be moving towards more independent games from the ground up like The Conduit?

JO: That's our goal. That's more of a bigger business-development question. But definitely, internally, a company-level and a team-level, people want to work on their own games. We love a lot of the licensed stuff we do, but there's a certain extra charge and level of excitement that you're working on something that you know is yours, and you don't have the luxury of hiding behind the license and you have to make a great game that can stand on its own. There's the extra level of stress and the challenge of making sure it's something people care about and want to play and hopefully is something a little more enduring. Yes, it's something we're very interested in.

NWR: You have some really great concept artists, in my opinion. How hard is it to move the concepts into actual games?

JO: We're getting much, much better at it. We do have great concept artists. They're fantastic, and they work real quickly. I don't know how they do it. Initially, we give them high-level designs and ideas, and from there we let them loose. They do thumbnails, which are very quick, little sketches, and then we get together and chat about which ones we like, what elements we like, and then they'll do more finished pieces. And then as production gets rolling, they'll do a lot of paint-overs as well. So an environmental artist is working on a space, if they're not quite understanding or feeling how to put it all together, they'll take a render from the gray box, at a very geometry level, and give it to an environmental guy, and they'll do a paint-over and make something awesome. It's great having strong concept art. It really frees up the level artists to just create the levels and textures and the geo without them having to be concept artists as well and figure out what should go in these rooms and stuff.

NWR: You guys were really pumping out WiiWare games for a while. Are there any plans for more titles?

JO: We're always looking. WiiWare titles did well for us. We're used to a certain team size. So I think it's something that's nice for teams, if you're on a longer project, a bigger team, then switch to something that's small, and lean-and-mean, and a shorter dev schedule. It's definitely something we're looking at. We were the number one maker of WiiWare games for a while there. We did Gyrostarr, Blackjack, High Voltage Hot Rod Show, and Evasive Space. So we have four titles out there. We're very supportive of WiiWare.

NWR: What's the status of Animales de la Muerte? I noticed that you have the video of it still running.

JO: We're not full time on it, but we always go back to it and continue to work on it. We think there's a great game there, so, one day.

NWR: Can you tell me some of your opinions of Natal and the Move, the new motion controls that are coming out?

JO: We're really excited about it. We've been playing around with the Move a little bit in the studio and done some stuff with it. I'm excited that all three console manufacturers now are working on motion controls and different interface devices. I think the more people that are doing it, the more competitive it gets, and the more people will push it as an interface. We're super-excited about it. And we'll see what Nintendo does next, how they'll respond to it.

NWR: Do you have any interest in working on DS games?

JO: There's a large segment of the company that is very interested in DS. At lunchtime, wandering around the halls, there are a lot of DS games being played. That being said, we're not going to announce anything specifically.

NWR: One game that a lot of Nintendo fans keep asking for is Kid Icarus. Do you think there'd be any way that High Voltage could approach Nintendo to develop such a game?

JO: I played Kid Icarus as a kid and loved it, and it keeps on coming up enough. We talk to Nintendo a lot; we're a great partnership, so we'll see.

NWR: (Motioning towards a poster with a single Conduit art-styled "2") What's the official status on a sequel for The Conduit?

JO: Nothing officially. We loved the world, we had a very strong foundation with The Conduit, and we'd love to revisit it sometime soon. We have more stories to tell. We think FPSs on the Wii, that's there's definitely a place there, we carved out a great niche on the Wii. So, stay posted.

Unique artwork adorns the High Voltage hallways

We'd like to thank Josh Olson and the rest of High Voltage Software for the interview opportunity. Interview conducted by Aaron Kaluszka and transcribed by Dan Wasielewski. Discuss this interview in Talkback!