Death Goat (XBLIG): "An Interview with Brian Ferrara of Nocturnal Studios"

It's not often that I meet a developer in this line of work that is so much like myself. From our first email interactions I was able to determine that Brian Ferrara of Nocturnal Studios liked a lot of things that I did. He's a fan of heavy metal music, comic books, and video games just as I am. It is truly uncanny how alike our interests are. After I learned about his career as an adult comic book artist I decided it was a good idea to interview Brian. When I got the okay to go ahead with the project I typed up an interview Q&A session as I usually do. Brian then filled it out so that it could be shared with everyone here. In the following interview you will get to learn a lot about Brian, his many interests, and a little about the other guys at Nocturnal Studios. I hope you enjoy the interview, and give "Death Goat" a proper chance. As I said earlier in my review, it's a thoroughly enjoyable game that will have you returning for more.

Without further adieu ladies & gentlemen I give you my interview with Brian Ferrara!!!

INTERVIEW WITH: Brian Ferrara (Nocturnal Studios)

1) Brad (OtakuDante) - "I would like to start things off properly by asking for some background info on yourself. What got you interested in indie game development? What is your background as an artist/developer? Etc., ..."

Brian Ferrara - I've always been a gamer & a fan of geek culture. I grew up hacking apart my Atari 800XL amazed by the possibilities 64KB of memory provided! I've also been a musician my whole life with a strong passion for playing the guitar and drums.

Prior to developing games, I had a comic publishing company for 10 years. At the core, I've always just had ideas, stories or concepts that I would express with different collaborators in whatever medium I had access to or made sense for the project. On the game development side, this lead to titles like Techno Kitten Adventure, Nyan Cat Adventure and currently, Death Goat.

2) Brad (OtakuDante) - "Earlier you had told me (via email) that you have done some work with "Death Goats" art director on some adult, and heavy metal comic books. Could you elaborate on that, and let us know about some other projects you have been a part of? Any links to your products would be fine as well."

Brian Ferrara - Yeah- during our comic book days we actually produced what we called, artistic interpretations of iconic adult cinema, better know as insane versions of Debbie Does Dallas, Deep Throat, Johnny Wadd, Candy Stripers & The Devil in Mrs Jones. We also did comics for heavy metal bands such as Dimmu Borgir, Soilwork and Exodus. In addition, our art director Narek did work on an issue of Heavy Metal magazine. This all amounts to the fact that we've always enjoyed working on intense content at the fringes of popular culture. I think our current work really doesn't deviate from this at all.

3) Brad (OtakuDante) - "One of the reasons I requested "Death Goat" for review (aside from the fact that it looked Awesome!) was that one of your internet bios reminded me a lot of myself. What sorts of things are you into (Music, Art, Etc, ...)? What inspires you to do the things you do?

Brian Ferrara - I still pretty much love the same things now that I did as a kid. Comics, cartoons, video games, heavy metal music, toys. In particular, I was influenced by artists like Simon Bisley & H.R. Giger- any of the artists that conveyed a palpable level of darkness in their work. I grew up reading Lobo, Punisher, Wolverine, Evil Ernie, The Crow, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. As for music, I am a total addict. I listen to pretty much every genre of metal music. I have around 30,000 tracks in my iTunes library & I swear I've listened to all of them. I listen to metal all day long, every day. It just keeps me creative and motivated. I'm sure I get some sort of endorphin release from it or something.

4) Brad (OtakuDante) - "During my interactions with various video game developers I've found that they are usually into gaming themselves. What are some of the most memorable, and influential games that you have played throughout your life? What's your favorite game genre?"

Brian Ferrara - Going off the top of my head, I've always loved Castlevania, Doom, old school NES and SNES platformers like Battletoads, Ninja Gaiden & Duck Tales. I currently really enjoy open world / sandbox games where you can just mess around & don't really have to follow any particular progression if you don't want to. Even though I spend a lot of time working on games, I still love to play as many as I can & love to try both Indie games & the big blockbusters.

5) Brad (OtakuDante) - "I noticed that "Death Goat" featured a variety of different Heavy Metal genres. There's everything from classical metal to death metal. How were you/the developer able to get the bands to contribute to "Death Goat"? Who made the soundtrack selection choices?"

Brian Ferrara - The Death Goat soundtrack was pretty much an amalgamation of current songs that I thought were amazing and deserved more attention than they were getting, mixed with some of my all time favorites that I would just be psyched to have in a project, like White Walls by Between The Buried And Me.

Most of the musicians involved are gamers and felt the same way I did about combining these two passions.

6) Brad (OtakuDante) - " The character, and creature design in "Death Goat" is absolutely brilliant. It's awe-inspiring to say the least. Which one of the development team members designed the creatures, and characters in the game? Who decided on making the death animations so detailed, and gory?

Brian Ferrara - Thanks! Our art director Narek Gevorgian set the initial style guide for the game & then both he and artist Jose Marrero took over knocking out concepts based on ideas the whole team had. Pretty much everybody contributed knowing that we wanted it to be as Metal as possible. It needed to be insane & brutal. Jose did a great job on the death animations in particular. Just the right amount of ridiculous gore!

7) Brad (OtakuDante) - " Shmups (aka, shoot 'em ups) are all about high scores. What is your personal highest score in "Death Goat"? What's the development team's highest score?"

Brian Ferrara - I can score over a half million if I concentrate. I spent a lot of time during the game's development making sure it was possible to survive all 14 minutes of White Walls. The key to the game is to just zone out & get into that zen state somewhere between the gameplay and music where you sometimes forget to swallow or blink for a while and end up drooling and crying by the time you die.

8) Brad (OtakuDante) - "My career as a gaming journalist has enabled me to gain some insider info on certain XBLIG developers' progress, and updates. I have found that some XBLIG developers are willing to add extra "free" content if they reach a certain number of sales. Would you, and your development team be willing to add some extra levels, characters, and songs if your game sells well enough? How well would the game have to sell for something like this to be possible?"

Brian Ferrara - We'd definitely like to update the game if there was enough of a community playing the game to warrant that. We have a whole wishlist of features and additions we'd love to get to. If you look at some of my previous games like Techno Kitten, we updated that game regularly for free, so we'd definitely be up for it. We even have a good amount of notes for a much expanded sequel if we ever get the chance to work on that.

9) Brad (OtakuDante) - "What are some tips you could share with us to help anyone who's interested in getting into indie gaming development? What kind of education does one need to get into the field? Etc., ..."

Brian Ferrara - I don't think you need an education, although you definitely need knowledge, tenacity and that certain aspect to your personality that lets you do things that would make other, more rational people cringe. Some kind of mix between a rebellious risk taker & an obsessive compulsive task master. It's definitely not for everyone. I believe that the people who should make games, will end up doing just that. You just start at the bottom and start figuring shit out. Make a bunch of mistakes, but don't let them kill you. If you fail and keep going, it's not a failure, it's a lesson & knowledge gained. I would know, I've fucked up plenty, but I'm still around!

10) Brad (OtakuDante) - "I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for participating in this interview. I think you are one of the more interesting game developers I have met, and that you are one that I can definitely relate to. I would also like to thank you for sharing your art with us. I started my "Art of the Month" feature as an outlet for anyone willing to share their work, and I have to say it's always a treat when we have professional artists such as yourself who are willing to share their art. I wish you great success with "Death Goat", and I think once the word gets out it will likely be one of the best selling XBLIG titles out there. Thanks for your time, and I hope to see many more "Death Goat" sequels in the future (Not Kidding Btw)!!!"

Brian Ferrara - The whole team and I seriously appreciate your support and for taking the time to play our game and help us spread the word about it. The only reason I've been able to continue doing what I do is because there are people like you that have supported our work.