I got the pleasure of interview Train2Game student, Lewis Gordon. Lewis is one of the founding members of Merkury Games and he talks to me about how the studio started and where the ideas for the games came from.

You can listen to the interview here: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1561950-train2game-student-lewis-gordon-talks-to-t2g-radio

Or read the transcript below:

Hi I’m Lewis Gordon from Train2Game doing the Games Development course.

How you doing Lewis?

I’m not too bad, yourself?

I’m good cheers mate. So give us a bit of your background then mate, what you been doing?

I started the Train2Game course three years ago, I’ve literally just applied for my extension on the course it’s self, but I started off originally just as a gamer and I turned around and thought, “I want to make games”, didn’t know much about it, saw this course, saw I could do it around my own time and work and thought it suited me to the best of my abilities really. Once I started the course I did struggle a bit and I met a couple of people on the forums them selves, one in particular, we started to bounce ideas off of each other and get some actual games rolling. The original one we made was just between me and the programmer, it was just literally the two of us. We had no designers, no artists or anything like that, it was just a case of we thought we’d make a game and it turned out it was actually working, which was a shock!

Nice! With the games you’ve made and stuff is that with the studio you’re part of now?

That’s right yeah, both games we’ve made are or are part of studio work.

Yeah? What was the studio called, your one?

The studios called Merkury games with an M-e-r-k-u-r-y.

Any reason you decided to go with that rather than the actual spelling?

Just because, like with our games, it represents how different we want to be. So instead of going the same route and going the same words and everything like that, we will just change a slight bit to make it our own.

Fair enough! I’ve had a look at a couple of the trailers for your games, I haven’t had a chance to play them yet, and they do look quite interesting and fun. Where do the ideas come from for them?

The first one, the pirates one, that was actually an idea from my portfolio project. We had to make a design document for a game and that was the one I came up with, then me and the other programmer decided “OK, let’s try to make this game”. So we kept putting ideas together and the ideas just kept expanding and expanding. That one, its self is still a work in progress because we are thinking about adding more levels into it and bosses and things like that but the idea, like with any kind of game, come from games we have played previously but just something that we’d want to play ourselves. If we think we can enjoy it, we just want to make sure people can enjoy it as well.

Yeah fair enough! So, you develop mostly for PC don’t you?

Yeah, for ourselves, PC market is the one we are going for. Just purely because PC Gaming is more or less for the hardcore gamers. We can obviously look at mobile phones and consoles but end of the day, Consoles are becoming more and more like a PC so might as well go directly to the market that’s asking for it.

Your studio now, you said that it started off as just you and another developer, so what have you got now?

So originally it was just me and the programmer. Now, I don’t know the exact numbers, I think we’ve got about six artists, some of them are on and off – just doing work when they can, we’ve got out games designer and obviously QA involved as well. So we’ve got a good variety of people, some new, some experienced and some just looking to get involved really.

How long have you been doing the studio?

The studio started this year, so we finished the first game and thought, why don’t we try and make this in to a studio? Get some people together and make some games that would actually be appealing to people and not just us.

Yeah, is it all Train2Game members you’ve got as your team?

Near enough all of our members are Train2Game except for one which is just a person I know personally.

Nice one. So what are your plans for the future?

Plans for the future, we are hoping that we can turn this company in to something that can.. For us it’s not making a profit that drives us, it’s making them games, but if we can make anything off the work we do that’s a bonus none the less!

Perfect! Well I think that’s all we have time for today Lewis so thank you very much for your time buddy!

That’s no problem at all

I will talk to you soon

Talk soon

Bye!

Bye!