Pool balls settle the score

Shizmoo has become something of a mainstay at the IGF, this year is the third straight year that they have been a finalist.  In 2002 they actually went a step beyond being a finalist, winning the "Audience choice" award.  This year's effort is Billiard Boxing, a game that employs the same type of furious action twist on a common game concept that Shizmoo has been able to pull off each of the last two years with their other games that made the final round.

I had a chance to pose a few questions to Dan Goldstein, one of the founders of Billiard Boxing, and the boundless enthusiasm that I've come to associate with the Shizmoo team was more than a little evident in his responses.  As far as what the game is, and a little background on Shizmoo games, I thought I'd let Dan explain, "Billiard Boxing is a crazy version of pool, where each player has his own cue ball and can shoot at any time. Aside from the fact that it's a new kind of game that didn't exist previously, I think all our games are innovative in that we bring interesting new game mechanics and kinds of play to multiplayer web games. If you look at the multiplayer web games that are out there, they are almost exclusively turn-based classic parlor games. Although it's good that those exist, the state of affairs is a little bit boring to us. Our technology allows us to quickly create and deploy interesting new kinds of multiplayer web games that are easy to play."

That technology has been growing as years go by.  The focus of Shizmoo has been web-based games.  Their games are playable through a web browser, and the ease of access by players is one of the reasons they won the audience award two years ago at the fourth annual Independent Games Festival. 

Shizmoo has a much more limited definition of what an independent game is than some of the other finalists, though their responses do echo some of the same feelings that I've seen in conversing with several of the finalists.  "Anything that wasn't funded by a publisher or didn't intend to get a publisher [is an independent game]"  said Dan.  While this is more of a strict definition of what an indie is than many people espouse, and it most definitely would disqualify even some of the IGF finalists were this definition to be used for the IGF, Dan gave several good reasons for so narrowly defining the indie game world while discussing the distinctiveness of Independent games. 

"Independent games come in a few flavors, each of which have different positive aspects. Some of them are created by people whose creative impulses greatly outweigh their financial interest in the game, which allows such authors to create the game that they want to make rather than the game for which they believe there exists a large potential to make money. Unfortunately, such games are often limited in scope simply because they lack resources during the creation process. Sometimes though, this lack of funds forces the developer to be more resourceful and come up with new ways of doing things and new kinds of games. Other games are made for financial benefit, but may not fit the traditional brick-and-mortar sales approach. These games have the potential to expand our notions of what is a game, how a game is distributed, and who plays games. Overall, Independent games become distinctive simply because they are made outside of the traditional publisher funded developer/publisher/distributor model and this means that different considerations are taken into account during the process of creation."

The overall feel I got from Dan was that by not receiving the kind of money that a mainstream game would get for development, Indie developers have to be more inventive in order to create the game they want, and in addition, not having as great a financial need from the game allows developers to take the time to be as creative as they want.  The financial constraint on developers, may in fact actually work to make the indie developer more innovative.  Shizmoo itself was working on a "massively multiplayer realtime strategy title, but we ended up temporarily straying into the web-games space somewhat accidentally because of a game idea I had one day while taking a shower. (previous IGF Audience Choice winner Kung Fu Chess)" said Dan.  One can only assume that had they received funding to do that first project, that the many loved games made by Shizmoo would not exist.   (of course, we might have had one amazingly good massively multiplayer realtime strategy...)

With as successful as Shizmoo has been, Billiard Boxing is not the last game that we can expect to see from these guys thankfully.  About the future Dan stated: "We've been focusing on expanding the distribution of our multiplayer web games and getting the revenue model really solid. We also have a new version of our technology, this time in Java, which will allow Mac and Linux users to play our games. It will also hopefully allow us to let other developers make games using our system. Over the coming year you'll start seeing our games in a lot of big places, thanks to some great partnerships we've made. I'm really excited to start on some fun new projects we have planned as well."  Which can hopefully only mean many more reflex oriented twists on some of our favorite games, in addition to a few more surprises.  Until then, I'll meet you online for a game of Billiard Boxing, and I'll take the first shot...and the second...and the third...

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By: Russell Carroll
Posted: Friday March 05, 2004