Dene Carter is probably the most lively developer I have ever met. He is always having fun, and he does what he loves, developing games. He just recently moved to the iPhone OS from console development. We had a chance to chat with Dene Carter and talk about his move to the iPhone OS, and his new App Flamboo. TheMacFeed’s interview follows after the break.
Hello, Dene thanks for taking the time to talk with us.
No problem. I don’t get out much these days, so doing this is the closest I get to human companionship. I’m so cooooold…
So, what led you to join the app making world?
For some years I’ve felt frustrated with what seemed to be an increasing gap between what I believed I did for a living (make games) and what I actually did for a living (sit in meeting rooms and argue the toss over character motivation with other frustrated people).
There comes a time when you’ve got to put your money where your mouth is, or end up one of those embittered developers you see nursing a pint in dark pubs muttering to themselves.
What did you do before you created apps for the iPhone?
Before I started Fluttermind I was the creative director for the Microsoft’s Fable studio. That meant that I was the ‘keeper’ of all things Fable, the world, the characters, the creatures, spells the story – all those things that go to make up a coherent and enjoyable world. Some years ago, I stopped actually making those things myself and ended up reviewing other people’s work instead. It was fun for a time, but not so much in the long term.
What would you say you have enjoyed more, the large gaming industry where you came from, or the app business?
The business side of the app world is tough – really tough. It’s incredibly hard to make any kind of an impression on the public due to the massive quantities of software being released daily. It’s incredible. However, I’m drawing, writing music, coding and designing things myself these days and I wouldn’t swap that for anything. I’ve had the well-paid executive job – but in my mind, going it alone and coding small games again is a step up!
Now, lets talk about your app Flaboo, where did you come up with the idea?
Flaboo started life as a game called ‘Bounce’ which I wrote for mobile phones many years ago. It was an experiment based on minimal interfaces and control methods. On the mobile phone you only had one button for ‘flap’, no tilt and that was it. The chaos and variety came from the patterns of the clouds and the fact that they were curved.
Where did you find inspiration for Flaboo?
Flaboo’s main character is Fat Chick – he was inspired by a weird Korean toy that a friend of ours bought ages ago. It was huge. We made some jokes at the time that there was no way that thing would ever fly unless it lost a lot of weight.
Also, my brother, a fellow developer – the infamous Simon Carter – once lost his temper in a meeting, and we started talking about how he was ‘hopping mad Simon’. The original version of Bounce featured him for quite some time.
What were some issues you ran into while creating Fluttermind?
Seeing as how I’ve actually not done anything myself for nearly a decade, I had to learn everything from scratch again. Web design, asset creation, XCode, objective C, how to take a video of an app, how to upload it on Youtube in under a year… everything was new to me. On top of that, there’s all the company rubbish, like organising corporation tax. If there’s anything that makes me want to play Russian Roulette it’s tax forms.
Have you enjoyed creating apps for the iPhone OS?
Bar objective C’s idiosyncratic syntax, programming for the iPhone OS has been a breeze. When I started out back in 1985 (gulp) there was no form of help or support anywhere. If you got stuck or didn’t know how to do something, you were stuffed. You might have to travel to London just to look for a book. These days, the community is so vibrant, and so full of intelligent, helpful people that it’s a much nicer experience.
The iPhone itself is also ludicrously powerful, with (at least until recently) pretty unique hardware. I couldn’t have done things like ’shake off the goo by jiggling the phone’ and ‘pop bubbles with your finger’ in any other medium.
Do you own a Mac?
I do. I own a MacBook. Not a fancy one, a slowly yellowing white one.
After using your Mac, have you remained a loyal PC fan, or do you prefer Macs now?
I still use my PC a lot for development of assets. I bought a lot of software over the years, some of it really rather expensive, and it only works on PCs. If I had the option to go back and do it all again, I’d probably do it differently. There’s a certain ethos in the Mac world which I approve of. If the user doesn’t need to do something very often, don’t force them to wade through that crap to do what they really want to do. I’m lookin’ at you Windows…
Thanks for your time Dene.
No problem. Now, where’s my money? Come on! Hey! Don’t look at me like that! I have a wife to feed. Do you know how many Flaboo!’s I’m going to have to sell to keep up the mortgage payments? DO YOU?!!!
Related Posts
- Interview with Keith Pichelman CEO of Concrete Software
- Interview With Adam Behringer Founder and CEO of BeeDocs
- Interview with Oliver Breidenbach Co-Founder and CEO of Boinx Software Ltd
- Interview with Matt Vickers
- Interview with Matt Engstrom
Categories: Interviews, The Feed
