Dan Marshall - Zombie Cow Studios interview
Who needs fancy graphics, voice acting, and hi-tech bells and whistles when you've got old school charm, two underdog heroes, and a boatload of irreverence? Not Zombie Cow Studios, who went from relative obscurity to cult favourite within a year with the release of two indie adventures. But who are these guys anyway? Series creator Dan Marshall took time out of his hectic lifestyle to talk to Adventure Gamers about the studio’s titles past and present (in more ways than one), from Ben There, Dan That! and Time, Gentlemen, Please! to the forthcoming episodic Ben-and-Dan debut, Revenge of the Balloon-Headed Mexican.
Adventure Gamers: Let's start by asking who or what make up the Zombie Cow?
Dan Marshall: It’s technically just me, but I’m lucky to be joined in my ventures by a whole host of awesome people. That includes Ben [Ward] as we toss ideas back and forth, and now the awesome Lemmy and Binky, a couple of AAA devs-turned-indie, responsible for the tragically as-yet-unfinished The Forgotten Element.
One day hopefully we’ll be rich and powerful enough to finish that off, but at the moment the three of us are working on something a bit exciting together – not an adventure, but the same sort of comedy nonsense as Time Gentlemen, Please!
AG: You've produced two highly acclaimed adventures so far. Have Zombie Cow always been about producing adventure games?
Dan: Nope, the first game I wrote was a 2D cartoon deathmatch game which took up two full years of my life (from learning to code to the final F5). Ben There, Dan That! was then written as a silly little comedy freeware game designed to bring more attention and traffic towards Gibbage, and hopefully bring in a few more sales.
 |
L-R: Dan (a cow) and Ben |
Ben There, Dan That! sat on my hard drive 95% finished for about a year, and after release turned out to do a lot better than Ben and I had ever really anticipated, and wound up bringing in just about enough donations to consider a small follow-up for the die-hard fans. Time Gentlemen, Please!’s development spiralled wildly out of control, and wound up eclipsing the original in so many ways that it justified a commercial release as a way of clawing back something from the countless man hours we’d somehow poured into it over the preceding nine months.
AG: For any readers who haven't played Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen, Please!, what are those two games about?
Dan: They’re about a couple of geeks getting themselves into scrapes. They’ve been brought up on a diet of Full Throttle and Sam and Max, and have taken the adventurer’s lifestyle to heart – that means picking up anything that takes your fancy en route and be damned with the consequences.
Ben There, Dan That!'s a simple little puzzler – upon attempting to fix the TV aerial so they can watch Magnum P.I., our two adorable little geeks get abducted by aliens and wind up having to travel through various improbable dimensions looking for the way home.
It all ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, so in Time Gentlemen, Please!, they travel back and forth in time in an attempt to undo the situation they find themselves in, and in doing so accidentally set up Hitler with an army of dinosaur Nazi clones and cause the Universe to become impossibly unstable with time rips opening left, right and centre. The usual stuff.
AG: Your first game was free and your second very cheap. But if you keep following this trend you'll be charging a million for your tenth game, by which time we'll be addicts... is that the plan?
Dan: I’m not exactly sure how pricing’s going to work yet – obviously the Dan and Ben games hit a certain niche and it’d be silly to be charging huge prices for little kooky games. That said, I’m running a business now like a grown-up, and it’d be really nice if it didn’t collapse out from under me. So yeah, million pound games from now on, I think.
AG: Your protagonists in the Ben and Dan games have the same names as you guys: how much of you is in them?
Dan: They’re based on us, I guess, but probably not as much as people assume. They look vaguely like us, and share certain traits, but that’s it. For the upcoming Episode(s), we’re going to be working on separating the two characters a little, defining who they are and the differences between them. For Ben There, Dan That! they were essentially interchangeable – it didn’t really matter who said a certain line, it would never have felt like “that’s not the sort of thing Ben would say”, you know? For Time Gentlemen, Please! we got away from that a little bit, and hopefully they’ll be a bit more unique with individual characteristics in future games. It’s an iterative process – they’re learning and changing with time, which is weird and exciting.
AG: Are any of your other characters based on real people?
Dan: Hitler is, he’s loosely based on this guy called ‘Hitler’.
AG: What do you think the best aspects of the games are?
Dan: I think they’re genuinely funny, which is a weird thing to sit back and say about your own work. There’s stuff in there that still makes me laugh even though I’ve seen it a thousand times. Most people seem to agree that they’re funny, despite the subjectivity of humour meaning we can never please everyone.
I’m also very proud of some of the puzzles in TGP – there’s some really deep, innovative, clever stuff in there, like the Alien Planet/ BBC Micro game mash up. It’s one of those puzzles that’s really meaty and satisfying to solve.
Adventure Gamers: You've had some good reviews and some awards and now some solid sales for your games; which is most fulfilling?
Dan Marshall: Reviews, I think. Opening up a new review – especially if it’s a big publication or website – is a total heart-in-mouth moment. I’m not one to skip forward to the meaningless number at the end of the review, because I’m a true believer in having an expert’s well-crafted prose explaining the pros and cons of a game to me. That’s unless it’s one of my own games of course, in which case I’m a total jump-to-the-end whore. Shameful.
AWARDS ARE NICE, though. As is money. So the answer’s “all of them”.
AG: You've announced another Ben and Dan game, Revenge of the Balloon-Headed Mexican. Can you tell us a bit about the new game?
Dan: Could do if I knew anything at the moment! We’ve taken a bit of a step back, and are re-working what we’d done to make sure the episodes are definitely going to prove a worthy successor to TGP. So it’s going to be a little while yet.
What I do know is that Ben and Dan are going to be facing a Mexican gentleman with a balloon where his head should be. The balloon is attached to his neck by a piece of string... aaaand you’re now pretty much completely up-to-date with the confirmed details.
AG: Do you find that you enjoy episodic games more than waiting longer for a bigger game?
Dan: Not particularly, no. Although I do like the idea of there being less of a wait in-between titles I like playing...
From an adventure development point of view, I’m finding the idea interesting in that they’ll be a lot easier to manage – there’ll be less inventory items and locations in which to use them, so theoretically I won’t have to worry about the sprawling headache that TGP became. And that had time paradoxes in it too, which further complicated things!
AG: How many episodes are planned for Ben and Dan?
Dan: Just one, at the moment. We’ll see how that goes, and whether or not it proves financially worthwhile to do more...
AG: If there are more, will there be a season structure and an overall story arc across later episodes?
Dan: It’s still undecided, but at the moment each episode is set to be an entirely standalone, self-contained adventure. Think Saturday morning cartoons – the good ones, not crap like Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
My main thinking for this is that I don’t want people liking the sound of Episode 4 but thinking they can’t play it until they’ve ploughed through 20 hours of preceding material... in the same way that I don’t like the idea of people wanting to play TGP, but can’t be bothered playing BTDT first to get up to speed. I get that, and it’s something I’m keen to avoid.
AG: Have you had a chance to meet up with other indie adventure developers? Or collaborate over the internet?
Dan: Not really. I communicate with a few, and we occasionally exchange ideas and what-have-you, but generally people are pretty happy in their own little bubble doing their thing.
AG: Are there any particular developers who have inspired your work that you'd like to meet?
Dan: I’d buy Tim Schafer a pint in a flash, naturally. Wouldn’t we all? I wonder if Tim Schafer ever has to pay for his own booze, or if he just walks into bars and is all like “oh hey... anyone played Day of the Tentacle or Full Throttle?”
Next time you’re interviewing Tim Schafer, will you ask him if he ever has to buy his own beer for me?
AG: Do you play many adventures these days? What are your own favourite "studio" and "indie" adventures?
Dan: I’ve played a lot recently – too many, I think. Adventure games are great, shining examples of brilliance, but like any genre it’s possible to overload. I’m really enjoying the Tales of Monkey Island episodes; they’re genuinely making me laugh and there are some amazing puzzles in there.
In terms of indie stuff, I was a huge fan of Nelly Cootalot; that came at the right time for me where I was looking for something little and charming to play. I’m also very keen to see what Lively Ivy does – Nanobots was a right charmer.
I also really enjoyed MashPotato’s Beauties and Beasts. Mash did the glorious ‘previously on’ art for TGP, so I sort of felt obliged to give it a whirl. Amazing ending, and a perfect length... I’m all about short games at the moment. Who has time to spend 100 hours messing about in virtual worlds? Not me, that’s for sure.
AG: Is there any advice you'd offer to anyone wanting to start as an indie developer and make or sell their own games?
Dan: Do it in your spare time, first. Be sensible – get a proper full-time job to pay your rent, and spend every spare second crafting your game – mornings, evenings and weekends. When you’ve got enough cash stored up to do it full time, take the plunge.
Also, when it comes to flogging the damned thing, don’t assume word-of-mouth will get you anywhere – marketing and promoting a game is a full-time job. When TGP came out I was spending 12-14 hours a day doing interviews and blagging reviews. It’s hard work. Not hard work like nursing or coal mining or anything, but it’s quite tiring.
AG: What differences have you found between working on commercial and freeware projects?
Dan: I poured my heart and soul into each and every game I’ve made, so my initial reaction is to assume ‘none’... that said, there’s a nagging little voice at the back of your mind that makes you feel guilty that people have handed over real money to play this game.
AG: What does the future hold for Zombie Cow after the Ben and Dan series? As job interviewers love to ask: where do you see yourself in five years?
Dan: Hopefully I’ll still be here, making games in some shape or form. I can’t see that the Dan and Ben games will ever grow beyond little spare time AGS games, but you never know.
I’d love to make a 21st century adventure game – something that breaks free of the rules laid down by Gilbert et al, and embraces modern tech... I think that’s some time off yet.
AG: In conclusion, are there any pearls of wisdom you'd like to offer our readers?
Dan: BUY MORE ADVENTURE GAMES. Preferably my ones.
