When Microsoft announced earlier this year that Double Fine would be making a Kinect-based Sesame Street game, many wondered if the developer studio behind Psychonauts and Brutal Legend were leaving their own original ideas behind for a lucrative licence. But Nathan Martz, project lead on Sesame Street: Once Upon A Monster, says that it was just the opposite. The game that became Once Upon A Monster actually started internally at Double Fine as an independent project. That fact and more came to light when I e-mailed Martz some questions about the creation of the new Sesame Street game. He discusses how he and his Double Fine colleagues came to grips with creating a game that would star some of the most recognisable characters in the world and why even the worst kids’ video games are triumphs of a sort.
The team-up between DoubleFine productions and one of the most beloved TV shows ever continues as a new add-on comes to Xbox Live this week. Unidentified Furry Objects introduces strange, interstellar new visitors to the storybook game and they’ll get a helping hand from Cookie Monster, Elmo and the kids and adults playing at home via the Xbox 360′s Kinect sensor.
Any project Tim Schafer’s Double Fine embarks upon gets attention – especially when they hit gamers from leftfield. But in an insightful interview with Gamasutra, Tim Schafer and Project Lead Nathan Martz discuss how their project, Sesame Street: Once Upon A Monster, came about, and their reasons for creating it.
A pair of new Sesame Street games will come bundled with the cutest, furriest Wii Remote accessories we’ve ever seen, transforming the peripherals from hard plastic blocks into cuddly Cookie Monsters.