In one of the only interviews I was able to do at EB Expo, primarily because the Australian section was so threadbare, I spoke to Jared Hahn about his new game, Mori, hating your job, and the trials and tribulations of focus testing your game.
Update: I’ve re-uploaded the track (and made it look a bit nicer on the page!) so the left channel only issue that was occurring before should be fixed. Enjoy!
Hahn is usually pretty chatty on Twitter, so I took the chance to sit down with him and have a chat in real life. It was also good to have a chat about some of the kids who came up and played Mori, although unfortunately I didn’t get that on tape.
A small word of warning: this is kind of a test here, so it might not be 100% the right quality. Please give some feedback on the quality. I’m hoping to roll out more and longer interviews, particularly for PAX Australia, so your comments are greatly appreciated.
If you want to check out Mori, you can get it for $3 on the iOS store here. It’s fun in that bullet hell, pattern recognition kind of way, although I can’t envision anyone playing it for more than 10 or 15 minutes at a stretch (perfect toilet game, though).
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3 responses to “Jared Hahn Talks About Mori And Hating His Job At EB Expo 2015”
FYI: Re-uploading to fix the left channel only issue, so if you heard it before give it a refresh in 5-10 mins and it should be fine.
First thing is the embedded soundcloud player doesn’t seem to have a volume control, which is infuriating since it seems to make everything play on max by default.
Nitpicky, but you came in really loud, sound was clipping and stuff. Jared was fine though. With this it felt like it might’ve been nicer as a video instead, though I can understand how that would be more difficult as a one-man team (cue the selfie stick? :P). Otherwise it was fine I think.
I met up with Jared as well. I went out of my way to spend some time with the indie developers at the EB Expo and spoke to 3 of them over the weekend. There were more than just the 3 you mentioned, it is just they were not all there all the time.
It was sad to see such a small area, and Jared was right, the display for military recruitment was bigger than the indie section. I think it might have been a reflection of the cuts to funding the federal government has made in recent times, though some people I talked to speculated the indie developers were saving themselves up for PAX in Melbourne.
Sure, it’s great to see the AAA games, but I always enjoy picking the brains of developers as well. Take Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. That has a team of over 1000 people across 9 teams from multiple continents. Even though I spoke to one of the developers from Canada at the expo, there was still a limit on what he could say or what influence he personally had.
But with indie titles, it’s a handful of people making the game, sometimes just one person. It’s great hearing about their processes and seeing their builds. It’s something I look forward to each expo, and it makes a great change of pace from some of the bigger games.
Thank you Alex for taking the time to interview Jared and raise awareness of this issue. More people should check out some of the amazing stuff the locals are doing. 🙂
Ah yes, the audio was fine for me. Thanks again. 😉
Edit:
One more thing… I just realised that is me in the photograph! You can’t see my face, but I am sure that is the back of my head. 😀