Interview with Martin Hollis
Jenn Cutter: GAF is happy to have this chance to chat with Martin Hollis. Please, could you introduce yourself for our readers unfamiliar with your work?
Martin Hollis: I'm Martin Hollis. I worked at Rare for something like 5 years. I was Director/Producer on
GoldenEye and held the same position on
Perfect Dark. I left Rare to look for new challenges. I spent 6 months at NTD (Nintendo Technology Development) in Washington State helping steer the design of hardware for Nintendo. Then I came to the UK to set up Zoonami and our goal here is to create innovative games that are going to sell. We do a lot of long-term projects and take a longer view, which is very unusual.
J: How did Zoonami come about?
MH: I've always, in the back of my mind, had an ambition to be independent and start my own company.
J: Does the name mean anything special to you?
MH: Well, no. We made it up. It's a pun on 'tsunami', which a Japanese word meaning 'very large wave'. We just liked the sound of it.
J: For
Funkydilla, was all the work done in-house?
MH: That's right. It's been a work-in-progress now, coming up to a year. We have an incubator system where we try and come up with original concepts and, then, we chuck most of them away. You have to be ruthless and pick out the real gems. Once the games have passed that hurdle, we prototype them to reach a proof of concept. If they pass that hurdle they go onto prototype+, which is where we try and take all the risk out of it from the publishers point of view. That's where
Funkydilla is right now.
J: Funkydilla is in the Rhythm genre, but what exactly is it?
MH: It is very challenging to explain in words. It is a totally new direction for rhythm-action games. It is a one-button rhythm action game that will suit every level of player from grandma to hardcore. It is one of the very few titles that actually deserve to be called 'mass market'. It's also a template to create a franchise of games using licensed material. Every pop star, every significant album is an opportunity to create a new product with this template. Whoever it is you like, imagine them in the game.
J: Is there any music licensed?
MH: We can't talk about specifics at this point.
J: Do you see
Funkydilla as a console-only release or will this get some play in arcades?
MH: Certainly, it could work in the arcade. Our main market, the really large market, is console games so that's where we see it having major success. It's a game fun for the whole family, whether you are watching or playing. It has a co-operative mode and a competitive mode. Although there is some mileage in the arcade, it really is a console game.
J: You recently said, "The game industry badly needs new ideas and gameplay innovation." Are publishers excited to see a concept like
Funkydilla?
MH: Very much so. There's very little out there that is genuinely different. Anything that has the opportunity to actually connect with customers and that also has simple ideas that can be communicated immediately to people what is different, people are very excited.
J: You've been very quiet in the past about
"GameZero". Is there any kind of crumb you can give us?
MH: No. No there isn't, Jenn. We're very worried about creating expectations in the short term. We have a lot of long-term projects of various levels of focus and we don't like to talk about them because people just can't wait. Once you answer one question, then there's more questions and so on and so forth. We just want people to forget about them, really. Until we're ready.
J: Do you plan on taking advantage of the online ability of consoles?
MH: It's certainly an opportunity with
Funkydilla, but right now I'm not really persuaded the market potential of online is significant enough. If somebody can persuade us differently, we're all ears. Right now I see online as a way to generate buzz about a title. It's very trendy, but it's not a big market.
J: Have you had time in your schedule to play any games lately?
MH: Oh, for sure. Well, you have to and also it's a pleasure. Yesterday I was playing
WarioWare Inc. , very convenient wherever you go. What else was I playing. . . some
Counter-Strike the other day. . . and that's this week.
J: Since you were involved in GameCube's technical development, do you think it's reached it's potential yet?
MH: No, not really. In many respects the performance of GameCube is on par with X-Box and in some respects is better. I don't think that that's really been realized. Similarly, for X-Box and Playstation2 you can tell there's a way to go. It takes people years and years and years to reach the full potential of a platform.
J: Many people feel
GoldenEye still stacks up against modern behemoths like
Halo. What do you think that's a testament to?
MH: It's always difficult to know, for sure, where success comes from. I think it's a testament to the people on the team.
GoldenEye was a great license in the first place but the reason the game sold very, very well and for so many years was really the quality of the game. The quality of the game comes from the people on the team. That's true for
Perfect Dark as well. I think that's the reason for other games being great too.
J: How different is running a studio from your past work?
MH: When I was at Rare, I filled a lot of roles and wore a lot of hats. In that respect it's the same here. Here we don't have lots of departments, so that's a lot different. There's no human resources department, there's no hardware department and so on and so forth. That gives a different quality. It's a friendlier feel. Running your own company is a lot harder work because I'm being an employee as well, though I guess that goes without saying.
J: When can we expect to see more information, either from your webpage or through more press releases?
MH: We're hoping to say more during and after E3. There's going to be a little but about us, more information about the company and the game, in Edge 137, their E3 issue. After E3 we'll be ongoing about providing information about
Funkydilla.
J: As a huge fan of rhythm and music games, I'm looking forward to see what you will bring to it.
MH: It's got such a huge potential, that genre. Everybody knows how many games are made out of films. It's a very successful area of video games in terms of licensing. The correspondence being making albums into games - that's incredibly under-realized and I think it has enormous potential.
J: The industry will definitely be tracking the progress of you and your studio and GAF wishes you guys all the best.
MH: Thanks very much.
GAF gratefully acknowledges the assistance of David Marshall for setting up the interview and thanks Martin Hollis for his time.
