Could you briefly discuss your development experience/background for those that are unfamiliar with your work?

I'm completely a self-taught developer and my first title was Total Pro Basketball 2003 and since then I’ve produced six more titles with the latest being Draft Day Sports: College Basketball. I worked for two other independent game companies prior to forming Wolverine Studios in May of 2006.

You're a one-man development team at Wolverine Studios. What advantages and disadvantages do you have being the only developer on a game?

While I am the only coder for the games I wouldn’t call it a one-man development team. Paul Yuan has done a phenomenal job designing the graphics for every single one of my games and I couldn’t do it without the countless hours and contributions of people like Bryan Swartz, Tim Plum and others. I think it’s advantageous for me personally to be the only coder because I taught myself to code so I have my own style. Not having to share code back and forth or wait for someone else to finish their part really gives me total control of the project and lets it move along at a pace I am comfortable with.

Do you have a set development schedule for each of your company's franchises or are you content to add new content until an engine rebuild is required? How long does it take to build a new version of the game from start to finish?

We try to have a development schedule for each product but that’s the disadvantage of having me as the only coder. If I get sick or something happens in my daily life then production essentially comes to a halt. Sometimes new game ideas get pushed off to build on old ones because the foundation is already there and we can produce a sequel quicker than a new game. Ideally I like to produce a new version of a game every other year with some minor free updates along the way. For example we released Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball in early 2007. Rather than doing some quick items and releasing another new version in the fall of 2007, we provided a free summer update with updated rosters and a couple of new little features. I want our games to provide great value for our customers. I know as a gamer I hate the idea of shelling out major dollars for a sports game that is basically just updated rosters every year so I want to provide our customers with more. As for building a new version of a game that depends on how deep the scope of the game is. For established games, we can pretty much work within a six month time frame. Totally new games take anywhere from six to twelve months depending on the scope of the game.

How important is customer service when you're a small development company?

Customer service is our number one priority. We do our best to release our titles in the best shape possible but there are always areas we could have improved on. We appreciate that our customers are patient with us and that they help us solve the problems after they have their hands on the game and we do everything possible to try and help out our customers. We’ll do anything from answering questions on our forum all the way to calling them if necessary to walk them through problems (especially with computer configurations for those who aren’t so tech-savvy but love to play a good game). I’m even willing to go into the code and salvage people’s seemingly lost or stuck seasons if possible. We’re willing to do anything we can to provide great service to our customers. They’re an awesome group of people who sometimes just purchase our games simply because they really like our games and they’ll buy more games just to help an independent developer.

Let's move on to 'Draft Day Sports: College Basketball'. What were your main development goals when you started to plan out your approach to this game?

Draft Day Sports: College Basketball is the sequel to my popular title, Total College Basketball. I really felt that there is no game on any platform that does a better job of simulating the college basketball experience than mine. My main goal was to take the game to the next level and in terms of sports text simulations. That next level is the level set with Championship Manager/Football Manager. The way people rave about that game in our genre is amazing and a good number of those people would tell you they can’t even stand soccer but they enjoy the game. That’s where I want to take all of my titles and I think we took a step in that direction with the brand new coach and player relationship models that were introduced in DDS: College Basketball.

You currently use a graphical interface instead of a menu-driven interface. What advantages does that interface provide to the consumer and you as a developer?

I play games looking for visuals. I know that being such a small development studio that we can’t offer customers state of the art 3D graphics, but that doesn’t mean we have to offer them nothing but text and spreadsheet looking screens either. I think the graphic interface really helps people to be more immersed in the game. I think it gives the games a more polished look and also helps for finding items. For instance in DDS: College Basketball you have a coach’s office screen that acts as a main hub with many clickable graphical items. Want to check your email? You click the computer. Want to call up one of your players and have a discussion with him about his bad attitude? You click the phone. It’s logical and more interactive than searching through drop down menus to find what you are looking for.

Simulation speed is always a concern on a text sports simulation. What trade-offs to you have to make to balance the depth of the simulated results and the wait times to simulate all game results?

The answer is I don’t make trade-offs. Our target customer is one who wants details – and loads of them. The games track dozens and dozens of stats, store data for every season of every single player that ever plays in the league and teams constantly reevaluate their roster. In the case of the college game, they also analyze recruiting situations. Could some of those things be eliminated to get through a week faster? Sure, but our customers don’t want things eliminated and sim speed is never on the list of concerns. In fact, whenever I play a sports game that can complete seasons in the blink of an eye I always take a skeptical approach and question just how accurate the sim is and whether or not it is really simulating anything or is it just spitting back out numbers that “look good”.