Do you prefer a small, internal testing group for your projects or do you look to open up the testing to independent testers?

In my experience, a focused internal team is best for finding bugs; but I absolutely rely on my testers for feedback and suggestions. Those kinds of comments can come from internal or external resources. Interestingly, many designers I know feel sort of threatened by suggestions. As if accepting help means the game won’t be “their game” anymore. It takes a talented team to build almost any game, so I try to be very collaborative. I just want to make great games.

Developers are always looking for the next great game. What do you use for inspiration when determining your next project?

I’m a big fan of creative synthesis. I like to combine two disparate ideas into a single cohesive concept. Madame Libra, for example, was based on a suggestion that came up in a meeting. A programmer named Carl Chavez said: “It would be interesting to combine a word search game with Mad Libs.” A more obvious example would be Fairway Solitaire, which of course merges golf and solitaire.

Another source of inspiration for me recently has been board games. Several months ago, I was enjoying a session of “Guillotine”, which is a rather funny board game about the French Revolution, when it dawned on me that, as a computer game designer, I would never have considered making a casual game using that theme. But it worked brilliantly. Board games have helped open my mind to a variety of new theme and mechanic concepts.

Sequels have become a large part of the gaming industry. What are your feelings on the increasing number of sequels? Does the decreasing number of new game ideas hurt the industry?

I think sequels help as much as they hurt, so I have mixed feelings about them. Yes, they can stifle creativity. But on the retail side of things they are necessary for blockbuster titles such as the recent “Grand Theft Auto IV”. Games like that sell systems. Rumor has it that GTA IV cost 100 million dollars to make. Can you imagine how much it would cost to build a game like that from scratch? That’s a rhetorical question, of course, because without the previous successes no publisher would ever have approved a budget even a quarter of that size.

Your latest game, Fairway Solitaire, has been well-received. What gave you the idea to merge solitaire and golf?

I’ve played golf since I was seven years old and even competed on the Pepperdine Golf Team for a couple of years, so that half of the merger was easy. The game was based on a real card game called “Golf Solitaire”. The rules of our game are similar, but we added the concept of “holes” and “courses”. And then we introduced a load of golf staples: sand traps, water hazards, unpredictable wild shots, and more. The intro for the download version (which was masterfully programmed by Jake Birkett, art by Matt Laverty) was based on the opening to last year’s Masters Tournament.

Fairway Solitaire would appear to be a game that appeals to the casual PC gamer. Was that the target market of the game? Did the sports aspect of the game allow for some cross-over into other gamer markets?

To be honest, although Fairway Solitaire was EXTREMELY well received, I think the genre (solitaire) and the theme (golf) actually hurt sales a little bit. Our focus test generated a lot of comments like, “Golf is boring. Period.” I knew this was going to be an issue, but often the most successful ideas are non-intuitive and come from left field, so I stand behind it. (“Star Wars” was released at a time when Science Fiction was a commercially unsuccessful film genre.)

The sound effects in Fairway Solitaire add a lot to the ambiance of the game. Could you discuss the team's work on the sound effects and how they were integrated into the overall experience?

A company called Somatone provides most of the sound and effects and music for the games we develop at Big Fish Studios. So that gave us a great start. Plus, I’ve done a lot of audio work in the past and Jake has an absolutely meticulous eye (and ear) for detail. So we all spent a LOT of time trying to make sure that the audio in the game was just right. For example, each course type has its own looping “soundtrack”, along with some specific sounds that we randomly blend into the ambient loops. This last bit is done to disguise the fact that the sound loops, and it works like a charm. And Jake and I went back and forth for weeks trying to pick out the right sounds for the cards being played.