Article by Matt S.
As our regular readers would know by now, last week we launched a Kickstarter to fund the production of a book on the topic of games as art.
And core to that book will be interviews with some of the games industry’s most prominent artistic game developers. With that in mind, I thought we would do a series of developer profiles to introduce you to some of the developers that you’re perhaps not as aware of.
If you want to hear more (much, much more) from these developers, then please do back the Kickstarter; it will provide you with some genuinely unique insights into how games are made.
Neil Rennison is the epitome of an independent game developer; under his label Tin Man Games, Rennison has carved himself out a niche, and then just focused on servicing those fans. Tin Man Games is all about gamebooks, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
That’s right; gamebooks. Those choose-your-own-adventure experiences with dice and combat and such that were so incredibly popular with teenagers through the 80’s have made a big of a comeback, thanks in no small part to Rennison and his regular Gamebook Adventure and Fighting Fantasy apps. Coming built in with some modern production standards, such as variable text size and animated dice, these apps fell both modern and nostalgic, and represent a return to a time where life was simpler and we played games for fun.
The interview with Rennison for The Interactive Canvas will be on mixing the need to pull on the nostalgic strings and the need to modernise, and the creative challenges inherent in catering to both conflicting pressures. And then how Rennison manages to keep such an intense production workload going, while writing entire books in the process.
If this interview sounds of interest to you, then be sure to pledge to the Kickstarter to make the project a reality!
– Matt S.
Editor-in-Chief
Find me on Twitter: @digitallydownld
