Chris Jensen: How long has Monster Madness been in development?

Jeremy Stieglitz, president of Artificial Studios: I originally came up with the concept in June 2005, and then slowly developed a basic prototype, on our proprietery game engine, while I also worked on some other projects (like CellFactor). Finally in April 2006, we met up with SouthPeak, showed them the rough Monster Madness prototype, and thankfully they decided to produce it as a full game. At that time, we decided in order to develop Monster Madness as a proper cross-platform, next-generation game, we needed to rewrite it on the best technology available, namely Unreal Engine 3. So then we essentially started over from scratch, and thus the real development cycle took from April 2006 to March 2007, about 11 months from start-to-finish on the game you're now playing. It's been quite a ride!

CJ: It seems that Artificial Studios went from creating middleware to tackling their first game in Monster Madness...Why the transition from creating graphics solutions to entertainment?

Jeremy Stieglitz: Yeah, back in 2004-2005 Artificial Studios (which I co-founded) developed and licensed a middleware product called "Reality Engine", which was a pretty nice looking next-gen game engine for PC. Epic Games took an interest in the tech, and actually bought the rights from us. I'm glad they did, because it gave me the push I needed to aggressively pursue a life-long goal: develop cool video games! There's no doubt about it, making games is WAY more fun than making technology; it gives me a chance to flex some creative muscle. Almost no one remembers what "engine" some classic game used, but they'll always remember the gameplay experience. And that's what makes all the hard work worth the effort!

CJ: Heather, you've been a part of some huge titles throughout your career, including Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, Raven Shield, Civilization: Call to Power, Heavy Gear II, just to name a few. Such hardcore games....how was it shifting gears to something more light and comedic?

Heather Chandler, producer: Many of the previous titles I worked on were heavily based in realism, and there was not a chance to go completely over the top with the weapons, characters, environments, or enemies. Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia is an original IP where everything is kooky, over the top, and pretty much anything goes. When Artificial was working on the game, if anyone has an idea about what would make a cool weapon (a toy monkey that bangs cymbals, anyone?) it could actually be considered without any other constraints. For example, SouthPeak sponsored a design-a-monster contest where people could submit an image and backstory for a monster to be included in the game. SouthPeak selected two winners (one from the US and one from the UK), and these monsters are included in the game. So all-in-all it’s a lot of fun.

CJ: How has the experience been working on the Xbox 360 platform?

Jeremy Stieglitz: As a platform, the Xbox 360 is quite a powerful, versatile gaming machine. Needless to say, it's got a ton of graphics horsepower, but it's also really easy to debug and port-over PC code. We picked it up really quick, namely because the console's very intuitive to work with. I also LOVE what we can do with Leaderboards, Achievements, and Xbox Live -- it adds so much to the game to be able to see exactly where you rank in each game mode, among every Live player in the world. I should also note that Microsoft has been nothing short of AWESOME to work with. We're a small, rookie developer and they really helped us with the whole process of console development, step by step. I can't thank them enough for all the support they gave us, especially our Account Manager Rich Hernandez!