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Martin Galway, longtime veteran of the Austin game industry, sent me an note yesterday to let me know that his latest company, Certain Affinity, is seeking a IT manager. I took the opportunity to catch up with Martin on the latest news — including Plunder. |
Lynn Bender: So, how long has CertainAffinity been around? You’re one of the founders, yes?
Martin Galway: I am a co-founder along with the Max Hoberman, the company president. Max is the chap who designed all the multiplayer features of the Halo games. Max is an austin native who, after working in Chicago and Seattle for decade, decided he had to come back. When Max met a few of us ex-Digital Anvil folks, we decided to start a company together.
Bender: Martin, it seems like you’ve been in town since the early Origin days. Are you an Austin native as well?
Galway: A school friend of mine had moved over to Austin and was working at Origin. He recommended me to come over in early 1988 for some freelance audio work. I immediately fell in love with the place - and Origin, who happened to have no audio staff at the time. They liked my work, so we started to talk employment. After some visa wrangling, I finally made it over at the end of 1990, and started Origin’s audio department. In 1996 a group of us left Origin and started Digital Anvil.
Bender: How did Certain Affinity get started?
Galway: In mid 2006, I was picking up the pieces after Microsoft had closed our beloved Digital Anvil studio (what a soap opera!). At a July 4th party, I was introduced to Max Hoberman who, while still on the Bungie payroll and still working on Halo 3, had finagled his return to Austin after ten years in the Bungie wildernesses of Chicago and Seattle. Max said he needed to come back to Austin - understandable! We formed Certain Affinity soon after, with Max as president, and by November we were off and running with nine staff and our first project, a map pack for Halo 2. That came out in April 2007, by which time we’d begun some original IP designs. We got Valve interested in us enough to land XBOX360 co-development work on their upcoming action-horror title Left 4 Dead, but continued work on the original stuff, and you’ll be seeing the fruits of both this year.
Bender: Everyone is talking about your new game, Plunder. What is the scoop?
Galway: That’s one of our original IPs - due out in the middle of this year from Capcom. It’s an easy-to-learn, action strategy title featuring pirates - basically you have to keep the other ships away from your stuff while you build up your empire. There’s tons of cannon fire and sinking ships everywhere, but it’s all viewed from hundreds of feet away so we don’t think of it as a violent game. Plunder is enjoyable for all ages, and we’re working to make sure it has depth enough for hard-core players, while people who don’t think they’re up to a conventional action title can still feel comfortable playing it. As one example of the simplicity - there’s no aiming, and no fire button! You just sail your ship up alongside the enemy, and a thrilling sea-battle automatically ensues. Anything you sail up to that you can fire on, you fire on. Sail away to stop the battle. In our play tests, all the non-gamers love it because they’re able to feel equal to the hardcore gamers.
Bender: I noticed that your games are geared mostly for the xbox. Do you have plans to extend to other platforms?
Galway: We are mostly an XBOX360 company, since that’s our recent background. Plunder will be on XBOX360, Playstation 3 and Windows.
Bender: In your email, you said that Certain Affinity needed an IT person. Can you tell me about the position?
Galway: We’re up over twenty staff now and I’ve been overloaded for some time. We’ve started to hire infrastructure people that make the company tick over in a much more professional way than me trying to do it all myself. The IT person will help solve our communications inside the company as well as with external partners, improve security, backups, and keep all our software and systems in peak condition. If they have other skills closer to development, there are always opportunities to get stuck in and help out. And - play our games of course, that’s important.
Bender: Do you have a jobs page that we can link to?
Galway: Sure. It’s: http://certainaffinity.com/jobs.htm
Bender: Thanks for giving me the latest news. I’ll be calling about that playtest. ;)
