According to Romino’s Joost van Dongen, ”It’s great, because it allows a small studio like us to get a game released worldwide on the major consoles. Sony are really supportive, and their technical support is really good. PS3 is not the easiest device to work with, and Sony really makes up for that by answering questions quickly.”
When asked about the challenges of programming, and what they didn’t like about developing games, Romino co-developer Jasper Koning replied, “There’s a lot of boring stuff, like the languages. Making sure everything gets translated properly. That’s a really banal task, and it sucks.” Dongen added, ”Yeah, we don’t have anyone at Ronimo who speaks English, Spanish and Italian… So we have to hire an external company to handle the localisation.”
The developers also feel that games are too aimed at young teen boys as well. When asked what the next big innovation in videogames will be, Dongen answered, ”It’s not so much an innovation, but I think things would get a lot better if games were more accepted. There’s still a vibe about them that they’re only for nerds or fifteen year-old boys. In reality, almost everyone plays games these days, but in the West it still has that stigma. If games were taken as seriously as movies, that would be the biggest change.”
Awesomenauts is due to be released this year on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. Strategy Informer previewed the game last June during E3, which can be read here.
