Hear how Motiga rallied to save Gigantic's development

Motiga’s Gigantic has been in development for a long, long time. It’s been in closed betas, open betas, weekend betas, and unfortunately much of that development time was marked by studio difficulties and layoffs.

But tomorrow, Motiga will finally launch Gigantic out of open beta, and as we noticed in our playing these last couple of days, it’s a pretty fun game! To talk about the game’s path to release, as well as how a smaller studio like Motiga manages to compete with hero shooters from larger companies, we invited lead designer Carter McBee and lead concept Vinod Rams onto the Gamasutra Twitch channel for a chat earlier today. 

You can (and should) watch the full interview above, but in case you’re gearing up to become a pro Gigantic player yourself, here’s a few highlights from our conversation with McBee and Rams. 

The game’s colorful, art direction comes from Rams’ personal idea for how games can make better art. 

During our (extended) discussion about Gigantic’s unique visual style, we quizzed Rams about how and why he came to Gigantic’s current colorful look. The way Rams tells it, having just come off of the early development of Shadow of Mordor, he wanted to create  an art style that wasn’t glossy and realistic. Instead, he wanted to make one that made the characters look like toys or candy to hold a different visual appeal. 

Gigantic made it through its lowest points because, according to McBee and Rams, everyone believed in the final game. 

It’s no secret that Motiga’s seen some rough patches during the last 4 years, but McBee and Rams say they were able to personally survive those patches because, through it all, they and the other Motiga game members had faith that they were making a good game they wanted to see in the world. They also credit Motiga CEO Chris Chung for keeping in touch with the team while trying to secure funding and business partners to keep the studio open as a great way to keep morale functioning, which may be sound advice for other executives leading their studios through troubled times. 

Game developers can learn a lot from candy.

No joke, at one point, Rams and McBee joke that game developers could learn more from studying the psychology and design of why people want to eat candy. It ties into the game’s art and characters, but as you’ll see during gameplay, it’s a philosophy that extends into the audio, gameplay, and other features as well. 

If this conversation was helpful to you, be sure to follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel for more developer interviews, editor roundtables and gameplay commentary.