Get to know an ngmofo: Chris Plummer

Chris Plummer is a rock star. Or should be.

A 13-year veteran of the console and PC realm, Chris has lent his marketing and production talents to the likes of Ultima Online, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, Command & Conquer games and Goldeneye Rogue Agent. Now that he is a producer at ngmoco, his fingerprints coat the likes of Rolando and Rolando 2. He’s currently overseeing Touch Pets Dogs, FPS, and various unannounced projects.

How would you explain what you do at ngmoco?

Chris: Well. I’m a producer. I’m trying to make sure that people are making really good games, and that all the various parts of the machine required to make the game really good and get it published effectively —that all those things happen.

How’d you wind up at ngmoco?

Chris: I ended up here at the beginning of last September. I’ve known Neil and Bob for a long time—actually I’ve worked with all the founders before—and I heard about them starting ngmoco. I didn’t have an iPhone [at the time], so I didn’t quite get it completely.

When I finally got my iPhone…I realized that it was pretty awesome. What transpired in the next few months was ‘Holy crap, this thing is going to be huge.’ ngmoco sounded like the place I really needed to be. So I started working on Rolando last September. Now here we are.

You worked on console and PC games at EA for 13 years. Do you miss working in that space?

Chris: I’m a game geek. Part of me misses the big games. But to be honest, the creative cycle was taking so long on the console side of the business. It felt like all the fun of making games was during pre-production and during the early stages of invention. Then it felt like a lot of my time was spent cutting things, reducing scope, and figuring out how to make something not suck.

The nature of the business and the needs of other parts of a big organization make it really challenging to spend your time focused on making the game better. Rather, you’re spending your time trying to keep the game alive. Of course, I’ve always been attracted to new and innovative things, which are harder to keep going no matter where you are.

Here at ngmoco the cycle is so much faster. You’re spending your time on all the really important creative stuff or things that are really critical to getting the game finished. All those things happen on a much faster pace, so it’s all a lot more exciting.

What game inspired you to make games?

Chris: I think it would have been one of the Ultima games. When I was younger, I was really into games but I didn’t know I wanted to make them. It was when I started playing computer games after the Atari and stuff…that’s when I knew I wanted to make games. I used to write fan mail to my favorite game designers.

What was it that made you realize you wanted to make games?

Chris: Well when you make a transformation from a game player to thinking like a game designer, that’s when it clicks - at least for me. When I started playing Apple II games and stuff like that, that is when I started thinking about designing games. I would actually write game ideas down on paper. I would fiddle around and look at [Dungeon and Dragons] books and stuff. All those things kind of came together. Like, “Oh wait, I can make a game.”

I made my first game in grade school. It was a Defender clone.

What would you say is the defining moment of your career so far?

Chris: There have been a couple different moments, but one of the first defining moments was being a part of Ultima Online. It was this crazy idea. I remember it being a joke inside of EA. Like literally, ‘that thing will never fly.’

The people close to the project all knew there was something really cool there. And eventually the company did certainly come around to it and understand it was something big.

I was the product marketing guy on it. There was a lot of opportunity to invent—even on the marketing side—for it. I basically produced the Ultima Online website and all the crazy stuff it had: atlases, flora and fauna guides, and places to sign up for guilds. It has all these things that sort of feel like standard practice now on MMO sites, but no one had ever done them before.

I remember presenting [the website] at a sales meeting at EA. After a 15-minute demo of the website, I realized that everyone in the audience thought they’d actually just seen the game. It was really cool to build this big huge crazy website that people could get lost in. Eventually I got out of [marketing] and got into production, but the first big moment for me was working on UO and helping—what felt like at the time—launch a genre.

If Neil booted you onto the street tomorrow and decreed that you could never work in the games industry again, what would you do?

Chris: I’d kick his ass. Then what would I do? Maybe I’d retire. Maybe I would play all the games I never had the time to play. Maybe I’d sleep in. I haven’t really thought about it.

If you could change one thing about the current iPhone gaming market, what would it be?

Chris: Definintely the price point of games. The bargain bin approach to merchandising apps is sort of a double-edged sword. It gives people the choice of a ton of apps, but it also encourages cheap, simple apps.

Nine out of ten apps are going to be of a quality level that you can only justify when a game is going to be made super fast and sold for 99 cents. It creates an environment where I don’t even know that consumers expect great stuff anymore.

It is very hard to justify making super big, ambititious games. The way you do that in traditional games is the great games are usually merchandised differently on the shelf. You walk into the store and you can tell what the hot new releases are. The stuff that is crap or cheap is in a big bin. You know you’ll get a different experience.

I would change how apps are merchandized and their price points so there would be a lot more motivation for developers to make deeper, more costly, and therefore more expensive games that would offer a much richer experiences for end users on App Store devices.

As the guy who is in charge of ngmoco premium apps, do you see a future where the App Store is filled with larger games that are more like DS or PSP games in terms of scope and price?

Chris: We’re already doing it. We’re just not charging what they would on a DS. Certainly it can happen. A game like Rolando is bigger, deeper, and has as high a grain of polish as anything you’d find on other popular handheld gaming devices. It can certainly go toe-to-toe with them.

The problem is, over time, it’s not sustainable for tons of those types of games to be made. It is way too easy for people to go on the App Store and see that there is a gazillion 99 cent games. They buy those instead [of premium games], and they may not even know that there are richer, deeper games out there.

There are a couple ways you could sustain [deeper games] over time. One is have different merchandizing on the App Store. But the other thing is in-app commerce. Maybe with Rolando 3 the right thing to do is have a really inexpensive app that allows you to get a taste for it, and then, through in-app commerce, consumers can engage more deeply.

I think the risk in that—because of the nature of the App Store where there are so many apps and so many cheap apps—people are sort of trained to sample one game for five minutes and never pick it up again. If people don’t actually engage in in-app commerce then that means deeper, richer games will start to go away.

What’s the most recent game you’ve played that ngmoco had nothing to do with?

Chris: I’ve been playing a lot of shooting games. I’m not spending tons of time with any App Store games right now. On console, I’m  picking up the Orange Box again. I love first-person shooters.

What app on your iPhone would you be embarrassed to show a random stranger?

Chris: I recently cleaned out my phone, so there’s not a lot  of super embarrassing stuff on here. I guess it would have to be Bugdom 2.

What game do you wish you had made?

Chris: I wish I had made Duke Nukem 4.

Have you been influenced by your kids at all when it comes to game design?

Chris: I haven’t really made a game that is for my kids yet. My daughter loves Rolando and loves Touch Pets, but I didn’t make them with her in mind. But everyone loves Rolando. My son, who is only four-years-old, can play Rolando somehow.

[My kids] have influenced the way I think about games a little bit—especially my son because he can’t read yet. I’ve now gained an appreciation for how UI design (if properly designed) can allow you to advance even if you can not read. I have a newfound appreciation for that.

Outside of the gamemaking and gameplaying universe, what eats up the most of your time?

Chris: I like to hang out with my kids. I like to be outside. I like to do yard work; I like to dig holes. When you make games all day long, you spend day and night in front of the computer. It’s kind of nice to have a few hours to go out and be like a little kid playing in the dirt.

Get to know more ngmofos:

Chris Plummer, Producer

Stephanie “Bam” Morgan, Producer