Interview | Open Robot Sandbox Project Rawbots for Wii U

Cubed3: Please introduce the team at Rawbots for our readers.
 
Neil Haran: That's me. I've been a software engineer for a long time in the gaming industry, now handling the business development side of the company.
 
Rodrigo : Our Lead Artist, band owner, composes all our music. Recently, cut his hair, or is another person, we really don't know.
 
Alex Rozgo:  Really talented game developer that left LucasArts to go indie. Always wanted to be a game designer and started programming on TRS-80 Color Computer.
 
Javier Hernandez: Our Lead Engineer. Weird dude, always grumpy. Knows electronics and is also a teacher.
 
Nestor Marinero : We took him off the streets, a graffiti junkie. Every now and then, his seat will be empty, and a wall in the city will be 'ruined'.
 
Alejandro Panameno: A talented artist and does really nice animations.
 
Vladimir Miranda : A software engineer, speaks English as if he were Russian. Known in our forums as Mazinger.
 
Alex Ochoa: Web Developer. We engineers always think we can do stuff without him. We always fail. 
 
Emilio Parker: Physics simulation sensei, won't speak to anybody and his vocabulary is limited to the word "No".

 
Cubed3: What other projects had the team worked on before Rawbots?
 
Neil Haran: We initially started working on Facebook and mobile titles. The titles can be seen here at our old company inearth.com. We pivoted to Rawbots a year and two months ago to work on something unique and innovative.

Cubed3: Please tell us a bit more about the Rawbots concept.

Neil Haran: Rawbots is a robot crafting sandbox game where players can design, build and program their own robots. In addition to robot building, they can modify their world through our hex building block system. 

Cubed3: All the Rawbots components look neatly crafted, how do players start to build their bots?
 
Neil Haran: All of the components in Rawbots are axiom building blocks that can be connected with each other to form complex parts. Players connect these building blocks together just like LEGO and then with some programming, they're on their way to controlling their creation.

Cubed3: The multiverse approach sounds interesting. So can players manipulate gravity and day/night rules in their worlds?
 
Neil Haran: Yes. The idea is, in their private universe, they are the game masters and can set whatever rules they want.

Cubed3: Despite the open sandbox setting, what goals/modes can players use in Rawbots?
 
Neil Haran: In their universe they can set whatever goals they want. If they want to create a racing game for instance, where players race around a circuit for a predefined set of laps, they can do so. Another goal might be a capture the flag type of game. There are several different goals and modes, only limited by the ones imagination.

Cubed3: What multiplayer features will be available?
 
Neil Haran: Well, this is a bit of an open ended question. We envisage a full open world MMO sandbox where there will be a full ecosystem filled with a marketplace of user generated content. Users will be able to battle each other, race, play capture the flag complete in death matches, etc. And we also have plans to provide the community with an SDK so that they can come up with new gadgets and features as well.

Cubed3: The community behind Rawbots is a great idea and shows a lot of creativity - how have these creations helped the development of the game?
 
Neil Haran: These creations have helped us in many ways to shape the game that you see today. For example, one player created a short film/machinima using Rawbots, and we then decided to put some features like "voice overs" and text to speech functionality within the game to make machinima much easier.

The community has shown that Rawbots is capable of a lot more, and we will continue to grow along with our amazing community.

Cubed3: Why did you chose Kickstarter to fund Rawbots?
 
Neil Haran: We want Rawbots to be a new robotics landscape, an entire multiplayer multiverse for designing, building and exploring together. Building something like this can prove to be quite expensive, and additionally, we want the driving force behind many of the features to be the community itself. Hence Kickstarter seemed like the logical next step.

Cubed3: Are you inspired by TV shows like BattleBots or Robot Wars?
 
Neil Haran: Absolutely. Much of the inspiration for our game came from those two shows.

Cubed3: What other Sandbox games are you inspired by?

Neil Haran: I would have to say Second Life. While many things can be improved with Second Life, I feel the core essence of that game provided the player with a true escape from reality.  

Cubed3: It's great that you're supporting the Nintendo Wii U, how do you plan on using the GamePad controller?
 
Neil Haran: Let's just say we plan to have the controller be able to do everything that the game was designed to do.

Cubed3: How have you found working with Nintendo so far?

Neil Haran: We are still in early talks with Nintendo, so we can't really say much other than, it looks like it could be a bright future for Rawbots on the Wii U.

Cubed3: If you could work on any Nintendo game, what would it be any why?

Neil Haran: It would probably be Super Mario Bros. To me, that game still is one of the best designed games of all time. 

Cubed3: What are your plans for the future? Will you be developing expansions/sequels for Rawbots?
 
Neil Haran: For the foreseeable future we see a long development road ahead for Rawbots, so we haven't really thought beyond Rawbots. Our plans are to make Rawbots be one of the best, most rewarding games of all time. We will be constantly developing new features and new content with the help of the community.