Julian Kantor is the man behind Groov, a dual-stick shooter with a musical twist, that’s one of the Community Games channel’s standout pieces. As part of the background to E202’s Creation Myths article, an in-depth look at the state of play on XBCG that we'll be posting on the site on Monday, we caught up with Kantor to ask about the origins of the game and his involvement with XNA, as well as look back over the period since the game launched. 

So how did you get into the Community Games scene?
I had no idea what I was going to major in last year. I’m a sophomore, and then last year my college announced this new major called Computing and the Arts which is half computer science and half music. I’ve always been really into music and made albums with my friends in high school, and I’d use computer programs to make music, but I had limited experience of games.

I’ve always wanted to make games without really taking any steps towards doing it, but I’d enjoyed the little programming I’d done so thought I’d give it a try and took a class last summer in Java for this new major, an introductory programming class. I had a bit of downtime because I was at school and none of my friends were around, so I was just fooling around trying to make a metronome with Java and then I wanted to take things a step further. I’d heard about XNA, thought I’d give it a try and look at the tutorials they had, and I just taught myself C#. It’s pretty similar to Java, and it went from there.

A major factor in that was presumably that you could eventually put it on the 360 console?
Yeah, exactly. That was one of the reasons I thought it was so awesome, that Microsoft let people get their games on an Xbox. So I made this drum metronome thing that you could speed up and slow down the beat on with the arrow keys, then I made this kind of Geometry Wars-esque ship flying around, then I combined the two ideas – and they led to Groov.

Groov’s sold well since release – you must be especially pleased with a conversion rate so far of around 20 per cent?
It’s pretty awesome – especially the fact it’s gone up after the first month of sales, and again recently. It had been on the most popular lists because of people downloading the game, not necessarily buying it, and then after it went off of that – it went a little crazy, last month especially I had a really high conversion rate. I think partially it’s kind of negative because only people, well not only, but a large percentage of people downloading it are actively seeking it out. It’s great, but in one respect the comparison of XBCG conversion rates to [casual] games with a 1% conversion rate doesn’t work – the latter are still selling tonnes because they’re getting downloaded so much, somewhere like Pogo maybe, where you’ve got millions of people every day.

Have you played a lot of community games yourself?
Not really. I download a pile of trials every once in a while to check them out. I’m a college student and I don’t have my paycheck yet, so I’m kinda broke, and don’t really have a lot of money to be throwing around on games anyway. I agree that from the games I’ve played, nothing’s really grabbed me. I buy a fair amount of Live Arcade games, and even the games with really high production values like Biology Battle have that problem of… let me explain: I’m not trying to knock Biology Battle or anything, but I personally prefer Geometry Wars. And that’s half the price. I’m a huge fan of Geometry Wars, so take that for what it’s worth.

Was that a factor in pricing Groov at 200 points? Do you think you got it right?
Oh definitely. It’s dual stick shooter so I immediately think of Geometry Wars. Groov isn’t going to sell for 800, so I was thinking between 400 and 200 – and is it as good as the original Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved which you can get for 400 points? I was like, nah. Just me, as a gamer, I think the gameplay in Geometry Wars is way better – even though the point of Groov isn’t necessarily to go up against that. I approached making it differently, as a kind of musical experience, and I’d originally categorised it as a music game which I changed. But the point is that the dual stick shooter you automatically think of is Geometry Wars, and when you know that’s 400 points you can’t go against that.

How do you feel about the community games presence on the NXE?
It’s difficult to find the games. When the NXE first launched I think it was better because on the game marketplace there was a link to it right there, but since then they’ve made it less prominent. I think Microsoft almost tries too hard to make everything equal, it’s like they’re almost scared to call out specific games for being really good. They did it with CarneyVale Showtime but it won a contest so I guess maybe it felt safe to promote it? I think they’re really trying to do this democratising of game development, which is cool, but I think it hurts the profile to have this thing that even enthusiasts are hard pushed to find stuff on, apart from the latest outrageous app that does nothing.

So you’d like to see a more elitist perspective from Microsoft?
Yeah, definitely. I think that in terms of promotion it caused many a firestorm online when they initially said they were planning on taking an extra 10-30 per cent to promote the game – and it got misquoted as them taking 60 per cent all the time, which was totally false, and in the event they took no additional promotional fees at all. But I think they really should use that. If they promoted my game like they promoted that week’s XBLA game, and they wouldn’t even have to do that much marketing like maybe Major Nelson makes a post about it or something, then they’re welcome to that because your sales might go through the roof. After they stop promoting it you still have all the good PR buzz, people know your game is good.

And I think if they were pointing people towards the really good community games, it would change the perception of community games. Even if people are happy with what they’re buying at the minute, like Rumble Massage which is a cool idea, the perception is that there are interesting apps on there but the only games are trash. Which isn’t true.

So you’re an individual that dabbled with XNA, saw the potential to get something on the 360, and made a decent supplementary income?
Yeah, that’s fair, definitely fair. I’m just a student and I did it in my spare time – I did spend a lot of time doing it but I obviously really enjoyed doing it. I mean, it’s hard to find a job – at school, there aren’t many student jobs going around. This is a really productive way for me to spend my time. I want to get into game design as a career and it looks good on my resume, soven if I look at the selfish reasons for doing it it’s not just about the money, it’s got a value for your future.

So, can we expect another Funkmasonry Industries production on the channel in the future?
Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s hard because I have school and I haven’t really thought of any ideas necessarily for a new game. But definitely if I had the idea I’d go that route. I’ve been thinking about trying a game on iPhone too, but I really like using XNA and I think it’s just awesome to have my game on an Xbox 360 – I definitely would make another game for it.

Also in this series of interviews:
James Silva, creator of The Dishwasher, the XNA project that won a competition to be launched as a XBLA title.
Scott Austin, Microsoft's director of digitally distributed games on Community Games' first six months.