With the upcoming release of their first IP, and one of my most anticipated iOS games, Past Memories, I was able to touch base with Roberto Guedes, the General and Creative Director of Give Me Five Games to find out more about the company and their game. He took the time to respond to my questions to help familiarize gamers with Give Me Five Games and what they can expect from it as well as providing more information about what went into Past Memories.

Roberto Guedes: Personally, for me, I was always into technology. I remember the first PC we got, which was a Compaq Presario with 1 GB HDD, 8 MB RAM, Pentium 100 and Windows 95. My first plan wasn’t to develop games, but websites, so I spent some of my free time copying some layouts I liked and then trying to do something on my own. Then I eventually had the money to buy my own console…which was the Dreamcast. When SEGA stopped manufacturing it, I decided to sell it, which I regret even today.

So after that, I promised myself that I would be more careful about my decisions and that’s why I started reading gaming websites and blogs. And that changed my career choice to game development and I knew I needed contacts for that. So I started writing on a blog as “press”, which eventually got me into Blizzard studios to cover their announcement of Starcraft II in Portuguese. I also knew I had to learn how to do it, so the plan was to go to a game development course in (college). I heard about one game dev course that was already opened, so I went there in the second semester where I met…my partners for Give me Five.

Roberto Guedes: Ok, so we were in the second semester of our course (it had only 4) and there wasn’t any game requested for us to do. So Felipe, Raphael, Otávio (also a co-founder of Give me Five who eventually left) and I discussed how we needed to do something. We had a prototype a couple of weeks later and showed to our art teacher Alex Leal who liked and talked about that to the university. That was maybe February or March 2010, so it was close to FIFA’s World Cup and the university then asked us to do a soccer game for that. We did a simple game where you just shoot penalties until you miss 3 times, called “Show de Bola”, released in May 2010, which did very well, with around 20k plays. The team that made that game also had other people from our class, but only the five of us (hence the name) I quoted went on to create Give me Five in September because we knew we had something going on.

It actually started with a prototype Felipe made back when we finished Dilma Adventure in October 2010, but not even remotely close, not even visually. Just a gameplay concept. He came back to that in May 2012, but very different, with silhouette visuals. By that time, it was the fifth project we experimented with between August 2011 and May 2012. You didn’t control the character (not even a human being like Past Memories… much more abstract), but that was it. We had to brainstorm more, which I did with the notebook and pen thing (brainstorming alone with no interruptions). The main motivation for being a running side scroller was that it was easy to play with the controls, but we also had experience with platformers.

Past Memories is not an advergame, which means we had more creative freedom, our own release date and also the opportunity to sell directly to customers. We knew the games we made before, despite (being) very well known within the public…didn’t grab the attention of most gamers, so it’s almost like our first game. We need to gain consumer’s trust and make our message very clear. That’s why it was always a $0.99 game with simplified controls and environmental storytelling that someone who doesn’t care about story just can play, finish and, if he/she likes, wait for the free DLC.

We also learned a lesson from “Jogo Justo” (which means “Fair Play” in english, a campaign to reduce game taxes in Brazil) and that was to test a lot before releasing. We didn’t plan for that at the time and the game released with some bugs we only found out about later. To give you an idea, we’ve already corrected more than 130 bugs in the last two weeks.

Also, I learned a lot about the press kit and how to communicate with players the best way possible. For instance, we didn’t want to reveal earlier in order to be sure everything we showed would be included in the final game and not cut or delayed. In fact, we didn’t even design the free DLC on paper yet. We knew the message had to be clear. There’s a “Coming Soon” on the stages menu, but we didn’t want to give the impression we would only do more levels to get more money. We are waiting to listen to feedback and then design with that in mind. And we won’t charge because it doesn’t make sense for us. The thing is, we also learn from what other studios do.

Roberto Guedes: First, how a Give me Five game is and will be. We do like humor a lot, even if it’s more subtle in this game. So we hope that people in the future expect to see our games to have some features they won’t find anywhere else. Secondly, treat consumers as the smart people they are… It’s our baby but it was created so people can play with it and we need to respect that they have their own imagination and can find the best way to have fun, without developers dictating that much.

Roberto Guedes: I know everybody says that, but it’s true: only if it makes sense creatively. You will see the ending there and it’s not a cliffhanger. We will have DLC levels, but they won’t change the ending since what we did was perfect for us. Now I can’t say much, but when you see the ending you will get why anything we do next with the same character would feel cheap. This story wasn’t made as a franchise. But, you never know! Maybe the pen and notebook will happen again, but both Give me Five and Past Memories are our babies and we won’t send them to school just to say we did.

Roberto Guedes: Not now. Maybe something in our minds, but we didn’t even discuss more than five minutes. After Past Memories, we will focus both on the DLC levels and brainstorming other projects. And maybe do more than one project at the same time! Honestly, Past Memories will dictate what will happen in the future, both in the kind of projects that we will focus and how could we expand the company.