Dev Box Interview: Bolt Creative’s Founder Dave Castelnuovo

Written by 2.o | June 24, 2009

It usually takes a small army to create the video games that we play, and, most of the time, all of the focus gets put on the game itself, and not on the people that came together to make it. Our Dev Box interview series takes a look at some of the unsung heroes that have committed their lives to entertaining all of us. This week we are letting Bolt Creative’s Founder Dave Castelnuovo take a break from working on iPhone Apps “Pocket God” and his latest creation “The Jackie Button” and give him a chance to get on the Dev Box and tell us a bit about himself, and what he thinks about the games industry.

Name: Dave Castelnuovo
Title: Founder, Bolt Creative
What you Do: Develop games and apps for the iPhone
Most Recent Game Worked On: “Pocket God” and “The Jackie Button”

1) What game has most influenced you and why?
The original “Doom.” It showed to me that a small team could turn an entire industry on its head. At the time, all game companies were going in the same general direction, no one was taking risks they were only creating content that was a derivative of whatever other game was hot at the time. Id came out of nowhere and not only blew everyone away with their technology but they created a game with tons of shock value, I had never seen a corpse that was torn apart and placed upside down on a crucifix in a game before. It just seemed that they created the game that they wanted to play without any interference from executives or publishers and they proved that a small team can self publish and become really successful.

2) What are you playing right now?
I am mainly playing iPhone games nowadays because I don’t have time to sit in front of a TV anymore. I just finished “Mecho Wars” which I liked but was too short. Other than that, I try just about any game that comes through the app store.

3) What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned about game development?
That it’s easier and more authentic to design something for yourself than to try and guess what other people will be interested in. Also, no matter how many great games you have under your belt or how many reasons why you think your design is better than the competition, connecting with the people is the only thing that really matters. If you create an innovative game that all the other designers in the industry think is hot but real customers can’t connect with (”Spore”), then it’s a bad game.

4) What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?
This isn’t advice that I received but a story about a conversation between Andy Warhol and Bruce Springsteen. This was before Bruce’s first album came out and Andy Warhol asked him what he did for a living. Bruce replied that he was a musician and Andy Warhol asked him how many albums. After Bruce replied that his first album was about to come out, Andy told him he shouldn’t call himself a musician. A musician is someone that constantly produces content, some good, some bad, but you are constantly creating new things and once the current project is done, you just get past it and move onto the next project. This has gotten me into a frame of mind where I try and appreciate the path instead of looking at the end goal or the potential success that should come after it. If the development path is fun and rewarding, the project you are working on has a better chance of getting through to people.

5) What do you think is the biggest problem current games suffer from?
Sweating the small stuff. I’ve been on so many teams where people agonize over the shade of blue that appears on a button in the corner but yet they can’t seem to take a step back, see the project as a whole and figure out the one thing it needs that will give it the biggest impact. I think a game where all the individual elements are rough but the core experience is good has a better chance at being successful than an overproduced piece of dog doodie.