Delving into the development of Word Ace

In a long and actually quite interesting interview with Seppo Helava of Self Aware Games, Pre 101 has given us an in-depth look at the development of Word Ace and how the company operates. As it would turn out, the genesis of Word Ace came about in a physical form, with the four-member staff of Self Aware getting together and playing Word Ace with real cards (well, index cards) and tokens, as pictured above. Essentially, they decided that if this wasn’t a game they’d play in the real world, it wasn’t a game they’d want to play on their phone. To them, the game is about to social experience of having fun with your friends, thus why the chat and custom emoticon status are such integral parts of Word Ace. As Helava said, “Winning wasn’t winning without the ability to mock your opponents.”

Word Ace was coded first for the iPhone (which Self Aware staff had experience with) while they learned the ins and outs of the Mojo SDK and the Pre. Once the iPhone version was up and running, the webOS client for the game was built and they were able to address problems specific to the platform.

Self Aware isn’t resting on its laurels, however. They are hard at work implementing new features in Word Ace (like the ability to purchase more tokens) as well as new games. Helava did reveal that they are working on a straight online multi-player Texas Hold ‘Em game that will integrate many of the social features they developed for Word Ace. But that’s not all, as he said of webOS and the Pre:

“Obviously, it’s a feature-rich platform. Coupling things like background processing with the Pre’s hardware keyboard, GPS, touchscreen, and persistent connectivity - the possibilities are ridiculous! I can’t say anything about it at this point, but we’d laid out some long-term goals for Self Aware, and webOS’s features enable us to realize some of those goals in a way that can’t be done on any other platform.”

Needless to say, we’re now anxiously awaiting the next release from Self Aware! Check out the rest of the fascinating and entertaining interview with Self Aware Games’ Seppo Helava over at Pre 101.