I had a chat over email with Tom Sennett, a game developer (well known for the popular RunMan series) and old forum friend. If you’re interested in game development, give this a read!

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Jon of ZippyGamer: Hey Tom, thanks for agreeing to do the interview with us. I noticed your last name rhymes with my last name, so I assume that means we’re both geniuses. Anyway, please give us some basic info on who the heck you are.

Tom Sennett: I’m Tom Sennett. I’m a student at Penn State University, an independent game developer, and a genius.

Jon: Tell us about your first video game. What was it? How did you come up with the idea?

Tom: The first real game I put together was called Atomic Wall Ball, and it was a Breakout ripoff. Not quite a clone, because it made less sense than Breakout. I was 12 or 13 years old, so I take no responsibility for it.

RunMan: Race Around The World

Jon: What are you majoring in at Penn State? Do you intend to create a career as a game developer?

Tom: My major at Penn State is Information Sciences & Technology. It’s pretty undemanding. All the work I’ve done on games has been far outside my curriculum.

At this point, I’m hoping to go full-time indie once I graduate. That’s a year from now, so I’ve still got some time. If it doesn’t work out I will probably find myself at a game company though. I am committed to working on games professionally in some capacity.

Jon: When creating a game, what is your typical design process like?

Tom: I try to think of something interesting or fun, then run with it and see where it leads. Like one of my older games, Acwabatiacs, I came up with while sitting in physics class in high school. I was doodling in my notebook and I drew this long segmented centipede, and then to make it interesting I attached a bear to its rear end. And I looked at it and was like, “What if this was your character in a game?” and all of the gameplay grew out of that naturally.

Other times I’ll think about things that have been done before and how I’d do them differently. So with RunMan it was, “What if we made a game about running really fast?”, and anyone who’s anyone knows Sonic did this a long time ago. But we totally ignored everything about Sonic and just focused on our question, and ended up with something considerably different.

My design process usually involves beer. And if anyone else is around, yelling.

Jon: What do you have next up your sleeve?

Tom: I’m working with Matt Thorson of MattMakesGames.com, my partner on RunMan: Race Around the World, on a new game titled Deepak Fights Robots. It’s an homage to some awesome old arcade games, including Bubble Bobble and Pac-Man. We’re developing it in Flash and hope to have it out before Summer 2010. So far we’ve only released screenshots, but I can assure you, it’s totally sweet.

Deepak Fights Robots

I’m also working on a three game series called Brutus + Miranda, or Miranda & Brutus with a friend of mine. That’s in Flash too, and is too convoluted for me to explain, but keep an eye out for it.

Hopefully you’ll also see some Flash ports/remakes of my older downloadable games soon, so Mac and Linux users will finally get a chance to play them.

And we have some plans for RunMan: Race Around the World. I can’t go into details now, but I think people will like it.

Jon: I appreciate your time, Tom! Thanks for giving us a lot to look forward to.

Be sure to check out Tom’s Official Website. You won’t be disappointed.