August 26. 2005 - Tampa Bay Times (Weekly mag in Florida [USA])

1) How old are you?

23

2) Did you go to school for game design? If so, where?

No, wouldn't know any near to me...and to be honest I don't think it would be useful. If the teachers have a clue about that stuff, they would make games and make much more money :)
My game design experience is all autodidactic. When i was 10-12 or so, I started painting Super Mario levels on paper, it was my dream to get a level editor in my hands...well it never happened.
Then Unreal was released in 1998, with an excellent level editor, that got me started with designing levels. At first I was designing levels for this game, then started doing whole single player campaigns. If you are self critical enough, (which most aren't from my experience, they are happy with "it's good for a beginner"...which never was my attitude. I started to be happy with my work when it looked like the stuff that came with the original game.) you can keep improving forever. Also at this point, when I started being happy with my work, I was able to sell some of my creations to the makers of the original game, to be used in future releases of their games, that motivated me more, as you can imagine, and I would never have expected to get that far with it, to be honest.
Well game design... it's about analysing other games, seeing which elements are cool, which are annoying...be inspired by the good ones, and also by the bad ones...AND be very critical with your own stuff. Don't hesitate to kill the work of one week if you know deep in your heart that it's not really good. Trying to fix every little thing, that seems a tad annoying (I'm a perfectionist there and others laugh at me for the "useless" details that I care about, but in my opinion it has a big effect in the end). And after learning so much during all those projects, my game design philosophy seems to apply to all game genres and I kinda feel like I could design a game in each genre now, but I'm always adding something new. My last 2 projects, Deathball and Notpron, are totally new, and nothing like that was ever done before in terms of gameplay. I now did 3 big projects in totally different genres:
They are:
-Operation Na Pali (a Single Player Shooter for Unreal Tournament),
-Deathball (A Sportsgame for Unreal Tournament 2004, bit like football from ego perspective, lots of people are addicted for 3 years now) and
-Notpron (the riddle for which reason you contacted me, eh?)

3) Where do you currently live?

Germany, Saarbrücken....forever here.

4) You are a rock star of the puzzle/riddle world - how does this make you feel?

Am I? Well if I am, that would scare me......me being a dumbnut that would get stuck on level 8 in his own riddle :S

5) Do you just work on riddles or do you design other types of games? If other games, what kind?

I guess I answered it in 2 already :)

6) How many people have played Notpron?

Can't tell you exact numbers. I have a hit counter on the first page, but many people link each other to the first level, so I don't know how many have been there.
So the frontpage says I have 5 million visitors. But my stats also say, that 80% are gone after level 3....
It's just a thing for computer freaks...at least that's what it seems to be. It's designed in a way, that every dumbnut can get through it, if he/she really tries. It's sort of teaching you how to computer related things, and gets into it more and more. I also get mails from time to time, from people thanking me that they now finally know how to use their computer.
For example, in one level you need to translate a piece of morse code. Some people say "I don't know morse code" and leave. The other ones that have the will to beat it, go to google, search for a morse table. That easy, done. Or in Level 6 you need to need to look into the source code of the level htm file. How does someone who has no clue about computers solve it? I took care of that, they just need to try, then they can make it. In the title of the page you get a hint "make up your mind about the source code", which is basically telling, "if you don't know what a source code is, go get some info on google and solve the level then". That way all can get into it and solve it.
What might also be interesting....50% of the die-hard notpron players are female, which kinda surprised me.

7) Are you surprised at that vast popularity?

Totally! There was a mysterious kinda thing on the internet which inspired me to start with notpron, adding my ideas which would make it a lot cooler in my opinion. Well I showed it to my internet friends (I had 5 levels up at this time), posted it on a forum I'm active in...and it must have fascinated people. Everyone posted it on the forums they are active in, then some big news pages picked it up and the snow ball was rolling down the hill. Didn't believe my eyes when I suddenly saw 40,000 people being there over night. Oh well...then I started to realize that I got something special and unique there....also because of the countless other pages that try to copy notpron. But fortunately people want to play the original, at least that's what I read when I go through forums where people try to get hints from each other about notpron. :)

8) What is your occupation?

Nothing right now. I was about to start an education as graphic dude in a local game company, but they closed down their graphic department. So I'm searching again...anyone interested?

9) Do you make money from Notpron?

Yeah, but not as much that it could keep me alive. I have these built in google bars in some levels. I love it, because they show that you need google for this level (external knowledge that is not common is required) so you got this handy thing there AND they even give me some cents for every use. I would even have put it up without the money, but so I get something each month. The best was 360$ or so, at notpron's best times, early 2005.
And people asked so many questions about level backgrounds, and some asked directly that I should write a making of book. Well so I did, it's got 100 pages, and people can buy it for 10€ (about 13$) at the page now. Well, I sold a good bunch, but as I said, nothing that could keep me alive :)

10) Do you have interests outside of gaming - if so, what?

1. My loved one :)
2. Music (listening and playing Neoswing, Rockabilly (Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Brian Setzer Orchestra, Boppin'B, Cherry Poppin' Daddies...) and also writing my own stuff (playing Piano, a bit guitar and a bit bass)) (sorry, bracket madness!)
3. Football (the real one), Billards and other sports

11) Are you working on any other games now - or are you continuing to expand not pron?

I have a concept for a Graphic adventure (stuff like Monkey Island) on ice, but that requires so many people, and I don't know yet how to start it without any funding. I'm also still working on Deathball, since it's too great to just stop it, so many good ideas left for it :)

12) How long have you been interested in riddles?

Uhm...never? :)
The usual riddles bore me pretty much, since it's always the same. Notpron's riddles are totally different from anything, because it's all based on special computer knowledge.
Had to laugh when someone mailed me that he could finally put his computer geek skills to use. I guess this is what most love about it. :)
I don't really know why I started it, it was just in my head, and 2 hours later I had some levels ready :)

13) Any words of advice for our readers who would like to design their own games?

Well, this is in question 2 as well. As for designing own riddles....in the mentioned notpron-book are 4 or 5 pages full of game design hints. You could refer to this.
I have a demo of the book on the notpron page as well, people can also get a snippet of this part in it as well.