Interview: Starboard Studios’s “The Wild West”
Background
StarBoard Studios is a Roblox development studio founded by tyridge77 and Tamara_X. They have currently released one game: The Wild West. The Wild West is an western MMO RPG where you must explore unfamiliar territory and carve your own place in one of the most exciting eras in American history. We sat down with tyridge77 and asked him your most burning questions.
The Interview
RobloxRadar: What made you become a Roblox Developer?
tyridge77: Most of us have been developing on Roblox for quite some time
I have been on here since 2008. I was 11 years old then and my best friend got me into Roblox with Galleons and Work at a Pizza Place, which really enthralled me. About half way into 2009 I started becoming interested in making my own games for fun. They were more like little experiences than games at the time, but it was a hobby that grew over the years into a game development career. Most of our team members have similar stories.
RobloxRadar: What’s your favorite part about being a Developer?
tyridge77: My favorite part about being a developer is being able to watch people create awesome memories with their friends. I love watching Youtubers, big or small, cover our game(s) because they’re always very entertaining and seem like they’re having a lot of fun. It’s cool seeing content creators and fans that are genuinely passionate about our game.Looking at everything we’ve built from the game to a pretty large community, and thinking “Wow, we made that”. It’s an amazing experience.
RobloxRadar: What keeps you motivated as a Developer?
tyridge77: As a developer, there are a few things that keep me motivated.
Positive feedback and watching people enjoy the game is part of it, but time management and physical health is important too. I try to stay fit and eat healthy, as well as keep a solid sleep schedule, because these are often overlooked things that can be very detrimental on drive and performance. I also try to take breaks often to play games and relax so I don’t get burnt out.
RobloxRadar: What’s your favorite memory on Roblox?
tyridge77: My favorite memory on Roblox was being an accelerator intern at Roblox in summer 2018. This was a really neat experience and I met some good friends.
RobloxRadar: Did you foresee your games becoming as popular as they have become?
tyridge77: None of us expected the wild west to get as widely known as it has so quickly. We definitely didn’t expect our discord community to get so large, or for so many big content creators to cover our game so early on. We had faith in our idea from the start but thought it would’ve stayed pretty quiet until we were out of paid early access.
RobloxRadar: How did you get the idea for “The Wild West”?
tyridge77: I got my development and life partner, and Starboard Studios’ co-founder Tamara_X, into Roblox development 3 years ago. She’s very artistic and I’m very technical, so together we started building a team and making ideas happen. We launched our first game, Snow Ball Fighting Simulator, in winter of 2018 as a small project to earn some money. It took off for a little while and made us more than we anticipated, and not too long after we were given the opportunity to become accelerator interns at Roblox HQ for the summer of 2018. Using our revenue from that game, we were able to go and live there and participate in that.I’ve always been a fan of open world western games, and I had some nostalgia playing old westerns on Roblox back when games were much smaller and simpler. We had the idea to create an open world western with inspiration from those older classics as well as Red Dead Redemption, and we fell in love with it so that’s we pursued as our accelerator project.
RobloxRadar: What are your favorite Roblox games?
tyridge77: My favorite Roblox games are Galleons, Vesteria, and Q-Clash
These are rated based on how much time I spent in them, and how innovative and unique I feel they were for the Roblox platform.
RobloxRadar: Any mistakes/hiccups you have made so far, something you would advise a new developer to avoid?
tyridge77: Many, but the largest one was our mistake in building a game without multi platform support and low-end machine optimization from the start. We’re still on a mission to make sure The Wild West runs perfectly for everyone, and eventually on every device, but it’s much more work going through and re-designing the game for that than it would’ve been from doing that from the start. It’s a headache especially for how massive the game is and it only having two programmers.
RobloxRadar: Do you have any future plans as a Developer?
tyridge77: We’re going to keep working on The Wild West and pushing it closer toward free to play, but we also have some other interesting game ideas up our sleeve so stay tuned! ;)
RobloxRadar: What are some updates that you have planned for “The Wild West”?
tyridge77: We have a lot of huge updates planned for The Wild West.
Among optimization, we’re planning on finishing up the map by unlocking 1/3rd of the currently locked zone(Large mountain biome, desert biome, and hills). We’re also planning on adding base building , factions, and a lot more content.
Additional Images
Conclusion
We appreciate tyridge77 and StarBoardStudios for sitting down and speaking with us about their new title “The Wild West”. We will have a review of the The Wild West coming out this week, so stay tuned for that! We can’t wait to review their new title and to write more about them. We are hyped!
Play the game: https://www.roblox.com/games/2317712696/The-Wild-West?refPageId=5c7f3696-796f-469b-ac0d-571f5e8112a7
(Note the game is currently in Early Access.)
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