Hi all! Michael Piper here with an interview with one of the heads of One Sock Prince, Peter Apgar:
What inspired you guys to start One Sock Prince?
We want to make the games we want to play. Before the company, we spent many years making things cool. We wanted to transition over to make cool things, unfettered by client’s request.
What makes you an “Indie game studio”?
A lack of funding first and foremost. Most game studios that make big titles are associated with a publisher, companies like Valve, Nintendo, or EA. We don’t have the backing of such a publisher. This isn’t a bad thing, there are trade offs between being attached to a big name publisher like EA or doing it all by yourself. The advantage for us is we can still make very cool things, but retain our own creative control.
What sort of products are you wanting to produce?
Artistic Games that inspire us. We are a collection of art geeks, and so we want to make games that play to our strengths. Games are a chance to not just passively look and appreciate art, but to play and involve yourself with art.
What sort of challenges did you face in creating and maintaining the studio?
Stabilizing the work flow is our big challenge. A totally natural production on a project would allow for you to stop, examine issues, and change your mind on key ideas. When you are dealing with multiple projects at a time it can get pretty confusing.
Why a name like “One Sock Prince”?
It all started a couple years ago as a joke between friends. Our dog liked to steal socks and we decreed that Noki Dojo
was a bandit of socks. Which left me a ‘One Sock Prince’ because even as the ruler of my domain I was always missing a sock.
Are there any games that hold a strong nostalgia for you?
A lot of us are from the Super Nintendo era of games. So a lot of our games have been inspired from them.