MobileTechReview.com Faces Behind the Games: our Interview with Javier Dávalos of Ionside

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Faces Behind the Games Interviews

—by Jade Dragon

Have you ever wondered about who the people are behind the games you love? What they look like? What they eat? Well, I came up with 5 questions for my five-minute interview with the leaders of popular game software companies. We will feature one Chief each week. And I've also got a photo of each Chief I've interviewed, so that you can see what they look like. As for what they eat, that's highly classified information.

This week we're interviewing Mr. Javier Dávalos of Ionside. He is the man behind the game Argentum. Need I say more? A great game developer comes only once in a blue moon; a great developer that can get a team of great developers together to produce great games comes even less often. Javier successfully accomplished both. With his groundbreaking idea, Javier managed to assemble a world-class team (they truly come from different parts of the world) and made history by giving us Argentum. RTS games on Pocket PC will never be the same again, and games on Pocket PC in general will never be the same.

Interview:
Jade Dragon: What would you say the game Argentum has achieved?

Mr. Dávalos: For many years there has been a large number of gamers asking for a good RTS game for the Pocket PC, so here at Ionside we decided to listen to them and to make the greatest RTS game for the Pocket PC to date. We truly think we've achieved our goal, Argentum is pretty much one of the best looking games in the market, featuring effects never seen before on a Pocket PC and setting a new standard in the industry, and not only we came up with a graphically beautiful game but it is also very fun to play, anyone who has played it will probably agree with me.

Javier Davalos

Argentum was designed with the Pocket PC as target platform and I think that's something very important because by doing that we were able to take it to the limit, something that will never happen with a multi-platform game or with a game ported from the PC to the Pocket PC. We've taken over a year developing the game and we sure feel all the work have been paid off.

Jade Dragon: What will be the exciting things coming out this year from Ionside?

Mr. Dávalos: Well, we sure are here to stay, and Argentum won't be the last Ionside product to hit the streets. We are already working on stuff that will be totally amazing, but what it is we are working on is our little secret. :)

Jade Dragon: What do you have to say to the Argentum fans out there?

Mr. Dávalos: Definitely a big THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT. From day one we've had a huge number of gamers encouraging us to continue working hard and that's probably the reason why we came up with such a good game. Support is very important for programmers and we got plenty of it.

Jade Dragon: What is your number one favorite game?

Mr. Dávalos: Well, if I had to pick a Pocket PC game I would choose RocketElite by Douglas Beck without hesitation. It's a really wild game and I highly recommend it. Plus he's the coolest programmer ever :)

Jade Dragon: How often do you play games?

Mr. Dávalos: Too often hehe… I consider myself a gamer in first place and a game designer / programmer second. Really, you can't be a good game designer if you are not a true hardcore gamer. You NEED to know what gamers want and how they want it. Otherwise you should move to business applications in my opinion :)

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