We had a chance to speak with Seppo over at Self Aware Games, who has two very exciting apps in the WebOS App Catalog. Word Ace, which was released very early on in the App Catalog, is easily the best game out due to its unique game play, which combines a Texas Hold'em style card game with letters needed to form words and allowing a multiplayer functionality that includes chat capabilities during gameplay. Then while we were all eagerly awaiting paid apps to hit the catalog, the day finally came, and to our surprise so did one stand out app that was actually free, 'Card Ace'. Card Ace is Self Aware's second release to the catalog so far. Card Ace takes some of the same concepts of Word Ace and allows you to actually play Texas Hold'em with other players online. This unique app puts you on a table with other players and allows you to place bets, call, or fold the current hand. It plays just like you would expect Texas Hold'em to play but one of the cool things is you can actually chat with the other players at the table. Definitely an exciting feature to see in a game this early on in WebOS development. We also discussed in depth, Self Aware's experience with WebOS and so far it sounds like a good one and looks like they have big plans for WebOS!

Check out the full interview after the break!

1. How do you like developing for WebOS?

Developing for webOS has been a pleasure. As you can imagine, developing an ambitious game for a new platform can be really tricky - you usually have to either be conservative with what you're trying to do with the platform, or what you're trying to do with the game. With a really small team, the challenge can be even more daunting. The fact that webOS uses familiar, established technologies was critical in allowing us to develop a fully-featured online multiplayer game in a ridiculously short time.

One of the most critical things in the development process is iteration time - the time it takes to make a change, and see it in-game. If iteration time is long, making changes is hard, and you're a lot less likely to do them. If it's short, it's really easy to make changes to the game - to fix problems, to add polish - the faster the better. With webOS, our iteration time is fantastically short - for someone who's got a background in developing console games, where each iteration can take hours, having a development platform where the iteration time is minutes, at most, is a huge breath of fresh air - and that difference is one of the most critical factors between being able to build a decent game and an excellent one.

2. How has Palm and it's app catalog experience been for you?. Is it an easy or painful process?

Building something new is always challenging. Building something new on top of something new that someone else is building, when that thing is rapidly evolving... I'm sure you can imagine that comes with its own set of challenges. That said, Palm's made it as easy as possible - they've been really engaged with the community, and they give really concrete, understandable feedback whenever possible. It'll be interesting to see how things develop - with Palm's recent announcements about a much more open distribution method, it's clear they're in this to really shake up the status quo - we're excited to see where the next few months lead!

3. Do you Prefer WebOS over other platforms? If so, why or why not?

Ha! That's a loaded question if I've ever heard one. We develop on a variety of different platforms, and each have their strengths and weaknesses. For webOS, the particular strengths are its unique features - the presence of a hardware keyboard and background processing. We think that the combination of background processing and location-awareness via the GPS really enables a new *style* of game - something that players simply haven't ever seen before. So the potential is really enormous, and right now, there's nothing else like it.

4. Word Ace is an amazing game and one of a kind. I personally haven't seen a game like it before. Was it a new idea you came up with or was there something else that helped to inspire it?

It's funny - in retrospect, it's an idea that seems so obvious. When we were looking at the Pre, we wanted to develop a game that would be targeted straight at the Pre's audience. The obvious choices were card games and word games - we wanted to take advantage of both the touchscreen and the hardware keyboard. So, for a while, we thought about what kind of thing we wanted to make - a card game or a word game? We had a couple interesting ideas we were tossing around about the best card game or the best word game we could possibly make.

While we were in the midst of those discussions, I woke up one night at 2am, with an idea about how to make a card AND word game, together. Thought it was awesome, wrote it down, and e-mailed it off. When we all got together the next morning and were talking about it, we were all psyched to make the game. But as we were talking, it became really clear that we were actually talking about really different things. I went back and re-read the e-mail I'd written, and it's the kind of unintelligible garbage you'd write after waking up in the middle of the night.

So the idea wasn't clear at all, but what happened is that the way that everyone had misunderstood the e-mail was actually better than the original idea itself. Which is both hilarious, and really emblematic of the way we work at Self Aware - the development process is incredibly collaborative. Word Ace isn't one person's idea - it's the result of the entire team's creativity and hard work.

5. Card Ace just arrived in the App Catalog the same day Palm released some of the first paid apps. Card Ace is a FREE app, this is pretty amazing because its argueably the best app that came out on the day paid apps arrived. You could easily sell this app for 99 cents or even a dollar. Why did you decide not to charge for it?

Haha. Why argue? :D

Seriously, though, it's actually quite simple. Setting the price of an app is really, really difficult. You're always dealing with two competing perspectives. On one hand, from the user's perspective, an app's worth is dependent on how much enjoyment or utility they get out of it. From a business perspective, an app's price has to be high enough to make back what it cost to build. Price the app too low, and you'll never make back your money. Price it too high, and no one will take a chance on it.

So with Word Ace & Card Ace, we wanted to try something different. We're giving you the entire game for free. There are no restrictions, and you can play it as much as you want. You never have to spend a dime.

We're about to roll out chip purchasing on the Pre - for a few bucks, you can get more chips, which are useful if you're out of chips, or you want to play at the higher-stakes tables. With the next update, we'll be rolling out a mechanism for players who love Word Ace/Card Ace to simply donate a couple bucks to help support the game. In return, for 30 days, we'll give you a little icon by your profile that'll show everyone you're helping keep the games running.

What it comes down to is this - we want you to give the games a shot. If you hate it, it cost you nothing. If you love it, we hope that you'll love it enough that you're willing to support the game. If you want chips, they're yours. If you want to simply donate, you're welcome to do that, as well. You can play the game as much as you want, and pay whatever you think they're worth to you.

We've had players ask us, completely out of the blue, how they can help to support us, and keep us making games like Word Ace & Card Ace. That's honestly, one of the most greatest feelings you can get - knowing that someone loves the game enough that they're asking *how* they can support the game. And by the time you read this, we'll have chip purchases rolled out on the Pre, with the donation purchases coming soon. We hope that players who love the game as much as we do will choose to support the game!

6. Do you guys have plans for any other games on WebOS?

Yes. Definitely. All I can say that our goal, as a company, is really simple - to use cutting-edge technology to enable people to play together. It's kind of a strange thing, but for a long time, technology's increased the distance between people. Things like Twitter let you keep up with what other people are doing, but reading someone else's tweets isn't *interacting* with them. With Word Ace & Card Ace, we wanted to create something for people to play *together*. That's why there's such a focus on the social aspects - in-game chat, the picture-based "emotes", and the ability to join a friend's game with the click of a button - we want our games to be something friends will play together - something that will *decrease* the distance between people. So what's our next game?

You'll have to wait and see. :)

7. Do you plan on making any apps that aren't games? Maybe a productivity or utility app?

I won't rule anything out. Like everyone else, we've got more ideas than we can possibly make with the resources we have. We may put something out that's not explicitly a game, but the kind of interactivity and addictiveness that are a crucial part of gaming - that's what we do, and anything we build will contain some measure of that.

8. Have you worked with or helped any other WebOS developers? And how is the  WebOS Developer community in the eyes of Self Aware Games?

We've been active on the Palm Development forums, and taken part in things like the predevcamp event a few months back. We love the community that Palm's built around development for webOS. Some things are, by necessity, things we'll keep as our "tricks of the trade," but the openness and interactivity of the development community a vital part of the strength of the platform, and we strive to be a vital part of that community.

Thank you so much for the interview Seppo! We over at PreThinking appreciate hearing from you and are excited to see what else you guys have up your sleeve!

Self Aware games has already allowed you to purchase chips within the game. Please do so as it helps support this fantastic developer and it will keep the developer motived to develop on WebOS!

Check out Self Aware's Website