Viva Pinata Interview

Viva Pinata, a game targeted for Pokemon driven or Animal Crossing kids who own Xbox 360’s. Microsoft has singled out Viva Pinata as 2006’s biggest title for Xbox 360. OXM interviewed the executive producer Jim Veevaert and Lead Designer Gregg Mayles.

Basically, the producers wanted to create a game that won’t look like and feel like second rate cartoon characters and then they stumbled upon the piñata since they are from UK and doesn’t really know much about piñatas. They took interest in it. The main concept was the player can customize the piñata to attract animals to be able to trade those animals with other people.

Viva Pinata, a game targeted for Pokemon driven or Animal Crossing kids who own Xbox 360’s. Microsoft has singled out Viva Pinata as 2006’s biggest title for Xbox 360. OXM interviewed the executive producer Jim Veevaert and Lead Designer Gregg Mayles.

Basically, the producers wanted to create a game that won’t look like and feel like second rate cartoon characters and then they stumbled upon the piñata since they are from UK and doesn’t really know much about piñatas. They took interest in it. The main concept was the player can customize the piñata to attract animals to be able to trade those animals with other people.

This game is about creativity, customisation, freedom of expression and personalising the world around the player to attract piñatas. The piñata can interact with another piñata but not everything will turn out good from this since some of the piñata are tempermental and spotaneous.

The currency in the game are chocolate coins while candies are the piñata’s favored food and there are different types candies and each one favors a particular kind of piñata. They even evolve when fed by a certain type of candy.

There would also be bad piñatas in the game which disturbs your garden. They either scare away and even fight other piñatas but do not worry though these bad creatures can be converted to be a good piñata and will be of good use to the player’s garden.

There are tools to be able to manipulate the player’s garden to make it more attractive and more suitable for the player’s piñatas to stay in. As of now, they are aiming for awards within the community for example being the best horse breeder.

The Xbox Live part of this game is that anything the player can see in the game can be packed up and shipped to his online counterpart. The player can customize a piñata and can bring him over to a friend’s garden. Each piñata will have a tag that contains their data especially where it is from. There are also new objects that the players can buy using his chocolate coins.