page_title: Joe Danger
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Joe Danger / Development
caption_attribution_description: English: Hello Games staff in the office
context_page_description: Joe Danger is a side-scrolling video game incorporating elements of racing and platform games, and is the first game developed by Hello Games. The player controls the eponymous daredevil and navigates time-limited courses, aiming to complete enough objectives to continue to further rounds. Joe Danger is presented in a light-hearted way, with emphasis on stunts and maintaining speed.
  It was released for the PlayStation 3, via the PlayStation Network, in June 2010, after Hello Games originally chose to publish it exclusively with Sony Computer Entertainment. A "Special Edition" for the Xbox 360, via the Xbox Live Arcade, was released on 14 December 2011; an iOS spinoff was released on 10 January 2013. In April 2015, a version for Android was released through the Google Play Store.
  On its release, Joe Danger received generally positive reviews; most reviewers praised the accessible gameplay and the ability to edit courses while playing them. Some suggested the game would have benefited from more options, such as sharing and rating user-generated content, and criticised the lack of an online multiplayer mode.
context_section_description: Joe Danger arose from the team's wish to make "something that puts a smile on people's faces" similar to games such as Mario Kart and Micro Machines. An Evel Knievel toy was a main source of inspiration for the "Joe" character; the team had fun "firing that stunt cycle out of windows and down halls". Nevertheless, Murray likened work as an independent developer to "the reality of eating ice cream every day for every meal" as the novelty of working for themselves wore off. The team often spent more than 60 hours a week working on the project because of the "unrealistic" time scales for development and with only four team members, each had to fulfil several roles; they had no public relations representative nor did they have a business manager or a designer. No software design document was made throughout the production of Joe Danger, since the team felt they understood each other's ideas.
  The game was announced on the developers' website on 23 September 2009 and given its first public showcase in November 2009 at the Eurogamer Expo in Earls Court. The team used this event as an opportunity for extensive playtesting, receiving feedback from those playing the game and creating new software builds for each day of the expo. Murray cited numerous "happy accidents" during development, which led to incorporation of various features into the end product. An example of this was a bug in the programming which enabled players to jump as often as they liked in mid-air; the team decided this was fun and incorporated it as a double jump.
  Hello Games struggled to find a third-party publisher for the game. Some of the reasons include worries about the lack of potential for porting it to other platforms, and comments such as "collecting giant coins feels unrealistic to me", and "we want games that are less about fun right now". One prospective publisher intimated that they might have published the game if the main character had been a monkey. When players were invited to make suggestions for additional characters, there was popular support for the monkey idea; this led to the introduction of a downloadable bonus character, Chuckles the Chimp. After nine months looking for a publisher, the team ran out of money. Murray later came up with the idea of selling his home to help fund development. He explained to Jessica Conditt of Engadget that he considered the house "like a blood diamond", since it was paid for with money earned at his job with Electronic Arts.
caption: The staff of Hello Games in their office in Guildford. From left: David Ream, Sean Murray, Grant Duncan, and Ryan Doyle.[22]
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