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#3 | Why This Developer Left AAA to Make a Game About Sperm
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In this episode game developer Valentin Wirth talks about his first commercial indie game Become and why he left AAA game productions to pursue an indie dev career.
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Transcript
Introduction of Glenn and Valentin
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome to the Game Dev 101 podcast. I am your host, Glenn, and today i am joined by game developer Valentin Wirth. Valentin, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me, Glenn.
00:00:12
Speaker
Yeah. um So what I'd like to do is talk about your journey as a game developer and discuss some of the moments that shaped you creatively, moments that taught you a lot, and perhaps moments where you were struggling as a developer.
Valentin's Career Beginnings and 'Become'
00:00:26
Speaker
ah You have a really interesting background because before making your own game, you worked in cinematic and art related roles on much larger projects. yeah And now you're developing Become, a solo indie game with one of the most interesting premises I've seen in a while.
00:00:42
Speaker
um Basically, you play as a sperm cell trying to reach the egg. Is that correct? Exactly. The race of life every one of us did.
00:00:52
Speaker
Yeah, so I'd love to talk about how that idea came about, how you turned it into an actual game and what it has been like to go from working on bigger productions to carrying your own project as an independent developer.
00:01:05
Speaker
um But before we get into become and your professional work, um I'd like to take it all the way back to the beginning and talk about what you were like growing up and whether there were already early signs that you might end up making games someday.
Early Influences in East Germany
00:01:18
Speaker
um So, yeah, before anyone knew you as a game developer, what were you like growing up? Well, I grew up in eastern Germany, like in the eastern part of Germany before the revolution. So I remember my early childhood was just running through the woods. There wasn't any games or any television or any media, really.
00:01:40
Speaker
And the first time I remember seeing a computer was maybe I was nine and it was like, What? This is amazing. Someone had Prince of Persia and then we got Robotron where you had to practically write all your games yourself if you wanted to play something. But for me it was absolutely mind-blowing, this stuff. And then over time, my dad at some point got a proper computer and he was like, oh, you can play chess on it. It's awesome. And I was like, what? You can play Dune and Command & Conquer and Warcraft. There's so much cool stuff.
00:02:12
Speaker
So there was a completely new world of games unfolding in front of me and ah it was super exciting. And eventually for me, the most exciting was when I found out that they're level editors in a lot of these programs like Warcraft had an awesome level editor later in
Learning and Career Progression in Game Development
00:02:30
Speaker
Half-Life. It came with Hammer and you could make stuff yourself and trying to build little worlds yourself and trying to change the game. That was super amazing to me.
00:02:40
Speaker
But because I grew up from not having, there was no game developers around, there was no game developer schools or internet, I never thought that this could be, like, you could just start making games and sell them somewhere. So I thought to myself, okay, I'm going to make this a mission all my life till I'm 40. I'm going to learn everything it needs to be to to make my own game and learn whatever it takes. And then I can make my own game, maybe being a bit too afraid to get jump in right away. But so I took it really as,
00:03:10
Speaker
job by job, year by year, I took some new topic on and tried to learn about it. So it started with learning some scripting and programming. The internet came learning how to do web pages, design, ah animation, and step by step, every bit of the piece, every job that I took was always, oh, can that teach me a little bit more that I need to know about making a game someday myself? So...
00:03:36
Speaker
I had some chance to work in a tv studio at some point to do like this there there was ah a mix of things from trailers and marketing stuff but also there was a use ah news news 3d animations which were awesome because you got like in the morning you got a topic and you had to really quickly build stuff animate have it done render it out till a few hours later so there was stuff like plane crashes or whatever, something with a train that happened. but and There was also some other shows.
00:04:08
Speaker
I don't remember what it's called, Akte or something. Anyways, you had to do medical animation. And I found that also always super exciting and amazing. Like we had few meshes around the body and then you had to show, I don't know, how blood cloths are made, how breast size reduction is happening. They always had very spicy topics. So I found these hilarious. They were great.
00:04:28
Speaker
so yeah that was um but that was still just making videos in the end and then eventually i got into a publisher there i could make videos for games and then i got into game studio and make really uh work on proper games so okay so like your first couple of jobs weren't in game development itself then you had you you transitioned into that Yes, I was in the beginning, I was having my own company for design and web design that was not games and then for ah like television marketing and stuff like this.
00:05:05
Speaker
Okay, okay. And yeah, but always the goal was always on every project. Can I learn something? So even and on if I had some like animated trailer or something, I tried to find out, okay, now let's find out how to get real time renderer working instead of in Maya. You had to always wait forever to render something. So but they were the first real-time ones that you could get really fast feedback and every project had something cool to learn about how to make games yeah yeah okay and is that how your your background in like cinematics developed early on then because you said you were making videos more and then you transitioned into games yeah i guess i also always had a love for visuals and art and
00:05:49
Speaker
I remember still in the beginning i had I had to do both because it was always in the company like you had both programming and art and the art side was just much more fun for me and whenever I had programming it felt like my brain is somewhat melting.
00:06:02
Speaker
I think I maybe
Transition to AAA Development with Mafia 3
00:06:03
Speaker
still kept some of this so if it gets more complicated or math heavy my brain is still ah having enough and the art side is always like oh this is fun let's do some more.
00:06:14
Speaker
Yeah, so it was more visually focused. Yeah, yeah. And i I read that you worked on Mafia 3, right? Yes, yeah. At some point I got the chance to move to Czech Republic and work on the Mafia games. And that was one of these games that when I was younger was super influential. Like Mafia 1, this idea that you can actually be inside a world and there's real characters. there's They're not just like some...
00:06:41
Speaker
They felt like real personalities with problems and struggles and it was so exciting to me and you you could go through this whole story and play through it yourself. It was different than just watching a movie. So that was super exciting and when I got the chance to work here I thought let's just take the leap of faith, see what it is. I didn't know much about Czech Republic or the studio here so I thought just let's just try it and see where it leads me and then I ended up maybe almost 10 years in the working on the mafia games and other things.
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah. and k How did you find your way there? Like, did you just apply for a job or did someone reach out to you? um Yeah, I was, i think some, what is it, like a headhunting agency or something just called someday, hey, would you be interested in trying this? And then they did the interview and we had a few phone calls.
00:07:34
Speaker
I could come by here to just check out the town. Yeah. And then just, step by step went. It was quite nice, quite uncomplicated. Yeah.
00:07:45
Speaker
Was that your, the first experience with like a big triple A title or were you working on other triple A games before that? Like before that I was working in Gameforge, which is they are more on the publisher side and but it is in the end still a bigger company. um But yes, it was the first time that it's really in-house developing the game, but it still felt quite similar because we were doing cinematics and it's not that drastically different than working in the marketing department.
00:08:18
Speaker
But yeah, it was it was a new world as well. New team, new place. Yeah, and what did you know working in like AAA development teach you about how games are built?
00:08:35
Speaker
Well, it I started off in just the normal editor position. And so step by step, you're learning more and more how the whole machine works or how how all the team works. So in the beginning, it was just playing around with their custom engine. getting to know all the other teams and figuring out what what is really awesome in ah in a bigger company like this is that you don't have to do everything yourself. Before it was, if I wanted to do an animation, you have to model it, animate it, rig it, render it, whatever, everything you have to do and relatively quick. But there you can just say, hey I need this new character. I have a scene here, need a car and some trees and we need a different environment. And people would just build a lot of things for you and you can take all the things and put them together and build a story out of it.
00:09:21
Speaker
It was also super interesting to see how the cooperation between the writers, us, then other departments, actors and mocap worked. So it was all way bigger scale than when you just quickly try to build something yourself.
00:09:37
Speaker
So that's super exciting as well having this huge pool of you have practically the whole game world to tell stories with which is amazing. Like if you're you come up with some ideas, have a whole pool of different cast, different characters, different people. Someone will in the end create music and sound effects for it. it's just way more professional and yeah, yeah different way of working.
00:10:03
Speaker
Yeah.
Experience with Mafia 3 DLCs
00:10:04
Speaker
And once development had ended on Mafia 3, did you then stay at the company or did you move on to another game? Yeah. First, we did some DLCs still and I was then starting as a lead for cutscenes. So I was having the team and we were and the DLC process was actually really fun. I know they are maybe not that known. but they were kind of self-contained little games that just would take one and a half hours and i really enjoyed this that they were a very condensed specific story with a very specific theme like once was like the uh what is it called like this car racing from the 70s and ah forgetting the name there was
00:10:47
Speaker
I forgot, it's an old TV show. Anyways, every one of them had a very specific theme and it was quite quite fun to create and to prepare. And also for me, there's very short timelines. Like before, when you have a bigger project and you know it's going to be two, three, four years. you you are always working very much in detail. While there you know, okay, we have two months, we need to get stuff to mocap right now, get it back quickly, prepare it, edit it together and and get it done. And while we get it done, we already start working on the next one and it was more iterative, more quicker. And I think at least to me, this is a workflow that I quite enjoy when you ah get stuff done quickly.
00:11:29
Speaker
Yeah. It's also sounds a bit stressful, like doing all that work condense it in two months. I don't know. I guess I bit thrive in not too healthy ah work behavior. But yeah I really enjoy this. once The more ah intensity there is, the more i guess I enjoy it. Now I had, for instance, and we were just earlier shortly talking this game show and preparing for that as well when it's like really long days and really high focus. That to me is the most enjoyable time. Okay. I'm curious. like what did
00:12:05
Speaker
um working on a big game like Mafia 3, what did that teach you that you still use now as a solo developer?
Indie Development Insights
00:12:13
Speaker
Yeah. There is maybe... um Well, there is a lot of things. I think one of the most important is you have all the connections, all the people that you know from before. So you can go back and you you're really getting stuck on some, I don't know, UI thing. So you always know, I can ask this UI developer, I have some foliage problem, you can ask this guy and... Everyone knows some knowledge. They are super nice. they They share things with you. So it's it's just a knowing who knows to me is one of the great skills. I think I used to have once a producer that I found really impressive because she wasn't
00:12:51
Speaker
um she wasn't trying to solve your problems but she would just get you and say okay this is your problem here this is the person you should get to know talk with each other and would just connect the two people and this way figure out your problem and I feel this like knowing who knows and connecting the people together and talking with each other this is an excellent skill that I find very useful from AAA.
00:13:15
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Great. On the other hand, there was also a bunch of stuff. If you're a bigger company, it's also way more organizational overhead, especially once you're in lead roles or direction, you're just it more and more less time you spend creating things and more and more time you will be.
00:13:33
Speaker
giving feedback, solving problems, doing work, organizational things, and setting up the vision for later, but you don't get your hands dirty so much anymore. So that's one side where I maybe started overcompensating against it a bit, and I'm slowly starting now to get back to it and finding like the even balance. It was, I think, for some time where I thought... Let's just not have any plan. Let's just go every day, get the most amazing thing done that I can. And then next day we'll see what's next. So now I'm slowly starting to balance this out again.
00:14:10
Speaker
You like to make quick progress, it sounds like. Yeah, I really enjoy, especially in the very beginning time of a project, there is a phase where you can just every day do big chunks of progress. And it might not be the most important thing, but if you have that done, you would anyways have done it. So I'm not sure if the order is always so important. So if you keep on working on the thing that you're really passionate about and right now can do a big... ah contribution to the project i think it's also quite useful but yeah at some point there is a lot of topics that need your attention and it starts being good again
00:14:44
Speaker
to ah start planning a bit more but i'm still trying to find that balance again yeah yeah yeah um did working on cinematics did that make you more sensitive to like pacing and um like emotional payoff and storytelling Yeah, yeah. I think so. there Although... and home where to start?
00:15:13
Speaker
um Yes, it it definitely is my way of thinking, I noticed, is much more about what does it look like, how does it move, what is the emotion that I'm trying to evoke. Well, I see some designers that I'm right now discussing with and talking with, I see that their mental image is different. They think like,
00:15:32
Speaker
in a side view about what is the function, what is the thing, how am I using this gameplay mechanic to revert something. So I think there is a different there are different ways of thinking and I'm naturally way more inclined to first think about what is the feeling that I'm trying to evoke, what is the like where do what is the kind of arc that I'm working on and where do I want to get to, what is i'm also decently visual person, so what is colors, lighting, composition.
00:16:02
Speaker
So when I started doing level design for Become, I started first figuring out what is the visuals like? Does it visually work? how How much movement can you get in there? And these things before I tried to figure out what is the exact gameplay system that I'm going to build. yeah So yeah, I guess a designer has a different mindset while a programmer might also have a different mindset. They think way more about systems and how they can work together. So yeah, everyone has their initial starting point how to think about things.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah.
Decision for Solo Development After Health Scare
00:16:32
Speaker
Yeah. And did, did AAA production, did that eventually make you more excited to go solo or did it make you more afraid to start something all on your own?
00:16:47
Speaker
I think honestly I've told myself so long for so many years, soon you're gonna make your own game. Then you release your a game again and say, it's kind of also game that I worked on so it's fine. Then you release the next one and you say, ah maybe for now I have the team here to worry about and ah let's see when it's more stable. and So I always postponed it a bit and further and a bit further. And then i was already past 40. So I thought, oh yeah, one year more, two years more, whatever, I'll start. So it ah I don't think that it made me more afraid of it, but it's just it's a relatively comfortable position position. You have a team to...
00:17:28
Speaker
work together, they are all great people and you have stability. You always, when I watch all the indie dev documentaries, it's not not guaranteed or simple or it is so many more hats that you wear. So it's very difficult to take this leap was, uh, took a while.
00:17:47
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And so like, what was there a specific moment that really motivated you and pushed you to pursue your own game? Yeah.
00:17:59
Speaker
For me it took a few steps. so i First, I all the time at home tried to make my own games. They always ended up way too big, so I didn't ever finish them. Then at some point in in Hunger, in the mafia company, we were working on a different game that was never announced and finished released. So I had a bunch of years where I worked and I had the feeling now the team is pretty independent, the project is not burning, I will go off and try it on my own again.
00:18:25
Speaker
So I started thinking about what could I do, but then I met another ah friend from another company and he mentioned, oh, we really need help with the cut scenes. Would you want to join? it So I thought, okay, for a few months I can help you guys. It's okay. So I joined there. That was another two years gone.
00:18:41
Speaker
then But then there was a point where I got really sick and for a few months I was knocked out and noticed, yeah, if I continue like this, who knows if there will be some time. So it's now or never. So I just said, okay, bye. I'm leaving and ah started off. And then I still was maybe for some time thinking, is it just midlife crisis or something? Should I try other things, building a house or...
00:19:08
Speaker
carving stuff out of wood and i tried it for a while and i noticed whatever i do all day long i'm anyways just thinking about how to make a game out of it might as well make a game so i was trying a bunch of different things and all the time was all day long running the game design ah thoughts i thought let's just do it and go for it that was not two years ago so Two years ago. So you you quit your job and you you didn't have anything else to fall back on. I imagine you had enough savings then to say, okay, we're going to do it now? Yeah. I was always thinking I want to do it someday, so I was always putting money aside, but still it it was a decent risk. I also have family and kids, so it was...
00:19:51
Speaker
um yeah But I knew I have to do it. so ah yeah okay So you felt prepared to make a game alone, I assume, or did you maybe underestimate how many roles you'd have to take on? Because ah to be clear, your making become completely on your own, right? yeah like You're doing everything by yourself.
00:20:15
Speaker
It started completely on my own, but lately there are a few people that are helping. I'll get to that in a second, but first to the... if i felt I did think I'm pretty prepared. like I knew about all the departments and I i had some experience in scripting and in art and in animation and game design. I've tried to do like Game Jam games in Unreal, but I very much underestimated what a difference it is, like leading a team and giving them feedback on design and them doing it versus doing it yourself, telling a programmer what you need in a tool and then writing the tool itself.
00:20:53
Speaker
ah Yeah, and Unreal's learning curve as well. It's very fun at the when you do your first prototypes, but once you have to, for every topic, you have to kind of learn a completely new tool. So it's ah been much bigger than I anticipated. And every department is really, there's a reason why there is a dedicated team. job for being a level designer for being a musician for being a sound engineer for being ah programmer so yeah yeah but step by step you learn things yeah with it yeah um yeah let's just get into like the development of become then um what was a spark for the idea
00:21:39
Speaker
Yeah, there are a few spots where this started.
Inspirations and Early Development of 'Become'
00:21:43
Speaker
and One is maybe, if I can branch out for a second, it was once talking with my aunt. She had her 80th birthday and was asking her if she felt any different than when she was younger. And she was saying, no, I feel like exactly the same person as when I was 17, except that my body hurts more. Like if I move stuff, it's different, but you don't change so much. And I noticed with myself as well, I always had the assumption that When I was, when I'm 40, I will feel really adult and not have the same stupid humor anymore and don't find the same things funny anymore. But somehow most of these things, they don't change so much. And I feel there is also this thing that people have,
00:22:26
Speaker
when they're 14 to 18 somewhere, that really influences their life. For me it was like figuring out how amazing games can be and really wanting to do this. And for many people this really shapes a lot of their life. Maybe they will not do exactly the thing, but a lot of their personality is made in this time. and yeah And so for me, there was something around this time when I was working at TV, there was this BBC documentary, The Human Body, where they had these crazy macro photography ah shots from inside the body. Like they would go with a...
00:22:59
Speaker
camera into the heart and you could see how stuff is pumping and there was one episode where they would follow semen from within the man go with the camera with it into the body show and i don't know this was 20 years ago so i have no clue how the did they manage to film this but it was astonishing visually completely amazing but to me i also of thought what an amazing crazy journey like there is like this spaceship-like world inside each of us and it looks just spaceship-like because all the ah sci-fi uses microbiology as a reference but it's in real there and it's a real journey that each of us went through that would be an amazing topic for a game so yeah I figured let's give that a try and the last point was maybe when I was then
00:23:45
Speaker
talking with friends in the pub about it and when you see the reaction of people to it and other people and they instantly come up with jokes about and everyone can't stop doing like double meaning yeah it was hilarious and i could just see okay there's maybe some potential there it's not just me who has a bit silly mind but it seems a lot of the guys remain some of their ah yeah humor from childhood yeah yeah yeah And ah this was like after you had already quit your job that you got the idea or was this maybe slightly before?
00:24:20
Speaker
It always grows slowly. Like the first time when I thought, when I saw this documentary 20 years ago, I thought, wow, that would be a crazy game. But then I moved on. And then when I quit my job, I was thinking, yeah, what could I do realistically now? What kind of game can I actually, as a single developer in a, I can't spend five years, 10 years on it. So what is, can I do really small?
00:24:43
Speaker
So I thought, hey, let's go really small, let's don't do cinematics that I know is complicated. Let's not do character animation, voiceover and all kinds of things that are super expensive. So then I went smaller and smaller and smaller and I ended up microcosmic small. So yeah, I thought that is probably possible to create in a relatively short time frame.
00:25:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so like you just opened up an engine and you just started working on it. Like, did you have a a concrete plan or were you just kind of like making prototypes first?
00:25:19
Speaker
Well, I used at work Unreal if on a few projects before. so And I had tried Unity before and... ah I tried as well doing some prototype in Unity, but it didn't quite click for me, maybe because I was too used to Unreal. So I just started Unreal and thought, okay, let's try first. Can I make... Can this work? Can this be even enjoyable to move around? Can this look nice?
00:25:43
Speaker
Can this be something that might be interesting for other people? So I just started prototyping around a bit and gave myself a few months to put together something playable and get it in front of people to see if they would enjoy this and how the reception for it is.
00:26:00
Speaker
And I just had to... This weekend was this Game Access, it's a yearly conference, so a year ago, that's where I first took this prototype, the first build that I had, and just put it in front of other game developers and friends and whoever comes, like it's... and ah Yeah, I think the reception was pretty good, but I could already see it's not yet strong enough as a game. Like it's visually good, the hook is good, but the gameplay needs to be stronger. So the last year was now trying to really work on the gameplay and make that really stand up as well.
00:26:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So then was the the comedic tone of the game that was basically maybe the the the biggest driver at the beginning.
00:26:42
Speaker
And then later you thought more about, okay, what gameplay mechanics can I actually implement in the game to make it more fun to play?
00:26:51
Speaker
I think I already um had a pretty precise idea of what I would like the gameplay to be. That it's not like it's not going to be a shooter, you don't have going to have a sword. So it's a lot of movement based. Something like Journey or Abzu, which is a lot around movement and feeling and atmosphere, but with more humor.
00:27:10
Speaker
But implementing this so it feels good, like for instance the Journey to find how do you make the character control controls feel really nice and While, like, for instance, as a sperm cell, people are expecting that you can free-swim everywhere. But I figured free-swimming makes for really poor level design and gameplay because you can practically... You see a level, you just skip it completely. Also, at least to me, Abzu was hard to to control because of the free-swimming and the many exercises you control. So I figured I'm going to do, like, some really floaty platforming, but then how to get it to feel really nice that players still are not...
00:27:49
Speaker
ah frustrated why they can't free swim somewhere. So do it yeah to get the play experience to feel nice. I know that I hear always this advice of people saying, hey, do this game jam. After two weeks, you got this thing, put it on itch and people love it or not. My experience is you will have an idea, you will do something. It feels pretty...
00:28:10
Speaker
There is something there, but it's not amazing. And it's through endless iteration and polishing and changing it again and trying again and putting it in front of someone and iterating again and again that you're very slowly near this point where suddenly people are saying, wow, this is really cool. I like this. This is fun. And it's not this magic, at least for me. Probably I'm a bad designer for it, but it it takes quite some iteration and a lot of trial and error to get closer and closer to this point where it's really feeling great to play.
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah, and those first few months you did everything by yourself then? Yes, yeah. At some point, I had the great luck of an ex-colleague that joined me helping with some UI and programming things, as programming is probably my weakest part.
00:28:56
Speaker
He's now helping. Now, just lately, I found someone that will help with level, that is helping with level design. He's also amazing, Emil. Then there's a musician that is making the music now, so it's starting to be a real little team. Yeah.
00:29:12
Speaker
Cool. Yeah. When you were like developing the game by yourself those first few months, were you ever worried that the idea was maybe like too weird or risky or maybe easy to misunderstand?
Challenges in Game Appeal and Tone
00:29:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:30
Speaker
Like, I'm not so worried about the weird or risky. To me, it's not super weird. To me, it's a cool adventure, but I was worried if there's enough players for it. Like, there is... If um I tried for this game access, I just put it up on Steam and just thought, we'll see if some people on Steam find it interesting. But Steam doesn't even know what kind of game this is supposed to be. There wasn't any traffic, there wasn't much wish lists, and... ah that got me a bit worried. So what if I spent a few years on something that no one really wants to play and just I find it funny?
00:30:04
Speaker
okay That was a bit worrying. But yeah, I somehow always had the feeling why are all the, there's so many games doing the same thing? Like why is there so many war games, shooters, sword fighting games? There's so many amazing topics, especially i find about reality. There's so many crazy topics to explore that just aren't much explored. But yeah, Who knows? Maybe it's going to be too weird and it won't find its audience. But I had the feeling now in a few months back, I did the announcement trailer and then it looks better now. There was quite some positive reaction to it. And I can see that a few quite a few people are excited about it.
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah, no, like, yeah, it has blown up. I'm curious how it got to that point. um But before we get there... um I do want to talk more about the premise of the game um because, yeah, it it is comedic.
00:31:00
Speaker
But in the trailer, you also get the sense that it's kind of heartfelt. There is like more to just than just a comedic tone of it. um Am I right for saying that or?
00:31:14
Speaker
Yes, it is. Well, I don't know how much i should... I don't want to spoil the end of the game, but my goal is definitely to start off with comedy and humor and I want to have people enjoy themselves and have a good laugh, but definitely I would like to...
00:31:30
Speaker
there to be more and ah yeah I'm not sure how much to already spoil here so we don't have to spoil anything for me there are two other approaches like I'm storyteller so I would like to also have an emotional arc in there but also I'm hoping that people accidentally... I don't want to be annoying and tell them, like, here, learn something about microbiology. But I'm hoping that as they laugh properly and have a good fun, that they also find out something about how how life works and reproduction works. And I think it could be also pretty fun. Okay, yeah.
00:32:05
Speaker
it It must be tough making a more comedic game. um Because... doing comedy is hard. There's not a lot of comedy games. Um, so how did you kind of balance that whole thing where you're not trying to make it feel cheap or one note? So how, how did you do that?
00:32:29
Speaker
Well, we are I'm not sure yet. We'll see. Yeah, I find it is hard and I'm very surprised how few comic games the comedic games there are. And I mean, there is a lot of weird slapstick, but not ah there are some games like Untitled Goose Game or that that are genuinely hilarious. yeah But this is also very hard, as you said. So I'm trying my best. I'm trying to find this balance. To me, it's the best is when people have the...
00:32:58
Speaker
ah double meaning in their head but it's not said outright so if you're implying things that whoever depending on their how old they are or how naughty their mind is they might have the double meaning or not and i think this is your own voice this is usually the funniest so i'm hoping this will work out well we'll see how it works yeah Okay. I want to talk more about like the setting of the game, because once you had the idea, then how did you turn the reproductive journey into actual gameplay?
Gameplay Innovation and Emotional Impact
00:33:38
Speaker
Yeah, it was... um well, there is first there is this very biologically oriented setting of going from the testes through getting hopefully into the woman but you never know where gonna end up. There's a lot of other places I heard sperm cells might go to. ah then And there's the whole journey through vagina, womb and into the fallopian tubes.
00:34:02
Speaker
And then I was just looking, there's a lot of dangers that happen to sperm along the way. There's 300 million about starting and just one will make it and maybe 300 might make it to the egg. So it's a pretty rigorous natural selection.
00:34:16
Speaker
So I was just looking, how can you, every everything that happens to them, how can you make interesting gameplay out of it? How can pushing through membranes, pushing through sperm? ah thick slime be interesting of getting chased by immune cells getting there's acidic environments and so yeah this works pretty well for some platforming challenges and there's also sperm cells they don't start off ah completely capable they start off pretty much immobile impotent and ah not very they wouldn't be able to make new life and they have to change along the journey through hormones and proteins and So I'm a bit exaggerating this more, but there is then some where you gather the proteins and upgrade your sperm cell and develop further. and yeah So it it is always a balancing act, trying to find gameplay that fits. I mean, it would be probably easier to add rocket launchers and machine guns, but um this way it, I think, ends up in quite interesting, unique gameplay.
00:35:18
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds like you did a lot of research on how, you know, the the reproductive process actually works and a lot of the science behind it. Yeah, there is some... ah I was the other day in the university here talking with one some of the people in the embryological and reproductive department, which was super interesting and it was amazing to see how there's other people super nerding out and getting excited about sperm biology and what weird shapes they have. And it was quite funny.
00:35:51
Speaker
and But yeah, there is some people... And one of the things that I found quite interesting is she was saying it's actually not much possible anymore to get ah electron microscopy of real human tissue and reproductive cells is very hard these days. But there used to be 20, 30 years ago people when...
00:36:09
Speaker
ah writes about what you can do with human tissue and not where a bit looser people that are studying this very in-depth and made amazing photo books and amazing documentation about what the inside of the human body looks like and as an artist to me that stuff looks absolutely astonishing and was quite interesting to look at and then find out okay how can you make interesting gameplay out of it Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:36:36
Speaker
And was the, was the goal ever educational as well? Or did the science just mostly serve the adventure?
00:36:47
Speaker
um My hidden goal that you cannot tell anyone is to be ah secretly educational. Like not tell anyone accidentally by playing it they might learn something. But it's not to sit there and yeah read through this text and this is how it happens in reality.
00:37:06
Speaker
First goal is always fun gameplay and if there is something that you can take away about how life is created, also good. um did that realism that you wanted to portray did that ever get in the way of making the game actually fun or did you make did you exaggerate certain things to make the game more fun absolutely yes it is sadly my initial a theory was Games can teach you so much amazing stuff. Like I have tables of some stats from some MMO that I played 10 years ago in my head and people know like hundreds of Pokemon names and whatever. They can teach you like amazing amounts of things. Why not use it for ah figuring out real things?
00:37:50
Speaker
But it turns out ah it is way more complicated to like... Real like reality is not very fun gameplay and you have to take quite a bit of liberty Like in reality, the sperms take weeks to travel through the testes and the distances are completely like some would make terrible level design. So it's always a balancing act and trying to figure out how can you be inspired by it. But still first, it needs to be fun gameplay and not it's not a just science class or something.
00:38:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It is a daily push and pull trying to get the right balance and trying to, uh, yeah, first figure out how to make it as fun as it can be.
00:38:34
Speaker
Yeah. You said earlier that, um, you didn't really want to do a lot of cinematics because you know that that's difficult. Yeah. Um, but your background as a cinematic artist, did that somehow shape become in in any way? Or were you just thinking about, I'm just, I just want to make a fun game. We're not going to think too much about the cinematics or my background.
00:38:57
Speaker
Yeah. For me it comes from a bit different point. There is two types of games that I play. Like I in theory with my head and heart I like games that are very story driven, cinematic, beautiful.
00:39:11
Speaker
ah Yeah, Last of Us, Hellblade, these kind of experiences. They are wonderful, but in reality I often end up playing Noita Balatro Slay the Spire, like complete gameplay driven. I don't want to say bad things about their visuals, but not visually astonishing. Definitely no cutscenes in there.
00:39:31
Speaker
Maybe ah The Long Dark is maybe the closest to combining the two things where you still have atmospheric, but it still is completely gameplay systems driven. So I have the feeling the strongest games that have the strongest impact on me are the ones that work through their gameplay first and that don't try to be a movie, that don't try to tell a story. So if you can manage to tell gameplay through, to tell story through gameplay, make you feel something through gameplay, that's, I feel, where the really sweet stuff happens. So I was...
00:40:06
Speaker
There is definitely a point to it that cinematics are very expensive and I was trying to be careful about it, but I think it's more motivated by that. That I was trying how far can I get to the point that I'm creating emotions, feelings and through gameplay instead of relying first on the crutch of just showing you something. I want you to feel something. so And yeah, I'm noticing in some cases now it's probably easier to just cut away for a second and show something. But I i tried to stay away from it for starters as much as I could.
00:40:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I guess the way that that you're creating these emotional stakes is like the the sperm cells and the other characters in the game, like their actual characters, they talk.
00:40:55
Speaker
Yeah. Was it difficult creating emotional stakes when the protagonist is a sperm cell? Like to convey emotions as a sperm cell?
00:41:07
Speaker
It definitely is. And it's different than if you have a human that you can look into the eyes and I will not have full voiceover. So it's even less possible. But I think a lot of the magic happens in people's heads, so you don't need to always say and show everything. You can imply it and people fill in the rest and I feel that's where some of this magic comes from in these games that maybe don't look quite as amazing as ah super big AAA production, but they make you in your head constantly run ah oh i want to achieve this and there's many questions at once that you're trying to figure out and it's a it's a different kind of engagement but i find this is to me what makes me want to play more and this is but yes it is definitely not as easy making some deep emotional collection if you can't we are just used to reading faces to reading people and yeah
00:42:06
Speaker
um The Steam page says that it's going to be a shorter experience, like a two, three hour linear experience. um That was something that you set out to do at the start, right?
00:42:19
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. One of the feedbacks I'm getting most right now is players saying like, oh, Wouldn't it be awesome? A million people battle royale. Oh yeah, it's got to be like with all my buddies together, I can play this.
00:42:35
Speaker
But yeah, I know how complicated multiplayer is and how much more difficulty it adds. And i this was one of the very first pillars that I set to myself.
00:42:47
Speaker
small contained game, not endlessly long, not endlessly replayable, because replayability also adds huge amount of complication and no multiplayer because that will instantly cut up this to multiple years extra on top.
00:43:02
Speaker
Maybe I'm too careful with it, but I know right now all the foundation for the game is to be a single player, two, three hour experience and not a battle royale, especially not million people both will to play.
00:43:20
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm curious, was there any feedback that... that the experience might be too short because maybe people want more, they want to play more, but you also probably have sure for some people it will be like this. There is a feeling that games are valued by the time they give you.
00:43:38
Speaker
um i feel I also like experiences that are very contained but strong rather. i don't know. There are some games that will just take an hour or two. That to me still, if they are very impactful, like Greece is not endlessly long, but it is very memorable to me and Abzu Journey also don't overstay their welcome lot. It's made by bigger teams again, but... I feel there is there is an audience that enjoys contained, ah clear experiences that don't last forever. I'm aware there will be also some people that would say, I need at least eight hours or 20 hours out of my game.
00:44:21
Speaker
But as a tiny, tiny team, that is pretty hard to do, except if you start off with full replayability and... But I'm somewhat not the biggest fan of harvesting player time and just trying to make some system that just keeps you engaged forever. Just because it ends up with more time, I'd rather make something memorable.
00:44:42
Speaker
yeah yeah i mean journey is one of my favorite games ever and yeah like you said that's a shorter experience and yes but yeah like the pacing of that game is it's like perfect it's such a emotional journey that you're going on um so yeah i also am a defender of like shorter experiences Yeah. I was now just helping out a little bit with Mafia, the old country, and I was actually quite happy as well to see that there was quite a few people. The reception overall wasn't so bad. it's ah
00:45:13
Speaker
It was bad. ah The reception overall was good. Like there were a bunch of people saying, yeah, I just want... ah experience that i can play through once and it's enjoyable and it's well paced so i think there is a market for it this is still way bigger i'm it's tiny team here so it's not going to be quite the journey level or the old country but i think there are players that enjoy this yeah yeah yeah definitely um i'd like to talk about kind of like your're your your
00:45:46
Speaker
solo journey now as a developer um and what it means to take on a lot of different roles. So I'm just curious, like what your day to day actually looks like as a developer now. Yeah.
00:46:00
Speaker
Well, i luckily we have here in town some cool workplace for game development. So I tried first to do that at home and I cannot i can very much recommend finding an office place that is really just for making the game. so And they're open 24-7 so I can just go there. When I wake up at 4 in the morning, I go there and ah make games. And then yeah I usually pick some topic for the day and it jumps around a lot. so i I have my list of things that I want to get to handwritten and try to cross off as much as I can. And it is every day something different. It's quite big variety. And in the beginning, it was actually quite tough. that there were There is like this, I once saw this very nice chart, like how a project goes. Like you have this euphoria at the beginning, and then you have this deep dive. down into the valley of despair when you actually notice oh it's not going to be quite as easy as you had and then but the nice thing in this graph was that it had like this like little climbing guy going up the mountain and was a very slow slow mountain going up so I had it with
00:47:06
Speaker
developing systems and programming and stuff just didn't quite want to do what I wanted it to do and it took me some while so I'm now I am quite far out of the valley so I feel right now quite capable to any system that I need to make or come up with to just make it and it it feels so So liberating somehow in AAA, it was you come up with an idea and you write a Jira ticket and then it's scheduled somewhere and then someone says, ah, maybe we don't have a few meetings about it and then goes into some backlog maybe and yeah or maybe someone's right away working on but you definitely won't have it the same day. And right now i come up with an idea. i just make it and the same day it's working and I can play it. And I love that. Yeah.
00:47:54
Speaker
Yeah, I'm just wondering, like, how do you balance all of those roles? Because you're responsible for design, the art direction, the storytelling, marketing, you know, how do you decide what matters most each day? Like, do you spend maybe a week on one topic and the next week on another? Or is it all just a mix of things? Yeah.
00:48:17
Speaker
I'm sadly frantically jumping around between everything. My commit messages are usually longer because I have many topics that I touch. But yeah, I try to do bigger chunks like I did in January. I did trailers, so I just spent two, three weeks just focusing on the trailer. And then I saw, okay, it's okay. People are actually interested in it. So I went back to gameplay and just figuring out all the remaining systems that needed some love and level design. And right now it's levels, levels and some remaining little tidbits that need to be made. So, but it is a lot of jumping around. I'm not super like Monday is my level design day and Tuesday is music and sound effects and Wednesday marketing.
00:49:03
Speaker
Yeah, it is a bit it is a bit jumpy and something of everything, but I think that's where i what I enjoy quite a bit the most, um that it's so much variety and so much new things that you can learn. I think for me, the most satisfying thing is always learning something new and you practically learn every day something new.
00:49:25
Speaker
Do you find yourself like endlessly polishing certain things about the game now that you don't have... like a team anymore, because maybe back when you were working on AAA games, there was someone telling you it's good. Now it's done. We can move on to the next thing.
00:49:43
Speaker
um There was a time i think where i was quite struggling with how ah like you usually have this idea that you should start with super gray box level design like don't worry about art at all. Then you go into test that a bunch of time iterate on it then you block it out a bit more and maybe ah do some super rough art pass and then you iterate more and like it didn't work so well for me. I usually started, okay, let's take some idea and finish it right away like and try. ah And I feel there was also some time where I would be focusing too much on visual things right away instead of just first proving it out with some people playing it.
00:50:28
Speaker
And this is for me a balancing thing that I'm trying to find the right level for. But I think overall, in general, I really enjoy this when you take something and right away finish it in like, or maybe have two steps. Like right now it's a design block out.
00:50:44
Speaker
Then you art it up and then later down the line I can go back and start to do some polishing with it. It's not so important right now as long as the gameplay works. yeah So finding this balance is a little bit of a balancing act and I maybe tend to polish too early but it's getting better and better I feel lately.
00:51:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Do you miss having a large team or does solo development like give you a kind of creative clarity? Like if you had to choose, would you go back at some point or are you, do you want to just pursue solo development now?
00:51:23
Speaker
I do enjoy this a lot now, but there is this advantage that I'm in this gaming co-work. So whenever I want to nerd around with some other game development or just want to vent about why is this AI tree thing so not... And then someone comes with, did you try this? So I really do love this, having other colleagues around and being able to discuss things, talk, nerd around, and sometimes vent about things that don't quite want to go the way you want to. But luckily this happens there and there is plenty of people around. If I would be just at home, I think that would be tough for me.
00:52:00
Speaker
But like this, having other people around and still being able to very freely switch around what you do, this I think it's really perfect. And right now we are really...
00:52:11
Speaker
three, like sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes four people together there working on things. yeah it's It's not lonesome or yeah it's a good mix. I think it's it's just the right amount. Yeah.
00:52:27
Speaker
um Let's talk about like announcing become and um going viral because I'm really curious how that
Viral Success and Its Impact
00:52:34
Speaker
happened. um What did it feel like to like make that announcement because it's your first indie game. It's it's something you've been dreaming of basically your whole life. So what did that feel like?
00:52:47
Speaker
Yeah, wow, I was nervous about that one. Yeah, I had before, I had the Steam page already existing and there wasn't much happening. And then, um yeah, I go to these, like sometimes we have play sessions in the office and then you get like 20 wishlists and I was quite nervous about it. So I thought the only thing that I can try is make a proper trailer, send it out to press beforehand and see if that will work. Otherwise, I should probably find a job again or something like that.
00:53:15
Speaker
So i I did that and spent some time really trying to put together whatever I have and trying to make a nice trailer from it and send it a few weeks before to press and let them know. and yeah But then when you send it out, the moment where you don't know, will anyone actually watch this? Yeah. yeah it was exciting once it really kicked off and it it goes like more more more more when the yeah use and especially the comments are hilarious they are for me like a entertainment program on its own to just read the comment section for a while
00:53:55
Speaker
Yeah, so you made the whole trailer by yourself. So yeah, because of your cinematic background. So that must have been like a big boon. Yeah, I had help with the music and sound effects. There is a local company here that did that. I'm not very good as a, I like mean, I like music personally, but I think that this level I will not achieve.
00:54:16
Speaker
So they were great. And yeah, and another friend who did the voiceover and recorded the voices. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my wife helped a lot with sending it out to everyone. I'm also pretty bad with organizational things. So there's a lot of weak spots, but always someone to help with things.
00:54:36
Speaker
Okay, so the the press kind of just picked up the trailer and then it just snowballed. but Did you do anything else to like promote the game? I actually got very few responses from press or anyone. Maybe that's normal. I'm i'm not sure yet how this goes. I also don't know the influencers. There were maybe two channels YouTube channels that wrote back and said, yeah, we can post it. ah But then i think somehow the internet does its weird thing. Like people post about it. They then put it on Instagram and TikTok and then someone else sees it. And then it took also a few days. And then you could really see in the wishlist, oh, today it made it to the US and suddenly the US s starts claiming. And then two days later, oh, it's in Japan. Oh, Japan. So it's like, no, it's in China. and it It went like over a few days. It started rolling around the world. And somehow was, guess...
00:55:28
Speaker
it was i guess Like there were some press outlets writing about it, but I think way more than that was just people sharing and making some funny clips from it. And then it just does the internet thing.
00:55:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the trailer has now over, I think, 3 million views. There are like two trailers on YouTube from two channels. They have 3 million views together. yeah But there were also some of these... im Sadly, I maybe grew up too early, so I missed out on all the social media stuff. And there's some...
00:56:01
Speaker
Instagram or TikTok videos with 20 million views where someone just films it off some screen. i i don't quite understand this, but I'm very glad that the that everyone is sharing it and doing something with it.
00:56:12
Speaker
Yeah, and yeah cause and then you probably saw like the wish list just kept coming in and now you're at over 60,000. Yeah, i must have found great twenty five thousand now it's pretty good. crazy. That's crazy.
00:56:27
Speaker
yeah yeah wow oh i didn't check it lately but that's crazy that's great that's crazy I'm super thankful for it because i that was for me probably the traciest part to see if there's actually some interest in it. Like if I will be the only ah guy playing it and then i spend all my life savings and all family savings on it, that would be sad.
00:56:53
Speaker
has like the public reception of the game and all the attention that the game is getting, um did that change how you think about the final release? Were you maybe tempted to make it into something bigger?
00:57:10
Speaker
Yeah, well, the... Multiplayer I mentioned already I'm pushing back hard on even though I guess it will make some people sad but for me it may be changed that I'm trying to just polish gameplay more. I see like I think the game will be really nice if the it needs to work also on the gameplay side it just can't just be click stream abate game or something like this it's really meme thing.
00:57:35
Speaker
So yeah, that was the last month I spent more time polishing on it. We had now on this weekend that I mentioned the game show and trying it out and getting feedback yeah on it. And I can see quite some improvement now in it that it just plays nicely.
00:57:50
Speaker
Yeah. yeah That was probably the the biggest change then after February when we released the trailer to just really go back and polish more. and i was so I'm so surprised how many little things it is to get the controller to feel really nice. to Little things that you cheat and help the player to feel like he's moving right. and
00:58:13
Speaker
I noticed that you don't have a publisher. yeah Although I can imagine you are getting a lot of publisher requests, like a lot of emails. I, yeah, there must be so many publishers that want to work with you.
00:58:28
Speaker
Why are you deciding to not work with a publisher and just do it all on your own? Yeah, I did get quite some ah messages afterwards, but for now I do have the funding still. I saved um all the last 20 years for it. And um my feeling is maybe it's one of the deformations that I'm trying to do everything myself, but I feel everything that you're doing yourself, it will be a bit more painful, but you're going to learn something and you're
00:59:01
Speaker
Otherwise, the other person learns it and they get better at it. But if I get better at it now, it will help me in the future. it will I will figure out, okay, these things I can learn to do these things I'm really rubbish at. And if I, in the end, figure out, oh, yeah, my Japanese is bad, i will not do Japanese localization, it's no problem to to find a company and help with that. But I'm trying to, as much as I can, do things myself, figure out what ah can I do, what can I not do, what can I learn, and...
00:59:30
Speaker
Yeah, I hope it will not get too much, but so far it's looking good. I think there will be definitely some things like localization that I will need help with. And yeah, some things I might not manage, but so far it looks pretty good.
00:59:44
Speaker
Yeah, because I know there's also publishers that will just help you with marketing. ah They don't necessarily always fund your game. um Are you thinking about marketing differently now that the game has gotten so much attention?
01:00:02
Speaker
um Because, yeah, like you said, you made the trailer yourself. That went viral. there Yeah, so... I'm still not 100% sure, but I think I will just continue like this. At some point, I will... Like, there is still a demo for Nextfest at some point. Then there's still there some release trailer. And...
01:00:24
Speaker
ah Who knows? that Maybe I'll find someone that will help just with some specific thing in marketing. But overall, I think... I hope this will be possible. And the more final the game is, the more nice things there are to show. It's a bit of a balancing act. You don't want to show everything. But still, ah I'm quite hopeful that this is possible.
01:00:45
Speaker
Now there is already some attention. And I think, yeah, I also have... Yeah. I have worked in in publisher before and on the other projects I worked with a publisher and I have the feeling there is, they are trying their best, but it's something different if someone else that has 10 projects and you are one of them tries to promote your game or if you do it yourself many times, you do then your own trailers anyways because you know the game the best and it it it is...
01:01:19
Speaker
ah Yeah, it is just something different. It's your little love child baby that you want to show the world as best as possible. While for the publisher, you are one of many projects and oftentimes I think not and don't want to speak for every publisher, but if you are not the game that does the best for you, are like a small indie developer and your game isn't kicking off right away, then you're just ending in the minimal life support. Okay, let's move on to the next game that maybe will do better.
01:01:49
Speaker
And there's a wide range of publishers, but I think it's must is maybe not always the best thing for indie developer. And i was on the weekend was a very interesting talk from Astrid, I forgot the last name, from Wings, the the boss of the company. And she was talking about that indie developers actually do...
01:02:11
Speaker
Many of the things that publishers do anyways, like you're usually doing your own marketing, you have your own Discord server and have your community that you keep together. And you in the end, it's a few more things, maybe finding a localization company, but you can also just write them and say, hey, I have this game. This is all the dialogue lines that I have. And you can work with them to localize it.
01:02:33
Speaker
Also QA, it's possible to just write to QA company and help get help at the very end with it. So... oftentimes the the extra amount that the publisher can give you is maybe some connections sometimes sometimes it's maybe getting into some like summer games fest show viewings because of these connections but um oftentimes indie developers are doing actually a lot of things themselves that actually already have a big overlap with what the publisher is doing Okay. Yeah. That's interesting. You say that because, um, the previous episode of the podcast that I did with, uh, Zach Northrop, um, he's working on a game called worming from home.
01:03:14
Speaker
Um, also very interesting premise actually. um but he also decided to not work with a publisher. um And his game is also getting a lot of attention um because, you know, with the the whole premise of you're a worm and you're doing a remote finance job. That's that's funny and instantly. So um there's actually a lot of overlap with with become and worming from home in that sense. True, yeah. But ah yeah, he has a YouTube channel. The trailer went viral. He's making a lot of shorts on the YouTube channel as well that go viral, that have millions of views. So yeah, he's just doing a lot of the marketing himself.
01:03:53
Speaker
um Yeah. Yeah. yeah And in the end, the publisher is also an investment company. So they are trying to get money back and they're not doing this for just trying to help you. So if you can cover all these things, it's a part of the money that you will, ah like if you can fund it, if you if you get money from the publisher and you need it, that's a different thing. and But right now I have the freedom still to choose. So I will try as far as I can get.
01:04:25
Speaker
Yeah, cool. Yeah, so now you're building towards the release, which is this year. um Q3, I think, set on the Steam page.
01:04:38
Speaker
Q4, right now I'm aiming somewhere around November, but ah it's not set in stone yet. Yeah, ah this just came to my head. Like, are you worried about...
01:04:51
Speaker
GTA, I know it probably doesn't apply as much to indie games and indie developers. I know all the AAA developers are scared and moving all their projects to next year. Is that something you think about?
01:05:04
Speaker
No, not so much. I find it hilarious that everyone I talk to is like, November, what? There's GTA. It's like, you got to get far out of the way. But I'm not so worried about that. It's ah quite a different game, yeah different audience, different scale.
01:05:24
Speaker
Yeah. yeah i guess you don't have it so much under control anyways what will happen it might be that the same day as you release some publisher releases i don't know some great deal on their whole catalog and some takes over whole steam page oh i guess yeah it's better to focus on making the guest best game you can do and then the rest will hopefully work out yeah yeah um You said earlier that right now you're mainly focused, I think on, um, polishing the gameplay.
Final Development and Future Goals
01:05:58
Speaker
Um, does that mean that you feel like, you know, exactly what the full game will be at this point or are there other parts of the game that you're still discovering?
01:06:09
Speaker
Right now it's a lot of level design. there is i have the feeling I know exactly what it will be, but you know, there's always the unknown unknowns. So you get somewhere and you notice, dang, this is missing. Oh, I haven't thought about this enough.
01:06:23
Speaker
And I feel it's it's getting along very nicely, but there's always some new things that you find every day that add something. And...
01:06:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's there is still plenty to do. Yeah. ah Since yeah, it's a shorter experience. Are there a lot of ideas that you're also cutting or are there? Do you know like, okay, this idea would be good, but it would it would increase the runtime of the game. So we're not doing that.
01:06:58
Speaker
yeah There are definitely things where I know beforehand this is going to be super complicated, so let's find a different way to do it. And I'm i'm not great with cutting stuff. ah Not great with cutting things. so I'm more a feature creeping. That's what I'm good at. But um I'm still... i'm I know there is a bunch of things where I just have to roll with what my idea is with it and not try to reinvent things. So I'm...
01:07:27
Speaker
getting at least for my levels much more realistic and much more just getting making sure as things get done yeah but yeah there is like the multiplayer for instance some crazy big things like this i will definitely not do anymore but yeah there's also a bunch of ah quite a section of things that I would love to do but we'll see if I get to it and I have this big wall of sticky notes in my work desk behind me with all the ideas and there's a whole section of very fun levels that I would like to get to but I'll see what I could get to yeah yeah okay cool there's so many silly ideas that you can do with sperm so is the goal for this project for this game
01:08:12
Speaker
For it to become financially sustainable or since this is your first indie game, is it more about proving you can ship a solo project? Well, I would love to, yeah. My focus is trying to make something that is financially caring itself. It's not just a hobby project, but the second goal for me is to prove out, is this for me better than AAA? Where do I feel really happy?
01:08:40
Speaker
Like I mentioned before, I was once sick in between. And from that point on, I'm always thinking everything I do, is this now feeling better? Does it feel right? Does it feel like I'm really enjoying this? Or is it just something that I'm doing because I have to do it right now? And I notice creating things and making things and solving problems and learning stuff. That's where I really thrive. And so far for me, the clear trajectory is if there's any chance that I get paid, continuing doing games, I'm in, I'm continuing on.
01:09:12
Speaker
So yeah, I'm trying to make it that it's a project that can carry itself and to make it possible that I can keep making games. Yeah. Yeah.
01:09:23
Speaker
I'm wondering um how you think about pricing the game, because that's always, i feel like a topic that's not discussed as much, um especially with shorter games and indie games. Like how how much are we going to ask for this game? I know that there was an article recently um on the pricing of Mina the Hallower because they they're selling it for $20.
01:09:53
Speaker
I think Silksong was also $20. A lot of people might say or they could have asked much more for Silksong. They probably could have asked much more for Mina the Hollower as well. So i'm wondering how you think about pricing your game.
01:10:08
Speaker
I don't have a specific price set yet, but it is ah has lots of levels. So I see as well a lot of indie games that I think are quite expensive. My feeling is at least I'm buying stuff on Steam right now, if it's somewhere around 10 bucks maybe. If it's a really small and niche game, sometimes I wait even for some sale to be below that.
01:10:28
Speaker
I don't know when I last time bought some really big 60 buck title. It's been a while, I guess. It's just so much awesome stuff there. And you can even sometimes you can get a bunch of demos and have a lot of fun for hours. And then you even try it out the game and can get it then when you really know you're going to enjoy that. So, yeah, my feeling is...
01:10:53
Speaker
and 20 yeah silksong 20 dollars is quite low o for the amount of content you get it's crazy as well some stuff like balatro is like endlessly replayable lots of fun but um yeah i all there is also the other side as a developer you try to not set your price too low so that if you go on sale there's nothing left anymore yeah there is nothing yeah so If you ever want to later lower the price again, there is nowhere to go. So I'm still not quite sure yet where it is. And it depends a little bit as well on how great the game turns out. And i think, yeah, right now I'm aiming, yeah, I'm not 100% sure yet.
01:11:41
Speaker
Okay. um Yeah, before we um end the podcast, um I'd like to ask a couple of questions that might elicit um some advice for the people listening. um Because yeah I imagine there's aspiring indie developers listening to the podcast that may that are thinking about making their own game.
01:12:02
Speaker
um So yeah, like just a few questions um about that. um What did like AAA development teach you that indie developers should know? Yeah, I think the...
01:12:21
Speaker
thing that it taught me the most is it's super valuable to meet a lot of people and connect with other game developers. yeah Every one of them has something they are super great at. This might be in AAA, but this is also true for indie development. So I think if you often reach out to some other indie developer that you find is doing something really interesting that you would like to know about, most people are so helpful and friendly to communicate. So I think it's very worth it. Even if you're alone at home,
01:12:51
Speaker
Or in a very small group to try to connect with other people, learn from them, ask them questions. I think there's lots of value in that. Yeah. um And then maybe a second thing, um but I'm not sure how to...
01:13:12
Speaker
Maybe this is now very specific, but yeah lately I had this pitch session on the weekend and I'm noticing more and more that if you have a game idea, it's not so much about what the idea means to you, then it's about when you tell it to someone else,
01:13:27
Speaker
What does it help them? How is it good for them? So I think it's often better to think about your your game ideas that maybe are amazing to you. is What do they give to the other people? How can you make it something useful for them? How can you make it something fun? Maybe for me it's just making people laugh about something or rediscover some of their joy from the past.
01:13:48
Speaker
But I think in every game idea, if you think less about why is this one fun for you, but why is it useful for the player or the person that you're telling it to, this is for me a great method of checking out if your idea has wings. so Okay. Talk to people about your idea, but talk in a way that what is it how is it helpful for them and see how they react. If there is like a very calm, okay, um then it's maybe not so great, but often you can figure out if your idea is is going somewhere pretty early on by just talking with people about it. And then when you talk with them, I think really great is to then refine your one sentence, two sentences that you talk with them about it. And through this, not just to...
01:14:32
Speaker
tell it better, but to for yourself refine what is actually the core of the the core idea that makes it really engaging. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting.
01:14:43
Speaker
I see, I think a lot of indie developers that are spending quite a bit of time on game projects that will be very hard to sell later. And if they would very early on just try pitching the idea to a bunch of people, refining it, they would get to a much sharper idea that will work better. I would think so. Who knows? Yeah, because that's that's what you did with Become, right? Like you told your friends about it first to see what's their reaction because it it is maybe a bit of a ah like a weirder idea or an out there idea.
01:15:15
Speaker
But then you talk to friends and then they were like, oh, yeah, that's good. And i tried to then, especially in the beginning time, try to tell almost everyone about it and see the reactions and see how you feel about it and try to get to a point where you feel like, oh, OK, this really has some potential. This is exciting for people to hear.
01:15:38
Speaker
um What skill or skills um matter more than people might realize?
01:15:52
Speaker
Good question. I don't know. um I think like one is i think to just be there every day. Like to ah you don't have to get up early if getting up early is not your thing, but just to get yourself to sit down and get started. And instead of procrastinating on something, just get started and then it doesn't need to be the most amazing thing that you start with, but just consistency gets you so much further than you might think. Like if you just get into a habit to at a certain time, just be there, get started, you will automatically run into continuing on and it will get rolling. So i think this is really a great thing to do.
01:16:40
Speaker
Yeah, are there any maybe like um productivity tools that you personally use? Or is it just like you you just know how to get started? and I find for myself personally, I have like two or three times a day a super productive phase, but you never know where it is. So the best way is to just have really long days. Start at three or four in the morning and try to go as much as you can to lick it's what you... So if you have 12 hours in a day, the chances of having three productive sprints is way higher than if you do six hours a day. For me, it's somehow, I know it's ah with all the having work-life balance not considered,
01:17:22
Speaker
too healthy but i feel just having more time working on something just gets also more out of it and otherwise i am a big fan of very old school piece paper write down the things you want to do and cross it off i know there's lots of digital tools for it but somehow it just is quick and dirty and just you've very low overhead you don't yeah yeah no distractions and yeah and for you, it also helps to be in an environment surrounded by other people, right? Like you don't like working from home.
01:17:55
Speaker
Yes. Having a dedicated place to work at, I think, is super important with any out distractions and then having other people around that you can talk to, fall back with, sometimes just have a coffee or sometimes just discuss some problem with that you're stuck on, just even if this is not their topic of expertise, but just to bounce back and forth the ideas.
01:18:17
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. I have one last question. How do you know whether an idea is worth committing years of your life to? Because yeah, we talked about you can pitch it to friends, see what they say, but you might have a ton of other ideas that you pitch and they're all, and some of them are good. Some of them are not, but then how do you pick the one that you're like okay now we're gonna sit down and spend months years working on this yeah it's a probably i'm not sure how valid my advice here is after 100 ideas that i have finished then it would be maybe more useful but my method is first try to form it into a very simple pitch an idea that you can share with people and pitch it many many times to reform it then once you have an idea where you say this is worth spending a month on spend a month on it and do a prototype or multiple prototypes around it once you have a few prototypes and you feel like hey this is actually something when i this is worth putting more time in so then you get started on it and don't be afraid in the after you've spent three months on it and you notice them there will be this dip so i feel it's also important to to power through this moment where you feel you are really struggling with the idea but also don't be afraid to at some point say okay the idea was great but in practice it struggles because of this i will not continue with it and move on um but i think yeah you don't need to like one morning say now it's going to be three years this game but you can make yourself some little checkpoints in between to validate if this is really legit and then i think can be useful as well to really
01:20:02
Speaker
yeah show the ideas to people that have more experience, for instance, publishers, because they are getting so many ideas every day and they will only react to stuff that actually has some potential to it.
01:20:13
Speaker
Although lately they are kind of even wanting that you already prove that there is a market for it, like that you have a huge whistless account. yeah I think still, if you have maybe some colleagues, friends, or if you would send it to publishers and you get zero responses, it's also some data that you can gather.
01:20:32
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah. Thank you so much, Valentin, for ah joining me on the podcast today. This was ah yeah just a great conversation talking to you. Thank you so much. That was awesome. Yeah. Thank you. um Yeah. I'll put the link to ah become on steam in the description.
01:20:52
Speaker
um Is there anything else you'd like to plug or or link to? No, that is great. Yeah, it's awesome to talk about it. I love your show, by the way, both the one-on-ones, but the other ones, they are like from editing point, you must have been spending so much time on each of these episodes. Like there's a lot of love and patience that goes into them, right? Yeah, thank you. Yeah, yeah I just try to kind of I guess, like mimic the style of the game. But then I have to create a lot of custom assets for all the video editing. It takes a lot of work. yeah So I basically have to start from scratch with every video. um But that's what makes it interesting for me that it's always different.
01:21:35
Speaker
um So yeah, it's just a ton of fun making them. And ah these podcasts... and yeah Yeah, go ahead. Super interesting to watch because of it as well, because each of them is a unique gem and a unique topic. And yeah, really great. Thank you. And yeah, the podcast has been has been great as well. It's just so much fun talking to people like you.
01:21:59
Speaker
Because usually I just be in my little office working on a video, but I never get to talk to anyone because I work from home all the time. um So yeah, talking to you is is is great. It's amazing. i yeah can't wait to do more of these. So yeah. yeah And I find that a lot of indie developers, they're actually also quite happy to just talk a bit about it because it is, I think it's quite interesting. I love there quite a few channels that do these interviews and every time some great gems in there, some great things to think about.
01:22:32
Speaker
Yeah, i I watch a lot of GameNav podcasts as well. And I just love the enthusiasm of all the developers. Like they're so passionate about what they're doing. And that's just great to capture that in in a conversation.
01:22:45
Speaker
Exactly. Awesome. yeah um Well, hopefully um we can talk again at some point, invite you back onto the podcast, maybe closer to the game's release um or after the game has been released and talk about that. Because I'm also curious what that's going to be like for you.
01:23:01
Speaker
yeah that would be exciting yeah okay just have to quickly go and finish it yeah well yeah good luck with the rest of the development and um yeah thanks everyone for listening and uh yeah till the next episode cheers