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Building Indie Dreams: From Children's Books to Game Design with Michael Csokas
28 Plays21 days ago
Summary
This episode of the Player Driven podcast features Michael Csokas, founder of Iron Octopus Productions, and focuses on his journey from working in the oil field to becoming an indie game developer. He shares how his experience managing logistics in oil spills influenced his approach to video game development, especially with problem-solving and world-building. The conversation highlights his creative process, the development of his first game The Broken Ceiling, and his plans for the new project Omega. Csokas also offers advice for aspiring game developers, touching on time management, community building, and the importance of hiring the right people to fill knowledge gaps.
The discussion is filled with behind-the-scenes insights on the indie game development process, from artistic inspiration and conceptualization to technical challenges like navigating Steam's platform.
5 Key Takeaways
- Apply Your Past Experience to Game Development (02:06)Michael discusses how his experience managing oil spill logistics directly influenced his approach to video game development. His method of breaking down big problems into smaller tasks and overseeing a "war room" to manage crews mirrors how he approaches level design and world-building.
- Storytelling & World-Building in The Broken Ceiling (03:39)Michael introduces The Broken Ceiling, a cosmic horror game where a rabbit accidentally becomes a key to a cosmic prison. The concept blends mythology and existential dread, with players navigating a surreal, interconnected world. His background in storytelling from children's books is clear in his attention to narrative.
- The Importance of Focused Roles in Indie Game Dev (10:33)He emphasizes the value of specialization. While Michael can animate and manage projects, he doesn't program, instead hiring a dedicated programmer. His approach illustrates how focusing on your strengths and hiring experts can accelerate development timelines.
- How to Stay Organized as an Indie Developer (29:58)Michael shares his creative organization process. He uses physical notebooks and multi-colored pens to brainstorm and document ideas, later translating them into more organized spreadsheets. His "chaos first, order later" approach helps bridge creativity with production.
- Lessons Learned from Publishing on Steam (38:27)He reflects on his first experience launching The Broken Ceiling on Steam. Michael learned to avoid price changes before holiday sales to maintain eligibility for promotions. His plan for future releases includes earlier marketing and taking social media marketing courses to strengthen his outreach.
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Transcript
Introduction to Guest and Topics
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to the Player Driven Podcast. This is what you're about to listen to on today's episode. We are meeting with Michael Chokash. He is the founder of Iron Octopus Productions. We're going to talk about things like the transferable skills you can get from within gaming, storytelling, and the importance of it, specialization in learning what you're good at and what you're not good at, the lessons you've learned from maybe posting on Steam or things you want to know before doing so, and community building and the importance of that. so It's a lot of good stuff from Michael in this episode and they're building a really cool game. So we hope you enjoy it. Enjoy the episode. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the player driven podcast.
00:00:39
Speaker
Greg here. Today we have a fun episode. We are joined by Michael Chokash. He is the founder of Iron Octopus Productions. We are going to talk about how he got into gaming and building games. Michael, thank you so much for joining us today. Is there anything you'd like to say about yourself?
Michael's Transition to Gaming
00:00:55
Speaker
Thanks, Greg. um This is new. First podcast. So this is definitely, if this is part of the process, I'm liking it.
00:01:04
Speaker
Good. yeah This is going to be trial by fire. We're going to put you on the hot seat here and really make you sweat it out. Oh, thanks. Yeah. I loved your background. I just taking i mean, we had a pre-colon looking now, right? You're a children's book author. You do indie game development. You've created worlds. You've done things like scientific journals and technical oil field manuals. Now, I'm curious on how all that brings you back to creating video games.
00:01:31
Speaker
um Well, as far as the manuals and that part of it, I used to do or used to be in the oil field. And I was a supervisor for an oil spill company. That means that if there was an oil spill on a lake, on a river, um yeah, I'd be out there and I'd be supervising crews and and helping with the coordination and logistics and all that good stuff.
00:01:59
Speaker
Are there skills that you are utilizing today when you're creating video games that tap into that side of, uh, Hey, I was designing these manuals. I was doing this stuff or managing, like, are there any best practices that have stuck with you? Even though if they may have altered a little bit. Yeah, actually, uh, well managing crews, managing people.
00:02:19
Speaker
being able to look at a bigger problem and find smaller solutions in order to solve that problem. Break it down to smaller bite-sized bits so the big problem isn't overwhelming and go in there and kind of chip away at it until everything's done, completed. and Well, in the case of the oil spill stuff, cleaned up.
00:02:42
Speaker
are making sure that the project from A to B is complete. You have it documented so you understand the process, the flow, and make sure that everything is, again, wrapped up at the end of the day. Is that right? yeah going in there and uh, doing the war room, figuring out what you need and your logistics, uh, how you're going to coordinate each crew, where they're going to go and looking at big maps. That's a big thing too. It's like, it's really interesting looking at when we were roomed it and we had the overview maps of everything. And we knew where all of the control points were for the, where the the oil flow was going to go. It's not that different than looking down and creating a ah world map.
The Broken Ceiling: Game Overview
00:03:21
Speaker
and figuring out, okay, this is where you need to be to solve this problem. This is where you need to be to solve this problem. So it was it was a video game strategy thing whenever there was a spell. Interesting. i want I want to dig into this a little bit more, but maybe for our audience who's listening, right Iron Octopus Productions has created their first game, The Broken Ceiling. Yes. Can you give us kind of the elevator pitch on what is The Broken Ceiling? The Broken Ceiling is all about a little rabbit who is compelled to dig deeper and deeper. And finally, digs too deep and falls through the ceiling of this cavern and ends up being the pawn
00:04:00
Speaker
the key to a cosmic prison that holds a prisoners from those who oppose this cosmic entity. And the idea is the character goes through this separated dimension. it's that You're in the same place, but a different place. And you have to go through and and you are the key. you Your destiny is to be the key.
00:04:25
Speaker
But at the same time, your destiny is not to be the key because it's a prison. And the idea is how do you how do you punish who are immortal? Either you you can say, well, you're going to be here for 60,000 years. And they're like, oh, yeah, okay, we're going to just nap, whatever. Or you can say that there's a chance that somebody could release you.
00:04:48
Speaker
If they do, they do. If they don't, they don't. So there's always that, could it be today? Could it be today? Could it be today? So there's no set timeline on their their imprisonment. So you being there is chance.
00:05:03
Speaker
So what I like about, that first of all, the story sounds like it's an awesome story. And I'm curious, as someone that was writing manuals and children's books, how how did this idea come to be? ah And for our listeners, can you kind of go into the timeframe that took you to build this out? Oh, geez. Well, how it came to be? um i started or I got out of the oil field stuff and I started doing video games in 2018, which is yeah before the dark or so yeah before the dark
From Children's Books to Game Development
00:05:39
Speaker
times. right
00:05:40
Speaker
um I decided I wanted to do what I really wanted to do, which was build video games. But how do you build video games? You need something. For me, I need something tangible in front of me. I need to be able to show people this is what I can do. And I had done the manuals and stuff, so I had some examples of what I could do. But I wanted to be able to go and meet somebody faceto face-to-face, and I prefer face-to-face. I mean, emails are one thing, and yeah, I like to go and meet people and and sit down and and have a good conversation with them.
00:06:15
Speaker
But I also wanted something with me that I could hand over and go, this is what I can do. So I had had some stories from years back. My friend Christina Thornton and and myself, when we met in Taiwan, came up with these characters and they were just kind of anguishing. They wanted to, they wanted some sort of release. And these books were a great way of both bringing those characters to life and me having some sort of tangible thing that I can hand over to people and go, yeah, this is what I do.
00:06:53
Speaker
So that's the first part. That's how ah the the the kids' book stuff got into place and how that was the the catalyst for now getting into jobs for video games. I had now had stuff. And then that actually worked. It worked great. I went to indie game dev meetings in Edmonton here.
00:07:16
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, this is what I can do. And from there, it was like, oh, well, we need somebody to do this. We need somebody to do this. And then I met up with some friends. Their company is only by midnight and they're like, yeah, we got tons of stuff and we're developing this new game and we're doing a prototype. So do you want to do drawings for it? And I'm like, yeah, let's, let's hit the ground running. This is great. So did you start with graphic design or, or kind of.
00:07:47
Speaker
design in the game itself? ah For the game itself, let me see. um Years have gone by since I started. So this was
Collaboration and Expertise in Game Dev
00:07:58
Speaker
last last November.
00:08:02
Speaker
And so meeting all these people, fantastic. And I met Matt Friedman, who was starting his own school. And Matt's ambitious about starting the stuff. He he wants to to train people correct the right way in order to get into games. that You'll say that I want to get it do it the right way. And he needs smelthat testers. And I was doing illustration for games at the time. I always had in the back of my head that I wanted to start
00:08:35
Speaker
the games that was or get into games, build games, ah not just do the illustration. So the timing was perfect. I was an alpha tester first his class. And part of the class was, so let's build a video game. And for him, it was, well, we're just going to do this little project. And by the end, you can say that you've had some experience building something. And I got about a month and a half into it. And just casually, this was maybe, maybe 10 hours a week.
00:09:05
Speaker
And I was like, no, I'm going to build something out of this. So I i said, you know your your class has a schedule, but I want to actually dig deeper. And so I spent about six months developing it. And then I hired a programmer, Blair Ludwig. And he, for the next two and a half months, we hammered this thing out. So all in all, putting all the the hours together, probably about six and a half, maybe seven months from me, uh, mixed in with two months with, with Blair. So call it nine months, right? So nine months from concept of the game to building of the game. Uh, well, there was overlap there. So yeah, let's say, look yeah, no, I'm not sure why not. If you looked at yourself 10 years back and said, I'm going to create a game. It's going to take less than a year. Would you believe yourself? Uh, probably not. No, there's, there's always, uh,
00:10:01
Speaker
oh it's the four-year development cycle. It's a three-year development cycle. um If somebody builds something in you know three months, then you kind of look at it and kind of go, well, hey, that's awesome. Thanks for the eight minutes of gameplay, and those are awesome blocks. how ah You had the design skills, obviously, going going back to the manual creation and kind of looking at the lay of the land, but how do you, I mean, you said you kind of took a bootcamp, but how did you teach yourself the coding side of it? Or was that also the programmer? No, no, no, no, no. ah I'm not a programmer by any means. i can I can stumble my way through Unity and I can do some animations and that sort of stuff. I want to stick with where my strengths are.
00:10:49
Speaker
And you know there's there's these people who can go out there and they can do a million things at once. And i that confuses me. I envy the hell out of that. But it confuses me how they are able to do so many things and have it turn out so well. um Myself, I like to ground myself. Well, if I'm going to produce it and I'm going to write it and I'm going to plot it and I'm going to do the level design and I'm going to do character design, environmental design, and then I have to drop something. So there are, why am I going to learn how to program badly when there's so many people who program, are just excellent programming? Yeah, you're speaking my language. I agree with you. I can't program for the life of me. And luckily with the beauty of chat GPT, I could kind of get along a little bit in just testing stuff. But I realized that there's people that,
00:11:48
Speaker
do this for a living out there and why am I going to compete with that when your strengths are better off in places where you are strong, right? It's all about hiring good people around you yeah to make sure that they can lead and put the load on their back to make sure that they are getting their project to completion.
00:12:04
Speaker
absolutely that
Indie Game Community and Game Jams
00:12:07
Speaker
nine months of development time for this would have been eight years, six months, four days, and three i don't know mental breakdowns later.
00:12:19
Speaker
yeah i'm with you right and the perfectionist in me, we keep going back and back and back and back and, and you know, ah perfection is the enemy of the good. ah So I always believe that. And I like that surrounding yourself with good people will help you get your project to the finish line. But, but you know, when we, when we first started talking, you've said something great that it's hard to stop once you get going, right? You are a night owl. You love working. So when you do work on the game, what are the skill sets that you think you're tapping into? What what is your, for lack of better word, day-to-day like?
00:12:52
Speaker
um wake up and build a liter coffee. but That's the first thing. Lots of creamer and then let's go to work. I work a bit on the mechanics. I'm constantly watching walkthroughs to see that looks interesting, that looks interesting. Nothing happens in a vacuum, no matter what anybody says.
00:13:17
Speaker
They can't just work in a white room. They have to have some sort of inspiration. um It's either doing some writing one day or working on mechanics another day, or like right now, I'm um working in character designs. And I got my tablet right in front of me right now, and it's chipping away at that. I spent last week, no, last 10 days working on the area map for this.
00:13:43
Speaker
And I know that this area map is going to be blown out. It's no matter what happens. Yeah. What did they say? No, no, uh, no engagement goes, uh, perfect to plan. It's always blown into the first second. Um, so, but anyway, I want to have enough resources in front of me that I can hand it off to somebody else and then go, Oh, that's what you were thinking. But my day to day is sit down in front of the computer and, uh,
00:14:13
Speaker
Go, go, go. It's either drawing or it's designing or it's story or it's, yeah. And no two days are exactly the same. How big is your team right now? Two people. So how do you how to kind of delegate and manage?
00:14:34
Speaker
Right now, I'm working on a pitch for CMF, and that's what I'm developing right now. So it's I've got to get everything out of my head in order to get the people that I need for this. And I mentioned earlier that I had gone to any game dev meetups. GameCamp here in Edmonton is one of those.
00:14:58
Speaker
tons of indie developers are there. And it's the writers and the musicians and the programmers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. um When time the time comes, like I have a great resource. There's tons of people in Edmonton who can do this stuff. And I just need to you know show my stuff. Who's interested? Let's let's go, go, go. um or
00:15:28
Speaker
That's how you get it started off. Later on, when it's picked up momentum and I need, you know, this person here for this job specifically, then yeah, the interviews start. What has been the hardest transition to running a studio like you're doing now compared to what you were doing before? There are skills that say that didn't come naturally to you that you're trying to force yourself into. Taxes. Taxes. Taxes. There you go.
00:15:58
Speaker
Honestly, that it's it's like to like it's a South Pole meeting a South Pole at that point. It just does not want to happen. There you go. in the mood in the In the market for a finance person, huh? Yeah, no kidding. I got a great accountant. It's just, I need to get everything ready and prepared for them. And you know, all that stuff and receipts, receipts, receipts. My wife is an accountant. So she, ahs she yells at me all the time, receipts, receipts, receipts, invoices, receipts, receipts, like, all right.
00:16:30
Speaker
What's your mileage? It's too much work. aye How is the indie game scene in Edmonton? It is vibrant. um I go to the game camp meetings and we have 30, 40, 50 people show up, no problem. And that's a monthly deal. There's other indie game communities in Edmonton, so it's Yeah, hundreds of people. um And everybody's interested in building their favorite thing, right? So lots of really ambitious people, lots of people who want to put something out and they want to be around like-minded people who ah who are also in that boat. it's It can be lonely doing this stuff. So having those people around is fantastic.
00:17:24
Speaker
Also there's the game jams that are put on in Edmonton. There's the Alberta game jam that happens in, well, we had August last year and then we have the global game jam that is happening at the end of January of this year. And there's a hundred people that show up to that. And ah you're familiar with the game jams, right? I am. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And in case anybody in the audience is like, what ah what's a game jam? 48 hours, Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon.
00:17:54
Speaker
There is, we get a venue, people bring their equipment, their computers, their whatever, and it's not just programmers, it's the artists, and it's the musicians, and it's the story writers, and it's they all to get together. We break them into smaller groups, give people a topic, and then for 40 hours you build a game.
00:18:16
Speaker
It's a great way to get creative people thinking. I know there's game jams all over. If anyone listening is interested, you could Google game jam in a city near you and there's a good opportunity or a good chance that there is
Influences and Creative Process
00:18:26
Speaker
something that exists there. It's a great way to see what people could build in a quick period of time and what works and what doesn't work. Absolutely. And the last few that I've been to.
00:18:38
Speaker
they've all had something that they put out. There is a playable game by the end of it. It's it's not going to be like a Diablo. It's not going to be AAA. But if you can get things moving around with a scoreboard and and actually a playable, you' you're there's some sort of playable element to it, then you succeeded. You've worked with a team. You've used your skill in a game scenario.
00:19:07
Speaker
um and you've come up with a concept and execute it. So yeah, it's it's a whole bunch of win-wins. Taking a step back, you when you first got into gaming or when you were thinking about it, you said you always wanted to be in it. So were you a gamer growing up? I was. Oh my God.
00:19:30
Speaker
ah I started off with an Apple IIe. And I played the heck out of like Conan the Barbarian on that thing. And I played the King's Quests. And I played Space Quest. And I played yeah lots of those ah solve the puzzle games. And oh, Ultima. Ultima. Oh, jeez. Yeah, I played the Hello. Ultima, nice. Yeah.
00:19:57
Speaker
um And so that was when I was a kid and I watched the the pixels run across the screen and was like, I want to draw pictures of what the pixels actually like. and So, yeah, that was that was the the impetus for it. It was I knew that it was fun in my head. I knew that there were, you know, these worlds and my brain was spilling in the gaps. But what I saw on screen just there was there's some sort of
00:20:28
Speaker
um break between the two. And I wanted to be a person who could fill in the gaps of those breaks. I mean, you you just unlocked a core memory here, of like those, I think it was Sierra or Sierra online games that like made Kings quest and all these point and click adventure games. I remember going to my friend Matt's house and I'm playing those. And I feel like that was like just a core childhood memory that that I used to just love it. And I mean, I would still play those games around today if they're still available.
00:20:55
Speaker
I'm sure they are. Oh, they are. They are. um And yeah, going over to my friend Chris's house and yeah, it would be okay. We'd start on Friday but yeah and then school's on Monday. Okay. Got to leave on Sunday. Damn it.
00:21:13
Speaker
So you kind of started with King's Quest and those types of games. And now you're creating The Broken Ceiling, which is a cosmic horror game. It's still got kind of that top-down view, which I could kind of see kind of resembles kind of the older school games and styles of games. And and cosmic horror is a ah unique genre. Why why there?
00:21:33
Speaker
It's a good question. um With the children's books and the um more technical stuff that I was doing, it seemed like I was kind of locked into different things. It was either I was doing kids things or I was doing um reality things. And I'd never really, I'd liked the genre, like in the mouth of madness and, and, uh, uh, horizon. I loved event horizon. Oh yeah. If you're going to mess around with cosmic stuff and the unknown, there you go. Right. Um, so I'm into horror movies, but it's not really, they don't really scare me, but I find it intriguing how things can, uh,
00:22:21
Speaker
can scare other people or scare people where it's like the unknown is always scary. You can have some, ah you can have somebody with a knife. Ooh, they got a knife. Ooh. But then when you have the unknown and you have something that's way bigger than you and you feel like you're a grain of sand, then you know that you've tapped into something primal.
00:22:45
Speaker
I know somebody chasing with a knife primal as well. Okay. Don't get me wrong, but, but you're tapping into your, the idea that you are just the smallest piece of the universe and you, you know, nothing Jon Snow. Yeah. It's like a suspense, right? yeah yeah yeah You're just a cog in a giant wheel of life and kind of.
00:23:08
Speaker
It's alarming and dooming when you think about the giant picture of what is out there. And to think that when you're dealing with the cosmic, you're never going to know what is actually going on. you're you're You're not the main character anymore. You are an atom that makes up the main character. So it makes you feel small in the universe. It makes you feel like
00:23:36
Speaker
It's unknowable. Everything is unknowable. But at the same time, you quest to know. So you nothing. It's both futile and inspiring. I want to know, but I'll never know, but I want to know, but I'll never know.
00:23:53
Speaker
Yeah, it was a movie. I think it was The Cave or the The Descent. I don't know if you saw The Descent. No. They go caving or whatever the word for caving is. Spelunking. Spelunking. And they just keep going down and down. And and crazy stuff keeps happening. And there's curiosity. And the human nature of wanting to understand what's happening keeps them going. And it's just like, I feel like the Blair Witch Project isn't much different than that. right It's like, ah what is happening? I need to figure this out. I need to keep going. and like Again, no one chasing you with knives, right? Because yeah, sure, getting chased with a knife is scary, but the more it's kind of messing with your brain and your mind, and that's what's truly scary. hu And realizing in in the in this overall sense, like your own mortality and how the sun is so much bigger than you, but there's bigger suns, and then there's bigger suns, and then there is like giant black holes that are bigger than the biggest sun. Yeah.
00:24:52
Speaker
Yeah, you see you know your place in the universe. I'm wondering how many children you gave nightmares to with your your children's book that you illustrated now. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Those aren't horror. those Those are cute. Those are those are cantankerous animals who build things and have, well, some things explode. But it happens. Yeah, it happens. It happens.
00:25:16
Speaker
So I want to talk a little more about how you got into gaming, more so focusing on your field of illustration and kind of drawing it and visuals on. If someone is coming into this field today and wants to start learning, what are the tools or assets or kind of how do you stay on top of your game?
00:25:37
Speaker
Good question. Tons of tutorials. David Finch, or Dave Finch, he is a DC artist that I frequent his his YouTube channel. ah His Batman stuff is frickin' awesome. Like, I love it. A big friend fan of Jim Lee back in the day. um I'd say Rob Liefeld, but yeah his first stuff was really good and then he got no feet.
00:26:06
Speaker
Uh, I know it's the big joke, uh, life old, right. But, um, and it's always looking around and and having things spark like, Oh, that looks really cool. I wonder what that would look like. It's curiosity mixed with ambition, mixed with, um, wanting to develop talent. It, a person may have innate talent, but if you're not looking for ways to improve or curious about
00:26:38
Speaker
stuff that you see that's way better than you and how can I get better, then you're you're you're done. You're a boat in the ocean. Your innate talent, what what do they say? Like somebody who wants and strives, who doesn't have innate talent will typically go farther than somebody who has it because you just get lazy. Oh, I'm good at that.
00:27:00
Speaker
Yeah. You always need to practice, right? I mean, it's always practicing and I'm always looking up reference and I'm always looking up at somebody who's better than me. Yeah. yeah Um, and watching or looking at games that have the coolest artwork, looking at stuff like even well, not even Hades that art style.
00:27:24
Speaker
Like, it's it's a mix between, I don't know, ah Mike Manola, and i I don't know how to explain it, but it's it's abstract, twisted with deep shadow, knowing where to put abstract lines to build this absolutely gorgeous and until completely comprehensible ah comfort comprehensible um image that it looks completely comic book. I love it. Absolutely love it.
00:27:54
Speaker
I love, you know, when you're talking to someone that's an expert in the field, which, which you are like, it's just amazing to hear you talk about this because I have played Hades. I've played around with Hades too, and I love it. Right. But like, and I think the artwork is great, but when you start talking about the detail of it, it's just like,
00:28:14
Speaker
It's amazing when you could see that type of detail. And I've been messing around with my own social media stuff recently and design. And I'm just like, I suck at this. like I just don't have the eye for it. right And I can create cool content. But like it's the whole concept of creating and drawing it up, which is such a skill. ah And, you know, it's not just that, right? You might find someone that's a skilled audio technician that understands how to put audio in the right time and right place. And it's just fascinating to hear, like, you're just throwing artists out there. Like, it's casually, hey, this style is this, this style is this, right? And like, that's a special talent that you have, right? Like, I've heard some of these names before, right? Because my son loves comics, right? But like, it's amazing to be able to reference these different styles by looking at this artwork. And that's an amazing skill to have.
00:29:02
Speaker
Mm. That was reading a lot of comic books when I was a kid. Arthur Adams. I love Arthur Adams. Oh, Jesus. Stuff just pops in my head. Like every time i I draw something, I want to be like that. Yeah. So taking what you're saying here, as well as something you said earlier of trying to get everything out of your head on to like How do you stay organized? What are the tools that you make? Hold up a pen and paper like I have here, right? But like, how do you kind of stay on top of your, your shit for lack of better words? Oh, can you see me? dont get I can see you. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Hold up the pun yeah the giant notebook. Yeah. There we go. I love pen and paper.
00:29:53
Speaker
I will put down all my new ideas. That book that you saw that was um the game I'm working on right now is maybe a third of a book like that. The game I was working on before was more than three quarters of one of these. I fill them full of ideas. And my organization is chaos. So when it comes to coming up with a concept and developing what the game is, I don't sit and have like, you know,
00:30:21
Speaker
The British novel, on this day of Rollo, 1791, blah, blah, blah, and organized thoughts. the you know There's no no letter to the king here. it's I throw everything down. I use multiple colors of inks in order to break up the ideas. And so if you were to go through my my book right now, it would be The Ramblings of a Madman.
00:30:47
Speaker
Nothing makes sense. There's no arrows pointing. Well, in some cases there are arrows pointing to things. I doodle and I write down, okay, so this mechanic and then two pages later it's like, uh, and the blood shall be, um, so it's all over the place. But I take this and I spreadsheet it. I go through every page and I go, okay, that was an idea for this and how, oh,
00:31:11
Speaker
on the 14th page, this is how the mechanic I thought would go. And then I start writing mechanics down. And then I start isolating. And I start isolating. And everything is, then you start to see this triple trickle down organization of things. And so then I'll take that, ah the spreadsheets and ideas, and then now I got some organized thoughts. Now I can start breaking it up into, OK, so at this part of the game, and then this part of the game, and then timeline it. And then it has.
00:31:41
Speaker
It makes sense to me to just get everything out and then start organizing it. I have the vision in my head that's a big puzzle and I'm taking pieces of it. I'm not building this corner. I'm building this over here and then I'm building this over here and this over here and then interconnecting the puzzle. And then I'm seeing a vision. I don't know if that made sense or not.
00:32:10
Speaker
So it all makes perfect sense and I love it. My, my, and I'm just thinking of by myself, right? Cause I do love taking notes by hand too, but I noticed though for myself is like, I don't put enough notes back onto my computer to share it with people. Right. And it's just like, all right, well, it's good that I have a notebook full of stuff here, but if it's not going to make it to the screen where I can send it to my producer or my programmer, right? Like.
00:32:35
Speaker
I don't know, like have you messed with any of those like ah notepads that can upload directly online? Oh, one of the, yeah, I know the ones you're talking about, it the e-paper ones and um actually that's a really good idea. it's not that I feel like it's not there yet. I feel like it's getting there. I always just want to be able to take notes and hit a button that translates it to a text that I could read because mine looks like chicken scratch. And it's just like, I don't know.
00:33:06
Speaker
you You may have put me in a direction. Yeah. Greg. I'm sorry for making this. No, yeah it makes sense that my workflow is going to improve, but um part of it is having that gestation time too.
00:33:21
Speaker
Like I don't put anything down the computer until like I have a critical mass of stuff, whether it be 50 pages or a hundred pages of notes or whatever.
Launch and Future Projects
00:33:30
Speaker
um But it also lets me have a chance to go through the notes and go, ah, that idea connects with that idea and then write down the next idea. So it's my organization is in that form, but when it gets to actually um sending it over to Blair, the person who does my programming,
00:33:50
Speaker
no it's got to be this is the way it is and not not for not for like I'm directing every single aspect I want him to be having have his freedom and like how this can be programmed but I want a clear idea of what the vision is going to be and so we're both on the same track. I've been on projects where it's not necessarily game projects but I've been on other projects where Did you get that? Yeah, I got it. No problem. And you end up with something else completely. And unless there's a clear game plan, expect that because yeah, as much as I'd love to have telepathy and everybody else should have telepathy and know what I'm thinking, that just does not exist. And yeah, you don't play that game. If you want something done and you have a vision, you don't play games. You don't be lazy.
00:34:48
Speaker
You write it down, you organize the thoughts, you annotate, you put your diagrams for how it's going to go. And then here we go. We're on the same path and there is. Yeah. If something goes wrong, it's your own downfall. But who, if you're building a game, you got to take responsibility for this stuff, right? ask Take responsibility. Don't be lazy. Make sure that everybody has all the information.
00:35:15
Speaker
and go over it with everybody. Don't just hand things off. If you hand things off, then there's more interpretation. yeah yeah And then that's your fault again, because you were not the one who was leading the charge. If you're building a game, and you're leaving the charge, lead the charge.
00:35:32
Speaker
that ah that that point kind of I've been there before when I've outsourced work before, you know, you can outsource to different countries and different countries are good at different doing different things. And, you know, I had this whole idea in my head and I was just like, all right, I need you guys to build this. And they built it and they built it exactly what I told them. But none of it sang together. It's just kind of like they built exactly what I built wanted, but without any of the context of what I wanted it to do. And it just all fell apart because They didn't ask questions, which they weren't meant to ask questions, but like, Hey, why is it doing this? How should I be doing this? Maybe what my design is, isn't the best design. Once they figured out what I'm trying to accomplish again, this goes back to what we talked about earlier. Be good or do what you do good and hire people to do things that you're not good at. Right. So like, just cause I have an idea, it doesn't mean it's the right idea. I need people to bounce it off of. And I think that's where that conversation comes in. That's why you have to explain yourself. So people would say, Oh, this is what you're going for here. This is what we need to do to make it happen.
00:36:33
Speaker
Yes, yes. And they can also go, oh, this is what you want? Oh, this is what you want. Yeah. but but My vision was so clear when I saw this. herere Here's everything. And they're like, well, if you change this to this, I can see what you're doing. But if you change this to this, it'll work better. And you can have the opportunity to go, damn, OK. So yeah, let's let's change this. If it's better, let's do it.
00:37:01
Speaker
you you You then have the, excuse me, the opportunity to look at something that is put down in front of you and clear, and they have the same idea and, or they can look at your idea and go, well, maybe we could do a little better. Why not? If it's a good idea, you never, ever bypass a good idea. You analyze it and see if it fits. If it fits, put it in. If it doesn't fit, well,
00:37:32
Speaker
You just put it over here in this corner and it will sit quietly until you maybe have another opportunity to use it. Yeah. Let's ah transition to my last conversation I want to kick off here. is ah Your new project is Omega, and it's building on top of what you built with the broken ceiling. ah The first part of this question is, as you're working on this game, there's going to be some point where you're going to start launching it or putting it on Steam. Are there any best practices you've learned from the broken ceiling that when you're going to approach Steam, you might want to do something a little different this time, or does that make sense?
00:38:09
Speaker
Oh, yeah, for sure. Um, my, my experience was steaming with broken ceiling what or the broken ceiling was huh, that's a really complex interface you got there. And let's try to figure it out. Gotta watch so many YouTube videos. So many. oh um It was definitely a learning experience. And you're The pressure is on because you just don't dive in there and go, Hey, let's flick some switches and see what happens. Although ultimately that's exactly what happens. But when you go into the refresh, it's like, I don't want to screw this up. This is an opportunity. I spent time on this. This is, I need to know what's going on, but I don't know what's going on. I'm going to screw myself up.
00:39:01
Speaker
And ultimately with the first try, first game, whatever, you do screw things up. The first day I, well, okay, so you have to put it in how much you're going to sell the game for. And you do that in advance, way in advance. And the first day I'm like, you know what? I should drop that a bit. It it seems a lot. I'm just going to drop it down and everything's good. And as soon as I did that, I locked myself.
00:39:31
Speaker
out of the Halloween sale.
00:39:38
Speaker
It's a cosmic horror game, cosmic suspense, whatever you want to call it. I couldn't put a discount on it for Halloween because I changed the price that locked me out of any other price changes because there's a cool-out period. It's crazy. Ow! Ow! Ow! I i went in to go, Oh, I'm just gonna, you know, let's do a discount on Halloween, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I'm clicking away. It's like, uh, why is it grayed out? No, that's the, the learning curve is there. And as things progress, it'll, it'll, the curve will flatten out. But what for the next one?
00:40:30
Speaker
Some things that I would like to do is actually, you know, if I'm going to spend a year on this game, if not more, it'll be more, um, start the advertising early and not really advertising, it but start poking things. It's like um my social media is like, is like, I'm working on the new game and here's some character concepts, blah, blah, blah. So I'm posting, but, and then that's small, but here's the biggest thing that I'm doing. I'm actually taking, um, social media marketing courses.
00:41:00
Speaker
And starting in January, I've already got them all set up at Nate and Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. I'm taking courses. So how do I prepare myself for STEAM? Educate myself. I talk to so many guests and like, well, marking, marking. And it makes perfect sense because you don't have, you know, eight arms and three heads and you can multitask. Well,
00:41:25
Speaker
There, and like I said earlier, there are people that can do that and they, they make me angry. They really, really do. But it's to the point where there's so many people who don't know that part of it and it makes sense that they're building stuff. But for me, I have to take that step off the cliff and go, you know what, I'm going to build my parachute on the way down, but I'm actually going to have some, you know, tools and some materials as I do it.
00:41:56
Speaker
There you have something to land on. Yeah. So for, for steam, actually get some marketing and know some marketing, um, and start building community, which is that you talk to any social media marker. They're in the like, you got to build your community. And in anybody who's in, this is like, I don't want to build the community. It's if you want to be successful, you got to have people looking and knowing and advocating for you. If you're building community,
00:42:25
Speaker
and And people really get into what you're doing. You've got advocates, you got people who are, who are cheering for you. And yeah, it's, it's, it takes a little bit of stress off knowing that there's people who want to see you succeed, but it also adds more pressure where it's like, I need to build something that they like. It's double double headed, uh, or double edged sword there. I think, you know, I mean, startup discord, that should be a minimum, right? And get people into discord.
00:42:54
Speaker
And then what we we've spoken to different community managers before in the studios at like the community starts drawing art that they'd like to see in the game. And all of a sudden it's like, Oh crap. People are creating content for a game that they want to see. her And it's your point. That's great because they're excited to the other point is like, Oh shit, I need to deliver something then. Right. Like, yeah and you can see these games and manner Lords is like the prime example, right? Like that took off even before the game was out because they built such a strong community. But again, it's another hat that.
00:43:25
Speaker
how many hats can one person wear? it And screw those people that are wearing every single hat that i can do them all, because there's a lot of hours, in or there's not enough hours in the day, I guess. There aren't. There really aren't. And that goes to our earlier hook about the burning the minnow oil and being a night owl. And it's not just, and it's not just being a night owl. It's you got to get stuff done. Yeah.
00:43:52
Speaker
Yeah. So you kind of put other things on hold and it's just, if, if you're on a hook or if you're on a, a good role, let's keep going. If you're not, you guys a lot lot of stuff to do, let's keep going. So yeah, i love it the rest of the wicked.
00:44:11
Speaker
Michael, I love it. I love what you're doing. I love your story. And I appreciate you sharing it. And I'm excited to check out Omega. ah People can check out the broken ceiling. It is on Steam today. You can download it. ah Is there anything you want to tell our audience at any place where we can find you? Let us know your details. Let me see here. I'm on X. Iron Octopus, Inc. my The name of the companies are in Octopus Productions, Inc. But what makes more sense than Iron Octopus Inc. There you go. Yeah. Like, yeah. Okay. So it kind of occurred to me, right? Um, I'm starting an Instagram. I'm on, uh, LinkedIn. So yeah, you can find me under Michael Chukash and LinkedIn. And, uh, yeah. Yeah. I'll be, post I post pretty regular on, on X.
00:45:00
Speaker
We will have all of Michael's information on our player-driven website. We will convince him to start a Discord so he can build a community. And we'll have anything. It's a great story. This proves that that you know with the right mindset of, hey, I'm good at this and not good at this, and I can find others, go network, go game jam, go find other people who are better at things that you can't do, you can build a game fairly quickly. and And you can build a game that you could sell fairly quickly. And then you could build on that. And I think it's such a cool story of how You go from creating manuals around oil rigs and oil fields and stuff like that into actually building out game worlds. And I think it's fascinating. I was watching some of the videos for the Broken Ceiling. I love the rabbit. I love him. The darkness plays a huge role in this and kind of navigating the darkness. And I think it's fantastic. and And I'm excited to see your progression on Omega. And I appreciate you coming out today. And I wish you the best of luck with everything. Greg, thank you so much for having me on here. This is yeah this was fun. I liked it.
00:46:00
Speaker
Hey all, I hope you enjoyed today's episode with Michael. We got to talk about storytelling and unique game concepts. We talked about how you don't have to do everything yourself and how mistakes happen, but you can learn from them about posting the steam and how you can start to build your community early. It was a really great episode and we hope you join us again next week when we have another great interview. In the meantime, you can check out playerdriven.io, check out our Discord and come hang with us and let us know what you think. Thank you and have a great rest of your week.