Sean Weiland

Name: Sean Weiland

Twitter: @Male_npc

Gender: Male

Nationality: USA

Birth date: 20/02/1984

Title: Project Leader

Company: Risen Phoenix

Some games that you have worked on: 

Steamalot

Go Go Galago

Website: www.risenphoenixstudios.com

1-What did motivate you to become a game developer? 

I spent most of my childhood playing games. Then I made a series of choices that sent me to seemingly completely contrasting career paths (theatre, bartender, dance instructor). At one point I realized that all of the work that I enjoyed doing was also work that needed to be done to make games, a product I loved any way. I was 24/25 when I made that realization and actually started pursuing game development. 

2-What does inspire you creatively? 

Just about everything inspires me creatively. It's probably why I have a large number of projects going on at any one point in time. Music and live performance are among my top favorite things that always leave me feeling jazzed to work on my own projects. 

3-If you had unlimited resources to make any game you wanted, what kind of game would that be? 

An Oculus RIft style VR MMORPG. I want to be plugged into an online world. 

4-What was the biggest challenge of your career? In which game? How did you overcome it? 

The biggest challenge was probably getting into games. I was already trained and good at other work. After starting to get work, market was/is the biggest obstacle. I don't think I've overcome it yet. Getting people to know about you and your game is one of the hardest things for an indie to do. 

5-What do you usually do for raising the possibility of success in your projects? 

Talk about what I'm working on to whoever will listen. BTW Steamalot (tactics game) has been greenlit and we are working on a spiritual successor. 

I do ^that^ 20 times a day. 

When it comes down to the project I try to go for the highest quality result that I can afford by time, talent, and money. Even if it is harder and pushes deadlines to the limit; every extra effort is worth it. 

6-What is the most helpful piece of constructive criticism you ever received? 

"You haven't begun to be creative until you've thought of everything. Once you've gotten all of that out of the way, you can start on the real work."

7-What are the advantages/downsides to working in games?

The advantages for me are that I get to leverage many facets of my interests. I love working on projects that have lots of unknowns (which can be VERY stressful for lots of people). I like planning projects, working on designs, and providing feedback to my co-workers. 

The downsides to working in games is that it is still intensive work that can take a long time and still result in failure. It is also a field where people constantly underestimate the amount of work that goes into a project. The work is also highly project based; meaning that when development is over many people find themselves looking for work again. It can be unsettling to look for work/move every few years. 

8-What is your best advice to a beginning game developer?

Learn things besides your core skills. Take history, literature, art, psychology, and anything else you like. Take a class in something you hate too! Games are an art form and art is the reflection of the world around you. If you don't experience the world your products will be flat and uninteresting. 

Also fail early and often. Don't wait for someone to tell you to make a game or to get that "big break". This isn't Broadway or Hollywood. Start making games and get all of the suck out of the way now so you can start making some really good stuff. 

9-Which skills are the most important for a game developer in your field/position?

:-O, dam. The most important skill for an indie developer is everything ;-) I wish that weren't true. I am a poor coder, but I still can sit down and understand what code is doing. The same goes for art, I don't have very refined skills for art, but I can describe what colors, shapes, and lines are doing for specific assets and give feedback accordingly. For an project lead/designer, flexibility, thick skin, and the ability to communicate with every type of person you meet is essential. 

10-If I want to become a great dev in your field, what games should I play, what books should I read, and whose work should I follow?

Hmmmmm, that's a toughie. You should play as much as you can get your hands on. Even bad games can teach you about what to avoid in game design. Hit up best of lists for the last 10 years as well as IGF nominations/winners from forever. There are good books for every field within games. This is so subjective that I can really only say start following the people you like that make games you like. If I were me, I would and do follow Jane Mcgonigal, Brenda Romero, Jesse Schell, and Richard Garriott. That's just a sampling though. There are many people out there to learn from. 

11-What changes do you want to see in the game industry?

There needs to be a larger forward facing movement to be inclusive in games. Its seems like developers are on board with diversity in games, but the games themselves are only slowly changing. I think due to unwanted backlash developers/companies have been quite about big social issues over the last year or so. 

Bonus: Tell us a funny story from your adventures in game development.

I don't know that anything really funny has happened while making a game (except for lewd design proposals). Since coming into game development most of my silly happenings have occurred from being in close proximity to influential people and been totally unaware of it until after. 

One of my favorites happened 3 years ago at the very last GDC Online in Austin, TX. I was hanging out with some new friends at a speakers social. I was volunteering at the event and then told to hang out and drink. I obliged. I saw a kid commenting on a guys t-shirt saying it "was funny". The gentleman kept a straight face and said he didn't see how his Disney script shirt that read "malt whiskey" was funny, and stolidly rejected his remarks. THAT made me laugh. "malt whiskey" and I started chatting. We introduced ourselves by first names and met up a couple of times during the week to have drinks and hang out. On the very last day Steve ask about my volunteer coordinator and asked me to deliver a message to him, saying that they were old friends. It was something about calling my coordinator an old man. 

I was all in, went to my coordinator, delivered the message, and awaited the laugh. He instead responded "Who exactly told you to deliver that message." I paused realizing I only knew this guys first name. I said "Steve", and described him. The coordinator and his wife looked at me and agreed that they know who sent the message and asked if I did. I said it was the guy I was drinking with! They laughed even harder and told me to google him. I immediately felt nervous. Being able to search for someone with expected results means I completely missed something. "Steve" is Steve Meretzky, game designer and one of PC Gamer's "Game Gods". 

I had no idea who he was. The jaws that dropped when I told people who I was hanging out with were enough to inform me that I had been painfully oblivious. On the up side, whenever I see "Steve" at an event, I know exactly what scotch to order. 

Ariel Contreras-Esquivel

Name: Ariel Contreras-Esquivel

Twitter: @ArielCEmusic

Gender: Male

Nationality: Argentine

Birth date: 07/02/1986

Title: Composer/Producer

Company: Ostrich Studios

Some games that you have worked on: 

Devils

The Meemy Moo

Balancity

Sapo

Train Around the World

Website: www.ostrichsound.com

1-What did motivate you to become a game developer? 

I played video games all my life and I love them. I never imagined to work on video games until a friend invited me to participate on the Global Game Jam... and that was the beginning. Friends, creative people, gamers, music, visuals... everything!! So all of that was a big motivation to get into it, and now I am here more than 2 years making music for games.

2-What does inspire you creatively? 

Nature, silence, noise. I get inspiration for what other people do, getting impressed by other minds. Children give me lots of motivations, mostly my students. Life experiences.

3-If you had unlimited resources to make any game you wanted, what kind of game would that be? 

A game with lots of music!! hahaha.

4-What was the biggest challenge of your career? In which game? How did you overcome it? 

One of the biggest challenges was when I client asked for a song singed by a little girl and some voice off too... in english! I was living in Argentina!

I made an open request for a singer and we found a 11 years old little girl who was amazing! We work with her and she shaped her voice as a 6 years old girl. And for the voice we had a friend in the US and her 5 years old daughter recorded everything... we felt like Disney!! haha.

5-What do you usually do for raising the possibility of success in your projects? 

I don't know what to say here because I make the music and not the game project. But in other cases I do my best, trying to keep creative, and always trying to improve what I did in other projects.

6-What is the most helpful piece of constructive criticism you ever received? 

Think twice, cut once.

7-What are the advantages/downsides to working in games?

It is fun! It allows me to keep myself creating, learning, improving, and travel. The industry in my country still very young and the budget is a problem most of the times.

8-What is your best advice to a beginning game developer?

HAVE FUN AND SHARE YOUR KNOWLEDGE!!!!

9-Which skills are the most important for a game developer in your field/position?

Patience, hard working, love, humility, companionship, creativity. Be yourself and be honest with yourself.

10-If I want to become a great dev in your field, what games should I play, what books should I read, and whose work should I follow?

All you can. Never stop playing, testing, reading, learning, follow to great composers and sound designers, meet them.

11-What changes do you want to see in the game industry?

Less cash more life. Less taking more giving.

Bonus: Tell us a funny story from your adventures in game development.

I always remember when a game designer tried to explain what he wanted for his game with my music... I was trying to understand why 10 demos couldn't get close to his idea (I actually never could understand what he means). I call him and said: "please tell me what you want", and he answered: "If I answer that to you everything will become too psychedelic", and I was like: "O.o" hahaha I still don't understand what he had in mind but we've made it :D

William Pugh

Name: William Pugh

Twitter: @HonestWilliam

Gender: Male

Nationality: British

Birth date: 02/03/1994

Title: Mr.

Company: Indie

Some games that you have worked on: 

The Stanley Parable

Bird Ball

The Stanley Parable: Demo

Bird Ball: HD

Need for Speed 2: Speed Demon (not accredited)

1-What did motivate you to become a game developer? 

I wouldn't say I had a 'motivation'. It was something I fell into accidentally after making Source Engine maps for fun for 5 years. I'd always liked games, my first time I remember properly playing a game was in a hospital when I was pretty young. They had Mario 64, and later that Christmas my parents bought me a Super Nintendo. I suppose I've played games ever since? I'd always enjoyed being creative, so I suppose pairing the two was something that was just naturally always going to happen.

2-What does inspire you creatively? 

Surprising people? Making people laugh? Finding ways to do these things whilst also expressing or talking about something that I'd otherwise feel uncomfortable or have a hard time expressing via language? We both know this is a bit of a twee question that's not going to have a particularly useful answer, so let's move on!!

3-If you had unlimited resources to make any game you wanted, what kind of game would that be? 

I think that game would be awful and boring. I think hard limitations create some of the most interesting experiences out there. For instance Stanley Parable had to be built on a source engine, with no NPCs and no complex custom models. If we didn't have those limitations we might have never finished the game! Basically I don't know if I'd want to work on a game with no limitations, because I think it'd potentially prove to be the least interesting work that I'd do?

4-What was the biggest challenge of your career? In which game? How did you overcome it? 

I think the first hurdle was just sticking to working on Stanley for the two years. But then again I was working with Davey 50/50 on it, so out of sheer politeness I could never have really quit.

5-What do you usually do for raising the possibility of success in your projects? 

I have no useful answer to this! Work with people you think are clever than yourself!

6-What is the most helpful piece of constructive criticism you ever received? 

The scale on this is wrong. If you want to provide a proper sense of scale you need to have stark contrast between the big and the small.

7-What are the advantages/downsides to working in games?

For me the big downside is how much time I spend alone in a room looking at a computer monitor. The upside is almost everything else.

8-What is your best advice to a beginning game developer?

Severely under-scope your projects. Think of your craft as an art form (as it very likely is). Model yourself as a "t-shaped model employee" (google this). Keep your team small and diverse. Do what you enjoy. Do what people haven't done before.

9-Which skills are the most important for a game developer in your field/position?

The ability to learn? The ability to work with others? There's no such thing as a "field" or a "position" for me, this scene is too amalgamated for us to impose any proper career boundaries upon it.

10-If I want to become a great dev in your field, what games should I play, what books should I read, and whose work should I follow?

Become culturally educated if you have the time and money! Read great works of fiction, go to the theater, go to art galleries and watch good films. Consume this content not only for enjoyment, but also use your imagination and think about how these great deliberate pieces of art could inform your alien process of game design. If you let established game genres be your starting point, I think your final product won't fall far from the tree.

11-What changes do you want to see in the game industry?

Everybody could be more open about everything and the sexist and exclusionary undertones should go away. We should also dress better - stop wearing games t-shirts you awful parodies of yourselves.

Bonus: Tell us a funny story from your adventures in game development.

When I was 20 I managed to sneak into The Wild Rumpus party at GDC in a suitcase rolled in by Zoe Quinn.

Ziba Scott

Name: Ziba Scott

Twitter: @popcannibal

Gender: Male

Nationality: USA

Birth date: 1/1/1982

Title: Owner

Company: Popcannibal

Some games that you have worked on: 

Girls Like Robots

Elegy for a Dead World

Website: www.popcannibal.com

1-What did motivate you to become a game developer? 

I've always loved programming, theater and the world of ideas.  I worked for years in web development and educational IT support.  But, topically, it separated me from people.  Games lets me work with ideas that fascinate everyone.

2-What does inspire you creatively? 

The creativity of others.  The simultaneous complexity and simplicity of nature.  How many feelings people have and how often we do or do not experience them.

3-If you had unlimited resources to make any game you wanted, what kind of game would that be? 

Resources aren't the main problem.  (Not that I have tremendous resources).  What's difficult is knowing how to effectively use resources.  Words are free and everybody can use them to incredible effect. But it's really hard!  I would use unlimited resources to train myself to be a better artist (in all senses of the word).

4-What was the biggest challenge of your career? In which game? How did you overcome it? 

Knowing when an idea and/or execution aren't good enough and putting them behind you to start something new.  I'm still having dreams about finishing a game I stopped working on.

5-What do you usually do for raising the possibility of success in your projects? 

Share! Test! Limit my scope and then cut it some more!

6-What is the most helpful piece of constructive criticism you ever received? 

Listen to your testers. Don't correct them.

7-What are the advantages/downsides to working in games?

Most people are in it for the love of it.  So I get to interact with passionate people who are very much alive and chasing dreams.

It can be hard to recognize your own successes if you compare yourself to the hugely successful outliers all the time.

8-What is your best advice to a beginning game developer?

Make small games and share them.  Learn. Rinse. Repeat.

9-Which skills are the most important for a game developer in your field/position?

Whatever your skills are, you need to be brutally honest with yourself about your own strengths and then find a way to fill in your gaps by either being more diligent or bringing in the right people.

10-If I want to become a great dev in your field, what games should I play, what books should I read, and whose work should I follow?

ALL OF THE GAMES AND BOOKS.

11-What changes do you want to see in the game industry?

Better treatment of women who make games and the depictions of them in games.  Less effort from brilliant minds poured into psychological tricks to make people pay for free-to-play stuff.

Bonus: Tell us a funny story from your adventures in game development.

I spelled my own name wrong on a name tag at an important networking event.  BEFORE drinking. Walked out of there with 5 lbs of candy.  Good night.