Nathalie Lawhead

Name: Nathalie Lawhead

Twitter: @alienmelon

Gender: Female

Nationality: USA / Slovenia 

Birth date: 20/10/1983

Title: Indie

Company: Tetrageddon Games

Some games that you have worked on: 

Tetrageddon Games

Website: www.tetrageddon.com

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

I think I always had it in me. I started as a net-artist in the late 90's. Traditional art wasn't enough for me, and I basically grew up behind a computer, so tinkering with interactivity sort of happened naturally. I was absolutely fascinated by all the avenues of creative exploration computers, and later internet, opened up for artists. Things could move, react, act, and people could experience my art on a deeper more profound level. It's like creating world's, or alternate realities.

The way I saw it, the internet made it possible for artists to really be in charge of their work. Anyone could see it, and museums or galleries where no longer in charge of an artist's success.

Eventually people started calling what I did "games". At first I hated the label because it also enabled a lot of misunderstandings. If you say "game" then people expect a clear goal, mission, agenda. Players would often become confused, or outraged, because "What am I supposed to do? This is not a game!". Eventually I decided not to fight the label, and see what contributions I can make to "games". We're all making this together. It's a collective effort.

Thanks to this (our collective experimenting, and pushing the label), today I think people are a lot more liberal in what they expect from a game. This "boom" in experimental is what I find totally exciting about games today. People are wiling to experiment and create new labels.

So I'm totally thrilled to call myself a "game developer".

2-What does inspire you creatively? 

I think you can get inspired by the weirdest things. Usually I get a lot of inspiration by browsing the crappy places of the internet (no need for names), but lately I've been getting it from places like itch.io, gamejolt, or fun collections like http://harmonyzone.org/frog.html. Twitter's #screenshotsaturday has become one of my happy places. I love seeing what other devs are doing. Just to name a couple... I totally love Strangethink's generative art or ceMelusine's stuff.

I started out being pretty isolated (not really part of the meatspace indie community) then I started going to events because my work was being showcased there. Now I can't believe that I haven't done that before. There's so much amazing stuff, and so many amazing creative developers. Events like IndieCade, Fantastic Arcade, or Glitch City have been a treasure trove of inspiration for me. You might not think so (if you're like me), but it does make a big difference to actually physically meet other developers.

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

Wow... I've thought of this often, but come up with something new everytime.

I would love to make a multiplayer FPS that's all about the bugs. Like the way you successfully play it is to try to get it to glitch out. Like fall through the floor, or rocket into the sky because you collided with something at the wrong angle.

I totally love the "bad" ideas. I had one before that would be called "The Crucifier" and you would play Jesus, as acted by Charlton Heston, armed with a nailgun and witty wiseguy one-liners. It would be horrible (in a good way), and all about meaningless over-the-top gore + shooting... There's also "Dude Simulator" which would be all about being a dude. You know, like brushing your teeth or walking around at home in underwear... I have notebooks full of ideas in the event something like this ever happens.

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

I've tried working in the game industry before. Suffice it to say, it wasn't good. I understand that other people may have good experiences, but I got one of the bad ones. Now I think it served the wonderful purpose to kick my ass into going out and doing my own thing.

I think that's one of my takeaways from that experience. Every creative industry has its companies that thrive on draining desperate creative people. You see this with visual effects. Games are no exception. This is no reason to quit on dreams, but incentive to go out and pursue it on your own terms.

Looking back I see that I could be so much further along if I would have just invested all that time, commitment, and passion into my own work. It's what I'm doing now, and I totally encourage other people to do the same. The tools are there, the platforms to get funding are there, it couldn't be a better time.

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

Passion is one of the big ones. If you're working on something and the ideas keep coming, and you'd rather work than sleep, and just can't stop, then I think it's definitely going to succeed. If you make something you love, I think other people will love playing it.

Also, if there's an idea you just can't put down, and you love playing what you make. I think you end up with something great.

I love the projects that keep me laughing all through production. It's really something special when you just can't quit working on it.

But, in the end, I think success is a very relative term. It means different things to different people.

I don't think you can make a good game if you set out to make a game for the sake of success.

Success can be a trap. You'll sacrifice potentially amazing ideas for the sake of some tired formula that everyone else is using. It's really best not to bring that into the picture.

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

Don't take the comments too seriously.

You need to have a concrete idea of what you want to make, and how you want it to turn out, then stick to it. People (more so online) are very quick to criticize. It can get VERY depressing. Sifting through that information (good criticism from bad) without letting it "kill" the passion/vision you have for your project is a skill in itself. Especially if you're making something new. I used to take what people said about my work to heart. If you're a perfectionist it can take a lot of practice not to do that.

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

The advantage is that you can completely express yourself. Games are sort of like the crossroads medium where all arts come together to make something. You can express yourself through music, and sound, and design the interactivity, and the artwork. It's very 100%. I absolutely love every aspect of development.

I'm currently working alone. I make everything on my own (music, art, programming, marketing, PR, etc...), which is fun, but can get incredibly lonely. It can seem a downside. To do this you do sacrifice your personal life, but seeing people play it when you're done is what makes it so amazing. My games are about humor, so when I see people laughing and "getting" the jokes, it's the best feeling in the world. I wouldn't trade that in for anything.

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

Just start making games. There's no one place to start. You can read all you want, and study about it all you want, but the best way is just to start making one. It doesn't have to be a good game, or playable, but once you get into it it sort of unfolds naturally. Get feedback from friends, keep tinkering, eventually you get better at it. It's also important to see what other indies are doing (like on itch.io or follow some devs on Twitter). This gives you a sense of what you can do.

I notice a lot of beginners often try to tackle the "epic" ideas first. It's not good to start with something huge, or that's "just like your favorite AAA game". For the beginning, it's best to start with something personal, and small. It's a great self-rewarding feeling to get your finished game out there, so it's important not to make it so complicated that you never finish it.

A great place to start would be to participate in gamejams.

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

All of them. You have to get good at everything. For example, music, sound, programming, art, and design. Then there is also marketing, and PR. It's good to understand your limitations, then build off that.

Not everyone is a great artist, so work with pixel art, or some retro style.

On the other hand, not everyone is great with programming, so focus on art and keep the interactivity simple.

If you keep pushing yourself then you eventually get good at what you are weak at.

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?

Nose-dive into http://itch.io/ and just get lost there. Also http://wip.warpdoor.com/ and http://killscreendaily.com/ are great starting points.

For those that are interested, I keep a youtube playlist of gamedev related talks: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXFlbiQkdDD1b3yOcFbx33lH0TfgCOFpx

Sort of my personal collection. Anything I find of interest, that helps me become a better dev, I put there.

It's also totally worth it to check out the GDC Vault!

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

More tolerance. I wish we could all just get along.

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

I have this game called FROGGY (It's Hungry) http://froggy.alienmelon.com/ and people constantly think it is, or has something to do with, Frog Fractions 2. There have been a couple conspiracies about that (people speculating on forums about odd details in the game, "the honeypot", etc...). I ended up making this website about how it's NOT Frog Fractions 2 http://froggy.alienmelon.com/thetruth/ which didn't help.

I've had a lot of fun watching peoples confusion.

Had to hold myself back from messing with them too much. :)

Adriaan de Jongh

Name: Adriaan de Jongh

Twitter: @AdriaandeJongh

Gender: Male

Nationality: Netherlands

Birth date: 06/11/1990

Title: Game Designer

Company: Indie

Some games that you have worked on: 

Fingle

Bounden

Friendstrap

Website: www.adriaandejongh.com

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

Games did. I loved playing games when I was young, and a friend of mine told me about people studying Game Design & Development at the Utrecht School of the Arts in the Netherlands. When I heard about that, I casually decided that I wanted to make games. Well, here I am, 11 years later :)

2-What does inspire you creatively? 

Play and playfulness and interactions in real life. I'm especially inspired by the works of Bernie DeKoven - you should look him up and read his books. Also read the New Games book, and its sequel More New Games.

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

I honestly wouldn't make any different game that I am working on right now! Games that explore social interactions between me and my friends. Games that deepen the bond between me and my friends. Most of my friends are non-gamers, so that drives me away from the usual themes in games.

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

Bounden was extremely challenging to make. I was the project's leading visionaire as game designer, producer for 11 people, business guy to travel around the world talking to Apple and Google, part-time marketing, and part-time developer. I overcame it by working 16 hours a day! It was a huge adrenaline rush all the way through. It was super tough, and at the same time the most energetic thing I've done in my life - mainly because the Dutch National Ballet is a hugely inspiring group of people and working together with them blew my mind every single time of working with the choreographer.

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

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

"Why?" How often do we have people around us that ask this simple question, over and over again? How thoroughly did you think things through? Maybe there ARE alternatives! Maybe you do NOT know everything! 

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

Making games can be as fun as playing them, and being able to do that every day is a blessing. But being sustainable making games is very hard, especially being by yourself.

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

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

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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?

- Subscribe to KillScreen's Playlist and buy and play all the games on there.

- Read philosophy, not game design.

- Play all sorts of games, but also be critical and talk about them with people around you.

- But most of all, and this teaches you more than any of the above: make your own games / stories / experiences, playtest them, and see how they work.

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

More playfulness.

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

The craziest story that our games brought me was a story about Fingle. My lawyer calles his new born child the "Fingle baby", because Fingle had a larger effect for him and his wife than only causing their hands to rub each other ;) ;) ;)

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