Interviews

JA – What made you take the plunge and become an Independent Developer?

Steve Ince -Initially
it was circumstance. I found myself out of a job when Revolution Software made
everyone redundant and decided to become a freelance writer. After
a number of months of this I realised that I had the opportunity
to develop my own game ideas and set about creating some design
documents.  The first responses from publishers were extremely positive, but none were prepared to fund my game’s development.  Rather than just sit around and ruminate on the state of the adventure games market, I decided to take a different approach and go for a completely independent route.  This means that I have had to start with a game of a different style than I had intended, but that doesn’t mean it will skimp on gameplay.  The thing that swayed my hand was that with the increase in broadband take-up, downloading games is getting more and more commonplace and the potential to sell directly to the customer could secure my future game development.

Jonathan Boakes –
I didn’t. I was looking to make a game in a fondly remembered style,
for a few friends and colleagues to play. The project, Dark Fall, ran away with itself.
 

Britney
Brimhall – We
decided several years ago that we would like to aid the ‘dying
adventure genre’ by creating remakes of Sierra‘s
classics.  Under the banner of AGDI, we released
remakes of the first two King’s Quest games,
and at that time, it became apparent that there was still a strong
market for adventure games.  In addition to allowing fans to relive
the past, we felt it was also important to provide games with new and
completely original content as a means of pushing the genre forward.
For this reason, we started Himalaya Studios.

Tamás Marosi Z. (Pierrot) – I have been an avid adventure gamer and collector; I have played innumerable games of the genre. Being an analytic type, I was fascinated not only by the games after a while but also by dissecting the makeup, the logic, which led me to thinking of my own project shortly. There are a few people in my environment who caught this contagion from me, so I had no problem finding partners for the enterprise. The story of Agon has been forming since 1997. Now is really the time to tell this good little story.

Mikael & Eleen Nyqvist – We had been making films for years, and also played adventure games for a long time. We saw that other people were able to make games without financial backing. We had both played with the idea for some time until we finally decided to give it a shot.

We started outlining a game, and it was soon obvious that it would be too large to offer as a free download. This meant that we had to try to sell the game, which raised the demands on ourselves.

Matt Clark – While working in theatre, and fine art, I became aware of a desire to create an adventure game, based upon a story, which has been with me since childhood. Many of the skills I have acquired in theatre have proved themselves invaluable to visualizing both the game world, and pacing of the interactive drama. The medium adapts itself well to telling good stories, and the time seemed right to give a full production a go. 

Cos
Russo – I
felt that producing a game was the perfect amalgamation of all
the skills that I had – a relentless imagination, 3D modelling,
computer programming, graphic art and music. I love the adventure
game genre.

Agustin Cordes & Alejandro Graziani – It was a wild move… personally, I had a stable job with a reasonable salary but I just didn’t like where it was heading. I knew that at some point in my life I would make an adventure game because I grew up playing them and just plain loved the genre. So I teamed up with Alejandro who wanted to get involved on some kind of independent project, and convinced him that making a game was easy and very profitable. Ah, such fools…

Before quitting my job
though, we took some time to carefully analyze the situation and “probe” the
terrain. That test was the very first Scratches teaser
– and it was successful enough (meaning a bunch of people were
really interested) to convince us that we should engage this a
serious
project. I can’t say that we were fully confident the whole time
though.

Actually, it was Dark Fall one of those determining factors that managed to convince us this was a profitable endeavor. Poor Jonathan…he was so alone back then!

Chris
Brendel – I’ve
wanted to make computer games since I was eight years old and got
my first taste of gaming.  Through the years, I’ve spent
most of my free time learning about the process of creating games.  Two
years ago, I had the opportunity and free time to attempt one, and
I didn’t hesitate!

Bryan Wiegele – I
think the decision to become a game developer is a process that,
for most people, begins with Independent Games. Unless you’re schooled
in a specific field of game development or have an abundance of
experience you really only have the option to start small.

After a few years working for several different companies on several
different projects I grew tired of the project quality being sacrificed
because of poor planning and management. I’m a bit of a control freak so it
was torture to be on a big project with high expectations and watch mistake
after mistake take its toll. With so much new experience under my belt I
felt it was the right time to take a chance at a new company and that’s when
we formed Big Time Games.

Gey & Silvio Savarese – We both have been interested in PC games since early 80s. Silvio was both playing and designing text adventure games on a Commodore platform. Gey was programming logical and action games for the TI-99/A home computer. We liked games such as those developed by Scott Adams. We enjoyed the feeling of being immersed in a different world and the idea of using logical thinking to advance in the game. When the technology became more mature and graphical adventures became more and more widespread, we started cooking up the idea of developing together our own adventure game. After a few years, we finally made up our mind and started the project A Quiet Weekend in Capri.
It was just a two-people effort and it took us almost three years
to complete. We were new in the internet adventure game community
and we didn’t even know that there were sites such as JustAdventure, and millions of fans (of adventure games) browsing the web, reading, chatting and getting excited about adventure games everyday. The Capri game was published in Italy first, then distributed from the internet over the world. The players responded enthusiastically. It was a surprise, a very pleasant one, actually. We realized we officially entered into the world of indie adventure gaming! Of course the big jump came when Howard Horowitz (GotGameEntertainment) liked the Capri game and decided to publish it in North America. It was a truly exciting moment for us. This gave us the strength and the economical support for our next project: Anacapri the Dream, which is currently under development. The core team of Anacapri is still composed by just two of us. But we have also external help from Nucleosys (animations) and from Laura MacDonald (English localization). More collaboration may come as the project approaches the end.

Michael Clark – When I was younger, I used to write fiction.  Then, in 1995, I discovered Myst, and Adventure Games.  I LOVED playing them, and quickly realized what a great medium they would be for telling stories.  I researched everything that was needed to make an Adventure Game, and realized I could actually do it myself.  So, I sat down and wrote Harvest, and took it from there.

Knut Mueller – My first touch with a computer-game was 1997. It was a freeware mac-only myst-like adventure-game, calling Das Tor der Minerva (The gate of Minerva). Stephan Stoske, a Independent Developer and 3D-artist made this game by himself. I found it on a CD of a monthly Mac Journal. In the same year I’ve played Myst. I was fascinated by this game, the logical design and the atmosphere of the worlds. After those two experiences I decided I would like to develop a computer-game as well. Myst gave me the power to start developing a game and The gate of Minerva gave me the confidence to finish the game alone. 

Keith Nemitz -That would be as a result of the stock market plunge and my industry job just plunging
with it. However, I have developed independent titles before. In 1999, my starship
combat game, Flagship: Champion was picked as a IGF finalist.