Indie Superstar

Indie Water Cooler Part 2: Chris DeLeon, Adam Saltsman, and Andy Schatz

// July 28th, 2010 // Indie Water Cooler

What secrets do indie game developers keep from you? Fresh off the gossip mill, three more wildly insightful Indies quench their developer thirst in this edition of Indie Water Cooler: Adam Saltsman, who designed Canabalt and the free Flash game dev library Flixel, Andy Schatz, who made the IGF nominated Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa, Venture Arctic, and the IGF Grand Prize winning Monaco: The Grace Kelly Story, and Chris DeLeon of Topple, burnit, and other iPhone and freeware games.

Just like any other water cooler, anything goes. There’s even a rare glimpse at the not-so-subtle mating rituals of two of the industry’s finest.  It’s all about keeping that Indie pedigree pure!

Question 1: What’s the Indie scene truly like in your eyes? Why might gamers perceive a disconnect among Indie developers?

Adam Saltsman: Is “family” too warm and fuzzy a word?  I don’t know if there is a disconnect or not, but I do know some people are surprised when I am excited to go to conferences. They don’t understand that I only see my best friends a few times a year, and that is an overwhelming and inspiring thing every time I do.

Chris DeLeon: While I don’t consider myself in competition with anyone, I’m deliberately not tightly-knit with the rest of the Indie community, either. I know these people, I value and love these people, but I’m wary of Indies forming a clique [leading to] groupthink or accidentally becoming an ad hoc “brand” to the public eye. I find that when I keep my communications relatively rare, I have more to share when paths do cross, and I’m happiest when it feels like what I’ve been making is out in left field – when I finally do catch up on what others are doing, it’s similarly a genuine surprise to me.

“I’m wary of Indies forming a clique [leading to] groupthink or accidentally becoming an ad hoc ‘brand’ to the public eye.”

Andy Schatz: I don’t think gamers think too much about this stuff.  They mostly care about the games, not the developers.  And in the cases where they seem to know the development side of things, they often understand the truth behind it all, which is that Adam Saltsman is my father.

Question #2: Can the following be “indie” studios?

A studio that has more than 20 people working for it?

Adam Saltsman: Yes

Andy Schatz: Yes

More than 100?

Adam Saltsman: Yes

Andy Schatz: Despite there being nothing that precludes a big studio from being technically “indie”, it’s hard to imagine feeling comfortable describing a 100 person company as indie. I always laugh when I hear a big studio that self-publishes describe themselves as indie, it always seems like they are trying to cash in on the cache’ of the term.

A studio that’s owned by another company?

Adam Saltsman: Presents challenges

Andy Schatz: No, most definitely not indie.

A 5-person studio owned by a small publisher?

Adam Saltsman: Also presents challenges

Andy Schatz: Nope

A studio that works solely on publisher-owned IP?

Adam Saltsman: Presents even more challanges.

Andy Schatz: Yes, but their games aren’t indie.

id Software, before they were purchased?

Adam Saltsman: Totally!

Andy Schatz: Yeah, I definitely think id was indie for most of that time.

A studio that earns more than ten million dollars a year?

Adam Saltsman: Not sure what money has to do with it…

Andy Schatz: Sure, why not? We can all dream.

The Behemoth?

Adam Saltsman: Obviously!

Andy Schatz: Yes

Zynga?

Adam Saltsman: No, a thousand times no! never.

Andy Schatz: Maybe, who cares, fuck them.

Got anything else to add here?

Adam Saltsman: To me the only metric that is useful or interesting is “do you get to make the thing you are passionate about” because that means the thing you are making is made with LOVE and that is important.

Question #3: So, how would you define “Indie,” anyway? Who, specifically, isn’t Indie?

Andy Schatz: Adam Saltsman.  For both questions.

People like to say that this question doesn’t matter, but for me it does. Not so much in terms of grouping other developers but in having an internal directive for the type of work I do. Also, [being] Indie is having complete creative control and the ability to make one’s own business decisions. I think one reason it feels weird to call a giant company “Indie” is that size constrains the types of business and creative decisions that you can make. I can only think of one company (Valve) that just kind of does what they want regardless of size.  And that’s probably a misconception in itself.

I am certainly not immune to my environment, making decisions solely based on my whims.  But for the most part, Pocketwatch Games is steered by the future, not the present conditions of the company.

“[Being] Indie is having complete creative control and the ability to make one’s own business decisions.”

Adam Saltsman: Labels are just that, but I find Indie as a label personally useful for studios that use things that seem like constraints to pursue their passions. Not having millions of dollars and not having hundreds of employees mean you can do things they can’t; you’re risking less. That is interesting because it creates things that wouldn’t exist in a purely commercial industry.

Chris DeLeon: If someone’s primary goal is to make money, and that’s what they’re optimizing against, I don’t consider them Indie. If money is secondary to someone’s artistic principles, creative exploration, or sense of craftsmanship, then they’re either a hobbyist (meaning they don’t make a living from it, and don’t care if they do) or Indie (they have made this work their primary source of income, and use the money earned from it to support committing their full attention to doing it more).

When people start to change their game for marketing reasons, that also reeks of non-indieness. At least for my side/hobby/experimental projects, I would rather say more to few people, than say less to more people, even if it means smaller numbers in my bank account.

There was a GDC panel years ago where all four Indies present were under a completely different assumption of what Indie meant to them – experimental, poetic, passionate, or shoestring budget. If you ask someone what Indie means, and they go on and on about it, or have a very clear answer, that’s generally a good sign. If they start giving developer names or listing game titles, they probably don’t get it.

Adam Saltsman: So this is probably a tangent but I’ve been thinking some about “being Indie,” whatever that means, and “running an Indie company,” which is a little bit different. I treat my personal projects differently from how I treat my company projects, but I think that’s a necessity. I’m really proud of and happy with the work we’ve done as a company, but BECAUSE it’s company work, it can’t be PURELY experimental – we definitely have to stick to stuff we think a lot of people will enjoy because otherwise there’s a good chance we’re going to run out of money.

Doing work for the company that exists ONLY to help me learn something or to do an experiment definitely strikes me as just irresponsible, whereas doing that stuff in my personal projects I view as a sacred necessity. I think of game development as being on three tiers:

1 – pure unsullied experimentation and passion
2 – interesting work that I control and am proud of
3 – shitty work that I can’t control and am embarrassed of and for

Is that a useful view or is that just obsessing over semantics? I view my personal projects as Tier 1, my internal dev projects for work as Tier 2, and some (but not all) of my past commercial freelance work as Tier 3. I guess.

I am more Indie than Andy.

I guess what I’m saying, really, is that there is a little AAA in all of us (except Stephen Lavelle aka Increpare).

“[There] is a little AAA in all of us.”

Chris DeLeon: This was the sort of distinction I was aiming to draw between Indie and hobbyist, although only a few years ago I think both fell under the Indie umbrella. Pure development for its own sake (may or may not be experimental); the type Adam sees as irresponsible if done as part of company business is what I consider hobby development.

If it’s a game I’m making to pay the bills, but I still have creative control over it (tier 2): Indie. The other half of my projects that I pull together to test ideas or get things out of my system, that I have no expectation to make any money from (tier 1): hobby.

Leo Jaitley of Dejobaan: While there are many different ways you can describe what is Indie, I don’t agree with the argument that thinking commercially or making money = bad. I think it is perfectly ok to love gaming, making games AND money. I think to some extent it is about what you make and how you make it. That said, I bet any one of you could come up with 100 ideas for a game that you WOULD want to make, if given 10 hours, AND many of those ideas would be commercially viable… Even if we don’t admit it, those of us who pay the bills through game development NEED to think about this and consciously or subconsciously do it, while making the games we love….

Ichiro Lambe of Dejobaan: Bla bla bla this Venn Diagram:

Adam Saltsman: That [diagram is] pretty much exactly our biz strategy!  I guess for me the solid red part is what I feel is REALLY Indie.  But the black part is pretty great, and it helps pay the mortgage.

Chris DeLeon: I don’t agree with [Leo's] argument either. I must have caused confusion or not written clearly. What you are replying to is not what I said.

There are two differences between what you’re arguing against and what I intended to say:

1.) A company, project, or person not being Indie doesn’t make it/him/her bad. The Sims is a good business, and there’s nothing invalid against making things for people that they want. There’s nothing bad about being commercially driven, provided a company isn’t doing things that are unethical. Those projects just aren’t particularly Indie.

“A company, project, or person not being Indie doesn’t make it/him/her bad.”

2.) Making money is different than optimizing against making money. There’s a difference between making money from what we make, as a painter that sells her painting, and making something specifically with the mission to make money from it, as with a poster maker that is trying to design the ultimate 50 Cent, unicorn, or Mickey Mouse poster. The former is making at least a little money, which is all fine and well, especially if the money is used to enable that person to continue focusing on painting. The latter is a purely commercial artifact, built more for a known audience than for the builder of a yet-unknown crowd of fans-to-be, and has little artistic or creative passion underlying its development.

To the extent that business thinking drives visibility (marketing in some sense), that’s important and valid even for Indies because even if everyone in the world would love it, if no one knows about it, then it’s not going to reach anyone.  But there’s a difference between, “Here’s this awesome game we couldn’t help but make. You might like it, too,” versus “We designed this game around what interests and demographics we thought had the largest untapped market potential.”

Question #4: What do you think about AAA studios trying to attach themselves to the “Indie” brand? (For example, Activision’s Indie game competition.)

Adam Saltsman: Fuck those guys.

Chris DeLeon: I’m torn on this point, actually. Sony, through its partnership years ago with thatgamecompany, has built a bridge to the Indie community. I think most of us are glad that Valve ate the Digipen team that made Narbacular Drop to help bring us Portal.  The trade-off [like Activision crowd sourcing their R& D] is, in principle, not far from poorly paid internships:  exploitation in exchange for credential, the latter of which really can go a long way in improving future opportunities. Meanwhile, it will probably prompt a lot of people who were on the fence thinking about it to get off their asses and actually build something presentable, a bit like the purpose that competitions of any sort serve.

Andy Schatz: AAA companies that are trying to make money off Indies are going to find that it’s a very hard road.  They need to stop looking to Indies for the next big hit and look at Indies as a source of renown and buzz. Activision can shape their image by helping out and attaching to truly Indie games only if they do it in such a way that the truly creative Indies will be happy to go along.  Like I said, if they are just trying to grab a piece of the “Indie” pie, they will find it’s not a very filling or tasty piece of pie.  They will end up getting the crusty, moldy piece that’s been lying in the fridge for a month.

“[AAA companies that are just trying to grab a piece of the 'Indie' pie] will end up getting the crusty, moldy piece that’s been lying in the fridge for a month.”

What happens during overtime at the water cooler and these devs start talking to themselves?

Chris DeLeon: What effect do I want my upcoming projects to have on players?

I want them to equip players with new mental tools, to prompt ways of thinking that have relevance to challenges outside of the video game. I want to motivate players to explore, improve, experiment, cooperate, doubt, and create in real life. I worry that video games have an expectation of either being non-stop addictive engagement or otherwise being judged as unworthy of our attention; I’m not concerned with someone’s happiness while they play so much as I hope that they’ll later be glad that they did.

Adam Saltsman: How beautiful is Andy Schatz?   Really beautiful.

Andy Schatz: What do I smell like?  Walnuts and summer evenings.

Please introduce yourself and why you’re awesome.

Adam Saltsman: My name is Adam Saltsman, I designed Canabalt and the free Flash game dev library Flixel, and I live in Austin, TX.

Andy Schatz: I’m Andy Schatz!  I’ve been indie for over 5 years, making the IGF nominated Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa, Venture Arctic, and the IGF Grand Prize winning Monaco. (www.monacoismine.com)

So, there you have it! Does everyone need a little Andy spritz in his or her life?  Is his smell only part of what charms devs like Adam?  What do you think of Chris’s kick-ass contentions or Ichiro’s Venn Diagram skills? Join in on the water cooler action in the comments below. Are you a now-inspired AAA game dev that has that “indie itch” to go and create something REMARKABLE? And check out our previous Indie Water Cooler piece for more!