Letters from a New York Indie #4: The Lonliest Number

[Letters from a New York Indie is a diary written by friend of Hookshot Inc, Kevin Cancienne, one of the creators of Drop7, who recently left his position as Director of Game Development at area/code to pursue life as an independent game-maker. The series documents life as a one-man indie as Cancienne explores what happens next.

Since becoming independent, I’ve pursued the notion of going it alone with stubborn and possibly self-defeating alacrity.

For a variety of reasons, being a one man band seemed the natural course: after a slightly soul crushing year in a big company, it seemed just the thing to shake off my hangover. And with the fervor of a recent convert, it seemed the purest expression of being an indie developer. Additionally, I’ve always found jumping into the deep end a good way to learn new things.

But sometimes, as I sit in front of a Blender screen full of unruly vertices, or fret about optimizing draw calls in iOS, I wonder: What is my obsession with doing things I’m bad at?

I’ve banged on quite a bit already in this column about the benefits of a punk rock approach to game development. Being not-so-good at what you’re doing can be an excellent way to spur creativity. If you’re sick of music full of self-indulgent guitar solos, just start a band with a guitarist who lacks the technical virtuosity to play them. Or pick up a guitar yourself, and see what happens.

Chris Hecker, virtuoso programmer and designer of Spy Party, spoke at GDC a couple years ago about being held back by his own technical expertise. He shared examples from a series of unfinished personal projects and described his habit of “ratholing” -- becoming so excited by a particularly juicy technical challenge that he ultimately spends all of his time on it, while starving the rest of the game. A newly-minted indie at the time, Chris saw this habit as one of his biggest challenges.

I like to think my own mediocrity as a programmer helps inoculate me against such challenges. I like short games, but if I scale my ambition to my abilities, they’re also roughly the right size for me to pull off.

“Artisan” has become a ubiquitous adjective among marketers pushing scented soaps and overpriced flatbread. But it’s not a bad expression of a certain ideal in indie games. Game artisans like Bennett Foddy, Terry Cavanagh, and Michael Brough create hand-crafted games, without the weird or hard edges polished off. And they make it look easy, though I’m sure they’ll each tell you it’s not. Still, Anna Anthropy, another game artisan, espouses an extreme DIY approach in her book, and is extremely persuasive as she does so.

I’d like to aspire to that ideal, but a tweeted warning from David Edery of Spry Fox nags at me: “How to fail miserably: keep trying to do everything yourself, forever.”

My current list of tasks includes programming for a new platform, switching from 2D to 3D, graphic design, 3D modeling and animation, and game design. Is this a charming exercise in self-determination, or the height of hubris? Or worse: is it an exercise in masochism and self-sabotage? If I’m honest, I have to admit I’m awfully susceptible to those tendencies, and should probably guard against them as strenuously as Chris Hecker tries to guard against technical ratholing.

I wonder also if I have the guts to really push forward with a fully DIY game of my own. The line between a so-so game and a great one is often polish, and the line between an “artisan game” and a shitty one is a certain je ne sais quoi that je ne sais whether I’ve got.

Going it alone has been a bit of a painful exercise so far, but I’m not ready to throw in the towel. I’ve learned a bunch of new stuff, so whatever happens, it won’t be a complete loss. I’m also willing to bend the rules a bit. Some amazing concept art by the awesome Rachel Morris has been an inspiration and an incredibly valuable tool.

http://twitter.com/KnucklesSonic8 KnucklesSonic8

While there is something to be said about not accepting help, I can only imagine that with you being in the position you’re in that there are lots of rules and decisions that need to be made — the nature of which may not even necessarily mesh with your skillset, as was pointed out. But the point is that you’re willing to push forward regardless and harness the level of creativity needed to achieve your end goals.

Now, having said that, speaking as someone who considers themselves a creative person, there are definitely times when you need to step back and get a good look at your work and be able to deconstruct what you’ve done from an objective standpoint. This is where having a team behind you can really come in handy because they can spot things that escaped your attention or elements that you’re so wrapped in that you can’t see the bigger picture. I’m not a game developer, but I can see why this would be a challenge for someone working alone. Still, your acknowledgement of the contributions made by fellow indies shows your willingness to look for outside inspiration and advice. So despite the questions that you’ve raised in your mind as a result of David’s warning, I wouldn’t say that your process and way of doing things as they are outlined here are completely self-reliant.

Keep it up, and I look forward to continuing to read more of these entries.

http://www.facebook.com/potatojin Kevin Cancienne

Thanks for the comment.

The whole one-man-band thing is quite explicitly an experiment for me, as I generally agree with what you say about the benefits of working with a team. In fact, the multi-disciplinary nature of game development, and the corresponding diversity of viewpoints on a game dev team, have long been one of my favorite things about working in this medium.

Working alone is a temporary measure, I think (I’ve given myself the better part of a year), and is a bit of trial-by-fire. It’s a hell of a good way to learn a bunch of new things, not least about yourself.

Michael Brough

Yeah, I really love the personal quality that comes from all aspects of a game being done by one person, but it’s definitely a tradeoff. There have been times in the past where I’ve devoted myself fully to painting, to music, to programming; and now trying to do everything at once I’m worse at each of them than when it was my main focus. But I am getting better slowly, “doing everything” is a skill that you can improve at too!

It’s definitely appropriate sometimes to recognise your limits and get other people onto a project. But any game developer who has never tried doing everything is lesser for it; the intimate understanding of every part of the process is extremely valuable.

http://www.facebook.com/potatojin Kevin Cancienne

Yes.

There’s another aspect I didn’t mention in the piece, and it’s a bit more pragmatic:

Doing everything myself makes it a lot easier to completely throw away failed ideas — I don’t have to worry about dragging collaborators down blind alleys. It makes it cheaper too, in a financial and reputational sense. If I lack complete conviction about a project, it seems more expedient to explore it myself, rather than hiring someone or splitting revenue which may never appear.

James Lantz

Great thoughts, very in line with my own thinking about solo work. I tend to go for exactly the same thing that PlusGun or Minecraft do: shift a lot of the work over to design by making it procedural and art/programming-lite.

That said, to me somewhere between 2 – 20 is the sweet spot. I think 1 is really just rough, and not to say that you can’t do amazing stuff by yourself, but there are a lot of things you just can’t touch when you go solo like that. And the lack of someone to bounce around design ideas with is just horribly painful to me.

http://www.facebook.com/potatojin Kevin Cancienne

One trick that helps: Marry a game designer.

http://twitter.com/smestorp Michael Brough

Ah, but then polygamy laws would prohibit something even more important: marrying someone with income.

http://twitter.com/potatojin Kevin Cancienne

You have no idea the crazy trifecta I’ve pulled off. (NB: trifecta is not polygamist lingo)

Letters from a New York Indie #4: The Loneliest Number

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Letters from a New York Indie #4: The Loneliest Number

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