Vince D. Weller - Page 2

7. How much awareness is there of indie games outside more dedicated gamers? What do your relatives or the people you meet at the bar think when you tell them you make indie games?

I'm not sure that awareness is the right word. It's about the visuals these days. Some people take one look at our screenshots and lose their interest immediately. Hell, I've seen people complaining about Alpha Protocol's graphics calling it a "budget title".

No indie studio can match the visuals of mainstream games and since the visuals are the main feature these days, indie games would remain unnoticed by the majority no matter how aware people are about these games. So, indies are a domain of dedicated gamers and I don't think anything can change that. Considering that it takes 0.1% of mainstream development budget to make an indie game, we are more than happy with 0.1% of the audience.

8. The promotion for Age of Decadence has involved not only your ‘standard’ stuff like screenshots, but also ‘Let’s Play!’ threads where fans can indirectly ‘play through’ a portion of the game, picking dialogue options or what to do next. What’s the payoff? Why is it worth doing?

3 reasons: feedback, credibility, entertainment.

Feedback - well, that's kind of obvious. If not, see my answer to the next question.

Credibility - we are all accustomed to PR folks lying, exaggerating, and promising features that aint there. We promise quite a lot too, and I think it's important to show people that everything we promised is in the game. The "let's play" format - forumites make all decisions, developer just drives - is made for this purpose. Actually I wanted to show our assassins questline, but the forumites decided to do and try different things, which is great.

Entertainment - waiting for a game could be boring and uneventful. I believe that we owe something to people who supported us by joining our forums and taking their time to offer advice, so it was also a nice present. Thanks again, guys.

9. Checking in on the AoD forums, I found the ‘Teron’s Mine’ discussion very interesting (http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php?topic=337.0) – Oscar, one of your devs, posted screenshots of an area he had developed, then tweaked it about a dozen times to satisfy fan feedback. It was almost as if he was presenting a draft for everyone to polish together. Does this happen often with Age of Decadence? Does it ever get difficult or cumbersome to put so much emphasis on fan input during the creation process?

It's an acquired taste. Basically, we don't treat people who are interested in AoD as idiots. First, their opinions are important because we are making this game for them. So, what I think sometimes matters less than what they think. Second, you know that saying "one head is better than two"? Well, how about one head vs a thousand heads then? Listening to our fans allowed us improve the game greatly. Some suggestions were absolutely brilliant. Kind of like "Damn! Why didn't I think of that?", which is exactly the point. You can't think of everything. The only way to do that is to pay attention to what people are criticizing and suggesting.

It's not about designing by committee. It's not about being unsure and asking people to do your job for you. It's about presenting your vision to people and letting them help you polish it and make it better. We started showing everything and getting feedback from day one, and once we realized the benefits, it became our way of doing things. Pretty much every aspect of the game was presented to our fans who did their best to tear it apart (fucking savages) and help us "think of everything".

10a. Are we seeing a trend towards simpler, less challenging RPGs that ‘hold the player’s hand’?

One of them rhetorical questions?

10b. Is Age of Decadence a rejection of this recent trend, or something else entirely?

Rejection is too strong a word to describe our design philosophy. The mainstream is going one way, we are going the other way. That's all there is to it.

11. You’re known for being quite outspoken – not afraid to call things as you see them. Some might say that this is needlessly confrontational towards people who might appreciate the type of game you make – is that an issue?

I don't think so. I don't see "being outspoken and calling things as I see them" as a bad thing. The gaming industry suffers, in my opinion, from too many politically correct people. A GameSpot editor who gave more than 10 years to the site was thrown out because he dared to have an opinion about Eidos' Kane & Lynch instead of writing a paid fucking commercial (aka, a review). How fucked up is that? GameSpot had basically acknowledged that their site is a publishers' outlet and unless you are really interested in what publishers happened to think about their own games, there is no real reason to visit the site. Everyone seems to be ok with that though.

Anyway, I'm well aware that what I say may offend someone. That's the downside of having an opinion, I suppose. However, I'm making a game not writing a complete collection of my opinions on various topics. If someone is unable to understand the difference, well, I don't think he or she would enjoy AoD.

12. If the option was ever presented to you – would you take up mainstream game development as a career, or stick with indie?

The option was presented to me, but I had to decline politely. I'm afraid that games I would like to make won't appeal to publishers who decide what mainstream developers should and shouldn't be working on. I'm not trying to say that all mainstream games are bad. Far from it. I greatly enjoyed Mask of the Betrayer. I'm looking forward to Dragon Age, Alpha Protocol, Diablo 3, and Divine Divinity 2. However, I also like a different type of games and since nobody else wants to make them, it's my duty to mankind. Ok, it's my duty to a few hundred geeks who happened to share my thoughts on RPGs. We can't abandon them, can we?

13. I’d ask about the release date, but we know “it will be done when it’s done” – anything planned for the waiting fans in the foreseeable future, though?

That's what the foreseeable future is for, isn't it?

Many thanks to Mr. Weller for the interview - and, possibly, providing the first RPG worth playing to death since 2004.