Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!
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Today I bring to you something different from indy game scene. I was able to conduct a short interview with Butterscotch Shenanigans. You can find more about their games at: https://www.bscotch.net/ . The Bscctoch bros have created several games that reach different platforms. Their biggest launches are Crashlands and Level Head. They have a very active community and are very insightful on the video game process. Since they have made several mobile games I was able to contact them about a few comments on the industry.
Adam Coster was kind enough to answer the questions I submitted to him.
Now onto the Interview.
Why mobile games?
When Sam and Seth (my brothers and co-founders) started making games we had no idea what we were doing. Not in the self-deprecating sense, in the literal sense: they knew anything about the industry (besides what a decently-informed player would know), they were not artists, programmers, or designers... Looking around at the industry at the time (2012), they thought that the mobile market would have the lowest barrier to entry, would allow smaller games, and would be more forgiving with respect to quality. At that time Steam's doors were just opening with Green Light, but they were open just a sliver. Consoles were very hard to get in on. Mobile was the only market you could just put your stuff on without gatekeeping, and Sam and Seth thought they could make something that could compete for quality in that market. So they figured they'd learn about making games, and how to sell them, in the context of mobile. That would allow them room to experiment, using lower-cost short-term development cycles, to figure out if they could make it work. Their first game, Towelfight 2, lost money but was well-received by those who played it (they even got some press coverage, which is unthinkable in today's market). So they saw they could make something that people would like, at least on mobile. They had enough runway for one more try, and so they made Quadropus Rampage. And Quadropus Rampage took off! It made just enough money that Sam and Seth felt that they could keep going, and it demonstrated that the strategy of starting on mobile made sense.
They never set out specifically to make mobile games, that's just where they thought they could compete. The goal was always to bootstrap their way to bigger and better titles, create a proven track record of capably building beloved titles, use that to get industry contacts, and eventually knock down the console and PC gates to make games for those markets. This ended up working out, through a combination of hard work, taking the right paths, and getting just plain lucky. We now think of ourselves as a cross-platform studio, and try to make games that feel at home on every form factor. We believe that this strategy is required for long-term success, because the game market changes constantly. By being able to put our games anywhere, we can move with the market.
If we were to start today, using the same strategy we took in 2012, it's extremely unlikely we'd have made it.
Is dropping work wasteful?
We do all of our design and development in a highly iterative manner (basically a requirement for us since we all have ADHD). So we throw work away constantly. As many great writers will tell you, a lot of what makes something good is what you've taken away.
We've been practicing conscious awareness of the Sunk Cost Fallacy [Author provided link for definition] for our entire time working together, and we do all of our work with a lot of collaboration. The end result is that we usually get to throw things away at the idea stage instead of at the much-more-costly dev stage, but we still happily throw stuff away then, too. It can be a bummer sometimes, but it usually isn't because any work you do (assuming you do it well and with intention) still created positive change. You got to hone your craft and try new things, and if it wasn't for that thing that you threw away you probably wouldn't have discovered the better thing you did instead!
Advice for entering the industry
In general, don't listen to the advice given by people in the industry. If they're in a position to advise, it's because they've been around long enough to be treated as an expert. If they've been around for more than a few years, what enabled them to enter the industry almost definitely will not work for someone new, because the industry changes rapidly. As importantly, you only hear stories from people who are still around. How many people did exactly the same thing but didn't make it? You don't hear from them. (This is the Survivorship Bias problem.)
That said, here's some evergreen advice:
- Never sign a contract without understanding it. Contracts are always negotiable, and you should always negotiate. In the beginning, you won't have a ton of leverage, but you should at least make sure you aren't getting yourself into a dangerous future problem. The publishing side of the games industry, especially for indies, is notoriously exploitative.
- If you want to do this for a living then making games can't be the actual goal. The goal has to be selling games. That's a two-parter: making games that you think can be successful in the market and knowing that making those games is just how you get your foot in the door for doing business. If you want to make games for the love of making games, you'll be happier doing so as a hobby. If you want to make games for a living, you have to treat games for what they are in the context: products. That doesn't mean you can't make things you like, but you do have to let that take a backseat to what you can sell.
- You have to accept the reality that the games industry is extremely risky. It pays worse than similar jobs in other industries, with less stability. The market changes constantly and wildly. Making games is a model of the all-your-eggs-in-on-basket idea: you'll spend months to years making a single thing, and then launch it without any idea of how well it'll do. And most games do not do well.
- Deeply evaluate the why of entering the industry. What are your goals? Figure them out explicitly. Then do as much research as you can about how and if those goals can be reached in the industry. For example, there are far more people who dream of being a game designer than there are jobs for that, and being a great game designer is far more challenging and requires much more breadth of knowledge than someone would think from the outside.
I want to give a special thank you to the Bscotch bros for taking time away from Crashlands 2 Development to answer these questions. You can visit Bscotch.net to find out more or join thier discord. I've been a long time fan of this indy company and I await what comes out of Crashlands 2.
Are you an indy programmer or game dev?
If so, you can leave a comment or contact me on social media for a chance to have an interview with you posted to my blog. I am looking for many devs that focus on mobile programming. If you have a cross-platform game, that is fine too as long as it's on mobile.
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