Going Rogue

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Written by BuckGB on August 6th, 2008

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Steven Peeler was a senior programmer at Ritual Entertainment. For him, leaving and forming the one-man studio Soldak Entertainment came down to a desire for creative freedom. "I really wanted to work on an RPG, and Ritual only made shooters," he says. "There were some annoying politics going on that was really frustrating, I disagreed with the direction the company was taking, I was really tired of pushy publishers and I just wanted to do my own thing."

Rampant Coyote: I assume you left the mainstream gig feeling like you had a handle on What it would take to make games on your own. Were there any aspects of indie game development took you by surprise? Were there any lessons you had to learn quickly?

Steven Peeler: Yeah, I would say I felt I had a good handle on creating a game on my own.

This didn't exactly surprise me, but there are a lot of non-game things you must do as an indie like setting up your business, taxes, creating a website, marketing, taxes, interacting with your customers, and more taxes. Did I mention taxes?

One thing that did surprise me is how hard it is too find good artists and level designers that actually have free time. I guess in retrospect this really shouldn't have surprised me. Most of the people I find either aren't very good, are already crunching (working more than full time) at a game company, or can't/won't work for royalties.

Another thing I have learned the hard way, RPGs are complex beasts especially when you go and add things like a dynamic world and opposing factions.

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