AMA #15: Joakim “konjak” Sandberg, Indie Developer

konjak

Hello, all

Livio

We’re starting now! Please join the #AMA-Voice channel. EDIT: nevermind, we’re doing text only

konjak

oh, voice?

Livio

or not hehe

we can do text only if you prefer

konjak

hah, i wasn’t prepared for voice right now

Livio

sure no problem. We do text AMAs all the time

Ok

Brandon Anderson

I’m at work, so I can’t really participate but I’m very excited to see what you have to say! Thanks for coming, your game looks amazing

Livio

Let’s get started! I usually ask speakers to start by doing a little self-introduction. Just say a few things about what you do, what you’ve worked on lately, etc

konjak

I am Joakim Sandberg, also knows as “konjak”, I’ve made games like Noitu Love 2, and Legend of princess. But most recently I released Iconoclasts on PC and Playstation platforms. Making games on my own is pretty much what I’ve always been up to!

Livio

When did you first start making games?

almost forgot: @here we’re starting the AMA

konjak

I must’ve started when I was around 13 years old, in programs made by Clickteam. I had always wanted to be able to create a game on my own, however. This seemed like an easier in.

Brandon Anderson

As a sole developer, what area of game dev gives you the biggest headache?

konjak

Turns out to be cutscenes. They would very often have issues, and after a few years on one game, when cutscenes had issues it felt like I was spending hours on an aspect that wasn’t the actual action gameplay part.

you question a lot about yourself sometimes when a game takes that long, alone, hah

Livio

How do you handle the costs of solo projects?

Brandon Anderson

Have you contracted out art or music before? Or is it all you?

Livio

clarification: by costs I mean, how do you get paid when a project takes so long

konjak

It’s all me.

I spent a long time earning money with animation freelance, but toward the end I had a distribution publisher willing to give me funds until the end, which was nice. I don’t have fantastic tips to make that happen, I just happened to know a person who was involved with that new company. But it got me to the finish.

Brandon Anderson

That’s so awesome!

Livio

Did you go to school for any particula skill, either animation, art, coding?

esarkis

First: thank you for being here!
Second: what’s something you would change about your solo development process, something you wish you had started doing or had done when beginning Iconoclasts development?

konjak

Some days I wanted to have done more smaller games during the timespan. But going solo is still something I’d consider. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a control freak or not, but I haven’t lost the will to do that. I will consider teams for bigger things in the future, though, hah.

I have no education in anything I ended up doing

just practice

Livio

do you have any friends or mentors in the industry who you feel helped you improve your skills? Or even just people whose work you admire that affected your work?

esarkis

Thanks! For after Livio’s question: any tips (technical, psychological, or other) you would give to someone starting a solo project with a long expected development time?

konjak

I’ve had friends tell me in the past good tricks, as well as just trying things out for myself until things work. A friend taught me how to do good collision a long time ago and it’s still how I do it.

Working on something long-time, it’ll help you a lot to not let the project come before the people in your life. Also, if you can, absolutely make sure you can afford it. Don’t quit jobs before something is there, working.

esarkis

Fair enough

Livio

Have literally all of your projects been solo? Any projects, even jam projects, that were with teams?

konjak

Pretty much. I tried team-ups sometimes but they didn’t usually finish, for various reasons. I finished one but it was because it was like a week-long thing, nothing special.

Livio

Every time I work with another person I feel like I get exposed to new ways of doing things that I haven’t thought of before. I can imagine missing those moments on a long solo project. But in a way, a long solo project also sounds like a thriathalon, like a really impressive personal challenge to tackle.

yeah if it’s not a serious project, that tends to be the expected outcome hehe

esarkis

How was your experience with your distribution publisher? Did they provide additional support for things like obtaining certifications to be on PS4/Vita? Things you’d look for in a publisher in future projects?

Livio

Isn’t the PS dev kit really expensive? It’d be nice if a publisher covered that cost for you.

konjak

I’m sure there are many negatives to going solo. It’s just who I am I suppose, hah

yeah the publisher that joined later did all that

also funded the porting guy from MP2 Games. Very talented at ports.

Yeah, the publisher is the reason the game is anywhere other than Windows

Livio

That’s great. I hear these days it’s usually more economical to hire a dedicated porting company than it is to do the port in-house

esarkis

That’s good to hear. One of the things that intimates me starting an indie project that would be shipping onto a non-Windows platform is that whole process

Before publisher involvement did you look for people who could offer port services or just focus on Windows?

konjak

i was kind of losing motivation before that happened, wondering if I should do something smaller, but then that all happened

Livio

Have you ever taken a break from a project in order to deal with that kind of long-project fatigue?

gatekid3

Given how story and character driven Iconoclasts is, is there any advice you would give for crafting a good story?

konjak

i did some prototypes during development, yeah, but didn’t finish side-things

Oh, I felt I had no real idea when doing that story, I just had established characters and story beats they needed to hit. I probably wouldn’t recommend that if you’re not solo, I could do that because it was always gonna be my output. I feel it worked out, and became a good expression of me. For better or worse?

Livio

I can see that

esarkis

That’s interesting! So, how did development accomodate that kind of self expression? I often hear that even solo it’s best to have story nailed down from the very beginning, but then you’re stuck adhering exactly with what you started with

Because it can be potentially very demanding to make even small changes to story after a point

Livio

When you’re building a story-based game, after while you just focus on making sure the planned story is built and that it actually happens, not so much spending as much time rethinking and rewriting the story

Yeah, like Elisha’s question: have you ever made tweaks to the story based on how it was coming out in the game, or even just playtesting?

konjak

If I wrote a script it’d be much easier to write too much. Writing isn’t easy, but it’s easy to write a lot. I feel I would’ve either been still working on the game, or had to cut constantly to finish, if I had a script.

story changes happened as i felt it made sense

esarkis

That sounds more rewarding than the alternative. Guess it provided moments of mid-development creativity to look forward to, as opposed to just following the set plan? Or worse just copying and pasting from a spreadsheet

Livio

Do you ever look at your past games and cringe

konjak

always do

esarkis

Hindsight is always 20/20. Finishing something, even if it ends up bad, tends to be one of the most important things for overall success, no?

Livio

What are you next career goals? Is there a game in mind that you want to work on next?

konjak

I have an idea for something small, I hope to toy with that soon, but there’s still old work to be done for a while

Livio

Is that work mainly related to supporting Iconoclasts’ release?

konjak

Of course. After any game you try to sell follows even more months of work. Fixing things, maybe continued content.

Livio

We have two minutes left, any last questions?

Flamegeyser

You said Iconoclasts was heavily inspired by Metroid Fusion, what other influences went into making the game?

konjak

moreso Monster World 4. If you’re surprised by the structure of Iconoclasts having so much platform puzzling, it’s because of that game.

Flawed but charming

Flamegeyser

Interesting! Thanks for the reply

Livio

nice

alright time’s up. Thanks so much @konjak for joining us today. 😃

And good luck with your latest release!

konjak

Thank you! And good luck to the rest of you.