- Man, that did not help at all.
There's a lot of discussion about
what indie is and what it's not.
Compulsion going from
six people to forty people,
a lot would say
that's too many people to be indie.
And I have so much respect for
how they're handling it.
Yeah, we are in snowy Montreal.
First thing we did was
go to Compulsion Games,
where we spoke to the studio head, Gi, Ji?
Gi, Ji, how do you?
Guillaume.
No, but it's with L's, isn't it?
- Yeah, that's how you spell it.
- That's how you spell it, but you pronounce it Guillaume.
- That's ****** up.
- I would say he's extremely serious
about running the studio.
I don't know if he's always been like that,
but knowing that they grew
from six to forty people in two years,
I can see how he made that possible.
- We had to punch a hole in the wall
because we were running out of space.
So we had a little bit an
overflow area down here.
- Forty people, that's a lot.
- Yeah, it is a lot.
We got a lot of media attention at E3.
And the game exploded.
- Guillaume.
- There was about five or six thousand
people in the audience.
There's big, blaring lights,
there's millions of people watching online.
I can't say I dreamed of it before,
because I never thought it would happen.
In the context of an independent studio,
that's a pretty big deal.
- Have you forgotten your joy?
- When I was a teenager, I wanted to
work in the games industry.
But there was nothing in Montreal
at that time.
Actually that's the funny part
of my story is I,
when I came back to Montreal,
it was like a completely different landscape.
We had all these big studios,
there was Warner Bros, Square Enix,
Electronic Arts, Ubisoft has,
today they have 3700 people
in this city alone.
There wasn't any real
independent game development
that was happening.
Until, you know, Steam just took off.
- That's the moment where you jumped in.
- That's the moment where I jumped in.
- Do you think that
the scene here in Montreal,
the indie scene, would've grown
even without all these big studios?
- No.
- Okay, I'm gonna ask a really stupid question.
You're not ready for this. - Here it comes.
- What are indie games?
What is indie?
- Nope, nope.
The conversation with Kitfox and Ko_Op,
I think it's a great reflection of
the kinds of conversations I have with indies all the time.
Ko_Op has seen a lot of success
with GNOG,
Kitfox has seen a lot of success with
multiple of their games.
A lot of people are very hyped
about their new one.
It really felt like just hanging out
with some friends, you know?
- I don't know, like,
making games sucks, honestly,
in my opinion,
so when you're doing it by yourself,
it can get really draining.
And it's really, really nice
to be surrounded by people that you love
that are going through the same thing,
that can understand
what you're struggling through.
And for me, Kitfox is like
one of the only studios
that I could imagine us being
together in an office.
- We were in the Gameplay Space,
which is a much bigger coworking space.
There's like maybe 20 studios there.
So we weren't feeling isolated.
That was not the reason.
- I think the fact that we sort of both make
similarly hard to categorize kind of games,
I think that sort of works to bring us together
in that way, just because
there's a lot of companies I think that sort of
drive for what the market is asking for.
- Are there many studios here in Montreal
that make more
market-driven kind of games?
- I think what's a big drive in
the Montreal professional indie game scene
is that there's so many AAA companies here,
and there's so many ex-AAA people
that are taking a lot of their
expertise from that environment
and applying it to making
higher budget indie games,
which is super cool.
- Do they mix well with the art indies
that are in the scene?
- I feel like, yeah, that's maybe
a false dichotomy.
I think the spectrum is pretty continuous.
- I really appreciate this type of community,
and this sharing of experience
and knowledge.
It's very beneficial, and I'm glad that
we're here in Montreal, because
that happens a lot here.
- I can email almost any indie studio,
even if I've never spoken to them and be like,
Hey, can you help me out?
and they'll say yes.
I've never been turned down in that way.
- Yeah, that's very cool.
Do you guys think it's easier to
make a living here in Montreal
as a game developer
than other cities around the world?
- Rent is dirt cheap.
That is I think one of the biggest things.
Like, the reason we had a really
shady studio previously
was because, you know, the rent was cheap,
and it's just like, there are a lot of
situations like that in Montreal.
- Montreal has this perfect storm of
low rent,
cheap cost of living,
food is affordable,
there's tax credits,
and then there's government funding.
And also, we have healthcare,
which goes a long way.
So, all of those together I think
allow people to take more risks
and more chances to make the art
that they wanna make.
- Whoa, yeah.
I don't think you ever truly
finish a game, these days.
We're almost like a year after release now,
and still I can easily fill
a full time job with
everything that has to happen
for Hidden Folks, easily.
There's still bugs to fix,
and there's still support.
Actually holy ****, that's so much work.
Doing that by myself,
it can definitely be...
be hard work, yes.
Fortunately, you know,
now that the game is doing so well,
we can hire some people
to offload some of my work to them.
Because yeah, a lot of people
are just waiting for more.
So, we're gonna do that.
So, okay, you come up with the idea
and it slowly starts growing.
Where does it go next for you guys?
- We looked at what is the pathway where we can
involve the community in our game?
Early Access was just starting,
the first titles were coming out,
and for both Whitney and I,
it was a bit terrifying 'cause
we like to show finished things that
are perfect.
Of course they're never perfect.
- Yeah, it was definitely an interesting insight
into how people respond to games, I guess.
And how they care
so deeply about the developers.
People are so interested in that
side of the industry,
and so I think that was really cool
to kinda feel like you had
this connection to people,
who were excited about what you were doing.
Figuring out what things
do they want to be surprised with,
versus what things do they
wanna be part of the process.
I think once we made those distinctions,
then it's been a good thing.
- We had no idea how
the public was going to react.
I think that's the case every time
you first announce or show something.
The reaction of people was
not just positive,
it was positive and
I'm expecting this game to be
way bigger than, you know, our team is.
Whitney lands me in trouble because
she makes things look really beautiful,
and amazing--
- And big.
- Well, not automatically big,
but people's minds go,
It's a big game!
- But yeah, that sets you up to--
- High expectation.
- Yeah, for high expectations,
which is good, but it's also scary.
- Yeah, it's also scary.
So, those high expectations
led to a point
where you were like,
We need to think about this
in a whole different way.
- Well, that happened several times
over the course of the project,
so we just try our darned best
to make sure that what comes out is
something that is at the level of expectations
that people have.
- One of the biggest takeaways from Compulsion
was that they still want to be indie.
They have a vision for the game.
They want to put personality into the game.
They want to make an indie game.
It's just that they have to do it
with a lot more people now.
And that just comes with a lot of challenges.
But that does not make them less indie.
What do you consider
the biggest challenges?
- Right now it's that we are
trying to grow as a studio.
Tackling bigger problems,
bigger scope in our games,
and two games at the same time.
We're gonna hire more people,
and it's gonna be riskier.
But also, at the same time,
we don't need to put
all of our eggs in the same basket.
- Our challenge so far has been
how do we express ourselves
and make the games that we really believe in
and survive while doing that.
With each project that we make,
it's how willing are we to meet players,
and how willing are we to just, like,
express ourselves.
I think when we first started, it was extremely one-sided.
We're just like,
we're making games for ourselves,
and there's hopefully enough people
that are like us
that will seek it out.
And I think as we've grown as artists,
we've kind of understood that
it's actually much more of a two way street.
We have to gently lead people
into that experience.
- It's very attractive to come and work here
in Montreal to make games.
Cheap sounds great,
and also this whole mix of
AAA and indie
and how involved everyone is in the community.
It sounds fantastic!
But the weather here.
That is just, like, not my thing at all!
I did expect there to be a
us versus them.
Like, indies versus AAA, but that
was not at all the case.
It seems like they really do find
a common ground in that
we make games and we're proud of this,
and we can help each other out.
I mean, I was surprised, but it makes sense.
It's awesome.
- Kinda wanted to work together for our whole lives,
and we made some weird movies
when we were little kids,
coated him in barbecue sauce
for a murder scene,
and a neighborhood dog attacked him,
and that was the last time
we worked together before Oxenfree.
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