Inside Indie Games – Details, episodes & analysis

In this final episode of our second series, our panel of industry experts join us for one last time to give us their thoughts on what the future may hold for indie games development.

With continued uncertainty about what lies ahead in the months to come, and with small businesses feeling the brunt of the economic impact of the pandemic, our panel discuss the immediate effects of changes to working practices on their studios and the wider industry.

Wrapping up this season in the only fitting way, our expert panel share their thoughts on what indie dev in the UK may look like post-2020.

• Gina Jackson - Sold Out
• Paul Kilduff-Taylor - Mode 7
• Tara Reddy - LoveShark
• David Hamilton - Ninja Kiwi
• Stephanie Warwick - Jolly Good Games
• Shaz Yousaf - Honey Tribe Studios

Many thanks to all members of our panel for sharing their time and expert knowledge over the course of this season of Inside Indie Games. 

In this episode we're diving into the subject of building and managing an online community as the core of your audience. 

As game developers, securing engaged and passionate fans is confirmation of success. But your fans aren't just your customers, they're also your biggest marketers. Fans are the ultimate focus group for getting feedback, testing ideas, and developing new concepts. 

So how do we go about gaining and retaining those fans? How do we build that community around our game, and our brand? 

Should you consider hiring a dedicated community manager? And if so, how do you go about finding the right person for the job? 

Our expert panel join us once again to discuss this hot topic.

• Gina Jackson - Sold Out
• Paul Kilduff-Taylor - Mode 7
• Tara Reddy - LoveShark
• David Hamilton - Ninja Kiwi
• Stephanie Warwick - Jolly Good Games
• Shaz Yousaf - Honey Tribe Studios

Katie Nelson is one of the founders of Blueprint Games, the company behind the very fun 3D platformer ‘Billie Bust Up!’. 

Blueprint are a brilliant example of a real community driven platform. They have an engaged and vocal fanbase who they can rely on for constant and instant feedback around anything they’re working on. 

In this episode, we’re going to dive into that, and find out Katie’s tips and insights around growing and utilising a community around your creative projects! 

Olly Bennett is the CEO of Cardboard Sword - a game development studio based in the North East of England. 

Olly has worked in the games industry for over twelve years, across six companies, with roles in QA, Design, and Production. 

Before starting Cardboard Sword, he was associate producer on Sony’s LittleBigPlanet on PS Vita.

It was a redundancy that led to Olly and one of his former colleagues taking the leap to form Cardboard Sword. 

That was six years ago, and in the early days, they made the bulk of their money doing consultancy work for a range of clients. But, understandably, that was never going to be the company’s end goal.

Their marquee IP is The Siege and the Sandfox - a “2D stealth Metroidvania” game with a real nostalgic 16-bit look to it, albeit combined with some powerful modern tools and techniques.

Olly also runs Game Bridge in Middlesbrough, a monthly networking event and community for video game developers based in the North East.

Kirsty Rigden is the Development Director at FuturLab - an award-winning game studio based in Brighton. 

Kirsty’s been with the company since 2010. But her career in the industry began back in her university days, when she got a summer job testing games for the BBC. 

She went on to gain more experience, working as a tester for a mobile company called I-Play. Kirsty told me that this was in the days before the iPhone, and, as she put it, “before it was cool to make mobile phone games”. 

From game tester, she then progressed to the role of junior games designer at that same company. 

Kirsty then moved on to the position of Lead Designer at Cohort Games, before heading down to Brighton to work for Relentless, EA, and finally, to FuturLab. 

Helen Andrzejowska is one of the three founders of Ocean Spark Studios, a video game development company formed in late 2016, and based in Huddersfield, Yorkshire. 

Helen came from an art background, going on to study Video Game Development at the University of Huddersfield, where she met her two now business partners, Zach and Ellie. 

As we’ve heard so far in this series, some game development studios prefer to focus on a niche market, focusing on one particular area of making games, whilst others prefer to take a more all-rounder approach.  

So, did Helen herself decide to stick purely to the artistic side of things? 

In this episode, we'll also hear how championing diversity in the industry is central to the ethos of Ocean Spark as a company and how they're training the game developers of the future by delivering training workshops in schools!

Adam Boyne is the co-founder and technical lead of BetaJester. 

This Yorkshire-based games company were formed in 2015 by Adam, and two of his fellow graduates of the University of Hull, Ryan, and Josh. 

The trio’s original plan was to spend four or five years working at established game companies, before going on to launch their own. 

But the general advice they got from folks in the industry was “if you want to do this, why not just do it now?”

This was further reinforced when the university offered them a year’s free office space to help get them up and running.  

The opportunity to launch and grow a company without any initial rent or overheads was too good to turn down, and in June 2015, they arrived for their first day at work as full-time game developers. 

And, aside from starting the search for their first few clients, that also meant they could actually work on… developing a game! 

Adam explained that they just wanted to get something out there that had their own name on it. 

That game ended up being an Android title by the name of Geometrics. 

So, how did that first effort perform once it was released out there into the wild? 

Tom Beardsmore is the CEO and co-founder of Coatsink, a UK-based game development studio and publisher. 

Coatsink were formed in 2009, but Tom has actually known his co-founder Paul Crabb since they were about 12 years old. Today, Coatsink has grown into a company with almost 70 employees, and work on a number of impressive projects, including developing their own IP for Oculus studios. 

We’ve talked a lot so far this season about whether or not to specialise in one particular area of making games. 

Well, in this episode we’re speaking to John Evelyn. He’s the creator of an entirely hand-drawn first-person adventure game called Collage Atlas. And as you’ll find out he wears many – if not all - of the hats on the project. 

John’s “one-man-band” approach is fairly uncommon these days. And perhaps it can be traced back to one of his tutors at university who essentially advised him to become a Jack of All Trades. 

He was studying a media course at the time and later went on to work on a number of marketing film campaigns, doing things like graphic design, coding, and digital design. 

But a serious illness made John re-evaluate his priorities, and he decided to throw himself into his main passion of making games the moment he was discharged from hospital.  

I was still curious to find out why he thought his tutor gave him that advice though. Why didn’t he recommend that John specialise and try to become a master of one particular area? 

In this episode we’ll hear from Gary Burchell of Fireblade Software. 

Fireblade Software is the creator of Abandon Ship - a single-player PC game which lets the player take command of a ship and her crew. The game hit the giddy heights of fourth in the Steam Global Top Sellers chart on the night of its release, and I definitely wanted to find out more about what went into that. 

But Gary has experience on both sides of the fence in this industry. Before forming his own indie studio, he spent 13 years at Climax Studios, where he worked his way up to the role of Executive Producer. 

I was curious to hear his thoughts on how things have changed over the years. Particularly, for graduates who are looking to break into the industry by getting their first jobs.