Interview with Steven Peeler

Depth of Peril (2007)

This week I had a chance to talk with Steven Peeler from Soldak Entertainment, Inc., the creator behind Depth of Peril and Kivi's Underworld.  You can learn more about Steven and Soldak Entertainment, Inc. by following the links after the interview.

How did you first become involved in the video game industry?

 Creating games was basically a hobby of mine through much of high school and college. I learned way more about programming by creating games than I ever did in school. Then after college, I started up a small indie studio with another programmer friend. Ultimately that didn’t work out very well and we both ended up getting jobs in the industry. He went to Looking Glass and I went to Ritual entertainment.

Depth of Peril was named RPG Game of the Year for 2007 by GameTunnel. What do you believe was the key to the game's success?

 I believe the key to Depths of Peril’s success is that it is different from other action RPGs. Most action RPGs are pretty much clones of Diablo. DoP on the other hand has warring barbarian factions that adds a lot of strategic gameplay, and also has a very dynamic world. With both of these features combined, the game is always different even if you play through it many times.

Kivi's Underworld was another highly successful game that featured a unique story. Where do you get the ideas for your stories?

 Our writer Delilah (who happens to be my wife) and I usually work together on the broad story ideas. Our ideas can come from just about anywhere. There sure isn’t any one source. Between the two of us we watch lots of movies, play a bunch of games, and read tons of books. So a story idea might be inspired from any of these or it might be pieces combined from many different sources.

Your newest game, Din's Curse, is supposed to have feature some unique game-play elements from dynamic generated towns to real consequences, can you elaborate on these features and how you plan on implementing them?

 Well first off the world is randomly generated. Each town you are to save has completely different problems (quests) that need to be solved and has different NPCs. The dungeons below the towns are also highly random. There are many dungeon and cave types, but even within the same type the layout will be unique each time. Within the dungeons the items, monsters, and objects are also placed randomly. Even the world itself has a different skew each time. One world might have lots of undead and the next might have lots of treasure. We want every single game to be unique. You will see many of the same elements here and there of course, but we want the mix to be fresh and different each time. One of my overall goals for Din’s Curse is to have a game that can surprise me even though I know about all of the individual pieces.

After the world is setup, it is still very dynamic. Things will progress depending on what the player does or doesn’t do, what the NPCs do, and what the monsters do. This leads to real consequences.

I like having actual consequences for the choices you make. If there is no consequence, then it isn’t really a choice. Should you save Gwen who has been kidnapped or deal with the Orc uprising first? In most games it doesn’t really matter either way. In Din’s Curse, if you deal with the uprising first, Gwen might die. If you save Gwen, the Orcs might start a war or raid the town. Of course if you are good, you might very well save Gwen and quell the uprising before anything worse happens.

Most of these things already work so we are past the planning phase. We are, however, constantly adding more pieces to provide more and more variety.

Kivi's Underworld (2008)

What are your future plans for Soldak Entertainment, Inc.?

 My future plans are to stay in business. It’s difficult for indie game companies to get enough attention to sell enough games to stay afloat as a business. Past that though, we are going to keep making cool, unique games, ones that you can’t find anything else quite like them. Eventually, it’d be nice to expand to consoles.

What are some problems or obstacles you have faced that larger studios do not usually face and how did you conquer them?

 I think the biggest problem for indies that larger dev studios don’t face is marketing. All games pretty much need a good marketing push or no one will ever hear about them. Many (not all) larger dev studios have publishers that do most of this for them. They don’t really think about this piece of the puzzle as much. Indies don’t have this luxury. I’m pretty sure I haven’t conquered this problem yet, but I do try to be very open with the press and interact with the community as much as possible. Basically I try to give people a reason to come over and take a look at our cool games as often as I can.

What do you believe to be the major differences in game creation between small/indie studios as opposed to larger and more established game studios?

 Small indies have a lot more freedom to do whatever they want. They can try new things, they can target niches, and they can bring back ideas that big studios can’t do. If a game is projected to make $200,000 in revenue, a big studio can’t make that game because it will lose them money. Even if they could break even, that might only be a week or two of their burn rate, so it’s an irrelevant amount of money. However, to a small indie team, that can be a lot of profit.

How has the video game industry changed over the years since you first entered into it?

 A lot has changed since I’ve entered into the industry, but that’s not surprising considering it was over a decade ago. Consoles are much more dominate than they used to be. Casual games have exploded on to the scene. Games on mobile phones have grown a lot, especially the iPhone. Web games are a huge market now, especially social games on Facebook (which amuses me since a lot of them are exactly like BBS games). MMOs have come a long way. When I started at Ritual I believe the only well know MMO was Ultima Online. Oh, and there are now women who play games. Games are no longer just for single, young males!

What do you believe to be the biggest change?

 Biggest is always hard to determine because it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between a trend and a fad. One of the things that’s definitely not a fad is the flood of female gamers. There have always been women gamers but they were few and far between. Now there are a ton of them and they’re changing the landscape, and I mean this in a good way. Because women and men’s tastes typically differ, we are getting more variety in games. Women are a big driver of casual and social games.

Where do you see the industry in five years?

 I personally don’t look that far in the future. I just try to build a solid foundation and be flexible enough to adapt to change. However, in five years we are going to be in the midst of another console war. The interesting thing to me- are all of the console makers going to learn their lessons? Is Nintendo ever going to come out with a decent online solution to compete with Xbox Live? Is Sony going to release a console that developers actually like to work with? Is Microsoft going to release a box that doesn’t break within a year? And finally is someone else, like Apple, going to sweep in and become a major player in the next war?

Depth of Peril (2007)

What part of creating a video game do you enjoy the most?

 Well I love doing things that are different. I’m very proud of the fact that both Depths of Peril and Kivi’s Underworld fit into the action RPG subgenre, but there really isn’t anything like either one of them. There are other things I enjoy, but I think it actually varies from project to project. Lately I’ve mostly been enjoying system design and polishing. With system design I get to add cool elements and figure out how they work together. There is just something fun about creating building blocks of a dynamic world. As for the polishing, I just enjoy play testing and making things progressively better and better. It’s very rewarding.

What other video games or game developers do you admire or respect and why?

 I admire and respect a lot of other game developers. Just a few off the top of my head are Cliffski, Will Wright, and Blizzard. Cliffski (real name Cliff Harris) runs Positech Games and is a great example of an indie who creates the games he wants and is successful. Will Wright only created one of the biggest games of all time with The Sims. I’m not personally a fan of The Sims, but Will went against the trend of the industry and made a hit game that women are much more likely to enjoy. Blizzard isn’t an individual of course, but I respect a company that is wise enough to polish their products until they’re just plain awesome. Blizzard products are pretty much an automatic purchase from me. I don’t think I do this for any other company.

What do you enjoy doing when not working on video games?

 When not working, I like to watch movies, read lots of books, play games, and go hiking. Although that last one is kind of hard in Dallas, TX.

If you were not making games for a living, what other profession would you like to be in?

 I’m actually not sure. I really don’t think about it because I never really question if I’m in the right industry or not. I guess if I wasn’t in games I would likely be programming something boring and making a whole lot more money.