The Design Behind the artistic games Closure and Aether

Tyler talks about developing the game “Closure” and Aether

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/closure-game-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]M9ubvxvT6_g[/wp_youtube]

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Tyler: I’m Tyler Glaiel and I’m an 18-year-old flash game developer.

Interviewer: What kind of flash games have you made?

Tyler: My two most recent are Aether and Closure which are both more artistic games and not really time wasters.

Interviewer: You said that you do these games alone. Have you tried to work on a team, or how does that work?

Tyler: I’ve worked with artists. Like, usually it’s me and an artist. It works out that way because then I get to have a fairly large degree of creative control over what I do, and I get to have a feeling of accomplishment when I actually do something.

Interviewer: Are these artists done remotely, or is it in person that you work with them?

Tyler: I have not yet worked with an artist in person. It’s all been online.

Interviewer: How did you get started in making flash games?

Tyler: I started in middle school because it was an easy way to also play around with making games even though the first ones that I made were fairly rudimentary. It’s up on my site, too; also called Pigeon Bird.

Interviewer: What’s your site?

Tyler: It’s glaielgames.com. It’s g-l-a-i-e-l games.com.

Interviewer: And so you started out, and then after that when did you decide to actually release them on the web or on Newgrounds or any of these other sites?

Tyler: Probably around the start of high school, I felt like sharing what I’d made with everyone else. It sort of jump started my ability to improve what I was doing.

Interviewer: So, you released it. What was the benefit then of releasing it compared to just…

Tyler: The benefit was I got a lot of instant feedback, so it really told me what I was doing wrong, what I was doing right and basically from there it just shot up, and I was able to improve what I was doing much faster than I was just showing it to my friends.

Interviewer: So, you get the feedback. Did you improve the game that you got feedback on, or did you make another game based on the feedback or what?

Tyler: I made completely different games, basically. I rarely do sequels.

Interviewer: How many games then did you release after that?

Tyler: A lot, like 45 probably.

Interviewer: Wow.

Tyler: Not all of them are big or anything.

Interviewer: Sure. And when you released them, did you just try to get sponsorship or release them on Newgrounds or how did that work?

Tyler: I got sponsorships on a bunch of the bigger ones, probably about 10 or so total.

Interviewer: How did it feel then getting paid doing games in high school?

Tyler: It was really nice. I didn’t have to get a job at KFC or McDonalds.

Interviewer: Awesome. Did you ever think of then opening your own studio or trying to sell your games directly instead of sponsorship?

Tyler: I’m working on that right now.

Interviewer: Cool. Are you thinking of getting another partner, or do you like working alone or what?

Tyler: I like working independently. I don’t mind working with an artist but I figure there’s no real [inaudible].

Interviewer: Well, you talk about flash games but what types of flash games? Do you go from genre to genre now since you have that time and ability to experiment?

Tyler: Yeah, I jump all across genres. I kind of lately have been doing a little bit more artistic endeavors like Aether and Closure which both have meaning beyond the game and are pretty atypical for flash games.

Interviewer: Can you talk about that more, and what inspired those games?

Tyler: Aether was Edmund McMillan’s idea. He pitched it to me over the summer and finished it in two weeks, so that was sort of like the start. Right after I finished playing Brain which was another Xbox game which was very artistic. It kind of inspired me to do something different.

And then, Closure was my own design which… I wasn’t really advertising the fact that it was meant to be artistic. I tried to pitch it as more of like a puzzle game, just so more people could get into it and not really care about the whole story or anything because I wanted other people to play it and other people to be able to understand it as opposed to just being artsy and pretentious about it.

Interviewer: What’s next then for you and your flash games?

Tyler: I’m taking the two that I made most recently, Aether and Closure, and I’m working on Closure right now outside of flash to get it to run faster, to get it to be more interesting and bigger. And I think Edmund and I are going to work on taking Aether and expanding upon that in the coming year.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.

Tyler: You’re welcome.