Indie Flash Developer Discusses The Changes He Made To Develop A Hit Game

Andy, developer of Steam Birds, talks about how he transformed a below-average flash game into a success

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

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]9p6MwHRucuo[/wp_youtube]

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at Casual Connect in Seattle, and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Andy: Hey, I’m Andy Moore. I made Steam Birds. I’m just incorporating my company, RadioGames. SteamBirds, I guess, is the big title. I slightly helped Colin Northway on Fantastic Contraption a few years ago and a few other flops in between.

Interviewer: Sure. What’s SteamBirds about?

Andy: All right. Well, SteamBirds is a top down, turn-based action dog fighting game. So, it’s a bit of a unique genre in that sense. I really just felt that the flash market didn’t have any turn-based games in it. So, I really wanted to bring that back because it seems like the kids these days haven’t played on all the portals and everything. They haven’t even heard of turn-based games.

Actually, when I was making SteamBirds, not to jump ahead of it too quickly, but in the play testing a big complaint was people didn’t understand what turn-based meant. They actually sent me complaints, saying, “The planes aren’t moving. Why?”

Interviewer: Is it multi-player then, or are you turn-based against the computer?

Andy: So, it’s AI turn-based against the computer. It’s a single player experience. So, I guess, a mistake a lot of developers make is they spend six, seven, eight, nine months on their dream game. And the core mechanic, though they love it, doesn’t resonate with the public. I’d made that mistake myself with a title, Protonaut, where I loved it, but it didn’t resonate with the crowd.

Interviewer: When did you realize it didn’t resonate with the crowd? Let’s talk about some of the mistakes that people learn from.

Andy: Oh, yeah, yeah. OK. Well, like Protonaut. It’s a platforming puzzle game. It was just launched in our games last week, after SteamBirds, actually. It was a game I spent a lot of time on and collaborated with Greg Wohlwend mainly from Intuition Games. It was a game where I really believed in it, and I think it had legs. But, when I exposed it to the public, people just disagreed with me and that’s fine, that’s fair.

Interviewer: Did you also get user testing to see, maybe, it was something else in the game?

Andy: Yes. See, that was my problem. I didn’t do enough user testing with Protonaut. I did hardly any, in fact. I did user testing with my friends, and I did it with my family. But, I never took it to a critical external source. That was one of the biggest mistakes I made with Protonaut. That’s one of the mistakes I decided to eradicate in SteamBirds.

Interviewer: OK.

Andy: Yeah. And I made a bunch of other mistakes. The long development time alone was a very stupid mistake. Why spend four, five, six months developing a game when I don’t even know if it’s going to work?

Interviewer: So, if you had to do it over again, you would have, maybe, pushed it out two or three weeks in and then see what happened.

Andy: Yeah, exactly, exactly. When I started SteamBirds, that’s exactly what I did. SteamBirds, the core game mechanic, is just moving your plane around on the screen and it flies in return. That’s it. It’s really, really simple. I actually had that finished in one weekend. So, two days of development and it was done.

I then got an artist on board and music art on board, and then we spent about a month full-time working and polishing that core mechanic with no future advancement. We didn’t iterate on that. We didn’t make it into a big thing.

Interviewer: Well, even while you’re doing that, did you actually get users to play the original mechanic to just start seeing what’s going on, or did you feel that it needed to be polished before you got the feedback?

Andy: Well, like, the first two days we had no feedback. It was just me, slammed it out. The following month, the polish phase was entirely user tested. Everything was user tested. I spent cash money hiring user testers.

Interviewer: Can you talk about how you found these user testers? I think that this is something that people aren’t used to, but maybe you go on Craigslist and stuff like that. How did you find these people?

Andy: Well, I actually reached out to a lot of people, a lot of social networking sites. I sent out requests on Twitter, like, I didn’t just link the game. I fed it to my contacts and stuff. And I got my friends to invite their friends and their friends and, you know, like that kind of stuff.

Probably, the biggest source was the website, FlashGameLicense.com. They have a service called First Impression, and it’s one dollar for First Impression. And for the majority and you get a whole bunch of freebies and stuff, but generally one dollar for First Impression.

What they’ll give you is they’ll force a random person to play your game for five minutes and write a review on it which is gold, I guess, so gold. And the only qualification this user needs to have is they have to know how to use the mouse and keyboard.

Interviewer: Awesome.

Andy: They’re all ages, all over the globe. Like, they’re some people from China, don’t even read English and they’re reviewing the game. It’s like this amazing service. So, I spent hundreds of dollars on that getting user test, user test, user test, user test, and that experience redesigned most of the game, like the way it’s presented, the UI. The tutorial in particular was completely redesigned from scratch four times due to user testing.

Interviewer: So, did you see a progression of improvement as you were doing this and iterating? Can you talk about that? Can you talk about the difference in terms of comments initially versus comments towards the end?

Andy: Yeah. Definitely. So, in this First Impression service in particular, people were given slots to give feedback on, like, graphic, sound, game play, all that kind of stuff. But, they can also rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 or whatever, and it gives you an aggregate score at the end.

So, when I first submitted the game for about 20 reviews or so, it got an average score of a 4 out of 10. But, it was a really rough copy of the game, very early copy of the game. We made it our target right from the get go to get it up to about 7.5 or 8. And I think we got 7.3 or something in the end.

But, it went through four or five rounds of testing and it slowly inched up each time. And we addressed each user concern, and we didn’t react. I think a big mistake is the knee jerk reaction to a response They’re like, “One of my complaints was your tutorial’s confusing. I was pounding the up arrow on my keyboard, and the planes weren’t moving forward. Your game’s stupid. It sucks.”

Now, a knee jerk reaction may be, well, make the up arrow, make the plane go forward. Well, no, I actually got to the core of the issue which was the customer wasn’t understanding the core game play. So, I actually redesigned the tutorial to emphasize the core game play. Like, looking beyond the words and seeing the actual problem and then fixing it and moving forward. That was a big thing that we did.

Interviewer: So, you polished it up over the month, and then you released it. What happens, and then are people more receptive, though, to this game compared to other games?

Andy: Well, definitely, like…

Interviewer: I guess there’s a flash game, too, right?

Andy: Yes. Yes. It’s a flash game released to portals. There’s hundreds of new portal games a day, and they’re all unpolished. And I’d say 99 percent aren’t user tested beyond the core group of friends, right? They’re Protonauts, essentially. They’re the failures, but they never learn from their mistakes, and they just keep re-releasing the same mistakes.

So, I thought, OK, well let’s just actually get it right and see what happens. And that’s what I did. I went and I corrected every single mistake I could identify and released super early so that I didn’t spend time on a failure.

Yeah, and the response was tremendous. We got huge reviews. It’s kind of a tingly feeling you can remember it now, like when Tycho of Penny Arcade was ranting about how awesome it was on one of his posts one day, like, I don’t think I’ve seen another flash game mentioned on Penny Arcade before.

Interviewer: Awesome.

Andy: It felt really good. It felt really good.

Interviewer: And so, once you released it, you got feedback. What was your next step? Were you looking to sell it on Flash Game License, or were you looking to monetize it yourself? Can we talk about keeping it sustainable?

Andy: Well, there’s a bunch of monetization strategies out there, and this really was a market test. Like, I always wanted SteamBirds to be this too big, massively, multi-player, simultaneous online persistent world, you know, this huge thing.

But, really, it’s just like a simple, mission-based, single player game. It’s designed to be very, very simple, but it’s not really the game I wanted. So, there’s always a future for the game if it’s successful. Thankfully, it was successful. Oh, I forget your question now.

Interviewer: Oh, yeah. What happened afterwards? Did you try to sell it on Flash Game License? Did you try to…

Andy: Yeah. Yeah. Sponsors like buying games that haven’t been released yet. So, all of this testing was private. There’s no public beta. There’s no open beta, and I didn’t release it. I put it up for private bidding on Flash Game License just to see the kind of response the professional community would give it, like the portal owners, how they’d respond because I don’t care how much the fan boys praise it. If no one’s willing to pay for it, then it doesn’t mean anything.

So, I put it out for bidding on Flash Game License, and I was super surprised at the reaction. It got up to $45,000 bids on the initial sponsorship.

Interviewer: Awesome.

Andy: I actually ended up turning down those big deals. I took a deal at only $25,000 with Armor Games.

Interviewer: Congratulations.

Andy: No, I was super surprised that it was even possible. But, it gives you this huge infusion of confidence in the IP because suddenly you know it’s valuable. It’s, at least, 25,000 grand valuable in this current state, and this is the bare bones, basic mechanic. Never mind what the actual explored mechanic will be, right?

So, it was about $25,000 from Armor Games as an upfront sponsorship. I went with them instead of the $45,000 deal because the $45,000 deal had exclusivities and rights to first refusal and the terms of the deal were horrible. But Armor Games just gave me one week exclusivity and then the rest was free for all.

Interviewer: So, does that mean they just pay you upfront, or how does that work?

Andy: Yep. So, Armor Games gave me a check for $25,000.

Interviewer: Awesome.

Andy: That was the biggest check I’ve ever received.

Interviewer: Well, you know, I think it’s a testimonial to all the different processes that you used which is something, and you invested, even paying dollars getting user testers.

Andy: That’s a step and beyond 99 percent of all flash games out there. I definitely put in a bit of an investment, but Armor Games made back their money.

Interviewer: Awesome.

Andy: They didn’t take a loss on it, for sure.

Interviewer: Oh, yeah.

Andy: But, they deserved the lion share of this because they’re the ones that took the risk on the property.

Interviewer: Sure.

Andy: But, still, they were super nice about it, and I loved dealing with Armor Games for that reason, but over the course, four months, five months ago. It’s been about 40 grand now in secondary licensing deals, ad revenues, all that kind of stuff. So, it’s definitely a success, especially considering I’m a one man team.

I had Daniel Cook help me game design an art. He was invaluable, and I got some artists and music and sound effects onboard as well, so I shared some of the money out. For one guy to receive a check for $40,000 for a game, that’s a huge boost of confidence in the future of the game.

Interviewer: So, you have this boost of confidence. What are you thinking now? What’s next in store?

Andy: Well, now I feel confident that my original vision for the game can actually be executed and has a chance at winning.

Interviewer: I want to point out one other interesting thing. So, you had this grand vision for your game at first, but you kind of narrowed it down and found something. And from that you got feedback and now you have a sustainable income while you can move towards that vision.

Is that your goal now, or is that your plan, or would you recommend that because I know everyone’s like, hey, I want to make this huge kind of MMO whatever. And then, just to go from zero to that seems a challenge.

Andy: Well, if you just look at the state of the flash industry, the numbers are this. There’s a hundred new flash games a day. On average, they will generate $2,000 lifetime revenue. It’s OK, and then the average game takes two weeks to make.

Interviewer: That’s actually decent.

Andy: That’s decent, yeah, like anybody in their basement can make a flash game.

Interviewer: And to be fair, that’s only ad-based. That’s not if people run their own virtual currency or add on.

Andy: Yeah. Yeah. But, that takes a lot of back end, a lot of thinking that no one wants to do. So, that’s not the average game. So, the average game makes two grand. So, the average game is a two week, unpolished, horribly thought out, bad graphics game. So, my whole thing was, why don’t I spend four weeks on something that actually good and see what happens, and it was rewarded.

As I look at it, I think there’s seven or eight other games in particular that did the same thing on Flash Game License, and they all got huge sponsorships as well.

Interviewer: Cool.

Andy: So, here’s the thing. If people actually try, they will make money, but no one’s going to try.

Interviewer: Well, to be fair, you also did get help from other people. I mean, I just want to point out that I’ve seen a lot of developers kind of, “I’m going to finish this. I’m going to finish this” but because you had to work with other people, maybe, that coordination helped.

Andy: Yeah, it definitely did. I failed previously. I made a game, Space Squid. I think you can buy the entire source code for Space Squid right now for five dollars, and I haven’t had a single complaint. That’s been a year and a half for sale. It’s a complete failure. Protonaut, up until last week, made zero dollars, and it’s a year old.

Interviewer: Is that right?

Andy: So, these are failures, and those are things that I tackled myself. And I thought I could handle, and I thought I knew what’s best, and I thought… I’m a game designer. I think I can do it, and I actually have dreams of these games where I think that they will succeed.

But, I had to take a step back and say, OK, I didn’t fail because of bad luck. I failed because something’s wrong. Now, let’s figure out what’s wrong. And what’s wrong is I’m not honest with myself. I can’t step back. It’s not possible for me to step back from a game and say, “This isn’t fun” because it’s fun to me.

I can’t see, I mean, it’s really hard for me to see the public perspective. So, working with Daniel Cook was so valuable because he’s a complete, honest partner.

Interviewer: Is that the Puzzle Pirates guy?

Andy: No, no.

Interviewer: That’s Daniel James.

Andy: That’s Daniel James, yeah. Daniel Cook works for Microsoft. He made the flash game, Bunni.

Interviewer: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Andy: And LostGarden.com is his blog.

Interviewer: Yeah. I just interviewed him.

Andy: Yeah. There you go.

Interviewer: That helps. OK.

Andy: So, he couldn’t convince me that I needed game design help. When he first came onto SteamBirds, he signed on as an artist. But, that’s kind of like, the Gateway Drug, right? But now, I can’t live without his game designs. He’s a genius in game design and being super honest. He has this phenomenal ability to step back from any project and look at all the flaws.

Like, I’m a programmer and proud of every line of code I write. It pains me to cut a feature from the game, but he just tells me straight up, “Dude, you have to cut it ‘cuz it’s not fun.” I’m like, “But, no, I put so much work into it.” He’s like, “That doesn’t matter.”

Interviewer: I guess his concept of honesty, just brutal honesty, if something didn’t go as planned, be brutally honest about why it didn’t than just saying, OK, I’ll do better next time or whatever, just an honest assessment you’re saying?

Andy: Yes. Exactly. I did a talk here yesterday at Casual Connect, and you can find the slides and talk online. It was all filmed. I listed 12 significant flaws with my previous games, and finding those flaws were, like, heartbreaking because every time I listed a flaw, this is a bullet point on why I can’t make it on my own, and no independent developer wants to find those bullet points because you want to believe.

There’s going to be the one in a million person that will succeed on their own. They’re going to be the magic guy that has the magic formula from his DNA or whatever, but everyone’s going to think they’re him. And you need someone else to slap you in the face and say, “Dude, no.”

Interviewer: And there’s nothing wrong with just co-collaboration, getting feedback from users. Just that alone is a huge improvement, I think.

Andy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Getting input from your users, user testing, reviews, things like that. They help, but I find a lot of developers get defensive when it comes from an external source. So, when a player tells me that my game sucks, I’m like, boy, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

But when a peer tells me that my game sucks, like, OK, well, OK, well now I have to listen to you. Let’s figure this out. So, actually figuring that and working it all through is a big part of the polish phase of SteamBirds.

Interviewer: OK. So, what’s next in store? Are you now going to do back end? Are you going to start learning My SQL or database stuff, or what are your thoughts on the future now that you’ve got this better understanding of what it takes to win?

Andy: Yeah, for sure. Well, now that I know, I wasn’t going to put a year and a half of work for something into this big MMO version of SteamBirds if people didn’t like the core concept of SteamBirds. Now, I know people do like it. So, I’m able to go and make the game I actually wanted to make. But, I’m also incredibly lazy. I’m just horrible. I’m the worst employee ever.

My previous work is a lot of PHP, My SQL stuff like that. I used to do that for companies and businesses and stuff, but I don’t want to do it. It’s not fun. So, I’ve actually hired other guys to do that for me for SteamBirds.

Interviewer: Awesome.

Andy: So, for the next iteration of SteamBirds. So, I’ve got guys working on the server maintenance, database implementation. I’ve got Daniel Cook and David Edgery. Their company is Spry Fox. They’re working on the business back end and all that kind of stuff.

I’m still entirely in charge of both collaborating with Daniel Cook on the game design, but I’m completely in charge of programming the clients, like the actual game play experience.

Interviewer: So, when is the next iteration going to come out now?

Andy: Yeah, this year. So, it’s partially done.

Interviewer: Isn’t that kind of long, though, given that you’ve succeeded with the one month cycle? How are you going to reconcile… Now that you have a lot more resources and money, maybe, to spend on it, is that going to get in the way of your success?

Andy: OK. If I wanted to be ultra successful, I would have done it all myself, and it would have taken me two years. So, I haven’t even written the first line of code yet, and it will be done in the next three to four months.

Interviewer: So, even three or four months, is that too long? That’s my main concern.

Andy: It took me a month to get the core game play down. So, if I want to even balance the multi-player game mechanics, that’s going to take me a month, at least, at least. That’s super optimistic. So, there’s a lot of game play balance and user testing and all sorts of things that has to go on.

A lot of frame works have to be tested, certain retractions, all that kind of stuff. Keeping bandwidth down is a huge chore.

Interviewer: I don’t know, though. Bandwidth optimization may not matter, at first. I think, is that premature optimization at this point? Once you get players, because players will fix everything in terms of, hey, you’ve got a lot of players. Now, it’s worthwhile to fix it. If you try to premature optimize everything else and you don’t have players, I’ve just seen this issue happen. I don’t know what you’re thinking because you’ve been a similar experience.

Andy: Yeah, I have. I mean, it would be different. It would be a very different plan if SteamBirds had a lukewarm response. I was planning on going ahead with SteamBirds multi-player as long as I made a decent sponsorship, but because I made the top ten of sponsorships of all time, it’s kind of giving me a bit more – I’m throwing more caution to the wind, going all gusto.

Because of the success of the initial version, I am taking more risks. But, I was also on the Fantastic Contraption doing community management when it first launched, and it first launched on a shared host with no database optimizations or anything.

I have this awesome MS Paint graph of how many times we upgraded the server, how many times the server almost literally melted, how many times we had to switch hosts. In the span of one month, we had to switch servers five times, but because we didn’t do those steps. The only reason it was a problem is because we had explosive growth.

Interviewer: Did you guys know it was going to blow up beforehand?

Andy: We didn’t.

Interviewer: OK.

Andy: So, that’s what it was. It caught us off guard. So, now I know what’s coming. I know I have a popular game. I know I have a popular title. I know as soon as this launches, I’m going to get bombed with traffic, and I have to be ready for that. I can’t launch with a half-assed hosting solution. So, all that pre-emphasis stuff has to be put into place.

If someone else is making an untested game, I’ll would say, whatever, just get your… I used FreeSpeech on that. They charge you on the bandwidth you use. You don’t even pay a minimal hosting fee. So, like, my website got no hits, I got like a dollar a month on it. That’s fine hosting if you have an untested game, but when you have a popular game where I’m getting emails every day and fans saying, “When’s the multi-player version coming?” That’s not going to happen.

Interviewer: Can we talk also about marketing? Since you’re getting email directly from fans, are you doing any special marketing? Are you going to build up your fan base, and what about virtual currency and stuff like that? Are you looking into those kind of business models to turn it into a huge business?

Andy: Yeah, for sure. The only money I really got from SteamBirds was licensing out to websites. There was a tiny bit of ad revenue, but I hate ads and ads are hard to monetize. It’s a bullshit market. I set, basically, some very basic monetization scheme there. I wasn’t even really looking for money. I just wanted to test the market.

So, SteamBirds, the full version, is going to have full micro transactions and social networking and all the big buzz words of today, I basically want to turn it… I hope one day it will reach like a Farmville-like status, except without being so evil.

Interviewer: Then, does that mean you’re going to forego sponsorship for the second version, or how does that work?

Andy: I will be, in the classical sense. But, I’m hoping to come to agreements with the sponsor. So, I’d love it, like, Dan from Armor Games helped me so much in the first version. I’d love if I can make a special Armor Games plane that’s only available for purchase if you play on the Armor Games website.

Interviewer: OK. Awesome.

Andy: I don’t care because I get the credit card number in the end. It doesn’t matter to me. The more places my game exists, the better it is. So, I’m talking to everyone. I want to get my game everywhere. I want it to be on handhelds, on every single website. I don’t want to own it and keep control myself because that’s a horrible business model, and it’s hard to retain your customers that way. I want this game to live everywhere.

Interviewer: Any suggestions then for other indie game developers looking to do their own projects or even students?

Andy: Oh, yeah. Well, basically, don’t make the game you want to make. Make the game to test the game you want to make. I’ve seen so many people like this guy in Vancouver who made Paper Zombies or Attack of the Paper Zombies. It’s this awesome, indie RTS game that I would have paid $20 or $30 for.

I spent an entire weekend playing it. I played more of that than I’ve played Command and Conquer. It’s just a little indie game, but he didn’t think it was worth it. He didn’t think because it wasn’t his big idea. It was just a test. So, he didn’t charge for it. It’s free. You can go to his website right now and get it.

That drives me nuts. He could have made enough money selling that to fund the big game, but I guess so many indie developers have this complex where they think that their work isn’t good enough unless it equals Team Fortress, or something. It’s just not true. If you ask people for money, they’ll give it to you, but nobody asked for money.

Interviewer: I think part of it is just being financially illiterate. A lot of the indies don’t know about the opportunities out there, even Flash Game License. I know people are kind of getting used to that. I didn’t know the average game, poor quality game makes $2,000. That’s still pretty impressive.

Andy: Yeah, it is. That blew me away when I found that out. I gave some talks to some students, and I put up a slide saying, the average game sucks and blah blah blah blah blah and makes two grand. And they hooted and applauded at that, so oh my God, that’s amazing. No, wait, wait. That isn’t the point. The next slide says how much you could make if you actually try.

Interviewer: Did you get them started on making these games then, for the students or no?

Andy: Yeah, definitely. I mean, this last conference I went to was a small school in New Brunswick. And I don’t think many people were planning on doing a Game Jam at the end of the conference, but after we gave them these talks and showed them what they can do, we actually went and all did the Game Jam together.

And everyone was super excited and super pumped and learning new technologies while we were doing the Game Jam. The game me and my team made actually got sponsored for $1,000 in 24 hours.

Interviewer: How did the team feel, once that happened?

Andy: Oh, just super stroked. You can just imagine. You put in 24 hours of effort and you get a grand.

Interviewer: Yeah. Was it in flash?

Andy: Yeah, I chose flash, but I don’t emphasize the platform. I love flash. I use flash exclusively, but that’s not to say I’m a flash evangelist. I simply use the platform that connects me to the most people.

Interviewer: Gotcha.

Andy: And flash is currently the platform for that. PHP arguably has a bigger install base than flash does, but there’s no PHP portals, and it’s hard to monetize PHP. But, if you’re thinking XNA, XPLA, XPLSN, or the portal PS3, and you compare any of those numbers to flash, it’s a no-brainer.

Interviewer: Any other suggestions then for students who want to make their own games? So, this Game Jam concept seems to be very powerful.

Andy: Yeah. The Game Jam concept is awesome, and all the big Game Jam organizations, like Tig Jam from the Tig Force forums and stuff and Toe Jam from Toronto and Global Game Jam.

If you talk to the founders, they’ll say one of the reasons for sponsoring these is just bringing the realization to people that you can actually create a game in a day or two days or a weekend or even a week, sometimes.

I think a UK group did, at the last Jam, did a game every three hours. I can’t even do that, but the fact that it’s possible, it’s inspiring. And you think people put six months of effort into a game to just canned or not even picked up or worse it doesn’t even get finished. That’s the biggest problem.

As I say, my advice for students is number one, finish your games. Number two, finish them as soon as possible and as bare bones as possible. You don’t want to spend a year making your dream game if you’re not sure that it’s going to be a success. The only way to be sure it’s a success is to be successful with it earlier.

Interviewer: But, what if people say, you know, who cares if it’s a success, I just want to make something that’s my dream. I think what might be interesting to point out is that it’s just being able to communicate your dream game the best way possible. And part of that requirement is to make sure you have something upfront so you can get feedback on how you can modify it so that you communicate your vision.

Andy: Yeah. Well, I mean, I am friends with some game designers all over the world, and some of them… We’ve gotten into these exact arguments about it, and they say, “You know what? I don’t care about money whatsoever. I just want to make the game I want to make.”

And that’s totally cool. I totally respect that, but I want to make this my job. I don’t want to work that desk job any more or I don’t want to be in the cubicle. I don’t want to be living in my parents’ basement. I don’t want to be a success. I don’t want to be a millionaire. I don’t want to be a rock star. I simply want to make games for the rest of my life.

Interviewer: Sure.

Andy: If someone cut me a check right now for minimum wage for the rest of my life, I would take it and make a game a month, like, that’s all I need, right? But, some people, that’s not enough. Some people, they need the creative freedom to make whatever they want, and if it’s a success or not, that’s fine. They’ll deal with it but they have to work that Wendy’s job or they have to…

That’s not something I can do. So, that’s not a sacrifice I can make. I want this to be my job and my only job.

Interviewer: And is there a website or blog that you have that people can check up on and find out about your latest games and everything like that?

Andy: Yeah, for sure, AndyMoore.ca.

Interviewer: How do you spell that? A-N-D-Y…

Andy: A-N-D-Y M-O-O-R-E.ca. It’s my personal blog. I’ve posted everything there, all my game design notes from all my games, all the numbers, the contract negotiations, like, every single thing you could ever want to know about any of my games is all posted clear to the public, and it’s completely transparent.

Interviewer: Great. Thank you very much for your time. Appreciate it.