Developer: Dandylion
Person answering the questions: Tae-Hyeung Kim
Country: South Korea
Most notable games: TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children
1. What made you want to become an indie dev?
Personally, the reason why I develop games is that I’m happy when I see people enjoying the games I made. So, to be honest, I wanted to be a game developer, but never thought of being an indie game developer.
When I worked for a previous company, I had a chance to become a development team leader who could exercise a lot of authority on developing a game project. However, due to my lack of ability, the process of making a game with more than 50 people was not that easy. Additionally, since my authority was not absolute, I could not solely determine the direction of the project.
I had to persuade executives, producers, and colleagues, and make an agreement with them upon different opinions. In such a process, my opinion and ideas were often denied and changed, and every time that happened, I couldn’t be happy.
As such situations became more frequent, I eventually left the company and tried to figure out a way to make my own games. It would have been nice to start splendidly with great ideas and the investment of huge capital, but I was an ordinary developer and was not capable of those, so the only option left for me was to start from scratch.
As I developed games for pursuing my happiness, people around me started to call us an indie development team. During the journey, I met five colleagues with their respective dreams and goals. And now, I am also with people who support our game.
I’m happy right now.
2. What are some misconceptions you had early on you no longer have?
At first, I thought even if our game was not made at AAA level, a proper quality game with a low sales price would make customers pay enough attention to it. But now I think that’s wrong. “Proper Quality” is just my excuse.
Games are all equal. Whether made by hundreds of people and with huge budget or alone, we’re all experiencing the fact that games that are more enjoyable and interesting are sold more and become steady sellers.
So we plan to continue developing our capabilities, and the current attractive parts of our game will pursue the best in the world that never lose to AAA-class games.
3. What are three things that you were expecting to be harder and three to be easier but were not so?
Nothing was easier than I expected. So there’s nothing to say about this part. On the other hand, most were more difficult than expected. Honestly, everything was difficult.
First, building a development team was so difficult. When I started looking for colleagues to play together and develop the game I wanted, I thought all the colleagues I needed would gather in at least six months. However, it took six months for the first colleague to join. And it took two years for up to six people to gather. I think the reason why it took me so long is that I wasn’t able to give my colleagues an attractive idea and a vision for the future.
Second, localization is more difficult than I expected. From simple translations to translations that require consideration of cultural aspects, I think it is the part that involves the most work-hand and modifications. And I still am sorry to the foreign players for the not-yet perfect localization quality of our game. I wish there was a clear solution for this that I could follow.
Finally, it was really difficult to gain money. In early stages, we sold our game on steam’s Early Access for getting the development budget. We thought that our game could earn enough money to maintain the development team. When I think back to that time, we were certainly a positive team with no finance insight. However, our game did not sell so much that I had to think about whether to continue developing this game. It was a really difficult time.
So I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the users who have trusted us and gave us the courage to continue developing. Since you have consistently evaluated our game positively, we have been able to continue development to this day without having to stop. Without your support, we might have already fled. 🙂
4. What was a notable mistake you made and how you moved past it?
The biggest mistake I remember was that we didn’t put our game at the launch sale event when Steam Early Access started. To make the situation worse, our release date on Early Access was Dec 31. The Steam Winter Sale season!!
Few people were really interested in our game. So I remember the people who visited us at that time until now. They are our savior.
5. From a financial standpoint, what are your professional insights? Is this a valid career path to pursue or is it reserved for success stories only?
Although we want to have financial insight and we kind of think about financial matters, we simply don’t know very much about that. So, we will just continue to develop games as long as our users enjoy playing them. Then, we believe that one day or other, the financial problems will be solved. Some may say we’re not professional. Yes. We are totally inexperienced in financial matters.😊
6. Any thoughts and tips on how to build a community around your projects?
I think the community occurs naturally when users have more things to be able to talk about game contents we develop. So developer’s community participation and response is also important, but I think that it’s the quantity and depth of game content that eventually makes the community active.
7. Crowdfunding. Yay or nay and why?
We really want to start crowdfunding, but we’re aware that except for Kickstarter, the effect is minimal. So we wish to try Kickstarter! However, unfortunately, due to nationality limitations, we cannot start a Kickstarter campaign. I feel very sad about that.
8. What advice would you have for an aspiring indie dev at this particular point in time?
Game development is a job that makes someone happy. So to make someone happy, try to be happy first.
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