GDC 2011: Interview with Soulcaster creator Ian Stocker

Released in March 2010, the original Soulcaster managed to summon a loyal following by fusing RPG and tower defense elements with a retro 16-bit package. When it came time to release its sequel eight months later, developer Ian Stocker decided to reach out to fellow indie developer Robert Boyd to cross-promote their titles, and the Indie Games Winter Uprising was born. I had a chance to sit down with Stocker during GDC to chat about development on Soulcaster, its sequel and the Winter Uprising.

So now that you have Soulcaster II done, what are you going to do afterwards?

So I’m working on a new game engine.

A whole engine?

A whole engine, from scratch. A new project in XNA 4. ‘cause, Soulcaster III will happen, but it’s gonna need the [XNA 4].

Yeah, I saw you had to switch it over a few weeks ago, right?

So, that would be a project in itself, which I don’t know how difficult that would be; it’s kind of a barrier. Another thing is I just made so much content for Soulcaster II that I need to take a break from that. There’s also a bunch of new features that I wanna try in Soulcaster III cause, Soulcaster I to II was kind of a visual upgrade and a little bit of a scripting engine upgrade and was just generally better, but in the third one I wanna offer like…tons of brand new features.

Well how long did I and II take you to come up with?

I took 5 months on the calendar.

Yeah?

And II actually took 7 months, it took longer as a sequel.

Considering you’d had a lot of the framework in place for the sequel?

That was a huge lesson for me, like number one…

The first one or the second one?

The second one. It was harder to make than the first one because, well, two things. Number one is, ah.. I ran into a glitch and there was a huge performance issue on the Xbox that I couldn’t track down on the Windows version.

That’s usually how it goes.

And I spent literally a month trying to track that down and then roll the code back to the Soulcaster I, and after spending like 2 months on it, [I] eventually found the code, which was in the sound config, of all things.

Something you wouldn’t even think would affect the game.

Yeah. One line. To initialize the song to null was causing this problem but to initialize it to like an empty song fixed the problem. So that was like a horror story. The other thing, that was more subconscious is there’s now like,  there’s so many people who liked the first one and who were excited for the second one – it wasn’t like I was making Half Life or anything, but there were expectations, and rather than… when I was making the first one, every step of the way it was like ‘Is this fun for me? Is this what I would want to see in a game?’

Yeah, it’s kind of like what any developer would have to ask themselves.

Yeah, and then when you realize that other people are gonna play it, and judge it, and compare it to the first one, it corrupts your thinking; it definitely slowed me down, having to second guess design decisions and imagine what people would say. I only finished it from a combination of setting a proper release date and like, in some way distancing myself in some way from what I thought people would say about it.

I know you came out with the Winter Uprising, but do you go on the [XNA] forums at all?

I’ve been kinda disconnected from the community for the last couple months, which is a mistake. Coming back here I’ve realized that I’ve been in this technical rathole and I need to become more active, in like Twitter and my blog and I’m sure that people can help me. I need to know that I’m not alone in this.

Would you like to stay indie, or open a studio, or like to work for a larger company? How would you like to see yourself?

I’d definitely like to see myself staying independent, but, uh, I’d love to work on games of a larger scope than I can handle solo, so I’d like to team up, build a small team; that’d be great. I don’t see myself really working on games larger than, say, a 9-man team. It would just take too long; those games would take more than a year. Even 7 months on Soulcaster II seemed to push it for me. I want to spend less time on each game than that.

How did you get into the [Winter] Uprising, and would you like to see another one?

Definitely would like to see another one, as long as I have a game to put out in that timeframe. I dunno if there’ll be a summer one or anything.

Yeah, I think the best bet would be to have something like, twice a year kinda thing.

So, how did I get involved? It started as a conversation between Robert Boyd and me

The whole Uprising?

The whole Uprising. I asked him if he wanted to cross-promote our two games Cthulu and Soulcaster II because they’re both kinda aimed at a similar demographic. He was down to bat and then he said ‘Let’s get more people involved; like 2 is good, let’s get a dozen people involved!’ And so we got 14. He really took the ball and ran with it. I was there to… like, he would ask me ‘Hey, does this game look good enough?’

Yeah, Cthulu was a very good game as well.

Yeah, I think it woulda been fine without it. I don’t know how much it helped our sales, but I know it helped our image, and I know Xbox Indies have never had so many hits on Google, or articles on so many blogs.

Yeah, and I think that’s what really helped it out. Larger sites picked it up, like Gamespot had it, Joystiq had it.

Yeah.

I’m not sure if Xbox Indies have a good chance without things like that.

Yeah, heh, all it took was like, 14 of us banding together.

 

By Dave Voyles at March 28, 2011.