In a rare moment between blizzards this month, I braved the mountainous snowy sidewalks of Cambridge to grab lunch with The Molasses Flood. Named after the historical Boston disaster for which it shares the first page of a Google search, the newly-formed, independent studio houses a collective 76 years of game developing experience between it’s six members. Comprised of industry veterans and former Irrational Games, Harmonix, and Bungie staffers, the crew prides itself as a group of “AAA refugees,” working together to make something awesome.
Corey Atwood – So, why make games for a living?
Bryn Bennett – When I grew up, I obviously loved video games and there was like this “legend of the video game creators.” They were all MIT and Harvard guys. I thought “If I could pull that off, if I could be a video game developer, I’ve really achieved something.” It’s a goal I always shot for. It was something I always thought very highly of. And I watched Tron when I was 8, so that was pretty big!
Chad LaClair – I have no other skills (laughs). I started making games early. There was this Maxis, “click-n-play” program that allowed you to make sprites and little 2D games, and I loved that as a kid. When Doom came out, I started making my own levels and that was what cemented it. I read up on the guys at Id and their little group, making what they made, that was such an awesome idea to me.
Damian Isla – I’m someone who’s always been interested in not just the technical side, but the art side, and the narrative. If you’re interested in technology meeting narrative or technology meeting art, there’s really not that many industries for you to go into. I was into movies, too, and most of my childhood I thought I was going to end up at ILM or Pixar, but my education took a little zig and a zag and I ended up doing games, which, in most ways, is even better. Gaming is such a new medium. It’s still trying to figure itself out, and it’s cool to be on the forefront.
CA – What made you want to leave AAA game development for the indie life?
Forrest Dowling – When they closed the studio where we worked, it kind of kicked us all in the butt, collectively.
Scott Sinclair – The timing was perfect, and the climate had changed with crowd-funding and Kickstarter and such. The groups that were forming ahead of us and doing this on their own without a 200 person studio, hierarchy, and publishers made it more accessible for us to even humor the idea.
Gwen Frey – To me, this was always the goal, it was always the dream. Since I graduated college, I wanted to form a small studio. It’s just way more fun. When you’re at a large studio, your role tends to become very specialized. You tend to really focus on one specific thing and you stop seeing the game as a whole sometimes. When you work at a studio with 200 people, all 200 people can’t have creative input. In fact, everybody’s input is kind of diminished to some degree. It’s way more fun to be on a team of six, and to know that you own one sixth of this game. It matters so much more because you have so much more invested. It’s fun and exciting, and when you have this opportunity where you have this group of people and you all happened to all be in the same place at the same time, it’s incredible.
CA – What’s the biggest hurdle to developing a game as an independent studio?
Scott – The arena of marketing, publishing, funding and Kickstarter are all things that emerge and demand your time, like answering emails and stuff as apposed to designing the game. You get introduced to all these new things that you think you’re prepared for, but you’re not. There are all these things that are difficult and new that you have to do, instead of being able to just sit down and make an asset for the game.
Gwen – You have to manage wearing a lot of different hats, and you have to be able to completely shift gears. Sometimes, over the course of a day, you’ll spend two hours being a producer and then two hours doing actual work on the game, and then two hours painting a banner.
Damian – I feel like for indies, one of the hardest things is assembling the team. This is something that blessedly, came together for us, but it did take some legwork. That’s a part of the puzzle that we’re not even thinking about anymore, now that the team is together. But, one of the hardest things about being indie is convincing talented people to throw their hat in and take the risk with you.
CA – What’s the worst thing about making games for a living?
Forrest – Compared to a lot of other creative endeavors, the amount of time and the overhead it takes to get from an idea to something that’s awesome, is immense. It’s like a year of hard work before you can get something to come to fruition. Whereas in other pursuits, you get results almost immediately. The amount of time you spend, going on faith alone that what you’re making is going to be great in the end, is huge.
Damian – The market is such a crazy place that’s constantly changing. We know we can make something great, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to sell. It doesn’t mean we’ll be able to do it again, which is kind of the goal. The goal of doing this for a living isn’t to get rich, it’s to be able to do it again. There’s real uncertainty. What if we want to release a game on Steam and, in a year, it’s not a viable platform anymore? Things have changed that radically before. There’s faith that we can make it great, but there’s a fair amount of hope that the market will be receptive to it and that everything will work out.
Lucky attendees of next month’s SXSW in Austin, Texas will be the first to get their hands on a playable demo of the studio’s first title, The Flame in the Flood. A wonderful amalgamation of Don’t Starve and Toobin’, the gorgeously stylized, post-apocalyptic survival sim will be available on PC, Mac, and (maybe) Linux. The Flame in the Flood is on track to be available this summer on Steam, Humble, and possibly GOG. The game’s entire interface is being designed with controller support in mind, so while there are currently no plans to port it to consoles, though the possibility is not completely out of the question.
We’ll be keeping an eye on the game, especially when it nears it’s approximated release date. But, if you’d like to know more about The Flame in the Flood right now, check out The Molasses Flood blog.