Interview: Cliff "Kudos" Harris on Being an Indie Game Developer
Cliff Harris, of Positech Games, is the author of Democracy, Kudos, Kudos Rock Legend, and several other titles. Cliff is known for being an outspoken indie game developer, commonly found railing against "common wisdom," including the usual belief that success depends upon going through major game portals, and that downloadable games must address a specific audience to do well. Cliff has charted his own course, but he's also managed to make it work. He's been half-jokingly referred to as a "poster child" for indie success.

But aside from this, he devotes a great deal of time offering advice and sharing his own knowledge with other members of the indie game development community, even to the point of sharing the most secret of data, actual sales numbers. All too often, his advice is sadly ignored because of its contrarian nature, but its hard to find another indie who has been more active in helping others in the community. This is an email interview I had with him while working on the article "Going Rogue" for The Escapist. Many of the juiciest parts of this interview were included in the article, but Cliff had a lot to say which I didn't have room to include. I hope you'll find as entertaining and useful as I did. Here's Cliff Harris on "going indie":

Rampant Coyote: Can you tell me about your mainstream game development experience and career?

Cliff Harris: I tried writing games in 1981, aged 11, eventually I started making and selling them online in 1997 as a hobby, but I never made enough money to live off it, so I ended up in mainstream dev, working at Elixir Studios and then at Lionhead while the indie games sales built up. I was the AI guy and general games coder for 'the Movies' at Lionhead (for the PC). The X-box game I worked on for years at Elixir got canned...


Rampant Coyote: What propelled you out of the door of that cushy mainstream game development job to join the ranks of the self-employed?

Cliff Harris: One reason was money, my games made (part-time) as much as my salary did, so it made sense, and also I was fed up with the way games companies are run. The long hours culture, the complete chaos, and the fact that obviously I was a frustrated designer working purely as a coder. I had been self-employed before, as an IT contractor and a boatbuilder, and I think I just have the DNA that makes me a better lone gunmen than someone elses employee. I'm very outspoken and probably a bit of a volatile employee. Plus I had a juicy contract with Maxis to tide me over the first difficult few months, so I knew I wasn't about to starve.


Rampant Coyote: I assume you left the mainstream gig feeling like you had a handle on What it would take to make games on your own. Were there any aspects of indie game development took you by surprise? Were there any lessons you had to learn quickly?

Cliff Harris: I'd done it before but badly, so I had already learned from those mistakes. One thing I had to learn was decent PR and publicity. When you work for some big name company, journalists get on planes and get bought to your desk to see cool stuff. That doesn't happen any more :( I had to learn how to get my name out there and promote my games, rather than just making what I thought was cool and hoping people would discover them. I was luckier than most in that money was already coming in, so I could relax a bit and just develop games.


Rampant Coyote: What have been your your biggest struggles / challenges / disappointments as an indie?

Cliff Harris: My biggest struggle is working alone from home. Especially when sales are good, because there is little incentive to do any work. Nobody cares if I'm at my desk or in the pub, and nobody cares if I'm working or playing games, or surfing the web. Staying motivated on your own is really hard, and it's tough having nobody to talk to all day, every day. That's the hardest thing about being an indie.

All the other problems, money, contracts, programming, are pretty trivial in comparison. I'm sure some of the hardcore semi-autistic programmer geeks love it, but I'm a bit more chatty than most.


Rampant Coyote: Do you still prefer being an indie over your mainstream game job? What keeps you going as an indie?

Cliff Harris: I'm definitely happier as an indie because I like succeeding or failing on my terms. Working with other people is a nightmare. I can't ever see me taking a normal salary ever again. once you get used to being your own boss, the idea of someone telling you what to do all day seems juvenile, like being a schoolboy again. I can't imagine working for three years on one game again either, or being detached from the business side of things. Sitting at a desk working for someone else, on someone else's idea, with no idea how much money it makes, just seems ridiculous. If I needed a full-time job again, I'd try and get into marketing or some other area of programming, rather than go back to 'triple a' gaming.


Rampant Coyote: Steven Peeler mentioned that one of his frustrations as an indie involved piracy. You've expressed similar views in the past. Do you have any perspective on this as an indie that you'd like to share?

Cliff Harris: The thing that really bugs me about pirates is that some of them cloak it all with this thin veneer of 'sticking it to the man' and being 'anti-DRM and anti-big corporations', and then despite me giving a free demo, no DRM, innovative games, at reasonable prices with great tech support from a one-man company, the bastards still rip me off and take my stuff anyway.

I can understand people who have no money, or even just people who are morally corrupt who think stealing is okay, but the ones that drive me mad are the idiots that lecture me about my 'outdated business model', like they are some sort of kindergarten Bill Gates, or the ones who tell me I'm some corporate shill because my games aren't free. Almost as bad are the ones who insist I should be happy that people are playing my games, and doing it for the love of it. Such people are normally living in mom's basement with no rent to pay.


Rampant Coyote: What else could you tell me about the difference between mainstream and indie video game development?

Cliff Harris: Indie devs can take risks. No way would Lionhead or Elixir have made Democracy or Kudos, they both seem a bit too 'off-message' in terms of what people think gamers want. Democracy would have had a pointless 3D engine shoe-horned into it, and Kudos would never have got away with being turn-based. But I think it's those limitations that force people to make interesting games. World of Goo will be cool *because* of it's 2Dness, not despite it. Because we don't have the option of doing a HDR-lighting bump-mapped high-poly shader-driven 3D world, it means indie games actually look different to the stuff everyone else is making. Plus, because our dev budgets are smaller, we can support niches like turn based strategy, serious games or kids games.

One of the best benefits of indie gaming is the direct connection between developer and gamer. I literally take 90% of the sale price of my games sold direct. That's way better than handing lots of cash to some middle-man who doesn't even play games.

It also means I can talk direct to my customers, implement their suggestions, help them out and support them without lawyers in the way. If someone asks how part of the game works, I can post a direct reply as the designer, or even share some source code to illustrate it. That's very rare in big retail gaming.


Rampant Coyote: Thank you, Cliff!

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Interviews

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