Indie Interviews: Thomas Riegsecker and Annie Mitsoda

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 14, 2010

A couple of great interviews with indie RPG creators Thomas Riegsecker of Basilisk Games (the Eschalon series), and Annie Mitsoda (formerly Annie Carlson) of Doublebear Productions (Zombie RPG).

First off, Thomas talkin’ to Mishmash Magazine about Eschalon series. It’s a pretty straightforward little interview offering some more insights into the brain of a developer, but one gem he offers here is a great one:

“Bugs are always a problem, especially when trying to develop any kind of AI. The funniest bug is actually still present in the game because it was just too awesome to remove: if you approach a friendly NPC and attack them, they become agitated and will attack you back. Casting a “Charm” spell on them returns them to a friendly state, but if you attack them again at this point they go mad with confusion! They begin to attack themselves until they commit suicide! This is a completely unintentional AI reaction, but upon discovering the effect we decided it was just too funny to change.”

I’d never tried that. But now I must! Anyway, the full interview can be found here:

Mishmash: Interview with Basilisk Games

And then we have RPG Codex’s interview with Annie Mitsoda, who apparently realized they could economize as indie developers by marrying her business partner. 🙂 Yeah, I don’t think I followed the causality of that one quite right, either. Her mainstream design credits include two of the Neverwinter Nights 2 expansions, and now she’s working on an RPG about zombies which – dude – I’m so there. The interview is anything but generic – RPG Codex is notorious for being rude, crude, and contentious, and Annie comes out swinging and talking about her career and ideas with frankness and with a lot of fascinating side-journeys. And about surviving a zombie apocalypse. While well, nothing’s “typical” as indies go, but their journey to indie-dom sounds pretty familiar:

“DoubleBear is really Brian’s brainchild – I’m a part of it, but I must admit the real impetus was Brian’s own experiences in the industry, and reaching a point where he really didn’t want to work on something he either wasn’t passionate about or something he was passionate about that stood a chance of getting cancelled. It’s something I’ve been through as well, and it’s demoralizing to have happen to you, and it’s actually happened to two games that Brian and I have worked on together. When Vince proposed working on a game with us, at first we thought we’d just become part of Iron Tower – then when Brian brought up making his own company, I was absolutely all for it. It seemed to make the kind of sense that is made when people propose combining two things that are delicious, like chocolate and peanut butter or rum and anything that might be fruit or fruit-related.

“We’re physically based in Seattle (insofar as DoubleBear is Brian and I at the moment) and although right now it’s just Brian and I, we’re working with multiple folks from Iron Tower Studios and other peeps who are spread out around the world. We’d like to grow DoubleBear, and definitely we intend to keep making more games, but that’s something we’re not focusing on yet – ZRPG will get finished first before we figure that madness out.

“Brian’s working on ZRPG full-time, while I’m working on it part-time. My full-time job is as a designer at ArenaNet, who very kindly are totally cool with me working on DoubleBear stuff. So I’m bringing in the outside cash, while – like most start-ups – our savings are keeping DoubleBear running. We’re not paying wages, but we’re doing a profit-sharing split with the key people working on the game – while others have volunteered their time and work simply for credit and out of the goodness of their hearts, which is so awesome and kind and rad that it knocks me right on my ass.”

Please read and enjoy more here:

RPG Codex: Annie Mitsoda’s (nee Carlson’s) Zombie Baby

Have fun!

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