The Devil's Terms of Service

I attended Full Indie Summit for the first time on Sunday and had a delightful time, which isn’t a feeling I associate with spending nine hours in a Westin hotel ballroom. It was a day spent celebrating and interrogating the work of indie game development, from generating the sound of alien crab languages to knowing when to get a lawyer for your studio. It was a hell of a lot of fun and if you’re a game dev in the PNW, and Vancouver especially, the value for money is outrageous. I’m already looking forward to next year. I usually leave a conference with little more than cheap swag and a lanyard, but I left Full Indie full of confidence that indie game dev is precisely where I want to be at this point in my career. This also isn’t a feeling I associate with spending nine hours in a Westin hotel ballroom.

If you spend a lot of time online, which most of us inevitably do, the sense of gloom and despair in the games industry is profound. As I write this essay I’m watching the reactions flow in to Xbox firing another 268 workers and the promise of more layoffs to come. Xbox, which is to say, the slobbering corporate hellworm that is Microsoft, is also lumping studios together with all the finesse of an angry toddler. Actually, I take that back: toddlers have better object permanence than the executives at Microsoft. Hell, putting 4 year olds in charge of financial approvals at a AAA studio might be a net win because children are largely motivated by fun, not the state of a Q3 balance sheet.

But I digress.

Capital G games are in rough shape, a fact that nobody was denying at Full Indie this weekend. Peppered throughout Q&As were questions about how to survive the industry, a keen interest in how to fine tune a pitch, and full rooms for any panel on social media tactics. But the mood across the conference was buoyant, almost defiantly so. The exhibitor rooms were packed with studios showcasing demos and people were unabashedly nerding out together. It reminded me of living in St. John’s, NL, where people would simply ski to the university for classes after a blizzard dropped 70cm of snow. Devs are out here building their games, industry storms be damned.

I’m one of those Ski People, and while I’m breaking path I’m thinking about how to move forward even though it’s often heavy going. Why the hell am I building a narrative game and futzing with hardware signal chains when I could have a nice corporate job pumping tokens into the magic plagiarism machines while my stock options vest on a tidy monthly schedule? Well, “What are your values? What systems are you willing, or not willing, to engage with?” Xalavier Nelson Jr. asked the room at the start of the day, “Will you use LinkedIn, and forever be banished from the light of God?”

It turns out that in addition to spurning LinkedIn, I’m unwilling to play corporate ball. Gosh did I try. I’ve sat in leadership meetings and used the word “velocity” without vomiting on a conference table. I’ve reassured teams shredded by layoffs that things would somehow be okay while my own body unravelled from the stress of doing 3 jobs simultaneously and remembering to order cake for everyone’s birthday. I did not thrive in any of those Good Jobs despite doing everything I was supposed to do because I was trying to occupy the wrong room. So I decided to make my own room.

When Lars and I walked out of the conference on Sunday evening, we reflected on the fact that if there’s a single value at the heart of Studio Iskotaa it’s independence. Neither of us wanted to work in a place where we couldn’t say no. The studio we’re building and the games we’re creating spring from that deep desire for freedom. Embracing that core value also means we’re eschewing certain tools and platforms in order to protect that freedom. Lars recently wrote about their allergy to subscriptions and the choice to use Godot as our game engine, favouring open source tools over proprietary ones. I’ve written elsewhere about our absolute refusal to use generative AI tools in development across the board—a stance that we wholeheartedly maintain. If our core value is independence, turning over the most precious and powerful parts of our creative work to a technology that strips it of human agency is nonsensical and unethical for us. How we choose to develop might look different, stubborn, or idiosyncratic to others, but it’s our way. It’s part of how you know our games are ours.

Another theme laced through Sunday’s presentation was the question of how to maintain a creative life, be that in games or any other medium, under the strain of late stage capitalism. We surrender an awful lot of agency and privacy for convenience, and relinquish ever more power for survival. For some people that’s a fair trade, and for others it’s the only option available to them. The methods we embrace and reject in pursuit of success are what I think of as the Devil’s Terms of Service. I’m not willing to use the magic plagiarism machine, endure the vituperative howling of an executive who can’t book their own hotel room, or live in a place where the air hurts my face. In exchange I now co-own my own business, but I’ve surrendered my corporate healthcare plan and so the dental bills are on me now. No paycheque arrives twice a month, but there’s also no limit on what I can do. It’s a huge trade, and an even bigger risk, but those are the terms I’m willing to take. There’s always a tithe, a tradeoff, or a bargain to be made in life and the most responsible thing you can do is decide what deals you are willing to make to get where you need to go.

I have full confidence that with the talent we have under the roof at Studio Iskotaa we can make great games. Lars and I are skilled people with absurdly fortuitous mix of skills that makes game development possible for just the pair of us. Will we have commercial and critical success? Don’t know. Will the games industry completely collapse before we finish our current project? No clue. But! Have people been making art in strange circumstances ever since we daubed paintings on cave walls? Yes. Am I going to keep making my own strange games as long as I’m able to? Yes. Are we gonna make it? Yes. We always do, devils and storms be damned. I mean, I’m off LinkedIn, so god’s on my side.