Interviews

Thomas Was Alone's Mike Bithell: 'It's been one hell of a year, and I've been very lucky'

How one indie dev avoided the bargain bin

Thomas Was Alone's Mike Bithell: 'It's been one hell of a year, and I've been very lucky'
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| Thomas Was Alone

It's fair to say Mike Bithell – the man behind Thomas Was Alone – has enjoyed an eventful last twelve or so months.

A speaker at the Develop conference in Brighton last week, Bithell stood at the front of a room as packed as any keynote, populated with fellow indies looking for advice, guidance, knowledge.

Indeed, pop along to any conference of note, and you'll see developers queuing up to soak up the hints and tips given by the guys and gals behind the biggest hits of the moment. But should they be?

Speaking to us after the conference – one which saw Thomas Was Alone pick up an award for best use of narrative ahead of the likes of The Room and Crysis 3 – Bithell suggested commentators and industry luminaries alike are all too eager to serve up "one size fits all" solutions to generate click-throughs and accreditation.

It's a trend that risks diverting developers from what they do best - making games they actually want to play.

So, just who should indies be turning to for advice, and how best should they best approach modern day game development? Bithell reveals all:

Pocket Gamer: Yours had to been one of the best attended talks we sat in on at Develop. Is it intimidating to have so many people turn up – developers and press alike – to hear what you have to say? Mike Bithell: It is...and it's new.

I always ask the 'have you heard of Thomas Was Alone' question. First room I spoke to about the game was about 10 people, and one hand went up. And he caveated it with "but I only watched half the trailer".

It's been one hell of a year. I've been very lucky.

It seemed as if you were trying to dispel the idea that developers need to chase the tails of the big boys in order to survive in your talk – that it's possible to be successful by appealing to niche audiences. If someone had told you that when you were starting out, would you have believed them?

I've always been a bit arrogant, so I tend not to follow the crowd by default - but that's not noble, that's just me being a bit dumb.

Increasingly though, I'm seeing a worrying number of pundits pushing for a one size fits all solution.

I don't think they actually believe it, or would push it on you if you hired them as consultants, but headlines and clicks need strong opinions, so they invariably state 'the future is x' or 'the only way to make money now is y'.

Experienced folks know to take this all with a pinch of salt, but many younger indies are coming straight out of uni and starting companies. I worry this stuff is being listened to and not challenged. I want to counter that.

Why do you think indies are so susceptible to the idea that they need to be selling hundreds of thousands of copies a month in order to be deemed 'successful'? Is there a responsibility on the part of the press to drag the limelight away from the likes of Supercell and King a touch to better report on the smaller outfits?

The big sales number story is alluring right? I mentioned Thomas' overall sales as a throwaway line in my talk, but there it is, big and bold in every bit of coverage my talk got.

I don't think that's unfair, it's a cool achievement to talk about, and of course it makes for a good story, but it's a tiny part of the story.


Thomas Was Alone

Indie dev costs are crazy low, especially if you exclude the time of the primary creator - which many do. We don't need to be a big hitter, we can do just fine from relatively low sales. Many indies are living just fine off games that very few even know about.

Basically 'indie developer doing just fine and is about to start a mortgage' is probably not quite as interesting a story.

On that note, do you think it would have been at all possible for a developer like you to operate in this way before the rise of digital platforms?

Hell no. Well, I say that - Introversion managed it with Darwinia, but it worked hard to do so.

But, nah, I can't see Thomas Was Alone doing particularly well on the shop shelves. It was also a really slow burn - it sells more as it goes on. On a shelf, it'd have been thrown in the bargain bin long ago.

Combining your talk with Fireproof's Barry Meade's keynote on the final day of Develop, there seems to be real line forming that many developers are becoming too concerned with the business side of games dev – monetisation, etc. Is there a risk that many developers will completely ignore these elements as a result, however, and end up in financial difficulty?

I unfortunately missed Barry's talk, but yeah, I think it's a natural reaction to the kinds of conversations happening around monetisation, and specifically free-to-play.

Some free-to-play is cool, and it's working fairly for an audience. But attend a conference, and you see the bulk of the rhetoric surrounding this business model is vile.

People talk about players like cattle. Those of us who love games culture are bound to get worried about this conversation, and I presume that's where Barry was coming from.

The problem is, the conversation got dumbed down by the black and white discussions from people trying to sell books. Many systems work. Thomas Was Alone has given me the money to develop two more games, based on a basic pricing model. This works, and I think it's a good idea to share that info.

We all need to eat, but free-to-play is absolutely not the only way to do that.

Scepticism is a very useful skill, as a dev and in life. Always ask why the person talking is saying what they're saying.

Another interesting point you made during your talk was the rise of 'celebrity' developers who can make a major effect on a game's downloads with just a single tweet, as well as the increasing importance of YouTubers. As far as having an impact on consumers goes, is games journalism in trouble? What role should it look to take in the future?

I think a fair few game journos are spotting the shift, and going with it, consciously or otherwise.

I'm a big fan of Jim Sterling - look what he's done! He's got a very popular video show, a podcast, and still does his reviews and textual content on Destructoid.

I think game journalism will adapt, it just needs to brave some uncharted water. I'd point to someone like Total Biscuit as someone who's doing serious critical appraisal of games on YouTube, and there's an audience hungry for his work.

And, it's a trend, right? So my point about indies not all rushing to mobile still stands. Games blogs aren't going to just die overnight - I expect awesome sites to remain doing exactly what they're doing and doing it well.

If we accept the role of games journalism is changing, though, how should developers just setting out seek to make the best use of it? You talked a lot at Develop about simply getting your face known at events the press attend...

Yeah, for all the marketing gimmicks and email approaches I've tried, nothing beats just knowing people.

It sucks, because geography and personality can block people from having the kind of access I enjoy as a reasonably confident guy living in London. But it's cool to know that I can call up someone from most of the bigger game sites now, or direct message most of the YouTubers I like a code on Twitter.

That takes time and a ton of rejection to build up, but it is invaluable.

I'm kinda intrigued to see how much attention I can drum up for the next game, now I'm not going from a standing start.

On that score, what's the biggest mistake you've ever made with the press?

Hmm. I've definitely said the wrong thing in interviews. Ultimately, no journo I've encountered actively wanted to screw me over or make my life difficult, so I've always been okay, and the bad thing I said hasn't made it to print.

Twitter has got me in trouble a few times. I'm hitting a scale of followers now where the odd tweet ends up as a news story, which sucks. Often something will be taken out of context or misunderstood, which is a shame.

An example - Kotaku ran a story about the Thomas Was Alone launching on Vita under the headline of 'Proof of God: Thomas Was Alone is coming to PSN!'. In reply, I tweeted 'as an atheist, I kinda guess this is a fail' with a link to the story.

My joke was, as an atheist, proving God's existence was a failure on my part. Kotaku's comment section leapt on my statement as an attack on the writer of the article Evan.

No harm done long term, but it was a wake up call that unguarded jokes were probably going to have to be toned down in future.

Thanks to Mike for his time.

You can read our Thomas Was Alone making of feature here.

Keith Andrew
Keith Andrew
With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font. He's also Pocket Gamer's resident football gaming expert and, thanks to his work on PG.biz, monitors the market share of all mobile OSes on a daily basis.