iLL People: An interview with Arvind Raja Yadav of Pyrodactyl Games

With a successful Kickstarter campaign backing it, Pyrodactyl games have recently released (July 23, 2014) their latest title for PC, Unrest, on a variety of stores including Steam. We spoke with Arvind Raja Yadav, the creator of  Pyrodactyl Games to discuss both the game and the studio behind it. Excerpts follow.

Ajay: Hello Arvind, greetings from illgaming.in.
Arvind: Hi, nice to be here.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us. Let’s start with your and your studio’s introduction.
Ok, so Pyrodactyl is a studio that has released 3 games so far, all of them on the PC platform, and we are an international team. Most of the team is based in India, but we do have collaborators from various other countries and we make role playing games. All 3 of our titles have been RPGs so far and we like to experiment with conversation mechanics, choices and consequences.

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About Arvind

Before you got into development what kind of games did you like?
When I was just playing games, I loved the Prince of Persia Sands of Time trilogy and it’s one of my favourites. I also used to play Virtual Fighter 2 Versus a lot with my brother. Those were the 2 games which I played the most. There were several others which I had played like Deus Ex, which was a great inspiration for me.

You have mentioned earlier that you got your first computer while you were in VIII standard in school. Was that when you got into gaming?
When I got my first computer in VIII, the person assembling it left a copy of the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets game, which I loved very much because it was quasi open world and during some parts of the missions, it roughly followed the film/book plot. That was about the time when I first started playing video games. Then we would get one game every month with the next one being Virtua Fighter 2. So yes, it started from there.

You started working first on the Half-Life 2 mod Dystopia. How did that come to be?
I started modding Half-Life when I was in college and was just learning to program. I always wanted to make games, so I was not really sure how to get started. Luckily, a person I knew gave me a chance in a mod called Neptune which was a mod before Dystopia. It is from here onwards that I started. My first tasks were simple like adding minor details in the existing Half-Life mod like a new HUD.

So was it like scraping the forum and looking at feedback of what needed to be worked on and opting in?
Yes that was exactly how it went.

Most of the game development in India is mobile focussed, were you ever tempted to go the mobile route yourself?
When I was learning, phones were not really clued in to the gaming scene. There was no smartphone craze going on. Mobiles back then used to be simple Symbian devices. It was roughly by the time I had started work on my second game that the smartphone phenomenon started growing. By that time I was already established on PC. We had an audience and we decided it was better to build up and expand on it than give up your fan base for a lucrative new market.

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The game

You have mentioned that you approached publishers with the idea for Unrest, but it did not work out. You then opted for Kickstarter. Could you tell us about it?
I didn’t approach many publishers, but I did approach a few India based ones. None of them were very enthusiastic about a role playing game without micro transactions, and without a free to play model.

We do tend to have a more narrow market for certain types of games.
When I was pitching the idea, a lot of people who hear it’s an RPG, instead of thinking Baldur’s Gate, they think about Clash of Clans. I was dismissed by most after a small conversation and no one wanted to get into details or followed up.

What bought on the idea of Kickstarter?
We thought at the time, when we started making the game, we did not have much capital and had found an artist to work with us on the game, but the money to pay him to make certain tile sets was lacking. He and the rest of the team then suggested trying crowd funding with Kickstarter and also as a side benefit we can judge the demand. We spent some time to work and polish a working prototype for the Kickstarter. Then we recorded it and made up assets for the campaign.

I do see that you maintain a lot of transparency of your development process and keep your Kickstarter updated on your blog with detailed videos of the actual playtest sessions. Has this level of direct interaction with the consumer and their feedback impacted your game?
When we get feedback like this, there were several people who suggested usability changes. For Eg., when you hover your mouse over a character their names pops up and when you looked at that feedback we thought, yeah that makes sense. No reason not to have it. So yes, a lot of users did influence the game. Another benefit is that when there is so much info for the player, it helps builds trust. We have been clear with what we want to achieve and how we are doing it.

During the whole development process what was the most fun part that would get the team pumped up for the project.
We always love creating scenarios and when you construct a level you are using placeholder assets. When the final assets started coming in and you placed then in the game, that was the most exciting part.

On the other hand what was the most unexpected speed bump or the biggest challenge to production?
There were a few architectural issues. I was the lead programmer, so for me, there were a few issues with the games architecture that I had to solve in the middle of the development. Most of it was the sheer amount of scripting that is present in the game. I had to fine tune the game to make sure it ran smoothly as we started with a custom engine. Unrest has roughly 120,000 words in it, and we had to make sure that the engine could handle the branching scripts well.

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The Studio

Tell us about the team? I know it has been very difficult working across the globe on different timeframes, could you tell us about the people behind the development of unrest?
Mikk (Mikk Luige) is the artist, he lives in Estonia. He is both the lead artist and the major QA tester for the game. He has been very active and has given the most feedback. He has single handedly found 70% of the bugs we fixed. 
Then there is Rutskarn (Adam “Rutskarn” DeCamp) who does the writing. He also creates an internet series (his blog). He is a great writer, especially because of how adaptable he is to the changes. Almost every scenario we started with, was tweaked based on feedback. We looked at the meaning that was going to the player from each scenario. So he ended up writing twice of what we finally placed in the game. The rest had to be discarded due to script changes. He was also very professional about filling in the details like journal entries and tooltips, things that were sometimes overlooked.
Mohammed Jafar is the animator. He was also the solo animator on the RTS games APOX and Tryst. He was brought in halfway through the project and had less time than the others to work on it, but delivered all of the work before schedule.
Ross and Ian (Ian “BaronLez” Nicholls) are two of our scripters. Ross is from Canada and Ian is from England. I know them from my Half-Life 2 modding days. I worked with Ian on Dystopia and Ross, I was familiar with a mod he was working on which I played as well. He eventually approached me for joining up for the new project.

You have mentioned that you want to remain independent, but now after you have released a final product, have you been approached by any publishers for the next project?
Not really, there were a few investors though. There was one I talked to for a long time, but then suddenly one day they phoned me to say that choosing the RPG genre means that your game does not have any micro transactions. We informed them of the upfront selling model and expansions with DLC. Then there was  visible disappointment in his expression before finally calling off the deal.

Were there many enthusiasts that wanted to join your team on hearing of your project?
I have had a lot of people emailing me their resume, asking for jobs. It is difficult to pay people full time beyond a small team. I don’t want to say to people that if you have the passion and don’t want the money, work with us because that is unfair to them. I don’t like to pay more people beyond I can afford and hence we cannot hire a big team.

You mentioned that once the PC version is released, you will look at expanding to other platforms, any developments on that yet?
At this point we are not sure because the PC version is recently out and we are just looking at player feedback and fixing any issues with the current build. I don’t want to outright reject the possibility. Often, people like to ask me about playing it on an iPad or Android tablet. I just tell them to wait for us to check if it will be viable.

You said that you are looking at feedback and looking at the Steam page and a few forums, we are seeing mixed reactions. How does that affect the team?
We liked that a lot of players seemed to have enjoyed Unrest and liked the story and what it led to. Even the negative ones have enjoyed the plot and I am happy that portions of the game were universally well received.

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The Future

Do you think other studios in India will see this as a successful precedent and will try to follow the same Kickstarter route?
I hope they do, but I am not sure what the other studios are thinking at this point. It is a great way to remain independent and motivated.

I also feel the same and it helps put India on the Gaming world map, especially with Kickstarter being an international avenue. Do you have any tips for others starting with game development?
I would say that you should start small with a project like Pong or something similar. Then try to make it as polished as possible. Don’t make it with just 5 command lines. Make an actual menu, with options and various settings. Then you will see what extra work is needed apart from the core gameplay.

Now that Unrest is done and you are in maintenance mode, what’s next for the studio? What can we expect in the future?
Right now there is no ongoing project except maintaining Unrest. But we will look at the feedback and evaluate the priorities and then we will see what to do.
We do want to continue making games. We want to see how much Unrest is able to support us and what other avenues to reach for.

Any message to the fans out there.
I am glad that you supported us so far and I hope I can continue making games for you forever.

And we do keep looking forward to hearing from you soon. Thank you Arvind again for your time and our best wishes for the studio.

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Unrest is out now on PC(Windows, Mac and Linux) and we will update this post with a link to our review when it goes live.
You can buy Unrest using the following links:
Steam
GOG
Humble