Interview Bastion A Supergiant Leap of Faith

A Supergiant Leap of Faith: Bastion Interview
Posted on September 13, 2011

Conducted By Adam Ames
Independent video game studio, Supergiant, released Bastion on Steam one month ago to rave reviews. TPG has
the opportunity to speak with Greg Kasavin, the Creative Director behind Bastion. Greg speaks about how
Bastion came to be, life as an independent developer, DRM, piracy, US Senate Bill S.978 and much more.
Please tell us a little bit about your self and your r ole with the development of
Bastion.
Im creative director at Supergiant Games, which in practice makes me a writer / designer on the team. I did the
writing and story work in Bastion, and also built roughly half of the levels in the game, among other things. Were a
relatively small team of seven people so everyone is responsible for big portions of the project. Ive wanted to
make games since I was a little kid and Bastion is the first game Ive worked on in a writer / creative director
capacity, where I got to devise the world and the characters and so on, so this project was especially important to
me.
How did you get star ted in developing PC games?
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Prior to Supergiant, I worked at Electronic Arts in Los Angeles on the Command & Conquer franchise, specifically
on Command & Conquer 3 and Red Alert 3. Thats where I met Supergiant Games co-founders Amir Rao and
Gavin Simon. I was a producer at EA, and contributed writing and design work, while Amir was a level designer
and Gavin was an AI engineer. Ive loved computer games my whole life so the opportunity to work on a legendary
franchise like C&C was very exciting for me. At EA I gained a lot of experience quickly and met some great
people, though its very refreshing now working on a much smaller team. Prior to EA, I worked in the gaming
press, most notably as editor-in-chief of GameSpot.
Wher e did the idea for Bastion come fr om?
The initial idea for the game was simply to make an action RPG in which you build the world around you. We knew
we wanted to make a 2D game, and also wanted for it to have an emotional impact on players through its story
and atmosphere, though the specific details came together gradually. We love action RPGs but felt the genre was
relatively underexplored both from a gameplay and storytelling perspective, so thats why we chose to go in this
kind of direction.
What ar e some of the successes and failures you lear ned fr om in developing
Bastion?
We work faster and get to higher-quality results by being a small team. Whats worked very well for us is having a
highly tactical workflow, where we never overschedule and take on numerous small tasks that can typically be
completed in a day or at most a week or two. Turns out all those little pieces can add up to a full game over time,
and it helps to break down the work into those bite-sized chunks to prevent from getting overwhelmed by the
sheer scope of the entire project. We pushed ourselves very hard to get Bastion to the quality level we wanted,
and we all recognize thats not the kind of thing we can keep doing indefinitely, else well burn out. But we
approached it knowing what we were getting ourselves in to, and knowing that if we could make a good game the
first time around, wed have other chances to do it again in the future under hopefully even more favorable
conditions.
I n its cur r ent for m, how close is Bastion to your initial vision?
Bastion didnt start with an overly specific vision, though Id say that the final version of the game is very true to
our original intentions in all aspects. We wanted to make an action RPG where you build the world around you,
something could have a strong emotional impact through its narrative and atmosphere, and something that was
very easy to pick up and start playing. The feedback weve been getting from players suggests that this is exactly
what weve done. Also from a story perspective, the story of the game and the key moments in it are very true to
what we had planned. All the major features we wanted, the kind of gameplay feel we wanted, and the kind of
character customization we wanted are all in there. We were very interested in making a complete-feeling game
where everything tied together.
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Some indie devs admitted their games wer e too hard upon r elease because they
became exper ts as they developed the game. Talk about setting the difficulty levels
for Bastion and if you faced a similar challenge.
We spent lots and lots of time tuning the difficulty of Bastion to feel just right, and making sure we had a clear idea
of which sort of player the game was for. We assume very little outside knowledge on the players part, just some
reading ability and a familiarity with basic input methods used for games. Its true that as developers we all have a
tendency to become overly proficient playing our own content, to the point where we can lose sight of what new
players will encounter. To that end, playtesting is really the key, observing new players go through the content and
seeing which stumbling blocks they encounter. This not only helps for difficulty tuning but also for interface design
and story writing.
We worked to ensure the default difficulty level of the game was suitable for most players. We wanted it to feel
challenging but to be forgiving, and then we offer our Shrine system for letting more proficient players ramp up the
difficulty for greater rewards. I think that system worked out nicely, as it lets players decide on game difficulty
after having played around with it for a bit, and its all integrated into the fiction as well.
Wer e ther e any challenges you faced in ensur ing Bastion would r un on the var ious
PC system configur ations?
We put a lot of time into translating the controls to mouse and keyboard, making sure that players on PC could
move with all the intended agility. We do offer gamepad support, but at no point did we rely on that as an option
most PC game players dont have gamepads so the default PC controls would have to be as good or better than
the console controls. We got it to where we were happy with it, plus the controls are fully remappable for those
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players who like to tinker around with the default settings. Other than that, we had Bastion running on PC all during
development so there were no major technical challenges in bringing over the game, just a lot of little things we
needed to do to make sure the game felt right at home on PC.
Outside of cr eating the game itself, what is the toughest aspect of being an indie
developer ?
I think the toughest aspect of working for a very small studio is just that it can be scary. Your future feels
uncertain, and if your project fails, youre done. The reality, though, is that working for a big studio is no different
these days, or if anything it can be even less stable. I think all of us on the team have made personal sacrifices as
part of this process. For example, Amir and Gavin the studio co-founders dropped everything to move into a house
and start working on this game. Living where you work can be fun and productive a lot of the time, but it isnt
always, and those guys knew it going in. Most of us quit perfectly good, stable jobs in order to do this for much
less pay, in the hopes that we could do something more creatively rewarding that might one day be sustainable as
a real job, and all that takes a leap of faith I think.
How did you cr eate funding for the development of Bastion and did you r eceive
emotional suppor t fr om your family and fr iends dur ing this time?
Bastion is a self-funded project, and yeah, it involved digging into our own pockets and those of our families and
whatnot. We didnt seek out venture capital funding or anything like that. We could never have made this game
without the emotional and financial support from our families.
Tell us about the pr ocess of submitting Bastion to the var ious digital distr ibution
platfor ms and if you encounter ed r esistance in doing so.
We didnt really encounter any resistance getting Bastion published, as by the time it was ready to be published, it
had become pretty highly anticipated among independent games. Our game is out now for both the Xbox 360 and
PC via Steam. There are different standards and requirements on both console and PC as you can imagine.
Microsoft puts games through a rigorous screening process, testing for a variety of specific cases unique to their
console. PC publishing is more lenient because theres no universal quality standard but the kinds of problems we
solved in the console version tend to benefit the PC version as well. In some respects its easier going on PC,
where we can update the game quickly and have a direct conversation with our players, though we always aimed
to have the game on both platforms.
How much pull do you have when setting sale and r egular pr icing thr ough digital
distr ibution channels? Did you r esear ch similar titles when tr ying to come up with
the launch pr ice for Bastion?
Its hard to quantify the amount of pull we have, but yes, we have some influence over the games pricing,
especially on PC. We certainly looked at other titles when considering Bastions price point for launch, though on
the Xbox 360, Microsoft determines pricing. Im glad the game was priced the way it was because I feel it offers a
terrific value for that money.
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Tell us about your relationship with War ner Br os and how that came about.
Warner Bros. is our distribution partner on Bastion. Its a hands-off relationship meaning we have full creative
control over the game and look to WB for support in those areas where their large size is a benefit. Every game
released for Xbox LIVE Arcade or PSN for that matter is published either by the first-party or a third-party
publisher. We got a lot of interest in Bastion after we debuted it at PAX last year, and eventually decided to work
with WB. They trusted us to focus exclusively on development while they supported us on the publishing and
marketing side, allowing us to have a strong presence at events like PAX East and E3. Its been a great
relationship thus far.
Please talk about developing the ar t style, level design and music for Bastion.
We were always interested in capturing a specific tone for the game, and the art, music, and level design all exist
in service of that tone as well as the type of play experience we imagined. I could write volumes about how we
created each of these individual aspects, though suffice it to say we benefited from having a specific idea for the
experience of playing the game and in having specific individuals responsible for each aspect of the presentation.
For example, as our composer and audio director, Darren Korb could deliver an unfiltered version of his musical
ideas. Likewise, J en Zee our art director is the only artist on our team so she created the vast majority of art for
the game in her own way. Amir Rao and I did the level design, collaborating closely. I wrote all the story and
narration, with Amir serving as my editor. We all played the game a lot and frequently gave feedback on each
others work to make sure everything was coming together.
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For the most par t, big budget studios no longer r elease PC demos while almost ever y
indie developer does. Why do you think this tr end is occur r ing? Tell us why
r eleased a demo for Bastion and the difficulties in doing so.
Shipping a demo can take a lot of effort, and it may no longer be worth it for big studios, especially when the
success or failure of their games is often predetermined by the number of preorders theyve received. Whats
more, demos for their games can be very large in terms of file size so the demo content may not be accessible to
a lot of players. Be that as it may, we wanted to release a demo for Bastion because we really want people to try
it chances are theyll like it. From day one, we were letting people get their hands on the game, because playing
it is even better than watching videos of it or whatever. Games are meant to be played, and we want people to
purchase our game with confidence that theyre getting something great. A demo can help do that.
There was no real difficulty in releasing a demo for us because we already had the content carved out and had
already released a free trial version for the Xbox 360.
How impor tant is it to get instant feedback about Bastion fr om user s thr ough online
message boar ds and other social networ king sites?
Its great getting feedback on Bastion through whichever means people want to use to give us feedback. We get a
lot of comments through social networking sites as well as via email, and we also like to check up on message
boards, where the discussions can be relatively unfiltered meaning players there dont assume the developers are
reading. We value constructive feedback and love hearing about peoples experiences with the game. It helps us
understand what we did well and where we have room to improve. Its also important to us to align external
feedback with our own internal postmortems, to make sure we have a good grasp on our own strengths. I
personally spend a lot of time reading message boards about games, so its just something I like.
How much value do you place on the opinions of those who r eview Bastion
pr ofessionally?
I was a game critic for about 12 years before I got into game development so I have a deep-rooted respect for
game criticism. As such, I value reviews a great deal. My stance, though, is that theres no arguing with
someones experience with a game. When a review comes in, whether its positive or negative or somewhere in
between, you take it at face value and try to extract from it what worked well for that player and what didnt work
well, and try to understand why a player could have had that experience overall.
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How do you feel about the var ious indie bundle pr omotions and the Pay What You
Want pr icing methodology? Would you be inter ested in contr ibuting to a pr oject
like that in the futur e?
The Humble Indie Bundle is the one of these Im most familiar with, and I think its fantastic. Its been an amazing
deal and the whole user experience around paying for it, or not paying for it as the case may be, has been great.
Ive bought two of them over the past couple of years. The pay-what-you-want thing I think is a very cool model
that works well in some instances. Im glad its been extensible to more than just that one Radiohead album, which
was the first case of something like it that Id seen.
As to whether wed be interested in contributing to something like that down the line sure, who knows? The
terms of it would have to make sense for us. We want to be able to afford to keep making games on our own
terms, so we do need to make some money in order to keep going, but my understanding is that some of these
bundles can end up doing pretty well for the games involved.
What ar e your thoughts on how the PC gaming industr y as a whole ar e dealing with
the problem of intr usive DRM and pir acy?
Its a thorny issue that makes me shake my head. We have no DRM in Bastion, though I guess some players
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consider Steam to be a form of DRM. At any rate we invested zero effort trying to combat software piracy
because we feel its hostile to paying customers and a losing battle overall, especially for a small studio like ours.
Software piracy is a reality, and the way we deal with it is by trying to make a great game thats worth paying for.
To that end, weve had a number of people email us out of the blue admitting to having pirated the game but paid
for it later. We think thats great.
Ultimately I want as many people as possible to play Bastion, but I also want to be able to keep making games
for a living. I dont care if some people pirate the game as long as I can afford to keep making games. As to why
bigger companies are investing so much into anti-piracy solutions, I think theyre helping make us smaller guys look
better and more customer-focused. We want to focus all our effort into serving our paying customers as well as
possible, so that people can feel good about spending money on our games.
Bill S.978 was intr oduced to the Untied States Senate ear lier this year which could
make it illegal to post unauthor ized copyr ighted content on YouTube and other
video shar ing sites. How do you feel about individuals outside of Super giant Games
posting gameplay videos of Bastion?
There are tons of great Bastion-related videos out there, including cover songs of some of our music and various
gameplay videos. I appreciate that the game inspires people to create that kind of content and its hard for me to
imagine a scenario in which we took issue with something like that. These people are helping spread the word
about our game, after all. The idea that people would always have to seek our express written consent anytime
they wanted to post a video of our game is pretty absurd, as the amount of time it would take to respond to those
kinds of requests would feel like a total waste. YouTube is one of those things that cant be stopped and shouldnt
be stopped, I think. The Internet has done a fine job of regulating itself to this point.
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How do you feel about DLC and its cur r ent implementation in the PC gaming
industr y?
Its hard to give a sweeping opinion about DLC, except to say I like it just fine when the content is good. For a lot
of big publishers, they make a lot of their money off of DLC. It wouldnt be happening this much if it wasnt worth it
to them. I dont like the idea that some good content gets held back during development for the sake of DLC, but
on the other hand, some developers including smaller independent developers like Team Meat have done a
great job of supporting their games with free content over time. This keeps players happy and keeps them talking,
which in turn spurs more sales over time, so its one of those rare everybody-wins types of scenarios.
DLC as a concept is nothing new. I remember buying the mission packs for the old Wing Commander games in
the early 90s. They were awesome! They let me play more of what I loved about those games.
Recently, ther e has been a lot of talk about modding of PC games and the
r elationship developer s have with modder s. How do you feel about the online
modding community in gener al and specifically if mods wer e created for Bastion?
With Bastion, we put no work into obfuscating the file structure, so the game is highly modifiable and its structure
is exposed for everyone to see. Hopefully everyone will play it the way we intended before mucking around it the
files, but hey, once theyve bought the game (or pirated it I guess), its theirs to do with as they please. You can
go into the XML files or the text files and change all kinds of stuff around, creating new weapons and enemies and
so on.
While we didnt include any special tools for mod support, were of course open to the possibility of user-created
content for the game. Mod communities have kept any number of PC games alive for years. In our case, weve
already had several folks come to us expressing interest in translating the games text into other languages, for
example. We shipped with French, Italian, German, and Spanish translations only, but maybe one day well see
the game in Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and more. Were patching in support for additional languages based on
requests from these kinds of players. I love this kind of stuff because not only does it show how passionate some
players are about the game, it also means many more people out there will be able to play it for themselves.
What advice would you give up-and-coming indie PC developer s who ar e trying to
br eak into the business?
Theres no formula for doing this stuff so the best, most practical advice I can offer any up-and-coming studio is to
not hesitate to reach out to other small studios whove done the work already whenever theres uncertainty about
how to proceed. In our experience at least, small studios tend to be very forthcoming and open about whats
worked for them and what hasnt, and when they can share their experiences, they can often mutually benefit as a
result. All the smaller developers are in the same boat together anyway against the cosmic forces pulling the
game industry in all kinds of different directions these days, so the little guys may as well team up whenever it
makes sense.
TPG would li ke to thank everyone at Supergi ant for al lowing us to enter the mi nd of a fabul ous PC
developer with i nformati ve and detail ed answers. You can pi ck up Basti on vi a Steam and also fol low
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4 THOUGHTS ON A SUPERGIANT LEAP OF FAITH: BASTION INTERVIEW
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This entry was posted in Interviews and tagged Bastion, Gamers, Indie, interview, Interviews, PC games, PC
gaming, PC indie by Adam Ames. Bookmark the permalink [http://truepcgaming.com/2011/09/13/a-
supergiant-leap-of-faith-bastion-interview/] .
Anonymous
on September 14, 2011 at 7: 10 am said:
Bastion is sooooo bad ass
et1337
on September 14, 2011 at 11: 52 am said:
One cool thing I noticed contrary to so many game development
articles that only show boring PR screenshots of the video game in
question, here we actually see some pictures of the people behind it.
Excellent article!
10 of 10 9/17/2011 3:55 PM

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