For the Community Connection project, I interviewed indie game developer Matt Trobbiani from Adelaide, Australia, who I’ve known for some time through his game Hacknet. He is self-employed and uses the Game Plus Adelaide workspace.

I chose to interview Matt as he is an example of a successful indie game developer. Game development is something I’d like to do in the future, if only as a side project.

And of course, these are questions and answers of the eponymous interview.

• Why are you so passionate about your job?

“It’s an amazing creative outlet – both the creativity involved in designing something new, and the technical process of building it are fascinating and endlessly fun for me.”

 

 

 

 

• What obstacles have you faced to get you where you are today?

“Making games is really hard, and making a game that’s commercially successful is very rare. I was working on Hacknet for years, while working full time, because it’s what I loved to do – I never truly expected that it’d be the commercial success that it ended up being. Aside from needing a lot of passion for making games to push through the hard bits in a hobby project, you also need a lot of technical skill to put something good together.

“Past that, almost no one makes a game completely alone. For example, I was about $10,000 in debt from licensing music and paying for marketing trips for the game when it launched, and I was really just hoping that it’d make enough money back that I wouldn’t take a big loss for it. It’s pretty tough to build your own game, and Hacknet wasn’t even my first –  a previous game had me going through all of this before, and hit the market as a huge commercial and critical failure. Picking myself up after that and committing to making another big commercial game was probably the toughest obstacle.”

• What advice would you pass on to someone interested in what you are doing?

“Start making games. Really, the best way to get better at this is to just start doing it – I don’t think I’d ever really consider hiring *anyone* that had never worked on anything that wasn’t a school or [post-secondary] assignment. The bigger, more diverse, and more interesting the projects you’ve worked on in the past are, the more interested I am. Start now!”

• Would you be open to further contact from Riverside students and if so, how can someone contact you?

“Sure, you can email me here: matt@hacknet-os.com”

• How would you recommend that a budding developer begin their career? Indie, like you, or as part of a larger studio?

“As above, I’d recommend starting making games however you can – alone or with a small team, as long as you’re always making things, you’ll be improving, and that’s the critical bit. As for aiming for jobs, that’ll depend on how you feel about your own projects when looking at the industry. There aren’t many big game studios in Adelaide where I live, so I never really had this option, so I don’t really know.”

• What would you advise budding developers not to do, ever?

“Don’t be disrespectful to industry members (or anyone really) on social media. It’s something that can really come beck for you, and it’s a lot harder to erase past mistakes these days. If you ever do end up successful, or working for a successful company, you can expect someone, at some point to scour through your past – you don’t want to to be embarrassing, or problematic.”

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What I learned from Matt is, overall, good advice for anyone interested in game development, as well as a good insight into what to expect. Through this interview, I’ve learned some good advice to take note of if I ever wish to join a studio. Knowing Matt has also introduced me to organizations such as indie publisher Fellow Traveller (formerly: Surprise Attack Games) based in Melbourne, Australia. While I may or may not be able to get a game published under their label if I do indeed to pursue game development, it would be great to know that I have options.

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Images 1 and 2 are screenshots of Hacknet created by me. Hacknet available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/365450/Hacknet/

Image 3 is a screenshot of Hatland Adventures from the Steam store page. Hatland Adventures available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/347930/Hatland_Adventures/

Image 4 is from a tweet published by Matt Trobbiani. https://twitter.com/Orann/status/911962202579509250