“I Don’t Have The Ability to do Anything Normal in Life.” A Final Interview With a Retiring Indie Game Developer

What goes in to making an Indie Game when you start with nothing? Earlier this month Jon reviewed the Xbox Live Indie game Herman. The game got a generally positive review and I contacted the game’s creator, Todd Snarl, to let him know. We had something of a chat about the game and Snarl made mention that he has “retired from the game business”.

Curious to know why and to find out more about the process behind one of the most interesting indie games on the XBLIG service, Snarl kindly agreed to an interview, his last formal addition to the gaming world.

Negative Gamer: For those who’ve never heard of you, could you give a bit of background on yourself?

Todd Snarl: I had a mostly normal childhood. Fifteen minutes after my last final at Ohio State, I hit the road to Los Angeles. My accounting degree has never come into play in life, thankfully. I was signed to BMG Music Publishing in ’99…I thought I was going to continue Cobain’s work, but recording over a hundred songs and scoring some short films by myself in my living room didn’t get me over the hump. All the music in Herman came from this period.

I lucked into the grip union in ’97, and have worked off and on over the last thirteen years on some great movies and TV shows…Team America, Terminator 3, Spider-Man, four years on The Office…all kinds of pretty quality stuff. And lastly, I was a huge internet seller of Transformers robot toys for a decade.

Nothing in my life, pre-2009 had anything to do with making a video game, aside from the fact that I have passionately loved and played video games off and on since the Atari 2600 and Apple IIe. I still have my Apple IIe, along with my floppy of 150 self-created Lode Runner levels. So my homage to Lode Runner comes from a very genuine love for it. I have around ten working video game systems in my house right now, from NES to PS3. No Wii, though…I’m into not flailing my arms around.

NG: What lead you to want to want to make games and why did you choose Xbox Live as your platform?

TS: I read about XNA a couple years back and made a note to check it out someday. When I finally did, I was excited to find out it was free. I never made the choice…a day later, with basically no programming experience and not much in Photoshop, either, I lucked into creating Herman and had him rotating left and right on my computer screen via a tutorial program. What a thrill! My girlfriend got that on video…that was a great moment in my life. No way did I ever think it was possible that I could make much of a video game, but one thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was swimming like a maniac. From that point, I became passionate and crazed, often working 12+ hours a day, for months on end.

I also never chose the 360. I just started working on doing something on my computer (aka for Windows), and Herman was a Windows game until it was 85% done…although the idea to convert it had been in place for months by then. Originally, Herman was bigger and ran around on more of a 3D office space with cubicles and water coolers…but I had crazy problems and eventually chose to redesign it.

The day I swapped it to the 360…and it really only took one day, that was another great moment. I have a video of the first time Herman came up on my TV. All I could think was: wow…I have made a video game that is running on the Xbox 360! It still practically gives me chills to think about that moment.

To this day, I am blown away by how well XNA works…I put Herman on a wireless laptop, and the next thing you know, it’s running through the 360. Getting it to run on the 360 was almost as smooth as clicking a couple buttons. Of course, I had to reprogram all the input controls and other stuff for the 360, and that took a week, but I’m just talking about what a solid system XNA seems to be. Go Microsoft.

NG: How many games have you created, and why did you make each of them?

TS: Herman was my first game ever, and then I spent a week making “Four Player Tangerine Fight,” which is just a 2-4 player arena battle version of Herman with no single player. I made Herman because I realized I could…and I made Tangerine Fight because, why not? The basic structure was already there, and it seemed like a fun idea. For only a week of work, compared to 1000 hours for Herman, Tangerine Fight was a steal.

NG: With Herman being a fairly non-typical game, how did you approach the ideas in it and how were they received?

You say it’s non-typical, but I really had no clue at the time. I was shocked when it released, by the reactions everyone had. Here I was, I thought I had made this totally sweet game that was going to blow everyone away. To me, it was like a playing a cartoon, with a killer story and totally bitchin’ music, and I thought it was fun as hell. I send it to reviewers, and some people acted like I had sent them a turd on a plate. Amazing.

To be fair, most people really liked certain elements of the game at least…the Braid homage, the music, the backgrounds. But there were a lot of people who just wanted to hate the game right out of the gate, and I think a lot of this comes down to the game being abnormal. Also, I totally muffed the press release, I realize in hindsight…I made a press release tailored for big sites like Gamespot, in which the game was really talked up. I should not have sent this to small sites, as I think it came off as pompous.

On my trial level…which I also totally screwed up…at the end, a screen comes up with some options. One option is “Press X if you wish the game were cheaper.” If you press X, different voices say things like “come on, man,” “can you really put a price on your entertainment needs,” “you won’t be sorry,” “do it!,” etc. To this day, this stuff still makes me laugh out loud…I think it’s a riot. But it was yet another thing that at least one reviewer crucified me for. This one humorless and very angry reviewer was convinced I was the most arrogant jerk who had ever made a video game…he was insulted to the core and rated my game a 0 out of 10.

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