The Last and Final Word: Terry Cavanagh
Terry Cavanagh has slowly but surely paved a way for himself to become a successful and well known full-time independent videogame developer. From Self Destruct to Pathways to his collaborations, Xoldiers (with cactus) and Judith (with Stephen Lavelle) and finally his break through shareware hit, VVVVVV (which was become both a huge critical and commercial success), Terry has always managed to keep things interesting, only working on projects that he feels passionate about.
Age?
I’m just about to turn 28..
Location?
I’ve been living in Cambridge, UK for almost two years now. It’s awesome - it’s a really beautiful town, and there are a lot of other indie developers nearby.
Development tool(s) of choice?
I mostly use FlashDevelop and Flex, and recently I’ve been doing stuff in Unity as well.
What do you do?
I make games. I’m probably best known for making VVVVVV. Currently I’m working on a bunch of smaller things, and one big thing called Nexus City.
How did you initially become interested and involved in game development?
I got started as a kid programming in BASIC on the Commodore 64.
Earliest thing I can remember about programming or any of that stuff was hearing some of my cousins talk about what goes into making a game. I dunno. I must have talked to my parents about it, because I think my dad pointed me towards the Commodore user manual, which had a really simple introduction to BASIC. The very first thing I remember making was a quiz game, made up completely from PRINT and INPUT commands. I got into it a little more seriously as a teenager when I discovered QBasic.
Do you have any regrets about your initial approach to become a full-time indie (taking out a loan)? Is it something you would recommend to others?
I dunno - I mean, things have worked out for me. But it wouldn’t exactly be responsible for me to recommend that path to others. It was pretty risky.
I’m sure as hell glad I did it, though. I’ve got no regrets.
Following this decision, did you have a concrete plan of action?
All I knew is that I wanted to make games for a living.
I was pretty conflicted about how to actually go about that. At the time, there was a lot of drama on forums like TIGSource about so-called casual games - there was a perception that the only way you could make a living as an independent game developer was to make match-3 clones or some rubbish like that, and I didn’t want to do that. I was far more interested in all the cool freeware stuff that TIGSource and the old Indygamer was posting. That was the sorta stuff I wanted to make.
I never actually thought it was even possible to make a living with the sorta things I wanted to make until Aquaria won the IGF. That was a big deal for me, because it was one of the first games I saw that actually seemed to deal with that conflict. This was a game that both the guys making it had obviously poured their heart and souls into.
Maybe it seems kinda trivial to put it as simply as that, but it wasn’t as obvious that you could do this for a living back then as it is now, I guess. Becoming aware of games like that was important for me, because it showed me that it was possible to just make stuff you cared about, and make a living doing it.
That was basically my plan, when I quit my job at the end of 2007. I’d just focus on making stuff I really cared about, for as long as I could. I’d try and make a big game and sell it.
It’s still a principal I believe in - just work on stuff that you’re into, and don’t worry about anything else, and you’ll probably do ok eventually. Maybe that’s really naive, but it’s worked for me so far.
On Jan 1st, 2011 you wrote a reflective blog post about your experiences on nearly having given up as a full time indie and how VVVVVV turned everything around. Where do you think you would be now if it wasn’t for the critical and commercial success of VVVVVV?
I dunno. Working somewhere, or I’d be unemployed, more likely. Or maybe I’d have left Ireland to find work abroad. I’d still be entering Ludum Dare and doing jams in whatever free time I had, I’m sure, but there’s no way I’d still be making games full time.
Did you even have an inkling that you had something special on your hands and that it was actually going to sell in good figures?
I think by the time I went to Berlin for BIGJam in 2009, I was really beginning to feel like I had something special on my hands. Honestly, I haven’t felt that way about anything I’ve worked on since - I was just buzzing with excitement for the game. I went for walks on my own around Berlin between the three hour jams, just listening to the songs Magnus had sent me on my MP3 player and thinking about the game.
You also wrote that you went from working in isolation to living with two well respected game developers. How did this come about and what impact has this had on your work as an independent videogame developer?
Well, none of my friends in Dublin really knew very much about games, or much about the sorta work I was doing. Which was fine - I loved living in Dublin, but it was pretty isolating, creatively. Stephen was the only other person around who was interested in making games, but he left Dublin in 2009 shortly before we finished Judith.
That year, almost everyone I knew moved away from Dublin, mostly to work in other countries. Since I didn’t have any money and everyone I knew was leaving, I ended up moving home to live with my parents for a while.
When VVVVVV actually worked out, I was sorta left not really knowing what to do. There was no point going back to Dublin, and I really wanted to go somewhere where there were other people doing what I was doing. I looked at the various options, and it basically came down to either London or Cambridge. I figured Cambridge would be cheaper.
For the first six months, I rented a small room in a shared house, but then Sophie and Stephen moved to Cambridge too, and we got a small flat together. That’s been really great - just having other people around that you can talk to about what you’re working on has been fantastic. And both my flatmates are super hard working and talented, which pushes me to work hard myself.
Collaborations seem to be a big part of your work. You have collaborated with the likes of Stephen Lavelle, Jasper Byrne and cactus. What role did you choose to take within these collaborations?
It really depends on the person I’m working with, and the project - with cactus, I basically just did level design, which I really enjoy.
With Stephen, we usually come up with a concept together, and then split the work between us - on our recent thing Oíche Mhaith, Stephen wrote the script and composed the music, and I did the programming and graphics. On Judith, though, we both did a little of everything.
Jasper and I haven’t done as much collaboration as I’d like, but maybe we can put that right in the future. He was doing the art and music on our dancing game, while I was doing the design and programming. We were both contributing to the game’s script (it was an RPG).
I’m also collaborating with Jonas Kyratzes, which is really interesting for me because we have a stricter division of roles. I haven’t done any writing at all on Nexus City, the script is all his - I sorta see my role in those games as a “director”, bringing his script to life.
Some developers who have managed to gain the same freedoms as yourself seem to take the approach ‘prototype, prototype, prototype, come across an expandable concept so work some more on it’. Shoot many blanks but occasionally come across a concrete concept that you feel might work as a larger idea - is this the approach that you take?
I guess it’s kinda worked out that way for me, heh. I dunno, I’m kinda stupid when I start projects - I always think of pretty much everything I work on as a big thing, until it gets to a certain point and I calm down a little and probably lose interest in it.
I’ve noticed that some developers (such as messhof), release games that seem to be designed specifically for shows, rather then the desktop PC. Tell me the appeal of doing this versus something you would normally release to a somewhat wider audience?
Mostly, it’s fun to think about game designs that aren’t just for one person sitting at home and playing a game by themselves. There’s a world of possibilities that open up when you think about, for example, games designed for public spaces or games designed for bizarre input devices or weird hardware or whatever. It gets you out of your comfort zone, makes you question your basic assumptions about how a game should work.
I think At a Distance is a pretty flawed game in a lot of ways, but making it made me a better game designer. I wanna make more games like that.
