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Welcome to another exclusive by the TavernRPG team. We reached out to Liam Esler—the co-founder and Managing Director of Summerfall Studios. In the past, Liam Esler worked as Associate Producer, Lead Scripter & Writer at Beamdog and Design Fellow at Obsidian Entertainment. You might also know him as Kaeloree, a long-time modder on Infinity Engine games, who has been running and operating Spellhold Studios and Gibberlings3.
Thanks a lot to everyone involved in making this interview possible!
Q: What was it like to start a new gaming company? Can you describe the story from the first idea to the actual foundation and first steps? What advice can you give to someone who is just considering this opportunity?
Liam: I’ve told the story of the founding of the studio many times before, so I don’t want to repeat myself here, but from a practical perspective it was all about finding the funds to build the game. We hand-picked the people we wanted to work with to build this game, to create an incredible team we knew it would be a joy to come to work with, and then through a combination of government grants, crowdfunding, and finally a partnership with Humble Games as publisher, we were able to bring Stray Gods to life.
My advice would be: Don’t start a studio by yourself - find one or two excellent co-founders who complement your skill set and personality. The money is often the hardest part, so you need to expect you’ll have to handle that yourself and find others to assist with creative and tech. Be pragmatic - there’s a world of difference between starting a studio and making a videogame. If you start a studio, realize that you might not get to actually work on the game - because someone has to run the studio itself. You really need to want to start a studio and be focused on the people in it and how it runs in order to be successful.
Q: Is it difficult to survive as an indie studio in today’s gaming world?
Liam: Even as a relatively experienced team, it is very difficult to find funding, let alone actually make good videogames that stand out among the crowd. Starting any small business is difficult - and with the complexity of making games, it’s really a wonder any videogame gets made.
Q: We are curious how did you come up with an idea to make a narrative musical game? When we learned about this project for the first time (it was codenamed Chorus back then) we were genuinely surprised that you would work on a musical, given your and David's history with classic fantasy RPGs. You worked on very popular CRPGs at Beamdog (BGEE/BG2EE) and Obsidian (Pillars of Eternity), and David was in great part responsible for the narrative success of Dragon Age games at BioWare. And then suddenly we all learned there will be a musical narrative game. What's the story?
Liam: We wanted to start small, and build out our tools and experience. We will always make games with roleplaying elements, but that doesn’t mean we’re strictly going to stay within one genre. It’s exciting to have the freedom to explore other spaces. Plus, the seed for Stray Gods began as a DLC idea David had for Dragon Age! It’s not really that far removed when you think about it.
Q: You managed to invite a group of amazingly talented voice actors to play their characters in Stray Gods. How did you choose them? Did you arrange the casting like it's done in the filming industry, or you had a good idea of how exactly you would like to hear and what in the game?
Liam: Most characters were cast by Troy Baker, based on who we collectively thought would best fit the roles. For some characters, we did auditions by invitation, as well. Some characters we knew who we wanted from the beginning, and some were big surprises!
Q: How did recordings look like from the logistics point of view? With voice actors living all over the world, we imagine this was not an easy task, especially since there had to be multiple recording sessions planned. What was the most complicated part of this?
Liam: The logistics of organizing voiceover sessions almost killed me. With so many people involved, who are all extremely in demand, even organizing a single session took weeks - you can only imagine how hard it was to organize the almost 80 sessions we needed for Stray Gods. Each session was usually half dialog, and half singing, once the actor had warmed up - this also helped us to reduce vocal stress and ensure the actors had a good time. Plus, the actors were the only ones in the studio - everyone else was remote through Zoom!
Q: How did it work to integrate the music? Does it fill the place that combat would have in a more "typical" game? Did you have ideas about a main theme for a certain situation and then tried to find variations according to Grace's choices or character personalities involved? How would you compare the creative process compared to writing different dialogue outcomes?
Liam: When we originally planned Stray Gods, we did think of the big interactive songs as the ‘boss battles’. Games are all about the building of tension and release. Combat is one way to do that, but there are plenty of others - so we thought, why not musical numbers!
I can’t speak to Austin’s process, but when I was writing the Grace-focused songs, I tried to hone in on her story. Who was this person? How do they express themselves, and how does that shift based on the traits she exhibits? What is her journey throughout the game?
Writing lyrics is entirely unlike writing dialog. There are definite similarities, but lyrics are far more complex in most ways - and require a lot more time. There was a reason we brought lyricists onto the project rather than try to tackle it all ourselves!
Q: What were the biggest surprises during the game's development, what was unexpectedly simple and just fell into place, and what turned out to be much more complicated or completely different from what you had had in mind?
Liam: Probably the biggest creative challenge was the interactive songs themselves - they were huge pieces of work, with many different people involved. Just working out how to design those songs was a challenge, and the lyrics were another challenge altogether, primarily tackled by the excellent band Tripod, with the love songs by Montaigne. I got to write several of the smaller songs as well, which was a delightful experience, and one I’m very grateful for.
Q: What is next for Summerfall Studios? Do you have a plan for your staff, or maybe you’re already working on DLC or even a new game?
We’d love to do DLC if we’re able to! We’ve obviously got a few ideas for what might be next for the studio, but who knows what the future holds.
