<aside> ⚙️ Hi everyone! My name is Kevin and I'm a co-founder and CBO/Business Director at Serenity Forge, a game development and publishing studio that creates meaningful, impactful games. We develop, publish (both digital and physical!), do merch for games, and have been steadily growing a lot during the past 1.5 years.
My/Serenity Forge's socials:
🟢 https://twitter.com/SerenityForge 🟢 https://www.instagram.com/serenity_forge/ 🟢 https://www.linkedin.com/company/serenity-forge/
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Wishlist Arcadian Atlas on Steam
Wishlist Land of Screens on Steam
<aside> 🤔 Can you start by telling us a little about yourself? Who you are, what you had been doing previously, and the origins of Serenity Forge as a company? - Nate
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<aside> ⚙️ Kevin: One of the first times I ever realized that video games were made by actual human beings was when I saw the behind-the-scenes footage of God of War (PS2) on a second bonus disk. And then the next revelation I had, which was that games can actually deeply impact someone's life, was when I first played Journey on PS3, which took me out of a depressive period of my life and made me have almost a semi-religious experience. So those two major experiences with games are what really set me on my journey!
I've been lucky enough where Serenity Forge has always just been my "real" job ever since I graduated college! I started it along with our CEO Zhenghua Yang (Z) and a few other friends, and we've just been growing, learning, failing, and succeeding for many years since 2014
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<aside> 🤔 Between your work of managing, designing levels, and writing, I can see you've taken a lot of different roles in the development process. What has been your favorite role? - John
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<aside> ⚙️ Kevin: If I were to be 100% selfish in my answer here, I'd definitely say the level design and writing roles, because they're just so creatively fulfilling!
But it's important for me and everyone I work with to be very self-aware, and part of that self-awareness for myself involves knowing that there are better-level designers and better writers than myself. And I've always been super passionate about the video game industry and the business side of things and will continue to be till the end of time, so I'm currently very happy focusing on the business aspects as well!
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<aside> 💡 Editor's Note: This is a really important point, particularly for those of us with many interests and consider ourselves or wish to be a jack-of-all-trades. Even if we can do multiple things, we're unlikely to be exceptional at all of them.
Understanding our strengths (or superpowers) and then creating space for others to deliver better work than we can is a key skill for leadership, people management, and even just effective collaboration among team members.
Further, even when you might be exceptional at multiple things, you're unlikely to be able to do them all at the same time. Better to then focus your efforts where you are likely to make the biggest impact, and again create opportunities for others to do the same.
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<aside> 🤔 Did you start your gaming career with these multiple skills and interests or did you add on over time? Do you have any lessons learned to pass on regarding specialization versus the pursuit of being a jack-of-all-trades? - Nate
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<aside> ⚙️ Kevin: As with a lot of people interested in games, I was just interested in everything, from design, story, art, etc. The only aspect I knew I wouldn't do too well in is programming. It certainly wasn't for a lack of trying, as I took some introductory programming-oriented classes in school (still thinking about that B- I got in that intro SQL class, which would have been a C+ were it not for my group final carrying me...)
As far specialization vs jack-of-all-trades, I think one thing is to really focus on the team size you're working with. Sometimes you don't have as much of a say in terms of how general or specialized you'd prefer to be once you join a team of a certain size, but what you DO have a choice in is to choose whether you want to join that team to begin with.
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<aside> 💡 Editor's Note: To Kevin's point, smaller indie teams often have less people to do all the things. As a result, those fewer team members may take on additional responsibilities outside of the normal scope of their defined roles.
That is one of the reasons that we at Work With Indies go to great lengths to make working with us as quick and easy as possible. Because it is often the CEO who may also be the Lead Programmer who is posting roles and making hiring decisions. And, they already have whole teams to lead and games to make.
Larger studios may offer opportunities to take on additional responsibilities in other ways, but may be more inclined to initially hire a people who are really great at the specific jobs they are being asked to do.
Of course, these are generalizations and there will be many exceptions to the rule.
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<aside> 🤔 With such a wide range of genres and target audiences, what factors go into your decisions to work as a publisher with specific titles and teams? - Kawa
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<aside> ⚙️ Kevin: Trust is a major factor, we need to know that we're working with a team that wants to be a true partner. In terms of the types of projects, we focus on impactful, narratively driven games; aside from that, the specific genre doesn't matter as much. In general, we tend to look for games to publish that are also on the smaller scope.
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