[English Version] Interview with Brian Mitsoda
Thomas: Hello Brian, thank you for the opportunity to ask you a few questions about your game. Please tell our readers a few words about yourself and your company.
Brian: I’ve been working in the game industry fifteen years. In that time games have gone big or gone home – literally, if you are not working at a massive studio with suits and fancy titles, then you are probably working out of your house, which we do. I started DoubleBear Productions to do games that I had a personal interest in making, which is to say, if we make an RPG, it’s not limited to standard fantasy, or if we have a good idea for an experimental project, we can do that too.
Our first game, Dead State, was released in 2014 and recently received a massive free expanded update. Dead State was Kickstarted in mid-2012 – without crowdfunding, we would have not been able to take on the project, so again, thanks to all our backers. We haven’t announced any future projects yet, but I’m looking forward to seeing the reactions when we do start showing off game #2, because I don’t think anyone would have seen it coming.
Thomas: Please describe „Dead State“ shortly in your own words. What were your inspirations?
Brian: Dead State was our attempt to adapt The Wind in the Willows into an RPG. We took some liberties and ended up with a game that is a lot more like the original Dawn of the Dead, meaning a focus on how humans deal with major upheaval in the natural order of things. We made the game with a threadbare budget of $300k, which is almost nothing for an RPG.
Our budget shaped a lot of what we could and couldn’t do in the game, but overall we stayed pretty true to the original vision presented in the Kickstarter, which is to say that we have a huge map, dozens of allies, branching dialogues, a morale/crisis system that impacts the sub-leaders and interactions, character development with multiple skills and perks, survival-based gameplay, and a story that captures a lot of the bleakness and desperation of the zombie genre. It was physically and mentally destructive to develop – please play it if you have the chance!
Thomas: Recently, Double Bear Productions released the „Reanimated“-Version of „Dead State“. What are the differences between the releases?
Brian: We’ve been supporting DS since it came out, and Reanimated is the result of incorporating a lot of the constructive feedback and balance requests we’ve received since release. The major highlights of the update include new difficulty options, rebalanced items, much smarter AI, new items, new levels, improved attack animations, and quite a few fixes/adjustments to the core experience. It’s a free update for those who own the original game.
Thomas: What is the current state of “Dead State”? In your opinion, is the game now completely finished? Will there be more content from your side? How about the modding community? Will Double Bear release some kind of modding tools in the future?
Brian: Dead State: Reanimated is probably going to be the last significant update to the game, aside from a few minor fixes. We’ve never charged for DLC and the downside to that for us is that the game doesn’t generate the money to sustain months of developing new content. After years of developing Dead State, the DoubleBear team is ready to move on to our next game.
As for modding, you’ll notice that many RPGs that have robust mod tools usually have a separate team developing the consumer version of the tools. It’s something we might have done if we had more funding at the beginning of development, but it’s not something we can easily do now. We’re cool with people modding the game – and many have figured out how – but it would be an expensive task for us and the audience for those tools would probably be fairly limited.
Thomas: Referring to the last question: Will the game ever be released in a different language? How about a German translation?
Brian: It’s difficult to say because the costs are based on the amount of text, which our game has a lot of. The sales would have to justify the cost of localization and development time. We’re still looking into solutions on our side, including possible tools to allow fan translations.