Interview with Starborne: Frontiers Producer, Egill Sigurjónsson

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When did you start working at Solid Clouds? What do you like about the company?

I started in September 2017 as a game developer. I am very proud of the team we have built up over these past few years. Any company entering the gaming industry requires multiple disciplines to function at the highest standard, and we have now gathered a team of highly competent developers to fill the functions we need during the development cycle. I think people will be pleasantly surprised by this company's quality of work.

What made you get into this line of work?

As a teenager, I got my hands on some game development tools and spent a large chunk of my spare time teaching myself how to code and make games with them. That then escalated into participating in video game development competitions, and I eventually founded a development studio with two of my good friends. It's the sort of thing where there was no going back after I realized I could make video games as a full-time job.

What does the Game Producer do? Is this position more about hard skills or soft skills?

A producer's main job is managing the development team and ensuring everything is on schedule. This includes taking in stakeholders' requests, delegating work to the correct people, and ensuring communications between departments are as smooth as possible. This naturally requires soft skills to achieve, but it is equally as important to understand the work of each team that the producer manages on a fundamental level. Taking in a stakeholder's request and knowing how to reduce its scope without losing its essence can save the development team immeasurable time and effort. Having the hard skills is also great for the developers because they don't have to spend as much time explaining themselves to the producer. They can just go do the work.

Which part of your job do you enjoy the most?

While my job is being a producer, I am still a programmer at heart, so I always enjoy seeing new gameplay systems handed off from game designers to programmers. There's just something satisfying about brainstorming programming solutions on how to achieve a complex game mechanic in a simple and elegant way.

Tell us about the state of Starborne: Frontiers game? What features have the team been working on?

When we set out on this project early last year, we split the production into several phases. The first phase was exploratory, and we created the first iterations of what became the fundamental gameplay systems. The second phase was implementing a "vertical slice", a functional game where a player can come in and have a short but meaningful play session, but the content would run out very quickly. The third phase was a polishing phase where we launched live tests in Asia to closely monitor the first-time user experience of the game through our analytics systems. We used the live data from those tests to iterate on the game mechanics and visuals to make the game as fun and engaging as possible. We are now in the fourth phase, preparing for the launch next year and focusing on our end-game systems. These are the gameplay systems that keep our players interested in the game for months and even years into the future, and they will be the vessels that allow us to deliver new content to players regularly. And while we continue to iterate on every aspect of the game, it's becoming a very polished product, and we are itching to get the world to start playing it.

What part of the new build excites you the most? What was the most difficult part?

The end-game system called 'The Abyss' is now playable, and it is an endless dungeon with amazing rewards. The feature also has a leaderboard, so I can't wait for our developers to start an in-house competition on who can go the furthest. The most challenging part of the latest build would be creating the new boss fight designs. The game designers had to make the bosses fit multiple design goals with high precision, so they required many iterations and intense testing to get there.

What is your favorite spaceship?

Mender. It's an uncommon unit with one of the highest healing outputs in the game, a bit of an underdog type of unit.

What do you think gamers will like about Starborne: Frontiers?

I think many players will like that the game offers simple gameplay when you are looking for a good and casual time, but also offers depth with its tactical unit placement and combinations when you want to be a gameplay mastermind.

What do you think it takes to succeed in the game industry today?

On an individual level, the game industry is an intense industry where you have almost every discipline possible working together to create something great. Unless you plan on being a solo developer, being able to work well with others under pressure is essential for entering the industry. In terms of company focus, I'd say that accessibility is a major factor in the success of your game. Today's gamers want to play their games on multiple devices, and having the game accessible on multiple platforms means the company has access to a vastly larger customer base.

Where do you see Sci-fi games in 10 years?

In the past year alone, we have seen tremendous technological advances in game development, specifically in the art department. We now have AI-assisted concept art creation that the team has begun using to speed up their processes. We can see this technology's massive potential to allow a single artist to generate multiple times the number of 2D assets they did before, and in 10 years, I would not be surprised to see this technology extended in some part onto 3D model generation. Sci-fi has always been somewhat of a niche genre, so allowing smaller development teams to create projects that in the past would have required a large studio means that we are likely to see many more high-quality SciFi games being produced than we do now.

What tip would you give anyone looking to get into this industry?

Whatever role you desire in the industry, you don't need to wait until you have a job to get some experience. Simply download a free development tool and start working on it as a hobby. The development tools available today are incredibly well documented, with thousands of videos on youtube showing you how to create any game you can imagine, and no prior know-how is required. People who put hobby game development projects on their CVs are already miles ahead of other applicants because they both show initiative in getting into the field and they've gained solid experience in creating an actual game.