Iron Tower Studio - Interview @cshpicone

Cshpicone interview Vince D. Weller and Ryan Easton of Iron Tower Studio about the studio and its games past and present.

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Joining me is Vince, the lead designer of Iron Tower Studio, which is the developer responsible for Age of Decadence, a text-based RPG which I reviewed very positively last year, and Dungeon Rats, a tactical game set in the same world. Ryan Eston Paul, the composer, also joins us to talk about his role in the studio. Throughout the interview we chat about the AoD and the studio in general and, most excitingly, Iron Tower's upcoming game The New World, which is still in the early stages of development.

Please note, you will find the following abbreviations in abundance:

AoD - Age of Decadence

TNW - The New World

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CSH: Iron Tower Studio has an interesting slogan, "proudly serving 0.003% of the Global Gaming Market since 2015. The remaining 99.997% need not apply." Why have you chosen this approach, and do you think it has helped or hindered your success as a developer?

Vince: You don't choose your passion. Some people are really passionate about action RPGs or MMOs. We happened to be passionate about hardcore, text-heavy RPGs, which is a very niche sub-genre these days.

We knew that AoD won't be a top-seller from day one and we were ok with it. Same goes for The New World. Think of it this way: when you open a corner store to sell what the locals can't buy in a supermarket, it's never about money. It's about doing what you love and dealing with people who love the same thing.

CSH: Choose a job you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life, eh? So who is Iron Tower Studio and how did the team come together?

Vince: When we made AoD, we had a team of 6: A programmer, animator, artist/designer, writer/designer, 2D artist, and composer. For TNW, we upgraded our animation rig and enlisted a concept artist, a 3D artist, and a second programmer.

I've met Nick (our programmer), Oscar (artist/designer), and Mazin (artist best known for his superb portraits) on RPG Codex, a go-to site if you suspect that a game you like might actually suck but can't figure out why.

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