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Talking about video games "own goals" and the new indie scene with Rami Ismail at Gamelab Tenerife

Our very last interview in Tenerife as the sun set and the sky turned purple was with an old acquaintance of Gamereactor's, Rami Ismail. The developer, speaker, and indie ambassador analyses how the world has changed in the past few years and its impact on video games, while also touching upon the transition from junior to mid-level devs, the more forgiven European countries in the industry, or how to find inspiration outside of video games.

Audio transcription

"We were used to meet you in Barcelona for Gamelab, but many things have changed, many things have happened.
We've been through a pandemic, this war now, and you were talking about being back to normal recently.
Of course, we're not back to normal, so how do you feel about that? Thank you so much for joining us."

"I mean, I think the interesting thing is that we are expected to go back to normal, right?
And I think the main thing that has happened is people are coming to terms with the fact that normal is not the same normal as before.
But it is a normal, there's sort of an equilibrium starting, a sort of a new balance, and you know, work from home is now a big thing."

"Globalization has changed a bit, economy is in a recession instead of like in an upswing.
So a lot of things have changed, and especially for the games industry, it's a very adaptive but a very sensitive industry.
Like we feel everything in some way, shape or form.
So for us, it's sort of the cutting edge of technology and commerce and art."

"It's been interesting watching all of these changes happen.
This summit is different also in the way that you guys are working behind the scenes, and you guys are sort of suggesting measures and talking about what are the challenges for the European industry.
And you know a lot about developers and indie developers and the way they work in a different way than, say, legends in video games or executives."

"So what was your voice? What did you want to say here?
I think for me the most important thing is just recognizing that a lot of the issues in the games industry are kind of own goals, to use a World Cup metaphor, that a lot of problems that we're having are actually the result of our own choices not too long ago.
So for example, a really big topic here was the talent pipeline."

"How do we make sure that there are talented developers at every level of games development?
So not just juniors, like people from schools that have just graduated, but also people with four or five years of experience, people with ten years of experience, people who have shipped multiple games.
How do we make sure those people exist in games? Because right now they're very hard to get."

"And the reason they're hard to get is that for ten years, companies would hire juniors and then burn them out in four years, and then just hire new juniors because there were new juniors, so they could just keep doing that.
So the problem that we have is caused by us.
And for me, I think my voice here mostly was, okay, how do we make sure that when we talk about Europe, we're not just talking about the UK and France and Germany and Scandinavia, but also about the Netherlands and Italy and Spain and Portugal and all these other countries."

"We have East Europe, we have Central Europe. Europe is huge.
How do we make sure that all of that is included?
So for me, my goal is twofold. It's to make sure that when these kinds of conversations are had, that we're not just looking at the short term, but we're looking, okay, what does that mean for us in ten years?
What does that mean for us in 15 years?
And sometimes that means telling a room full of executives that they're politely full of shit, and that they have to step it up."

"They say, okay, it's hard to get well-educated talent.
Well, then give some of your senior folks a day off to teach at a local university.
You can solve it. You can solve it.
These problems are ours to solve, and I think the beauty of this summit is the opportunity to talk with people in games, in European games, that really have an opportunity to change things, and to not just be a person who says, yes, that's a good idea."

"Yes, that's a smart idea.
But to challenge, and to have discussions, and real discussions with people about what the challenges of the games industry are, and what mistakes we can make in trying to solve them."

"Fantastic. And tell us a bit more about what you've been doing as of late with developers.
Of course, we know about the PressKit project, and you're in contact with them constantly.
So what can you share in terms of what you've been doing with them?
Well, one of the big things that happened for me mostly since we last spoke is obviously travel stopped."

"And for me, a huge part of my life was traveling around the world and meeting with developers everywhere.
You know, from Uruguay to a tiny town in Canada, from Indonesia and Japan to South Africa and Namibia, and all around the world, sort of meeting developers and hearing what their problems were, and hearing what their solutions were, and then connecting people to each other, and taking things that I learned in one place to another place, and then travel stopped."

"And it felt like I was a tree without roots, right?
Like all the information and the knowledge and the context just suddenly stopped, and I decided to do it online.
So now my main thing is actually, and I'm really loving it, is I'm helping developers online for free, frequently, just talking about their studio and their opportunities and their problems, and connecting them to people."

"So that sort of consulting role that I had for a really long time, I'm now trying to do it more and cheaper for developers so that developers have a more fair shot no matter where they are.
Because for me that's important, right?
That no matter where you live, you should have access to knowledge and to network and to funding."

"It's a fun challenge.
And from talking with these developers for so long and so many different ideas and developers, do you get this itch that you want to scratch in terms of getting back to development?
Oh yeah, and I'm active in development, but I don't have..."

"It's not like I have something really, really big going on.
I just have many very small things going on.
And I'm not the main name on them.
It's not... I'm a programmer."

"I like programming. I have to program.
I'm a designer, so I help on a lot of designs.
I'm working on quite a few projects at the moment.
You just won't see me as the next Rami Ismail game."

"Anything you want to share about those games?
Or all of them are secret?
Well, that's the funny part. It's not my name on the games.
I'm not the person who's in charge of saying when do we talk about it, which is actually really cool."

"I've never had that.
At Vlambeer it was always me deciding when to talk about games.
I will go back to game development at some point where it's my name on the game."

"But for now it's really fun just seeing all these different projects and different scopes.
Some of the teams I work with are two people.
Some of the teams I work with are like 40-plus people."

"We've seen indie games big and small.
And it's very difficult to discern between an indie game, a double A game, and the sizes, genre, all fused together."

"You can have an indie game that's a goatee contender.
So what can you say about that?
The way indie developers and indie games changed from when you were that ambassador."

"It was very early.
It's super exciting to me that some of those early indies are now teams of 20, 30, 40 people making much bigger games than we ever could have imagined."

"To me, it's the idea that when I started you could put most indie developers around the world in one room and it would fit.
And now, if you would take most of this island you could probably fit them, but it would be quite busy."

"To me, that is amazing.
It's a dream beyond dreams that independent game development took off to this level and that you're seeing so many different games with different cultures, different stories, different history, different everything being made all the time."

"And it's just, you see it like I was playing Stacklands the other day.
It's a really cute little card game world builder kind of combination."

"I was like, this is amazing.
Nobody has ever made this.
I love it.
And it's just simple and it's beautiful and it's elegant."

"For me, that's it.
Every now and then, you just play these gems made by small teams.
I'm happy that some of the teams get bigger, but to me, the interest is always at the small things."

"You just mentioned the island and you just mentioned taking off.
So, what do you hire a plane in Tenerife for?
Actually, to fly around.
Since we last spoke, I got my pilot's license."

"I've always loved travel, but I think one of the things I learned from being in games for 12 years is that it's not healthy to only have games."

"Because if you only have games, you lose inspiration.
You're just going, okay, so we're going to take this thing from that game and this thing from that game."

"When I think the real innovation in games happens when you do other things in life too.
For me, flying has been a really relaxing kind of hobby, which is kind of strange, but sadly, they didn't have an airplane for me."

"I'll have to come back to Tenerife at some point and fly a bit.
That gives you perspective for sure.
Thank you so much for your time, Rami."

"Once again, looking forward to meeting you again.
We'll see each other again."

Gamelab

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