Games like “Fallout,” “Metal Gear” and “Assassin’s Creed” are colossal projects that require the combined effort of hundreds of development staff and enormous financial backing, but independent developers, like SIEIDI, prove successful games can be made with a shoestring budget and a handful of people.
SIEIDI is a Finnish team of only five people, that built a game about strapping machine guns and explosives on Vikings so they can kill monsters. “Gunnheim” is their debut title.
“‘Gunnheim’ was born to the idea of couch co-op gaming, having friends over and spending a night or a weekend glued to one screen,” said Petri Pekkarinen, CEO of SIEIDI Ltd. “During the development we have been [nostalgic] over old-school games, especially Finnish classics like Crimsonland, Liero, Molez and Tapan Kaikki. If you look them up, you probably understand where we come from with the ‘Vikings plus guns equals mayhem.'”
However, “Gunnheim” wasn’t SIEIDI’s first idea, it was the outcome of multiple concepts. According to the team, the Vikings had traditional weapons in some early concepts of the game. Eventually, guns were implemented and they decided mixing guns and Norse tales would be a fun idea.
Just like most creative ideas, development went through several phases and changes.
“Back in January before any prototypes were made we had a dozen game concepts that we pitched and reviewed inside the team,” said Pekkarinen. “The ideas ranged from tactical survival games to open world exploration and clicker simulation games, but ‘Gunnheim’ (having no name at the time) caught our interest.
“The concept itself has also transformed quite a bit, as in the beginning there was supposed to be more emphasis on exploration rather than non-stop co-op action.”
The variety in concepts and ideas may be a result of the various educational and career backgrounds that make up SIEIDI. The team has people who have worked previously in the game industry and others who have an education in art, business and software engineering. With that in mind, there are still unique challenges that a team of only a handful has to face.
“For us it was pretty easy to start [development], and easy to expand all the existing ideas to the point of well-known scope creep,” said Pekkarinen. “With a small team it’s really overwhelming if a game concept starts to get out of hand with countless features and an amount of content that is nearly impossible to produce. Being a small team has its advantages though, as everyone has their specific role and responsibility for certain things inside or outside the game.”
Collaborating on any project of any scale typically requires making sacrifices. Whether due to budget constraints, insufficient development time, employment issues or any other number of unfortunate circumstances, developers must usually figure out how to make everything work regardless of the situation.
SIEIDI is no different.
“Working in an indie studio these days is a sacrifice in itself, hence also the studio name’s meaning,” said Pekkarinen – the name SIEIDI is a rough translation to “a sacred place” in Sami, an indigenous Scandinavian language. “We often joke about getting a ‘real job,’ but then again all the sacrifices with time and money have already been worth it.
“The competition for indie game studios and their games’ discoverability is more than fierce, but to succeed you have to be ready to sacrifice a lot, at least temporarily. Making ‘Gunnheim’ full time meant doing no client projects for a while, which have been our main source of income from the start. We hope that ‘Gunnheim’ could shift that balance so that we can devote enough time to our own titles in the future as well.”
SIEIDI considers its studio a sacred place because it is where the team places its effort on making a livelihood and creating games. Since playing is the most important part of a game, they also try to cultivate a trustful relationship between themselves and the players of their games. One way to accomplish that trust is to engage the community and assess their feedback.
With Steam Early Access, a pre-release platform for consumers, they found an active, albeit small, community that gave them suggestions to help make the game more fun. The received feedback cleared up initial game design questions that the team had, thus making the final product closer to being final.
The acceptance of feedback shows SIEIDI considers respect for the gaming community to be essential, and player-developer trust plays a huge role in a developer’s life.
“When going through all these things it still comes down to making any game while following our guiding principles,†said Pekkarinen. “Respect the gamers and value the makers. And for us that means making games that we and hopefully other players can enjoy every step of the way.”
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