Train2Game catch-up with Steven Herod CEO of student studio

This week Tain2Game spoke with Steven Herod in regards to his student studio Heresy Studios. Heresy is a student studio, made up a majority of Train2Game students. It’s working on multiple projects and operating an ‘all welcome’ policy when it comes to recruiting new team members.

The team are great advocates of ‘learning through doing’ and have recruited many team members through the offer of creating portfolio content. Train2Game spoke to Steven about what the team are currently working on, recruitment and what Heresy has planned in the future.

Steven Herod, CEO, Heresy Games: “I’m classed as the team leader/boss but within the group I have four team leaders, Chris is Team Leader on the frosty Pigeon project, Jason is running the House project, Myself and Valo are running Ming In Space Project, Mauro and Heather are running Desert Raiders (Newest addition to the list).”

“We came together, well let me start from the beginning, I started the course and made that first game on construct 2, Asteroid dodger game, And I thought about how to expand it and make is an actual decent game, Me and My bestfriend (Cara, She quit XD), started to the make the group.”

“As I was getting really eager to make something happen and Cara basically put it all off I started asking around the forum for some people to work with me, that’s where I got Heather to join. She spent most her weekends working on the logo, different panda images etc. She became a very valuable member.”

“At the same time I was talking to an artist called slinkydink (Not her real name) and she was supposed to help with the company logo (heather’s logo was for the actual game), Slinky kept putting it off and it never got done BUT she set up a TeamSpeak channel and started inviting people from the course.”

“This is where we got one of our artists: Vampii (Not her real name, She’s really called Nair) So Nair has been doing some concept art ideas, different animal images etc. and she introduced me to Mauro (Her son’s godmother’s son or something like that) and he immediately started on some artwork too.”

“This is when I decided Ming In Space is going to be huge and 3D XD, So this prompted me to recruit like crazy,  Whilst all of this was happening I was a part of a Train2Game developers group on Skype which was set up by one of the students, (Think its Richard S) and I’ve grabbed a couple of developers from there, One of whom is Valo (He’s done some unity terrains and is really taking to this teamwork business ideas).”

“One night I stayed up until about 5am messaging a lot of people on Train2Game course that had posted about working on projects etc. And we’ve got ourselves a nice range of QA Level Designs and just Designers too, many of whom are on the About Us section of the website but since we’ve increased in numbers I need to update that. There are many members I could write about but then you’d just be here for ages XD”

“I feel we all work extremely well together, most of us have the course in common (This is my recruitment selling point, I can say that because we’ll from the course we can all help when it comes to coursework except from the projects later on because I don’t think we can help but none of us are at this stage yet.)

“We’re always accepting new members to be honest, although it might sound stupid to accept endless amount of members its actually quite smart. Some people won’t be here for the actual studios set up, some members just want some portfolio work, some people just want to be a part of something. By accepting every member possibly it allows me to manage several different projects and elect team leaders for each project, and when we release these projects, we will see who’s done what, who we want for the founding party of the company and who is not pulling their weight (If we find anyone not really pulling their weight we will address this formally, maybe see if they want to work on another project and find out what exactly they want, If they don’t want to be a part of it then we’ll suggest they stay as a background member until they time or something like that).”

“Not all of our members are Train2Game. An old best friend/neighbour is mad on gaming so immediately I’ve got him involved and some of his arty friends involved so I’m teaching them about Unity, (Can’t teach them construct2 very well without them having the licence to release stuff but I’ll buy them that in the future.)”

“But in terms of living in different locations, The campus forum, Facebook, Skype and TeamSpeak solve that right away, also drop box is key here too, Naturally it can be difficult explaining things without being able to sit next to someone as say look at that there BUT Skype has screenshare :P”

“In my opinion, The Train2Game course has been fantastic so far, (Little hiccup with TIGA but if they don’t want to accredit us then fine, I’ll be successful without them :P.) But in terms of the actual course, the work I’m really enjoying it, I’m super looking forward to my projects at the end, The TMA’s could maybe be a bit harder than multiple choice questions but on the other hand they are just checkpoints really so I’ll see what the projects are like,, ABSOLUTELY love the Unity book, It’s got everything in it!!”

“Long term goals, Be Bigger than Microsoft, XD, Or own Microsoft,, Whichever comes first, but no, seriously I’m going to open and run a studios in Manchester and Mauro is going to run the studios in London. We’re going to be the best game developers ever and we will owe each other for our success. Like I said though, some people aren’t here for the long run, I know some people just want some money and portfolio work which when they get this and leave we’ll keep their info for when we’re a huge success and they want to come back, and we’ll either welcome them back with open arms or assign them to the mail room (Depends how they left).”

“By making actual games instead of brainstorming and saying that’s cool has really given such a better understanding of how to make the games, what is needed, and how to improve. An example is for a Construct 2 mess around project I made a level select screen, it didn’t really thrill me but then because I had learnt it in Train2Game I used an array to set it up and BAM much better, So using that example project I’ve shown some people and they’ve adapted their ways and Chris even said that without actually making the level select screen he had no idea how it really worked (If you understand?)”

“We want to release at least 1 game by Christmas (It’s doable) but if not then March is the ultimate final deadline. Ambitions for the games; Ming in Space is going to be a best seller, the mobile games will do extremely well and help us fund the studios, Project 64 is going to be the killer.”

“The kickstarter project: That’s For Ming In Space as you probably know, it was an idea to attempt to get some funding for that game but also to test out what we need for funding, like I don’t think we’ll get a backer on there this time around because we’re so new to it, but by doing it with a semi ready project we get the understanding of what we need for the next crowd funding. Fingers crossed we get a backer for it BUT who knows??”

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