Alillm has made a name for himself as a independent videogame developer, making browser games. Even as a part-time, hobbyist developer, he seems to have struck the right balance between living off the cash he gets from sponsorship and being able to experiment. First impressions might give you a clue that has has been quite strongly influenced by the likes of cactus, Terry Cavanagh and Loren Schmidt. His games include the likes of 41st Reality, Hash and MercX.

Bonus link at the bottom of the interview.

Name?

Alistair Maunder.

Age?

22.

Location?

United Kingdom.

Where in the United Kingdom?

Cardiff, Wales.

Development tool(s) of choice?

Flash.

What do you do?

I’m currently finishing off my masters in Engineering. When I get a spare moment (very rarely right now!) I attempt to make games.

Tell me a little bit about how you became interested and got into game development? I get asked this quite a bit and I never have a good answer. I had quite an imagination when I was younger and was always inventing characters and game ideas but with no real intention to make them a reality. Then when I was about 15, by chance I somehow stumbled upon flash and discovered a thriving community of flash game devs. I’ve been making games in it ever since.

What are your goals and aspirations as a game developer? Basically to make games that I enjoy making and playing. If other people enjoy them then that’s a big bonus! I try to avoid getting too bogged down in making what other people want, although it’s easier said than done in a area as crowded as the flash games’ market. Do you regularly enjoy playing your own creations? Or is it mainly the most recent game you’ve made that you play the most? Well it’s more a case of enjoying them during the creation process. I often lose days of development time just playing with the current build. Once the game has ‘shipped’ though, I’m quite fussy about playing it. It tends to lose its magic once its online and I start to see all of its faults, which can be quite frustrating. That’s not to say I’m not pleased with my work, but I’d rather play my next work in progress than spend time playing a finished game and finding a million things I wish I’d done differently.

What inspires you to keep developing videogames? The fact that I can have an idea in my head and make it a reality is the best bit for me. I’m sure that a lot of developers would agree that it’s much easier to start a game than to finish one though. I think that’s because once the idea is playable, anyone creative instantly wants to move on to the next idea. The main thing that inspires me to finish games is that other people then get to play my ideas which is cool.

Do you make a living from your sponsored flash games or is it income on the side? Somewhere in-between. Unfortunately I have to work quite hard for a good chunk of the year in university, so I’m really a part time developer. Even so, I get by fine on what I earn so I guess you could say I make a living from it. And after you’re done with university, will game development still play the same part time role in your life? I hope so. I like to consider it to be a hobby first and a job second, so I don’t want to go into it full-time, but I don’t think I’ll be giving it up any time soon either. To what degree I’ll be involved with it in the future though, I can’t really be sure.

I sense some of your games have been heavily influenced by other indie developers. Tell me a little bit about your influences?

Yeah, I make games that I like to play, so it makes sense I suppose that my games are inspired by other developers’ games which I’ve enjoyed playing. I could list developers whose work particularly impresses me, but I don’t want to miss any out so you can draw your own conclusions there. I enjoy games which stand out from the crowd, anything quirky is usually a hit in my book. I’m always being inspired and that’s bound to come out in my own games.

How did porting one of cactus’ games to flash come about? We 'met’ during a shmup competition. I hadn’t heard of him before so I looked him up and thought that Clean Asia! was brilliant. I can’t remember how we actually got talking, but he was interested in getting into the flash scene, so we did a slightly modified port of MSOIDS together. After that got sponsored, we started work on an original game, but unfortunately it never saw the light of day.

You don’t seem to have much trouble getting sponsorship for your games. Do you find the sponsorship process easy? Easy probably isn’t the right word. The flash sponsorship market doesn’t always make sense. There’s a lot of luck and random factors at play. Generally though, it’s not too hard to get sponsorship if you have some idea of how to go about it. Whether or not you get a good deal is another matter, but having a relatively decent game and knowing who to talk to can go a long way.

Have you ever had any trouble getting your own games sponsored? Well it depends. I’ve done a few games which I never really expected to get sponsored due to their simplicity or weirdness, in which case I just used them to advertise my own site. In general though, I don’t have too much trouble, and on odd occasions I’m even surprised when a game gets a good, unexpected sponsorship. Do feel that you have to 'stand out from the crowd’ in some capacity? Yes and no. The flash market is (unfortunately) flooded with a lot of worthless material, which means that your games have to stand out as being something of higher quality or you’ll be overlooked with the rest. On the other hand though, it’s difficult to be experimental or adventurous because there is a danger that the game won’t be appreciated for what it is. The flash game audience is not the easiest to deal with, and your game can be lost in a sea of other titles if it doesn’t meet their current definition of a 'good game’.