You might think that trading a position as CEO of a multi-game studio to work on a single, smaller, and most decidedly indie title would be a step down in all respects. But for Pixelmage Games’ John Smedley, it’s right where he wants to be.

“I can’t even explain how happy I am to be implementing and to be making things. My last year at SOE, I poured myself into H1Z1 and focused on that. This to me, is even better than that already good experience, because I’m physically doing work on it and it’s so much fun. It’s also a ridiculous amount of work,” said Smedley in an interview with Gamasutra. He pointed out that even though he’s the boss, he still has to do a lot of grunt work, coming in at 5:30 a.m. to get a strong start to the day.

Smedley said that he’s happy to be “in the trenches” with fellow game designers as they work on Hero’s Song. Pixelmage Studios has grown to include 17 employees [the original source article said 77, but Smed corrected it on Twitter] and is currently running an Indiegogo campaign to raise additional funds for Hero’s Song (it is now over $80,000 out of a desired $200,000 goal).

Smed also talks a bit about the design process for Hero’s Song, explaining why he settled on smaller servers for the game. From Gamasutra: