One game developer that I have bumped into many times over the years is Rami Ismail. We’ve both spent our careers evangelising indie games and their creators, just from different sides of the fence, and as such, our paths have crossed a handful of times.
Of course, most of you will know Rami as a former part of indie studio Vlambeer, the developer that gave us one of the all-time action roguelike greats: Nuclear Throne.
Since then, however, Rami has been on a mission, not just to make his own games, first with Vlambeer and now on his own, but to help more game developers find their feet and have their voices heard by wider audiences.
Normally, his work happens in the background, with consultations and design support, but his public work for fellow indie devs is also no secret; he gives regular talks all over the world, champions the work of marginalised developers, and I still routinely encounter press packs powered by his presskit() format.
Anyway, I should get to the point.
The other day, I was doomscrolling on BlueSky, and I saw a post from Rami about his upcoming courses. As someone who will probably never make a game, but who loves the idea and has huge respect for people who do make them, I was immediately drawn into the project’s eponymous raison d’être.
It’s called Levelling the Playing Field, and knowing Rami and his work, I wanted to find out more. I also figured that some of you lovely folks might be interested in hearing what he has to say, too. That being so, here’s our Q&A, with my questions in bold!
MH: Last time we talked, you were showing off your next game, Australia Did It. How’s that coming along?
RI: It’s such a fascinating project – I always love creating new things, and I think whenever you create something new, you’ll always run into challenges that nobody has solved before. Right now, we’re really focused on playtesting and making sure the onboarding explains the core concepts of the game as well as possible. I always say it’s best to get your final pass on onboarding out of the way last, when you know everything about the game there is to know – so I guess we’re very close.
We’re not here to talk about what Australia did or didn’t do. We’re here to talk about how to make video games and teaching people how to make them. This is something that I know you’re passionate about. What are you working on right now?
I always have a number of projects moving at the same time, but I just wrapped up work on a set of 101 video courses about game development and the business of game development. It’s part of my Levelling The Playing Field program, which already includes a free newsletter and free 1:1 calls for developers with questions. One of the core values of the LTPF program is extreme affordability – so there are always ways to get access for the lowest price I can offer it, and voluntary ways to support it if you can afford it. For the courses, they’re 40 euros each, and they cover the most common topics I cover in conversations with developers – that includes marketing and budgeting, but also pitching and creative direction.
The main reason I made these is honestly seeing how many developer hopefuls were getting ripped off by grifters charging thousands of dollars for awful YouTube courses – while there are incredible courses out there, there’s also an industry of exploiting the fact that creative industries feel opaque and inaccessible from the outside. If people want to access this knowledge, often the best way to learn is to get to expensive events in lands with restrictive visas. That feels unfair to me, and I’m the kind of person who will see a problem like that and just try to fix it himself.
It’s been three years of work since I had a call with a young developer who had just spent years of his teenage job income on a course that was frankly worse than not taking a course at all. That was the initial inspiration for undercutting this grifter market. When I made the announcement, the first thing I did was send him a voucher for the full course program – I don’t know why exactly I felt compelled to do that. Perhaps it felt like an apology for not getting this made sooner.
What sort of things do you cover in your courses, and how do people interact with them and with you?
There are eight courses, all at 101 level: Business, Marketing, Budgeting, Teams, Production, Direction, Pitching, and Timelines. Each of them gives you a number of video classes, articles, exercises, resources, and exams. Completing a course will give you the basics of the topic – enough to keep yourself standing in a conversation with a fellow independent developer or publisher scout.
None of these is meant to make you an expert in the field – but that’s not the goal: the goal is to take someone from absolute beginner to someone with a strong grasp of the basic fundamentals of a topic. For a lot of aspiring developers and new indies, the fact that there’s nowhere to get the basics makes a lot of business-related work very stressful and unpredictable: trying to pitch a game you’ve worked on for a year to a publisher, with all the nerves that come with it, is far more nerve-racking when you literally have no idea if your budget or timeline makes sense.
With these courses, you’ll not only be confident about your budget and timeline – you’ll be able to justify them and support your choices. If you get an accountant across from you asking advanced questions about your P&L, yeah, this won’t cover that – but for 99% of the daily working of our industry, this’ll give you what you need.
I know that a big part of what you want to do is equalise access to the industry and help more marginalised voices get heard. Why do you think that is more important than ever in the modern game development landscape?
In 2013, a remarkable little puzzle game came out. It was called Farsh, and in it, you move a carpet around with a mechanic I had never seen before. I became obsessed with it because this was in the middle of discussions about whether we’d seen every possible video game idea before – and here was something entirely new, with no precedent, no mechanics leading up to it. The developer was barely connected to the industry, an Iranian kid by the name of Mahdi Bahrami. I asked Mahdi how he came up with such a fresh mechanic, and he just said they have carpets everywhere in Iran.
That’s when I realised marginalisation makes all of us poorer. When the US makes war games, it’s about being a hero abroad, and the worst thing that can happen is you don’t go home. When the Germans make war games, it’s Spec Ops: The Line, and the worst thing that can happen is already happening – going home or not, you’re fighting a war, and you’ve already lost. And when the Polish make a game about war, they make This War of Mine (pictured below) – a game in which you don’t even play a soldier. Each of these games is a natural expression of how those cultures think of war.
How many games are left to be made? How many Expedition 33’s are left to be discovered? How many This War of Mines? All these themes and histories and art styles and narrative techniques and games people grew up with – their rituals and hopes and dreams – they can make it into games if we just make sure making games can be done anywhere.
In a world of layoffs and big corporations all trying to make the same game, I think we can all agree our industry needs space for new ideas.
I know that a number of my readers enjoy dabbling in game design, and you’re currently working on a game that flirts with roguelike-adjacent mechanics (and let’s not forget your contribution to Nuclear Throne). What’s the first piece of advice you’d offer to a roguelike game designer who is looking to take the next step in a fledgling career?
Never balance a roguelike; balance the probabilities. Roguelikes are effectively gambling mechanics bolted onto gameplay – there need to be good and bad outcomes, with “normal” outcomes the most common ones. But if your roguelike doesn’t have a jackpot, what’s the point?
If any aspiring game developers out there are looking to level up their game-making skills with your help, what should they do next?
Stop thinking and start building things. You can write a hundred documents, or make a hundred lists of items: until you build stuff, it’s impossible to know whether it’s good. There are so many great game development platforms that are free or cheap, so download Godot or GameMaker and just start trying. If you don’t have game ideas, just try to make Pac-Man or something in every tool you can find. You’ll find something that clicks for you eventually.
Thank you for your time. I can’t wait to play the finished version of Australia Did It!
If you’re interested in hearing more from Rami Ismail, head to his new platform: Levelling the Playing Field.
