9 minute read
WLAD MARHULETS
A GRADUATE OF THE JUILLIARD SCHOOL AND A FORMER COMPOSITION STUDENT OF OSCAR AND PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING JOHN CORIGLIANO, WLAD HAS WORKED ON SUCH FILMS AS AMBITION, DIRECTED BY BOB SHAYE (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY); HITMAN: AGENT 47, STARRING RUPERT FRIEND AND ZACHARY QUINTO, MARSHAL FROM DETROIT, STARRING EMINEM; THE GIVER, STARRING JEFF BRIDGES AND MERYL STREEP; NOVEMBER MAN, STARRING PIERCE BROSNAN; SABOTAGE, STARRING ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER; AND OTHERS. A FEW YEARS AGO, WLAD STARTED HIS OWN VIDEO GAME DEVELOPMENT COMPANY. HIS FIRST GAME, DARQ, WAS RELEASED ON PC, PS4, PS5, XBOX ONE, XBOX SERIES S|X AND NINTENDO SWITCH TO BOTH COMMERCIAL SUCCESS AND CRITICAL ACCLAIM. HAVING WON A NUMBER OF AWARDS, IT BECAME THE 42ND MOST SHARED PC VIDEO GAME OF 2019 (METACRITIC).
G.A.N.G. Staff (GS): Please tell us about your background and musical upbringing.
WLAD: I was born in Belarus and relocated to Poland at a very early age. My father was a music lover and an amateur songwriter. My brother, on the other hand, was a world famous musician by the time he was 6. I had no interest in music until I turned 16, when I finally decided to give it a try. I was lucky to have gotten accepted to a local music school without knowing a thing about music. My instrument of choice was the clarinet, although I was interested in music composition above all else. It took an incredible amount of work to make up for the years of music education I had missed out on, but ultimately, I did manage to write quite a lot of music in that period. It was a time of indescribable struggle, as my family ended up falling apart. We went bankrupt and couldn’t afford food and utilities. I’ll spare you the details, but to this day I have a memory of having to wear layers of winter clothing at night – it was the only way to fall asleep.
During this challenging time, I borrowed a bit of money and went to New York to audition for The Juilliard School to study composition with my favorite composer, John Corigliano. I had only studied music for a couple of years at that time – I knew my chances were nonexistent, but I was desperate. I found myself in the middle of Manhattan in March of 2007 with $300 of borrowed cash in my pocket. I spoke no English – literally, zero. There were periods during which I was nearly homeless and starved for days. Long story short, with a lot of struggle and much luck, I was accepted to The Juilliard School as a full scholarship student to study composition exclusively with John Corigliano. It changed my life forever and I couldn’t be more grateful to him for giving me this chance. After graduation, I was fortunate to have been introduced to Sam Schwartz (of The Gorfaine/Schwartz Agency) by John Corigliano himself. This allowed me to start working in the film industry soon after moving to Los Angeles. I loved working in film and I’m incredibly thankful to my agents for creating opportunities for me that would have been out of my reach otherwise.
GS: You shared that when you first got started in this industry, you didn’t know anything about game development. How did the formation of Unfold Games come about and what were your expectations?
WLAD: I was in the early stages of my film scoring career when I decided to try something new. In late 2015 I had a month off in between film gigs. I decided to download the Unity engine and play with it a little bit. I had no intention of creating a commercial game at first – it was supposed to be just a hobby. I knew
nothing about game development, but learning about it made me feel like a kid in a candy store. Coding, 3D modeling, texturing, animation, game design...I was glued to the computer screen for weeks watching tutorials and trying things out. A month later, I had a little prototype of a game. Without giving it much thought, I called it DARQ. A friend of mine liked it and encouraged me to put together a trailer so I could upload it on Steam Greenlight. While Steam Greenlight is no longer around, at the time it was a platform that allowed Steam users to vote for games they were interested in purchasing in the future. To my utter surprise, my little game prototype became one of the 10 most upvoted titles on the platform. The game got covered by major media outlets and I started receiving offers from game publishers. Soon enough, game development became more than just a hobby. That’s how Unfold Games was born – unexpectedly and out of the blue. I describe the process of going from knowing nothing about video game development to launching DARQ to both commercial success and critical acclaim in my book GAMEDEV: 10 Steps to Making Your First Game Successful.” I’m proud to say the book was praised by Forbes as their “favorite book on game development by far.”
GS: What are the challenges around getting funded for an indie project? How did you succeed in getting funding for DARQ, which was recently named one of the 10 Best Horror Games on PS5?
WLAD: When I started working on DARQ, I had about 3 months’ worth of savings. I received quite a few funding offers from publishers early on and spent a lot of time negotiating, but in the end, I wasn’t able to reach a deal I was excited about. As scary as it was, I ended up politely turning down all offers from publishers. At the same time, I was grateful to have received any offers to begin with – after all, I was a complete newbie and had no clue about game development, not to mention the business side of the game industry.
I continued scoring films for a while trying to save as much money as possible while working on DARQ whenever I could. Eventually, I was able to save enough money to work on it full-time. When I say “full-time,” I mean every waking hour. Over 100 hours a week. Many 16-hour workdays. While it might be seen as unhealthy, nobody forced me to do it. The reason I was working every waking hour was because I loved the process that much. While DARQ wasn’t developed completely solo, about 95% of the game was done by me. It’s a terrible way to make a game, but it was the only way I could manage at the time. I kept the development costs low and put in as much “sweat equity” as possible.
After the successful PC launch, I teamed up with Feardemic – a publishing company I absolutely love. They’re a subsidiary of Bloober Team, known for The Medium, Blair Witch, Observer, and Layers of Fear. They did an incredible job porting the game to five consoles. I look forward to our continued collaboration as we continue to develop our second game – this time, with a pretty large team.
GS: Can you walk us through the game development life cycle for an indie game?
WLAD: Every indie game has a unique story of how it was developed. Every indie developer has a unique set of challenges, so it takes a lot of perseverance and thinking outside the box to overcome them all. Having lived through this process, I see every game release as a miracle. DARQ was no exception. The project was way too ambitious for it to be developed almost entirely solo. I was too inexperienced to handle it the right way and actually started the game from scratch three times trying to reach the quality level I had envisioned. Almost half of the development time was spent trying to gain experience and learn new skills. I made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I’m glad I did – that’s a great way to learn. Ultimately, it took over 10,000 hours to develop DARQ, which included learning
coding, modeling, animation, texturing, game design, level design, marketing, PR, accounting, law, and business in general. What surprised me the most was that the last 10% of the development takes a very long time. Adding polish, creating a simple pause menu, fixing bugs, testing – all of that can feel like an endless process. Thankfully, it’s extremely rewarding to see the game come to life as these tasks get completed.
GS: Indie games are more popular than ever before. What do you attribute this to?
WLAD: There are multiple factors. Back in the day, before digital distribution, it was virtually impossible to create a small passion project and have it reach a wide audience. A lot of talented people had no way of showcasing their work to the world. Now, selfpublishing a game is easy (at least on PC and mobile), and social media creates equal opportunity for visibility whether you’re a small indie studio or a large AAA company. Also, every year game engines evolve and offer more and more intuitive features and free educational resources. It’s still very hard and timeconsuming to create a commercially viable video game, but it’s now more accessible than ever before. It’s only natural that we’re seeing a lot of talented people create incredible things using these tools. Last but not least, I think indie games are popular because they tend to offer unique experiences that AAA games often cannot. The bigger the budget, the bigger the need to create a product that appeals to masses. Indie developers can afford to experiment within a small niche and come up with something truly creative and personal. Such games might not always find large player bases, but they often appeal to smaller targeted audiences. GS: You produced your first awards show this year dedicated to indie games called the Unfold Games Awards. Can you tell us about the support from your sponsors and big award wins?
WLAD: When developing DARQ, I received a lot of support from the community. I felt it was my duty to try to give back in some way. I partnered up with Intel, Unity, Pixologic, FMOD, Integral Capital, and The McArthur Law Firm to come up with prizes of the total value of over $170,000 (including hardware, software, services, press coverage, and cash). It was important to me to make this award program completely free to enter, as indie developers often cannot afford hefty entry fees. That’s why we’ve received an overwhelming amount of submissions. The competition was judged by industry veterans, famous streamers, and members of the press (GameSpot, IGN, Forbes). As far as I’m aware, Unfold Games Awards is the largest free-to-enter award program for indie games in the world (when it comes to the total prize value). The game that won the Best Game Award, as well as a few awards in other categories, was Before Your Eyes. It’s a true indie masterpiece – give it a try if you haven’t yet.
Thank you, Wlad. It’s been a pleasure talking with you!
