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Interview with Connor Ullmann
November 10, 2013
Connor Ullmann is a Flash game developer. For more information, visit his website at www.connorullmann.com.
Tibbetts: How long have you been interested in games?
Ullmann: I've been interested in games since I was little and would watch my dad play Super Mario World and Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts on our SNES. I've loved them ever since, and got in a fair amount of trouble when I was younger for playing long past the alotted "time" my parents gave me per day to play games. Nowadays, I don't play very many games and instead put more energy into making them.
Tibbetts: What made you decide to become a game developer?
Ullmann: My main motivations at the start were just that I wanted to change stuff in video games I'd played. Nothing major, but even just changing up the level design or making my own skins for current enemies seemed really cool. So I wanted to find some way to make games, and I ended up searching "Game Maker" into Google. This, not surprisingly, brought me to Game Maker, which I used for four years before moving to Flash and C#. Now I enjoy building an atmosphere and aesthetic in my games, and I find it really fun to bring worlds to life.
Tibbetts: What inspires you?
Ullmann: I'm inspired by art and other games. I like to think of games as being a Frankenstein's monster of the designer's inspirations, and I frequently will be inspired by one scene from another game or movie, or just from a drawing. Usually it's the mood of the scene/art piece that I want to imitate, or other times it's the way a game made me feel while I played. Some examples are the intense feeling of satisfaction after beating a hard section of Dark Souls, or when I started climbing the biggest mountain in Skyrim and began to realize that it's actually a really long climb--the scale of that and the immersion it created really inspired me at the time.
Tibbetts: How would you describe your creative process?
Ullmann: It's almost a stream-of-consciousness kind of thing when I'm working on a game. I'm never one to do up a design document, or even sketch out something on paper beforehand. I just start drawing something, and if I like it, it'll go in the game. For my largest released game, Seedling, I didn't even have a storyline until I was working on the last of eight dungeons! It's also nice because I've spent enough time doing all the parts of the development that I can safely do a pretty good job at most tasks (programming, graphics, design, sound effects, and a *bit* of music) and I don't often have to try and explain my craziness to people.
Tibbetts: What do you consider your best work?
Ullmann: My best released work, to date, is Seedling. However, I'm working on a game now that I think will be better, called Oblitus.
Tibbetts: What advice would you offer to aspiring game developers?
Ullmann: Finish games! As far as I can tell, this is half the job. If you finish games, you will eventually make money, get attention, and be able to attract the most talented people around to work with you. Good concepts and half-games only get you so far. Another piece of advice, mostly for programmers who haven't worked on games for very long; don't steal assets from online, even if you're making a game for free and won't get sued for it. I did that for a while when I started out because I couldn't do art very well, but when I started practicing, I got to the point where doing the art is one of my favorite parts, and now I'm capable of doing art for my games out of sheer practice.
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