An Interview with Alexander Bergendahl

Valenka: Tell me about Poppermost Productions. How did the team come together?

Alexander: My two co-founders and I founded Poppermost and began development of SNOW in May 2012. The three of us hadn't worked together before but met through mutual friends and through the CRYENGINE development forums. We wanted to create a studio that was different, that fostered creativity and didn't rely on publishers or single-title success. With a shared love for action sports, we got started on SNOW right away.

Valenka: What are your goals as an indie developer?

Alexander: Simply put, we want to create something new. We are dedicated to creating completely immersive experiences and try to avoid following trends. Instead of attempting to copy whatever the top selling game is at the moment, we are motivated by the challenge of the unknown. There are so many unproven and under-represented genres in gaming that we can't wait to explore, fueled by a studio-wide determination to bring innovative games to new audiences on new platforms using new business models.

For Poppermost's first game, SNOW, we saw a tremendous gap in both the winter sports market and the action sports world. With overly arcade-like winter sports games on the market and no game that truly captured the magic of being on the mountain, we took the plunge and started to build a new gaming experience that would be fun for a whole spectrum of gamers - from the top winter sports athletes who can recreate their real-life tricks in the game, to those who have never been on skis or experienced riding down a mountain in fresh powder.

http://i.imgur.com/AxH8ZRV....

Valenka: Let’s talk about SNOW; how did the idea of a free-to-play, open world winter sports game come to life?

Alexander: I grew up skiing and snowboarding and counted the weeks until I could put my skis on and ride down the mountain each season. When it wasn't ski season, I wished I could somehow experience the feeling of being on the mountain that I loved so much. As a gamer, I was naturally excited about any winter sports game that came to market, but felt they never really hit the nail on the head and gave players the full authentic experience. So when I met my co-founders who shared the same passion, it was clear that diving into the winter sports genre would be our first order of business.

As early game development progressed, our business model also came into focus and we decided that the free-to-play model would be perfect for this sort of game. We wanted the core experience of free-riding around the mountain to be free to all users to experience together and wanted the game to be able to grow with the sport. Because of our business model, we are able to constantly add content (gear, events, etc.) so we can grow with the sport and remain current at all times. Additionally, because we are building a game as a service, we were able to release our game in a pre-alpha stage and get loads of valuable feedback from our community. Our development has always been heavily influenced by user feedback, and we intend to always keep an ear to the ground to make sure we are creating the best game for our community.

Valenka: What are some of the key features in SNOW?

Alexander: First and foremost, we offer a massive open world that players can roam around freely. This freedom to explore is at the core of our experience, and something that we have spent a lot of time tweaking to get just right. To go along with our beautiful winter environment, we have developed a wide range of partnerships throughout the industry to make the game even more realistic. We have partnered with dozens of the biggest ski brands to offer an in-game store stocked with high quality digital replicas of the most popular ski gear on the market. We have also aligned ourselves with some of the biggest skiers out there, who have provided valuable feedback on gameplay and who we have been working with to design new content. We have also recreated several real events in the game - like Nine Knights, B&E Invitational and the Jon Olsson Big Air, so our game experience stays current and always reflects what's going on in the winter sports world. With a solid core experience and a wide range of specialized content, we aim to offer the perfect a la carte experience for our users.

Valenka: What’s the development process been like for SNOW?

Alexander: We started small with just 3 people - myself and my two co-founders. We worked hard on the initial core experience and released a first playable as soon as we possibly could on Early Access. Thanks to our success on Early Access, we were able to slowly grow out the team to 11 and also raise money from some local VCs and Angel Investors.

Since launching on Early Access we have gone back and rebuilt most systems from the ground up, done more R&D into how we design and build our mountain and of course add a lot of new mechanics, features and content into the game. We recently launched the Closed Beta version which is also the first time microtransactions are available. There is still tonnes to do, but we're getting there bit by bit!

http://i.imgur.com/ZUHyIbM....

Valenka: Were there any significant challenges you had to overcome, either during development or in general as an indie developer?

Alexander: As you could expect, when building a sports game a lot of the hard work comes in nailing the experience of that sport. Developing the physics of the game was definitely our biggest challenge. We didn't want to cut any corners or fake the experience in any way, which forced us to really break down all movements and constantly tweak all the physics. Building the environment for the game was also no small task. We started with just one portion of the mountain and slowly expanded the world, re-building areas to be tailor made for dynamic gameplay and customized to create a fun experience. Our world is now 65^3 km big with over two dozen unique areas to explore and interact with.

Valenka: How has Steam Early Access affected the development and perhaps even the team at Poppermost?

Alexander: Early Access has had a tremendous impact on the development of SNOW because we created a strong link to our community very early on. We constantly interact with users on the Steam forums and have no shortage of feedback every time we release an update to the game. The community helps guide our development process and also provides lots of encouragement and validation for us. Lots of our Early Access users have also made amazing gameplay videos, which is very inspiring for us. Because we saw such dedication and interest in gameplay videos early on, we have developed many features to support this such as our Replay Manager and the SHARE page on our website -- http://www.snowthegame.com/... . Our community videos have over a million combined views on YouTube - here is one of our favourites:

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

To put a game out there and then see the community respond so positively and then create such amazing edits with our game is just mind blowing.

Valenka: How far along is the development on PlayStation 4? Will we be seeing a beta or demo on the console?

Alexander: We're working hard on our PS4 release. We have a playable version for PS4 and when it's time, we'll handle the release in a similar way to how we released on PC. We will start with a Closed Beta but have not yet set a date. We hope to announce one soon!

Valenka: Are there any sacrifices you’ve had to make between the PC and PlayStation 4 versions?

Alexander: Thanks to the power of CRYENGINE, we don't anticipate having to make any sacrifices. CRYENGINE is an amazing tool that works seamlessly between platforms, making a cross-platform release possible for a small teams like ours. PS4 is a great platform to build on and has a lot of added benefits, such as the built in gameplay recorder. Of course we will work to ensure optimization cross-platform, but we don't expect to lose much fidelity.

Valenka: What’s next for Poppermost Productions?

Alexander: Right now we are fully focused on SNOW and have a lot of features on our roadmap that we are eager to build. Most importantly, we look forward to including snowboarding in the game as soon as we lock down all the core open world features. Looking further into the future, we hope to explore other action sports when we move beyond SNOW.

Day 18 | Poppermost