"[Out of Hell] had everything that I love about games," says Lassen. "Atmosphere, texture, moodiness, rust, decay, blood, resonance, subtle details and not so subtle details. I'm a huge fan of the post-apocalyptic genre. Plus, I was floored by the fact that it was created by one person. The mod community unfortunately suffers from its share of big, bulky teams, and Long is a breath of fresh air."
Mods, it would seem, ironically suffer from many of the same issues plaguing commercial game design, such as feature creep, group think and unreasonable egos stifling creativity. As humans, we bring our horrors with us whether we're being paid or not. Long, although his project ultimately suffered from many of the above-described ills in spite of his sparse development team, wanted to avoid all that.
"I wanted to learn as much as I could in all aspects of making a small game," he said in a recent interview with ModDB. "I also liked having the control over the direction of the content while avoiding some of the problems that could arise with disagreements in a mod-team setting.
"The disadvantages (and there are many) are that it takes way longer to create. As opposed to being only a texture artist or a prop modeler and making only those things and then giving them to the mapper to put together, I'd have to do every single thing myself."
He tells The Escapist that through the experience, he's "gained a more appreciative attitude toward games/mods and the people that make them. It's a lot of hard work, a totally alien concept that I just didn't have before because 'hey, it's making and testing games, and that's easy!' So I would play a game and just label it as being good or crappy, go on a rant, and think nothing else of it. Now I know that a game that didn't turn out the way the developers wanted was still the result of a lot of hard work and dedicated individuals had to go through stress, late nights and crunch-time, despite what I thought about it. It definitely casts a new light on my approach to games and outlook on people [making them]."
This isn't news to Justin Lassen, who's worked on his share of mod projects.
"I have always supported the independent game development scene," he told The Escapist. "I've modded and worked in teams doing various roles for just about every engine. ... I tend to act as a creative producer in mod projects, part biz, part design. Out of Hell is one of those rare gems where I didn't have to do either. Long's totally got his act together. This let me focus on composing, and it was really refreshing.
"I got one of my favorite collaborative experiences with Out of Hell, where the music and art end up influencing each other in a kind of dance. For instance, I was initially inspired by the screenshots, but then I started adding ambient effects in the tracks that gave Long ideas about what might be causing those sounds, and that influenced the game design. I love that back-and-forth."
But back and forth takes time, especially when your development team consists of one full time programmer/producer/artist/coder/mapper ...
"Out of Hell has gone through numerous overhauls throughout the years and ended up taking much longer than I had anticipated," says Nguyen. "Though there were many factors involved, I believe the biggest issue was just that I was never happy or content with what I had created. Because it was all a learning process, each time I found a better way of doing something, I would decide to go back and bring everything else up to par with the current work.
