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The Michigan Daily | michigandaily.com | Thursday, November 3, 2016
Three independent game developers talk
stress, inspiration and passion for their craft
Cooper Riehl wants to make video games.
He has wanted to since middle school, when he
played GameCube and RuneScape and discovered
how to program text adventures onto his TI-85 cal-
culator.
Now, he’s a senior at the School of Engineering,
and he’s putting that dream into motion as a pro-
grammer and webmaster for Wolverine Soft, a stu-
dent-run organization dedicated to fostering game
development talent.
“I would love to do it professionally,” Riehl said
in a Skype interview with The Michigan Daily. “I
haven’t decided what I want to do finally when I
get out of college, but I would love to work at a big-
name studio or a small indie studio with a couple of
friends, as long as we were making enough to sup-
port ourselves. It’s definitely a big passion of mine.”
For Riehl, making games is an opportunity to
have a career as a software programmer in a field
that brings people joy.
“I do think games are an art form, but for me
it’s more about programming something exciting
rather than some boring old system in a bank some-
where,” he said. “I like the idea of writing code to
create something that people actually enjoy using
rather than just another random application.”
He’s not the only one around campus who dreams
of making video game development a career. Accord-
ing to Riehl, more than 80 new members signed up
for Wolverine Soft this semester alone — the biggest
uptick in membership since Riehl joined the club
three years ago.
It’s not hard to understand why independent
game development is currently such an appealing
career venue for young programmers, artists and
musicians, as both mainstream and game-indus-
try-specific journalists have brought monumental
attention to indie success stories.
In 2012, Lissanne Pajot and James Swirsky’s
acclaimed documentary “Indie Game: The Movie”
told the story of four independent developers whose
projects turned into landmark commercial and crit-
ical successes, simultaneously making each of them
millions and skyrocketing them into avant-gardist
wunderkind status among their industry peers. The
New Yorker and The Atlantic have also published
extensive profiles of developers Rami Ismail and
Jonathan Blow, respectively, highlighting their
near-overnight successes, their road-hitting indie
hero lifestyle and their thorough dedication to their
art.
Writer: Jacob Rich, Senior Arts Editor
Design: Katie Beukema
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