Industry Interview with Tanya Short

The interview below was published on The Grind, a now defunct website, and was conducted in July of 2016. Although some of the content covered shows its age today, the interview is finding a new home here for anyone interested in diving in to read what Tanya had to share!

Tanya Short
At the Time of Publication (16-07-06)
Position: Creative Director
Project: Moon Hunters

01) How would you describe the Creative Director role to someone unfamiliar with the position?

Imagine you had a team of amazing people (superheroes, witches, etc.) that were all full of skills, ideas, and expertise. Your job as their leader would primarily be to set goals, and direct their energy towards solving a particular problem. That’s what the ideal Creative Director does: they communicate a clear vision of what the team should be trying to accomplish, without telling everyone how to do their jobs. At Kitfox, I like to call myself “Captain” because I’m Creative Director… but also, less officially, lots of other things: producer, business developer, marketer, and community manager to name a few.

02) What kind of game have you always wanted to design, but haven’t had the chance to make yet?

Massively-multiplayer games have been very close to my heart since I was thirteen or so, and although I worked for almost five years at Funcom as a designer on MMOs, I haven’t yet conceived an online world from scratch. The funny thing is that I’m not sure I’d ever invest in such a project with Kitfox, because I know my online world impulses are very particular and different from the usual image of ‘MMO’.  But maybe I will someday, if I can convince myself to be brave enough.

03) You’ve been involved with a small group at Kitfox Games for just over three years now. How does it compare to your time with larger development houses in the past?

Being trusted to lead Kitfox is great! It really is like I’m leading a team of superheroes. Or witches. Whatever. The point is that my co-founders (Jongwoo Kim and Xin Ran Liu) are really talented, smart, hard-working people, and it’s difficult to express how much the last few years have made me love them (professionally) and their work. In a little studio, you definitely work more closely together, and so when your interests and styles gel together, it’s magical. It’s impossible to have the same kind of cohesion past twelve or so people.

04) Is there anything you miss about developing AAA titles?
I miss a few things about larger studios. I miss being able to forget about business or marketing, and just focus on making game content: I miss 40 hours a week of being a designer. There was also a comforting knowledge that literally hundreds of thousands of people would play what I made. As an indie studio, there’s always a lurking terror that I’m wasting my time. I don’t want to work on a game nobody plays….



05) What do you like most about indie development?
I love the sense of camaraderie among indies. I’m currently in a co-working space where there are 12 or so different studios, all sharing a space and helping each other. And I’m also subscribed to a bunch of mailing lists, Skype channels, and Slack channels, where indies are doing the same. You get a similar feeling at a larger company I guess, spread across several projects and countries, but it’s not quite the same because within a company, you know you’re collaborating for the profit and benefit of the company. It’s so much more fulfilling to collaborate purely for the benefit of other people, with no direct benefit to your own project… and to see others doing the same.

06) What’s been your favourite project to date?
Moon Hunters is certainly the project that makes me the proudest. It’s Kitfox’s largest, most heartfelt and brave creation so far. But really, the project that brings me the most joy is thinking back to one of the first game jams Kitfox ever did, the Indie Speed Run of 2013, in which we made a haunting game out of clay, called Sculptorgeist. You might notice the gameplay is similar to a game that came out six months later, called Haunt the House: Terrortown. I think they made their initial version in a game jam around the same time. I haven’t had a chance to high-five them, but it seems great minds do think alike.



07) Who would you say are your greatest inspirations?
Great artists across all media. I mean, of course I look up to great game designers and writers like Will Wright or Porpentine, but I also try to draw inspiration directly from folks like Gene Wolfe, Ursula Le Guinn, Jodorowsky, Miyazaki, Moebius, and others whose creative spirit speaks to me. Occasionally, of course, I’ll ingest something like The Act of Killing that completely upends my attitude towards creativity and all of existence, but that’s because, overall, it’s important to have a varied diet of art and culture.

08) What content, games or otherwise, have you found inspiring your work lately?
I’ve actually been falling in love with Montreal all over again. It’s a beautiful city, especially in the summer, full of so many different places, culture and unique appeal. The central hill (the “Mount Royal”), the river, the history: there’s so much here that it’s hard not to stumble over something inspiring if you have your eyes open.



09) What would you say to someone aspiring to be a Creative Director one day?
Woah there. Be good at something first. Like, really good. Try to be the best in the world at that thing: whether it’s level design, character art, writing, whatever. Take at least five years and practice that thing. I took seven, and kinda wish I’d taken more: like ten or fifteen. The trick is finding a way to not burn out and get jaded in those years. Remember to always take care of yourself, and nurture what you love about games.

10) What games have you been playing lately?
I was a little disappointed by the lack of secondary gameplay or decisions to make in Tokyo Mirage Sessions, but I’m enjoying it nonetheless. Final Approach is also quite cool and inspirational as a VR experience. I just picked up Stardew Valley but I’m saving it until I have a few hours at a stretch.



11) What do you do in your free time? Any hobbies?
I help run Pixelles, a non-profit helping more women and non-binary people make games, write a short fiction story every month, and I always have some kind of hobby game project. Last month I was working on a robot dating app for the #ilujam. Currently I’m playing around with prototyping on the Vive. I’m really stoked by SteamVR as a designer. There’s so much unknown design space, in terms of interaction, navigation, interface: everything! Oh, yeah, I’m also helping edit a textbook on procedural generation with Tarn Adams of Dwarf Fortress, so that takes up some time, too.

12) If you had more time, what would you spend it on?
If you’re offering more hours in the day, I’d probably just keep my current work-hobby-sleep balance, since it seems to be working for me. If you’re offering more years in my life, I’d be extra-excited to see what hobbies I might pick up when I’m a hundred and twenty. I’d like to go off on a little tangent here and say that, although I am disappointed in the level of modern arts funding, I believe very strongly in the power of science, which means that I believe it’s essential to our productivity that Kitfox enforces forty-five-hour work-weeks, with only occasional overtime allowed… even if it feels less productive, we have to overcome that with intellectual understanding. I even made a public pledge for all game developers, to help eliminate “crunch culture”, which makes people feel like slackers if they’re not destroying themselves. I’m happy that Kitfox can be a small part in normalizing healthy work culture.