When it was released on November 10th last year, The Falconeer Player amazed in many ways. The title was not only one of the first exclusive titles to take full advantage of the technical possibilities of the new consoles, but above all, the dogfighting game was actually developed by only one person. :: Tomas Sala.
To learn more about why and how to make a game of this scale yourself, Backstage had the opportunity to speak to the Dutch creator. During a long interview we had the opportunity to discuss many topics. From the beginning of our interview we were impressed by Toma’s availability and good mood. Despite a significant amount of work between monitoring the game and developing the next DLC, we were able to chat with him for almost two hours.
In particular, we talked about his beginnings as a player and how he got into making games. At that time, you should know that video game development was light years away from what we can know today. There were no specialized schools or well-defined courses. So he only made his debut with a few friends:
We started a studio, but we had no idea what we were getting into. We didn’t even know what an editor was, but we knew how to make games. So we just offered our services around us and little by little it worked. So we started making games for other companies.
Tomas also told us about his motivation and preferences for solo development. Teamwork is simply nothing for him:
Working as a team was particularly difficult for me. If the studio is very small with three people, there is no problem, we do what we want. But when we’re 8 or 10, we need to have schedules or even daily meetings. We sit down together, we have to tell what we did, assess the weather … When I came to these meetings, I was asked what I was going to do. So I quickly wrote two or three things on a board and then wanted to go back to work. Most of the time everyone looked at me and said: “But Tomas, this is work too!”
Since the game was recently released in Xbox Game Pass, we also took the opportunity to ask his opinion on Microsoft’s subscription service:
The Game Pass is bigger than anything else. It’s crazy how big it is. There are so many people trying the game and there is so much feedback! In fact, I’m glad the game wasn’t in Game Pass at the time of release as I had 3 months to improve it.
If you want to know more about the conception of The Falconeer and the journey of Tomas Sala, we invite you to see this interview in its entirety or in several parts, which you can find on ours Backstage chain. Don’t hesitate to turn on automatic subtitles in French.
