Dusk Wave Arts has just hit its 10-year milestone anniversary, and Geek Native has been delighted to have the opportunity to interview its CEO Paul Graham.
As a comics studio and game development company, Dusk Wave Arts prides itself on being made up of passionate people with diverse stories to tell. Their latest game, Barheim, has just been released on Steam – and Girdy’s already had the pleasure of reviewing it!
But now, it’s my turn to have a good old chat with Paul and see what he has to say about the trials and tribulations of DWA, some of its latest titles, and what’s coming next!
B: Hi, Paul! DWA is 10 years old this year. We’d love to hear your own story of how you got started vs how far you’ve come.
Paul: Talk about beginning with such a big question. I had a vision in mind and, I knew with my learning disabilities, I had to do things my own way. So, I teamed up with the business person and started the company a month after graduating college. I had to learn a lot on the job, since what I studied the most was psychology hoping I can become a great storyteller. Full of ambition, I also wanted to create comic books too.
Since I was a founder in the company, I had to be a leader and eventually become CEO. Because I had a lot of help, I learned a lot and really developed over the years. I started off just wanting to tell meaningful stories with a tremendous amount of creative freedom to learning how to become a leader that can uplift others as well as promote their creative freedom.
I had pipe dreams of making comics with audio and AAA video games. We were able to achieve comics with audio during the pandemic and although we haven’t got to AAA video games, we have Barheim releasing and another project over the horizon!
B: Let’s talk Barheim; a game where players have to juggle mixing drinks and running a busy bar whilst defending themselves from thirsty Vikings! What inspired you to create it?
Paul: Honestly, it came from the team. Mars (COO and game director for the next project) and I created a process for the team to evaluate themselves and teammates for making a game they think they can do in a year. That brainstorming resulted in Barheim. Also, we wanted to make a fun party game after spending a lot of time making a more serious game. We all thought ourselves, what if we smashed games like Overcooked with a tower defense?
B: What drew you to the tower defence style in the game?
Paul: It was really determination of our process, but we made a prototype for a different game to be tower defense. With that tower defense in the back of some people’s minds, and at least one other tower defense game being brainstorm at the time, it just seemed like it was a genre worth doing. Tower defense also seems to really work with melting with other genre kind of games. Mixing drinks on its own can be fun to serve them up, but wouldn’t it be more fun to shoot it at a hoard Vikings?
B: DWA has a very strong message on inclusivity, neurodiversity and breaking down walls. As fellow trudgers, we salute you! How have you brought that ethos to Barheim?
Paul: Thanks for saluting our efforts. It’s mostly behind the scenes, we just spent a lot of time improving our company culture. Especially with self-reflection and opening up with each other, we really learned a lot about who we are and how diverse we are. I know I’ve always been a poster figure for it because of our comic book series The Glove since the release of issue six, that comic book series is very much about my autistic experiences dealing with myself on the spectrum.
I was giving clues about Tim, the protagonist, being on the spectrum but blatantly said it in issue six. Sorry to go on this tangent, but it is important. The themes of neurodiversity and breaking down walls are deeply intertwined and have been in the blood of the company since it’s origins as well as probably reflects in all of our IP’s, consciously or subconsciously. It really sunk in when Marshall was making the story for Barheim about being small businesses protecting it’s individuality to break the walls of big businesses trying to tear it down as well as replace it with a self-destructive systems and philosophies.
I think it’s a pretty strong metaphor for what it’s like to live as a minority and/or someone outside of “the box.” Also, I think just our naturally corky sense of humor. The Glove might’ve been our start, as a opening for people to start feeling comfortable and confident enough to speak up, but it was us breaking our own walls making Barheim that really allowed all of us to come together more and come to this epiphany that we are about inclusivity. Embracing inclusivity, and especially narrative diversity, wasn’t really something we had a choice in, it’s who we are. It’s something we need to do, just like the bartender in Barheim.
B: Are there any plans to port Barheim to other platforms in future – for instance, could it go mobile?
Paul: In full transparency, if it does well; we’ll see if we can port it. It’s a much bigger business decision afterwards and what our decisions are, but we’re going deeply into our next release. If it does really well, maybe the sequel might be more than enough for ports and etc. ;)
B: What’s been some of DWA’s main challenges over the past 10 years?
Paul: It was truly a struggle to learn maturity, understanding, and leadership. I’ve always wanted this to be a company where we all had creative freedom but truly understanding what that means and how to get there was very different than my expectations.
Learning that our greatest strength is being able to open up to each other seems like it’s simple on the surface, but it’s challenging to be that vulnerable. Although we communicate a lot better today, time zone is still an issue we deal with. We’ve been remote since maybe a few months after we started the company and then gone fully remote when there was basically only two people left in the office.
B: What have you done that’s worked out well for you?
Paul: Finding and working with the right people! I might sound like a broken record but honestly open communication has been the best. Also switching to being agile, trying to be adaptable and really focus on what’s important. Something that has really worked well is finding and focusing on intention.
Having guideposts is critical to giving people creative freedom, without it you can create a mosh pit of constant argument. For me realizing that my job, the goals of starting this company, was to get out the intentions of my story, not focusing on every detail, is critical. Being able to explain your intentions and giving people the creative freedom to express what that means for themselves as well as for you is the ultimate compromise to running an excellent business… and possibly life. It’s a way to put everyone on the same team and for everyone to feel valued, as well as have their input.
Nothing is perfect in life, always got a compromise on some things, but how you compromise is critical for making everyone decently satisfied. It’s also the best way to be surprised by what people come up with, how they connect with each other, and so much more. So, what has worked really well for me is finding teammates to help my visions come to life and setting those intentions so that creative freedom has purpose and meaning. Ultimately, it comes down to communication and working with fantastic people.
B: We love that you have audio packs included in each comic issue – what inspired you to do this for readers?
Paul: So, sorry I’m going to be nitpicking but I want to clarify it’s not audio packs, it’s that our comic has audio features. This is because what inspired me was dealing with my dyslexia. Computers back in high school just got the capabilities where you can highlight words on certain documents, specifically just word and stuff, was able to read back to you.
So while I was struggling to read webcomics, I just thought to myself what if I could click the word bubbles and hear voice actors. I read best with audio, I only read audio books, and I thought to myself how much more enjoyable would it be to be able to read comics similarly.
Still today, can’t find a good accommodation for it. They try things like font modifications and Etc but nothing quite beats being able to actually hear something. With that, we could just push the technology for onomatopoeia’s, music per page, and etc. I had this dream and when the pandemic hit, I thought it was time to make it a reality.
We’re constantly updating the technology and the music’s going to be great for the jewel knights as well as we estimate loading times. The Glove’s prequel though will be even better as I believe we have excellent cast. Keep your eyes on that coming up!
For me it wasn’t just trying to accommodate dyslexia for a wide range of people, but it was also to make the best reading experience for myself too! On top of that, being able to give the tools to everyone else in a simple and easy way but that stuff for the future…
B: If you had to give one piece of advice to anyone wanting to follow in your footsteps with a comic or game company of their own, what would it be?
Paul: Start off small and simple. Do projects you can complete quickly and get out the door fast. If you think something is simple, thing again because it’s not as simple as it seems. Do fast and quick iterations and tackle only one thing at a time. Always check your resources to see if you can actually accomplish something.
Find out what you need help with and do what you can to get the help. Commit to one thing, see if it works, learn from successes and mistakes, and then switch to something else or continue if it’s successful. Never look for perfection and go with goalposts in mind. Start with projects that you can be flexible on but is decently close to your heart.
You can always do bigger projects in the future, start off as soon as you can something easy, fast, and efficient. Start off early as well, with my disabilities I couldn’t but if I did smaller simpler things, maybe I could have. Start today with something that can fail easily with no consequences. Also, build up your leadership and communication skills because being able to lift people up is always better than telling people what to do.
B: What’s next for you and Dusk Wave Arts? Is there anything coming up you can tell us about?
Paul: Well, we got quite a few things on the horizon. Jewel Knights is a comedy coming out soon about two kids dreaming of becoming superheroes in a world that doesn’t care for that, The Glove prequel Forged of Fate about Tim’s mother and learning what autism is, and SITP: a game that we worked on that’s close to my heart for a very long time. It’s narrative driven but I’ll let marketing expose the rest. Sorry I’m only giving you an acronym for now. Thanks for this opportunity and I hope you all enjoy Barheim because hopefully it’s sequel will become a future project as well!
B: Thanks so much for your time, Paul! We wish you all the best with Barheim (out now!), along with Jewel Knights, and your next projects!
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