Dec 10

Dec 10 Jumping Onto The Rocket Ship Mid-Orbit - Owen Trett's Vampire Survivors Experience | Winter Spectacular 2023

My 2023 has been incredibly surreal for multiple reasons, I managed to reach my weight loss goal, fully embrace my nonbinary side, and join one of the most interesting video game companies of all time.

The team behind the BAFTA Best Game winner Vampire Survivors, poncle, is an incredibly unique studio, and when I was hired back in April, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. My journey, however, has been one filled with a huge range of experiences that I still find surreal to look back on, and I wanted to take this time to share some of my general thoughts and feelings that I have encountered over my time working on last year’s most morish game.

For context, two weeks after I signed my contract for poncle they won the BAFTA for best game, something I didn’t see coming. After a lengthy amount of screaming and air-punching, it finally hit me, “Gosh, I’m actually going to be working for this company, this will be my new life for the future”, and the concept terrified me slightly. I had gone from working with a large team of experienced video editors to being the sole video editor behind one of the largest indie titles on the planet. The pressure mounted further shortly after I joined, as my first major project was working on content for our Nintendo Direct, and just to add icing to the cake, we announced in the same week that a Vampire Survivors TV show was in the works.

I will admit that I suffer from a horrible case of impostor syndrome, so there were times when I suffered pretty rough bouts of asking myself “Did I make the right decision here?” or “Oh gosh, if this bit of kit doesn’t work I’m gonna lose my job, aren’t I?” came bursting into my brain. Looking back at these feelings I think it’s important to highlight them, because it’s a constant type of thinking that I see pop up within the games industry when people talk about their own work. For many of us, we’ve been fans of games since we were kids means that as soon as we find ourselves working on one, or even working with industry icons we used to read about online and in magazines, it can be easy for us to fall into wondering how we managed to get here.

In my mind though, we are all capable, and in recognizing these feelings of anxiety - I think that’s the main way we can fight them. One example that stays in my mind was setting up a monitor at my home desk, I looked down to do some cable management, then up at the screen, which would refuse to turn on. I was certain that I had broken a bit of equipment. Equipment I needed to do my job, and I had to take a break for an hour because I had constant unrealistic thoughts of “I’m gonna have to tell my ops manager and they will SURELY fire me because I’ve damaged company equipment”. But this wasn’t the case at all, as jiggling a few wires behind my desk sorted the problem out, it was as if taking a break solved this issue by some magical means.

But what does this pressure even mean? It definitely wasn’t brought on by any of my colleagues, who from the start were open and transparent about moving deadlines and working to comfortable levels, so why had I worked myself up like this? After a fixed monitor and shedding a few tears, I had come to realize how much of the pressure in this situation had been thought up in my head, and how it tied into how I felt about being thrown into this new role. All of it was made up by my own confidence (or lack thereof), I had gotten myself into this mess, and only I could get myself out of it. One technique I kept doing was repeating to myself “Everything will be ok in the end”. And this actually worked, we’re all human, we’re just making content to entertain people, not brain surgeons.

I think that poncle runs on this mantra too, a vast majority of the company is made up by industry veterans and friends who had worked previously at the same game development company. There is a general essence of humility in the fast-paced environment that is Vampire Survivors, and everyone has that same idea, “Everything will be okay in the end”. Every Tuesday call results in a huge new idea from Luca, (the boss, for those unaware), and there’s something exciting in not knowing what each week will bring to the table. Even though I had this horrible period of impostor syndrome, we now sit in the same boat, the storm outside is fierce and fast-moving, but also… comforting?

One of the first times I heard about Vampire Survivors was a review from a friend saying that it was his “comfort” game. Originally I couldn’t understand what he meant, especially after he showed me screenshots of weapons and hordes of enemies taking up the entire screen space. However, after playing the game, I get what he meant, mowing down those waves can be extremely satisfying, and with such a simple control scheme, it’s so easy to pick up. It’s something I find difficult to put into words, that there’s comfort in this chaos, but it’s exactly how I see myself working as a video editor at poncle. We keep doing what we’re doing because “Everything will be ok in the end”, we will finally reach the 30-minute goal and beat that stage, or at least die trying.

Whenever I think about my goals as a video editor in the games industry or just my career in general, it has always involved focusing on my own happiness and bringing happiness to others. If I’ve made a single person feel some kind of strong emotion when watching my trailers then I have succeeded at my job. But at the end of the day, how can we create entertainment as developers when we aren’t satiated ourselves? And if we self-impose this mountain of pressure, whether we’re BAFTA award-winning titles or a hobbyist game jam creation, we’ll be crippled by fear and anxiety. In order to create something others can enjoy, we sometimes have to focus on ourselves first. Am I pushing myself too hard? Is this worth the effort? Is someone going to die if I make the wrong decision? I hope the usual answer to that last question is “Heck no”.

Overall, joining poncle midway through its raging success has been not just a way for me to learn new skills and general workplace independence, but it has also taught me a lot about myself and how I see my work. I love working for poncle, I’m able to surround myself with the most talented, funny, and interesting creators I’ve met within the games industry. I’m writing this just as I’ve come back from an in-person company event (we all work from home usually) and being able to surround myself with my colleagues has increased my confidence even further. Even though we’re a bunch of quirky individuals, everything will be ok in the end.

Some people find the chaos of Vampire Survivors relaxing… some people.

After this whole experience, I can safely say that I survived Vampire Survivors. Video editing is an incredibly challenging and nuanced role within the games industry. Trailer content is incredibly subjective, but there are definitely ways to help with your workflow. If you want my advice, I would highly recommend reading the works of trailer editor extraordinaire, Derek Lieu, who has come in clutch over the past few months. I would also find ways to manage anxiety, especially when you’re cutting close to a deadline and Adobe refuses to cooperate (which is annoyingly common in this line of work). The best thing I’ve learned to do is to take a break, think, and come back to the problem after an hour, but everyone has their own routines and tricks that will help them cope. In the end, we’re not brain surgeons, we’re just making silly little videos for gamers to enjoy. It shouldn’t be treated as life or death, because even if you do die, you can always start another run through the chaos, carnage, and suspiciously few vampires.