A Game Design Graduate’s Career Path to Cooking Up Monsters

We sat down with 2016 Game Design graduate Sean Pennell, as he enters the public phase of his latest project, Elderfeast. He shared his journey from graduation to a AAA studio and back to the indie game industry.

Sean’s career has come full circle, starting with a similar experience to the one he finds himself in now. “I actually started with an indie studio. After graduation, a couple of others and I from our senior project decided that we liked what we were building and wanted to see how far we could take it, so we started our own studio back in 2016. And it was a good experience.”

Their game passed Steam Greenlight, a Steam platform from 2012 to 2017 that used community voting to determine which games would be published. While they never wound up shipping the game, as they each decided to focus on their job searches, it was an experience that helped Sean navigate where he is today.

“The big first job hunt, which is always a tricky one, was a lot of persistent effort and patience. I applied to over 100 positions, with Sledgehammer Games being one of the first few applications I submitted, but didn’t hear back from for months. Daphne Walker helped me talk to the right people and eventually land my role there.” Sean worked his way up from Associate Level Designer to Senior Systems Designer over his eight-plus years with the company.

Back in the Indie Game

Now, Sean is back in the indie game industry after co-founding Lurker Entertainment with teammates from Sledgehammer. “We had been working together on a project at Sledgehammer Games for years, and when that project got canceled, myself and most of that team got laid off.” This tight-knit crew stayed in contact and decided to continue working together on their own venture. “We liked working together, why not keep doing that?” explained Sean. “That naturally led to ideating games, and then going, ‘okay, let’s take this to the next step and be a little more serious,’ and eventually here we are. We have a game on Steam.”

Two different teams, two different games, the same idea.

Sean has started an indie studio at both ends of his career, bringing valuable perspective on each timeline. “It’s always the classic mistake that everyone will make, including myself, when they first start: you want to make the biggest game of all time, because it’s exciting. But you may not fully grasp the scope of the project.” While the team at Lurker Entertainment is making something pretty ambitious, they each bring years of experience shipping multiple games, giving them a better understanding of the scope, and most importantly, the benefit of having worked together for so long. “We can look back for reference, and be like, ‘Okay, I know that’s what I was able to get done in that amount of time there. This is what I think I can do here.’”

Before he graduated, Sean was told the best time to start an indie studio is right after graduation or a decade or more down the line, which, coincidentally, is what he did. But is one option better than the other? “They’re both good experiences in their own way. After graduation, you kind of have nothing to lose for the most part. But obviously you lack the experience. Still, you try it and work with what you have. And then, the advantage of doing it 10 or 20 years later is that, while you might be a little less flexible, the experience offsets that and gives you an advantage in a different way.”

Lurker Entertainment & Elderfeast

We moved to the main course of our conversation, Elderfeast, Lurker Entertainment’s latest project. Elderfeast is a cooperative action sci-fi game in which you dismember Lovecraftian monsters and use their parts to cook delicious meals. “At its core, it’s this cooperative experience where you’re doing cool sci-fi things and chopping up monsters with kind of this Dead Space dismemberment angle. And on the other side, you’ve got cooking, which is this very relatable, more lighthearted component.” Since the game went public in June, they’ve seen that this juxtaposition is what a lot of people react to. “It’s fun to see how unexpected it is to people, but in a positive way,” Sean shared.

Cooking Up Monsters and Creative Ownership

When asked about the inspiration behind this unique blend Sean pointed to two main factors. “I think, subconsciously, it came from the fact that we all recently watched Delicious in Dungeon, which is an anime that is probably the closest parallel to the experience in Elderfeast, with a group of adventurers diving deeper into a dungeon, and along the way, they have to chop up the monsters and eat them to survive. And also, many of us just really enjoy cooking. It’s a way we connect with people. It’s part of our lives, so it’s fun to see that integrated into another area of our lives, which is cooperative gaming.”

The creative control and ability to make personal, out-of-the-ordinary choices like this is part of why Lurker Entertainment was founded. “The creative ownership is something that we’ve definitely come to value and appreciate,” Sean expressed. “We’ve bounced around different AAA studios and bigger studios where you don’t necessarily have as much creative control, and wanting to retain that is a huge part of Lurker’s identity.”

As the game’s System Designer, Sean focuses on the cooking mechanics and experience, as well as the overall progression of how players get stronger. However, as is common at any indie studio, he wears many hats, including co-founder, game designer, and community manager. “If you’re interacting with us on social, it’s probably me on the other end, and talking to whoever it is we need to talk to about business, marketing, PR, all that. That’s been totally new for me, but honestly pretty exciting, and I’ve had a lot of fun with it.”

While he has a wealth of experience in game design, community management was a new role for him. Sean cited Chris Zukowski’s How To Market A Game website and Discord channel as a valuable resource for this side of the work.

Going Public

Elderfeast has already gained over 50,000 wishlists in just two weeks on Steam! “There’s been a lot of fun moments making the game, but honestly, dropping the Steam page has been the most exciting part so far. The best part for me, and this has always been true on Call of Duty and other things I’ve worked on, is when people actually get to see it… It’s very validating to put it out there and see that people can summarize the game in their own words.”

The next exciting milestone will be playtesting, where a limited number of people play an early version of the game, allowing the Lurker team to observe and gather data about the players’ experiences to understand how fresh eyes are viewing the game.

Watch the Elderfeast Trailer on Steam

Advice for New Grads

As we wrapped up the conversation, Sean left us with a familiar piece of advice for students and recent graduates:

“One thing I want to throw out for the alumni and grads is that I highly recommend staying connected to your peers and supporting each other. It’s a two-way street. There are going to be times when you’re going to need help, and you’re going to be really glad that you knew people who did get hired. Just remember: when you’re on the other side… when you have the job, to be extending a hand to those who don’t have jobs at the time. It’s really important to retain those relationships from college. They will carry a lot of weight, I mean, even 10 years later; here I am interviewing with you guys right now.”

Champlain College’s Game Studio Discord server has 1,098 current student, alumni, and faculty members, with dozens of active channels keeping its community connected.