I hate to be all "DetectiveGAF" and chastise this guy, but honestly, all signs are pointing this is his first real game outing. And that is kind of sad, because he got like $200K on kickstarter by convincing people this proejct is doable. Props to the guy for putting together a great KS package, but it still really rubs me the wrong way. Note that I'm not calling for a lynch mob here, just noticing some facts about this guy that that he has seemed to have overstated.
On his website, it lists that he worked at Microsoft after moving to Seattle on a whim. Not only does he mention how long he was there, it doesn't mention his job title.
http://www.disastercake.com/blog/soul-saga-update-10-why-im-standing-here-today/
To my surprise, I got a job at Microsoft working on games within the first week! It was an amazing feeling to have landed something like that in such a short time. My family was very proud.
You'd think this would be outlined if they were impressive (Systems programmer at MS, Game Designer at MS, Environmental artist at MS, etc, etc.). Even entry level stuff is impressive at a big game development house like MS Games. I mean, come on.
The next thing I noticed was that he claims to have worked on Fable 3 and "a few other titles". Now I'm unfamiliar with Microsoft Game's organizational structure, but most of the time if you are working on a game, you are with that team for a while to finish that project, and then you move on to something else. So either he was with Microsoft long enough to work on multiple projects, or he was in a role that caused him to move around a lot. From a separate interview:
Ive made several mods across different games like Warcraft 3 and Starcraft. But my professional work experience comes from my time at Microsoft where I had my hand in many games such as Gears of War 3, Age of Empires Online, Fable 3, and a bunch of others.
http://bossdungeon.com/quitting-your-job-to-create-an-rpg-interview-with-disastercakes-mike-gale-about-soul-saga/
Three games he's had his "hand" in. That's interesting. It's important to note that all these games came out in 2011 (Fable Windows edition, that is, which I might note that MS was a publisher of, not a developer), and all in about a 3 month window from each other. It stands to reason that these games had decently long development cycles, and team members were most likely not jumping from project to project during development.
Finally, he states he was on contract at MS:
I finished up my contract and then decided to spend the next 2 years teaching myself how to REALLY make Soul Saga happen.
Now I'm no expert on the game industry, but I've had enough industry experience to know that someone who works for a publisher and that jumps from project to project in a very short time frame and is on contract has one of two jobs: contract artist or Quality Assurance. The fact that these all were released close to one another leads me to conclude that he was most likely a QA Tester for MS Game Studios. Also, of course, that he is contracting all his art out. Surely, an artist would probably make some of his own assets.
For my final piece of information I dug up was his linkedin. I don't wish to link the site out of respect for his profile, but no where does he list his game experience at Microsoft, further leading me to believe that he in fact was in QA. Also, his only education is listed as Associates of Business Management from Bellevue Community College, which, according to his website, was done after he quit his job at MS. Before that, no education is listed.
Therefore, I can comfortably say that the person behind Soul Saga had a negligible amount of industry experience before starting work on the project. I have to be honest, the first time I came to the kickstarter, I took his "game industry experience" comments at face value and assumed he worked at MS in a game development role of some kind. But that is not the case. Contract QA at a game publisher has pretty much no creative input of any kind into a project, and doesn't really have any development experience built up either.
I'm sorry for having to break the bad news, I know many of you probably already had this figured out. I just wanted to everyone else know.
As a final thought, I just want to say that I'm not trying to crucify the creator for any decisions he made. He ran a very good kickstarter and got a lot of people believing in his vision. I'm also not criticizing the game idea on principle. What I am criticizing is his gross overestimation of his abilities, and the fact that he made it seem like he has experience developing games when he clearly does not. I do, however those who donated will take this as a learning experience for being wary of kickstarters that look too-good-to-be-true. And, to Mike Gale, I hope he learns a lesson or two about game development along the way. It's no easy feat. Especially alone.