Game Dev Life

I talk to Nicklaus Liow and Jason Church, makers of the HTML5 game creation and remixing tool, Craftyy. In this interview, we learn what it is like to fail fast as a Silicon Valley start up. Craftyy got started when Nick and Jason took 1st place in the Start Up San Diego competition. Soon, they were accepted into the Mozilla WebFWD accelerator and funded Craftyy with a successful Kickstarter. But soon, Nick and Jason learned the lesson of letting raw momentum hide the lack of a cohesive vision.

I talk to board game designer Teale Fristoe about his ocean crossing journey with Corporate America. Fristoe began his career as an engineer at casual game maker PlayFirst, but left to pursue a doctorate in game studies at UC Santa Cruz. 3.5 years into his program, Teale left academia to follow his true passion of designing board games. Hear his lessons learned from using Kickstarter to pay for the manufacturing of his game, Corporate America, as well as just what it takes to get a physical good like a board game manufactured and delivered to his backers.

I talk to game designer Max Temkin about his two viral success stories with real world game Humans vs Zombies and the breakout card game hit Cards Against Humanity. Max has been in the enviable position of being part of teams that have gone viral. First on college campuses with the massive nerf gun tag game Humans vs Zombies and now with the party game for horrible people, Cards Against Humanity. Learn what the process is for the 8 person Cards team to design new expansion packs, as well as how working on the 2008 Obama campaign helped fuel the branding and distribution of Cards Against Humanity.

Chistopher Jeffery started out as a student making Flash games in his spare time to amuse his friends. He scored an early sponsorship with Big Fish Games with Scramball and went on to make games including Platcore and Space is Key. Based on the success of the iOS port of Space is Key, Chris started making enough money to leave his job as an accountant behind and pursue game development full time. He also helps organize the Mochi London game conference and is one of the three hosts of the Super Indie Pals podcast.