Good morning TIGSOURCE!
Long time lurker, 2x TIGJAM attendee.. and happy to be here.
My first impactful memory of games comes from wandering across Metroid on an NES. I ran right, of course, hit the wall.. then found the morph ball and got a smile on my face.
I started programming games at age 8 with the birthday gift of Interplay's Learning to Program BASIC! CD-ROM from my parents. Interplay's discs gave lessons and then challenges -- can you make the character do this? Can you expand the game like so? I fell in love with the process of discovering how to translate my imagination into the screen. I was a big fan of Interactive Fiction and hacked together a few of my own surreal mini-adventures.
Fast forward a number of years with continual notebooks piling full of game sketches (mostly rip offs of N64 games I played at the time), a friend taught me Visual Basic. We made a few simple games including the milestone of my first networked games.
In middle school I was a pro at secretly starting food fights (I had a great spotter) and made a VB game where you shot radioactive food, rubber bands and dodgeballs through the school cafeteria & gymnasium.
Later on I programmed less and got into more game design. I had the idea that I didn't need to program if I could just come up with cool stuff.
I worked in Sydney for 2 years at Microforte/Bigworld Tech as a Junior Game Designer (promoted to full GD after 1 year) on a stealth-action MMO that never saw the light of day thanks to the 2008 economic crash. Our CEO, who had offered me the job originally after we connected at a conference, was fundraising back in the USA and the interested investors withdrew in light of the global markets.
Going to lunch daily with programmers, level designers & designers who would end up at the likes of Pixar and Irrational Games, I quickly realized game design is not enough.
GAME DESIGN IS NOT ENOUGH.
The iPhone had just been released in Australia. Fast Forward to winning an overnight programming competition back in Houston for best app made over night (I made a SHMUP with a progressively more difficult boss), I launched a career as an iOS developer.
It's paid the bills but it hasn't fulfilled me like developing games has. I got back into doing game jams, completing 2 LudumDare's last year & a Procedural Generation Jam.
I have a passion for making games that connect people and I believe I can accomplish this through GPS based games that get people in contact with each other. Most games are about staring into a screen alone and I want to create in-person multiplayer games.
I play fighting games competitively and love the hacking/exploratory process that evolves with the metagame as players invent new techniques. Reading Raph Koster's Theory of Fun was very inspiring and I think too often as a game designer I get stuck in the "beginning player" or "expert player" mentality.. when really every player is an evolving player and the game needs to be fun throughout that evolution.
My most recent game is a SHMUP where each level features an enemy that mirror copies how you killed them -- inspired by the legendary A.B.A. (Kenta Cho)'s DefeatMe. If you're a TiGSourcer, PM me for a download code.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quantum-pilot/id935956154?mt=8I'm currently working on Quantum Pilot, incorporating feedback from a few New Year parties and will be visiting IndieCade in NY next month to pass it around and see if people like it.
I'm going to start a devlog on the forums here to share with a great community that has shared so many great games over the years.
Happy Jamming, Tigsource!