Origin Story

I remember it vividly…

The first time I picked up a NES controller and started playing Super Mario Bros, I was entranced by the glowing pixels that came to life at the press of my fingertips.  The characters.  The challenges to overcome. The experiences.

It was MAGICAL!!

From a young age, I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up: MAKE GAMES!

Over the years I built all sorts of little games—outdoor events, tabletop projects, card games, point-and-click adventures built in HyperCard….  Eventually I was able to dabble in scripting and some 3D applications.  I was going to do this.  I was going to be a game developer....

But then reality hit me in the face like the unforgiving fist of an 8-bit era Mike Tyson.

“Making games isn’t a real job!” the college counselor told me.

I knew this wasn’t true, but I also couldn’t find anyone making money, making games, in rural Idaho.  The internet was in its infancy and game development companies were fewer and farther between.  

I couldn't afford to move, or get the degree I thought I would need to get hired in the industry.  I was becoming an "adult" now, and my dreams felt impossible to realize.

"Some day..." I promised myself….

Fast forward 15 years…

A lot changed since then.  The internet became ubiquitous, indie games went mainstream, and the game industry became bigger than Hollywood. 

I got married, became a family man, served time in the military, and then landed a job at a Fortune 500 company.  It was a good, steady job...

...a steady... soul-sucking... job. 

I wasn't getting any younger.  I couldn't do it anymore.  Something had to change! After a decade and a half of running with the Lemmings, I decided to pursue my childhood dream.  

In between working full-time, taking college courses online, and raising a family, I taught myself how to make video games. I spent every ounce of free time I could find over the next couple of years, learning everything I could about game development and business, and working on my first real game--Guts and Glory.

Two years later…

Guts and Glory turned into an "overnight" sensation, opening doors and giving me the opportunity to pursue my dream. 

After a successful Kickstarter campaign and publisher deal, I quit my day job and took a leap of faith--I began making games full-time for a living. 

Striking out on my own as a self-employed, solo game developer was equal parts exciting and terrifying! I learned and grew a lot during that period, but was anxious to improve financial stability by putting more eggs in the basket.

I eagerly began working on new projects, when an even bigger opportunity came pecking at my door…

The Pigeon Project

“Let’s Build a Studio”

Out of the blue, I get a call from my publisher at the time, tinyBuild, to discuss a potential opportunity—co-found a new studio, hire a team, and do what I do best: build silly physics games.

But first, I’d have to pass a test…

“Pitch me a game concept called Pigeon Simulator.”, the voice prompted me.

I laughed. Was this really happening? My mind started racing with thoughts and I began shaking and sweating with excitement. I immediately began spouting off my ideas, describing a game that I thought would be super fun.

…

There was a pause… then the voice started laughing out loud.

I must have said something right, because our conversation went very well after that. It turned out Pigeon Simulator was a prototype built by my friend and fellow developer Kevin Suckert and the prototype team at Bossa Studios. It was then sold to tinyBuild and passed on to me. (There’s a lot more to this story, but that’s for another time.)

I hired a small team and we got to work immediately. After some analysis of the prototype project, we determined it would be best to scrap it and start fresh. I completely redesigned it, carrying over the best parts, and we began rebuilding the game from the ground up.

Things were off to a flying start! Our teaser trailer was a hit, gaining a lot of interest from partners and gamers alike. We had a small scope concept and were making good progress.

And then our parent company went public…

“We need to go BIG!”

When tinyBuild launched their IPO, everything changed—producers, priorities, scope, targets, deadlines, etc. Some changes were good, some were not.

At first, this was great news. More resources meant more possibilities. We were able to experiment with some concepts we had previously cut, and it put our mind at ease knowing that we had a little more runway to build the game we really wanted.

But it also increased the pressure to deliver BIG. We we directed to pivot the project to something with a bigger scope and expand the team. Pigeon Simulator went from a silly “meme game” by a small team to an incredibly ambitious endeavor by over a dozen people!

Our team of rockstars rose to the challenge and built some amazing tech, like mix-n-match ability systems, automated content generation from TV-show-like scripts, and procedurally generated cities that are fully explorable and completely destructible! We crafted a hilarious storyline and got to work cranking out content. It was all coming back together at last!

And then my phone rang again….

“Shut down the studio… tomorrow.”

Just before Christmas, 2023, our studio was unexpectedly shut down. The dreams of myself and 16 other creatives instantly vanished. We were shocked and devastated. All that work, all that time… gone.

Exactly how this came to be is, of course, buried in non-disclosure agreements and paperwork.

So instead, I’ll just point out some public knowledge and you can imagine what this environment was like to work in: TinyBuild went from a nearly $500M valuation to the verge of bankruptcy in about 2 years. As a result, multiple studios were shut down and many people lost their jobs.

Unfortunately, a slew of similar stories have plagued the games industry recently, as shown in the graph below.

Beginning in 2023 and continuing into 2024, the video game industry has experienced mass layoffs. Over 10,000 jobs were lost in 2023, and an additional over 8,000 jobs were lost in 2024 from January to March. (Wikipedia)

Sudden, major layoffs became an epidemic across the games industry.

Ups and downs are to be expected in highly speculative business like games, but it shouldn’t be this bad. What we see here is largely the result of poor business decisions, bad investments, and the simple greed for short-term gains.

The situation looked grim. Reporters stated that every open job position received hundreds or thousands of applications, project financing suddenly became much harder to acquire, and the competitive landscape had increased significantly since I started.

But hey, at least I could take solace in the fact that I built a studio where people genuinely enjoyed working.

These kind words from my peers gave me a lot of motivation to carry on with game development work and seek new opportunities to lead and nurture other teams.

HakJak 2.0