GarageGames: the people, the games, and a call to action

It's been a month at the Garage now, and thought it time for another blog lest I fall behind. In the spirit of a day in the life of Tim Aste, I thought I'd make this post people-oriented to describe what I do via who I work with.

A big part of producing is bridging product development and marketing, so naturally I work very close with the marketing folks:



Heading up the marketing department is Mr. Eric Fritz, also affectionately called just Fritz. As his profile states, he has 15 years of marketing experience, and from working with him, he knows his stuff. He did a TON of work to help get TGE 1.5 out there and in promoting the recent Microsoft XNA / Torque X news as well. We work on a lot togeather, just about anything related to marketing products on our site: product pages, IOTD's, landing pages, newsletter releases, etc. Fun stuff includes giving input on pricing and marketing strategy, participation in brainstorming sessions, and getting leads on games. I always appreciate his input, and appreciate being able to give mine.



The other half of marketing is this fine gent, Mr. James Wiley. Like Fritz, just about anything marketing-related is worked on with him also. On top of the usual stuff, he has some interesting side projects, like gathering market research for an unannounced project, and has a knack for sending good game leads my way. He's also currently owning me in Atari Combat, but I don't think the invisible tank mode counts.



And of course you all know this guy:



It's Jeff T., who is legendary for Dynamix, for co-founding GarageGames, and for his ability to stop bullets with his teeth (ok everything but that last part). Jeff is my boss. Things he sends my way: games to review and follow up on, developers to follow up on for potential seeding of our game engines for their future projects, business development opportunities to review and either dismiss or forward to the appropriate person, and giant yellow homocidal clowns (ok everything but that last part). He also advises on game development for internal projects, and works closely with marketing as well. His Make it Big in Games blog is a must-read for all game developers.

The four of us all sit in the same area, along with marketing interns, so these are the guys I see and talk to most of the day. Fortunately they all have a good sense of humor (sorry about hitting your car, Eric!).

Just around the corner from me is artist and dedicated marketing inker Nate Feyma:



Nate gave TankBuster the radical style that everyone loves, and is a kick-ass artist all around. He can whip out IOTD's faster than you can say "Hey Nate..." I know because I tried it once. We lean on him for things like product page bling (when the developer lacks it), banners, IOTD's, logos, landing page images, you name it, and he's up for it all. I hope to work with him more on internal games, given how kick-ass TankBuster art turned out and his obvious enjoyment of such.



Just down from him is this guy, another co-founder titan and one of the hardest working guys around here, Mr. Rick Overman. As he recently said, "I'm the CIO and my entire support staff!" Should be a T-shirt. Few days pass where I'm not asking him for something or he's not helping me out. From creating product pages and posting images, to posting product builds, to granting access to elite corners of our IT, Rick's the man. With both Google mini and Akamai to manage on top of the vast GarageGames.com website and other IT considerations, he has a handful. I try not to nab his time unless it's important, but he's always more than willing to help (he even came back to work one night to launch Golden Fairway, and put in a late night with Fritz to launch TGE 1.5). Hey Rick, by the way, internet is down and it smells like ozone in the server room, can you take a look?



Next to Mr. Overman is this guy, Sean Sullivan. Sean is working closely with Jeff on a top secret super huge take over the world project, and though I've tried to help with it, I've been too overwhelmed with work myself to contribute meaningfully. However, once it launches, I'll be intrinsically involved and working more closely with him. We try to feed and change his water every few days as he does tend to get trapped in the cage of his project, but I know he's excited about it launching soon, and it's cool to see someone so pumped about what they're doing.



Next up we have Mr. Ben Garney, the Torque Technologies Director. I don't actually work with Ben on a single thing, but he's always loitering around my desk and is commendable for his knack for making me unproductive (as well as his knack for quick-witted toilet humor). Actually, I do sometimes wrangle him in for a second opinion on games I have evaluated, and while we're generally in agreement, our tastes have also widely diverged of late (cough-hasnotaste-cough). Also, he has a cat, which has nothing to do with anything, but since he talks about her a lot, it didn't feel right to talk about Ben without mentioning her too. Apparently they're close.



And then we have this infamous character:



Tim Aste. Man. Artist. Legend. Author of innumerable content packs (innumberable due to my lack of volition to count them) and GG old-timer. Tim is currently managing the content pack and tool stores, which is growing every day. If you haven't checked them out lately, change is afoot! Managing that is a full time job for him, and though I try to help if/when I can, I'm finding the games store (and internal development) to be a full time job in itself. Regardless, as sister-stores there's a lot of cross-talk between us, and we send each other leads for games/tools respectively. I try to send (and even generate!) as many leads as I can so as to further swamp him with work with no possibility for respite. But the cream rises to the top, so even with the mountain of stuff to review and publish, only the best makes it. Which is good, cuz otherwise there'd be a big mountain of crap that would only collect flies, and flies don't have credit cards they can whip out every time they see a shiny new tool or game.



You all know this guy. You all love this guy. You all want to be this guy. I could go on calling this guy "this guy," but instead I'll identify him as one Joe Maruschak. Currently he's heading up the "TGB docs and demos team," and myself being part of that team, we work togeather on management and design issues. Specifically I'm working on two demos (River Rafter and Mighty Fist) with Red Thumb Games alumni coders (Gary Preston and Andreas Kirsch).

Joe is definitely a kindred spirit in that he sees games as having potential beyond the traditional "blow shit up" paradigm. He's into sandboxes, experimental non-game games, artsy stuff, cutting edge stuff -- the kinds of things that would never make it into the likes of GamePro and EGM. Our engines aren't really marketing to those crowds, but the stuff they could do with our tech could be amazing (as opposed to --ewww-- Flash), and this is an exciting area. Though Joe and I do diverge somewhat in taste, we definitely have enough parity to move in a similar direction with our work and motives. Very happy to have Joe here!



Mark McCoy sits by Joe and was among the few, the proud, the BraveTree before they all joined up with the Garage. Though his profile modestly states "I make art," what he does is closer to Joe's role, though not directly heading up the demos team. That is, his design sensibilites are awesome (his was among the best feedback I got for Shelled way back) and in line with Joe's sensibilities as well. Mark and I share a fanboyish glee over Joe Lesko's work, which cemented our friendship right there. I'm greatly looking forward to working more with Joe and Mark, as conversations with them have been among the most interesting I have had. Oh yeah, and his art rocks too!



Around the corner and in the Big Important Locked Office (tm) sits the Fairy Garage Mother, Ms. Karen Peal. Though a virtual unknown before I got here (despite her being one of the original group), these days I work with her a LOT to file publishing contracts back from indies and look up contracts to sleuth legalease when questions arise (whoops, you mean we published a game without a developer contract? a handshake should work in court, right? right??). Karen has a fantastic sense of humor and once shot me in eye. She also stocks the candy around here which is the arch nemesis to my sugar-craving hypoglycemia. She also pays everyone so you really don't want to cross her or you will literally pay for it!



Ken Holst is our QA Manager (heck, let's just call him the QA Director -- or maybe International Director of QA given Torque's unicode support?). We don't work too much togeather, but he does a final QA pass for games before they hit the store, and for things like TGE 1.5 we ALL pull togeather to QA it. Ken takes QA seriously, which is a refreshing change of pace from my travels in the IT industry ("A bug? Yeah whatever, file it and I'll get to to it when I have time."). And he's stoked about working with games, which is cool.



Tim Gift, another of the GG co-founders, authored Ignition, our GarageGames e-commerce store DRM solution. As our product lines continue to grow (we have over 100 products!), so too does the need for Ignition. Though I work with developers to Ignitionize their games, Tim steps in and offers technical support when needed (he wrote it!), and is always happy to do so and extremely helpful. I wish I was closer to the Top Secret stuff he's working on because I've gotten a glimpse and it's hot stuff, but for now I am grateful for his gracious Ignition help.



Like Mr. Gift, I don't work too much with Davey Jackson, but our paths do cross. If someone is interested in commercial or educational sales or has business development opportunities that are beyond my ability or interest, Davey is the man. He's also a terriffic guy and very funny and adds greatly to the unique culture that is The Garage. As Davey likes to say, "Somebody has to make the bread around here so you children can run around and play with your little toys and games." Yet somehow he seems to spend more time with Guitar Hero than at his desk... and he just can't keep his hands off my ultra-rad inter-office Spiderman scooter. Hands off, Davey! With amazing power comes amazing responsibility.

Honorable mentions go to Thomas Buscaglia, my former roommate at the intern house, and Thomas Eastman, my current (and only) intern house roommate. Props and respect for co-habitating with me.

There's more people I work with, but those are my regulars. Everyone here is worth mentioning of course, but I'm doing a "slice of life," not a comprehensive list. So that's the gang. Fun times.



A little more about what I'm doing:

Foremost, the game store is growing. I helped launch Golden Fairway and MiniGolf Mania -- both of which felt great -- and we have fifteen confirmed titles that will be published in upcoming months. All are fantastic quality games that I'm super excited about. And better still (you ready for this?), all are made with Torque technology. Over half of them are Torque Game Builder, with the remaining ones Torque Game Engine. Some you've heard of, some will be brand new. Some came to us already completed, some we're providing design feedback and working closely with the developer to complete. Some will be $10 games, some $15, others the standard $20 -- but whatever the price, all will be worth your time to download and play. I'm excited about all of them, but there's a few in particular that I'm really excited about. Week by week, I can't wait to release these and grow our game store. Our game store will be doubling, and none of it is filler.

This is truly an exciting time for indies! We have seeded our engines for many years and those plants are finally starting to mature, with a nice boost from TGB. The technology rocks, we're publishing a ton of games, and the time for excuses is past. Whatever your obstacle or perceived obstacle, get over it. Our business is totally oriented around facilitating indie success. Let us help you or point you in the right direction.

To set expectations, unless a game "breaks out", none of these games are going to make "mad cash." But they're all creating opportunites for those that are getting published, they do have the potential to make nice sums, and most importantly, you can tell that these developers are having a blast. Make games! We want to see them and we want to publish them.

Soapbox over. :)

Second, as I said in my last blog, if all I were doing was hunting, reviewing, nurturing, and publishing games, it'd be a lot of fun but not very creatively fulfilling. That's where internal development comes in, and I'm fortunate enough to be taking over on two modestly scoped demos that I'm way stoked about. I love these kinds of games! I have a near endless fascination with them; which ones and why they are fun; what makes them tick. It's a bit of responsibility -- what if what I shape is no better than what I started with? -- but my experience shipping Sploidz and Shelled, although not vast, gives me enough confidence to move forward, and it will grow with further success. This is unquestionably the most exciting part of my job. Growing the game store is very rewarding (I like to nurture things: games, developers, contractors, whatever), but there's no excitement to match playing something you have created.

And third, I'm doing "misc." What's "misc"? Well if it wasn't misc, it wouldn't be misc. Argue with that.

So there you have it: who I work with, what I do, and a not-so-opaque call to action. I can't wait to talk more about some of the games we're releasing, but that will have to wait until after they have released. Suffice to say we've got some cool stuff coming and it's a great time to sign up for our gamer's newsletter and subscribe to our game store RSS feed if you haven't already.

Keep sending games our way, and keep the indie spirit alive! We're here and we're listening.

Josh