News is out!

Well, we've been sitting on this news for awhile, and it's great to finally announce it! We're very excited to let everyone know that GarageGames has partnered up with InterActive Corporation, IAC, to build a brand new network of action games playable in the browser, and to fund independent games, all in accordance with our long-standing philosophy, vision, and mission at GG.

As far as publicity goes, to get the word out there, we decided to talk about the business end of our deal with IAC first, as we knew it'd cause all kinds of questions, and we wanted to answer them frankly. We figure it's best to be honest about it, now that we're ready and able to talk. This is why the stories you're reading online today are pretty deal-oriented and chalk full of business terms. From here, we'll be talking a lot about what we've been working on lately, and what we'll be doing in the future, which will be much more interesting (at least to most everyone on our site :).

Similarly, in this blog, to get the big sticky questions out of the way, I'll start off by talking about the deal we cut with IAC, what it means, and why we did it. Then, I'll move onto the really cool stuff, including what we're working on now, the future of Torque, and how we're funding games. I'll be totally straight in this blog, as this is obviously huge news for us.

Why were we interested in funding at all?
We were interested in funding to try and do a better job fulfilling our mission. Since Jeff, Rick, Tim and Mark started the company 8 years ago, and since many of us joined up early on working for beans as we bootstrapped the company, the fundamental mission for GarageGames was pretty simple (yet powerful)... make the industry a better place for developers. By doing that, more great games would get made, which would be better for gamers everywhere.

GG started out working toward this mission by focusing on providing professional quality game technology and tools at prices literally anyone could afford, democratizing game development, in a sense. There's no getting around the fact that making games is just plain hard, and it takes a lot of talent and work to get one finished-- let alone to make it fun and appealing. We can't change that. But at least GG put a stake in the ground and took on one of the biggest hurdles facing aspiring game developers and indie teams-- access to affordable, effective game technology.

But making it easier to create games is half the battle, at best. Part and parcel to GarageGames' mission was to help developers get their games to market successfully and find their audiences. That is a massive challenge, as anyone who has shipped a game will tell you. At GG, we've taken some steps to try and help indies get their games to market-- we created the basic Game Store here on GG.com, which publishes lots of fun indie titles, and we have helped establish some successful games there. We've helped broker deals for a few games to break onto Xbox Arcade, casual portals, mobile devices, and other emerging, indie-accessible channels. We created The Great Games Experiment, a social-networking site for gamers and game developers to promote games and find friends.

While these were all good efforts, we've never had the resources at hand to fundamentally change the game and carve out new space that'd really help developers be successful.

With IAC, that is exactly what we're doing now. We've been dreaming of a new, better way to develop, distribute and play games online for a few years now, and we've been working on the technology to support that dream for a couple years, behind the scenes. I'll talk about the details below, but the bottom-line is... we started looking at funding possibilities because we wanted to do a better job helping other developers build their games and be successful with them.

There's no way we or any other single company can help every single game out there that deserves attention and success. But what we can do, now, is truly become the publisher and developer partner that we always wanted to be. We'll help lots of teams succeed, and we'll help drive the industry even further toward establishing newer, more developer-friendly channels and markets.

We've been actively building out a new network of games at InstantAction.com (which everyone in the GarageGames community will soon get early access to, as you'll all be given accounts at IA). We're working on games ourselves, and we're funding games on very developer-friendly terms that allow both us and the developers we're working with to win. Of course, we'll doing all this while continuing to push forward (harder than ever) on Torque and our commitment to developer tools.

There's much more to talk about in all this, and this blog is just the beginning...

What kind of deal did we do with IAC?
As must be expected when doing a big hairy announcement like we just did... sometimes not everything you want to say gets across cleanly in print. However, I want everyone to know that our deal with IAC was and is fundamentally compatible with our philosophies at GG, and the internal plans we had in place.

As some of you have read in the announcements by now though, IAC has acquired a majority of the equity at GG. However, we used a very unique structure in our deal with them. While IAC now has the majority of the future economic value of GG, we continue to run the shop right here in good old Eugene, OR.

IAC is a very smart, savvy group of people and they recognized right away how passionate and committed we were to making great games, to treating developers fairly, and to our philosophies here. As such, our deal is structured to accommodate all that, and to make sure we stay true to our goals. As it's headed up by people with a lot of experience in creative industries, IAC also understands the importance of creative control, and treating both content creators (developers) and audiences (gamers) the right way.

So, our wording in the press release and such today involves IAC's new majority stake in GG's equity, and we wanted to be honest about that. But keep this in mind too: we wouldn't have done this deal without knowing for sure that we'd have the freedom to stay true to our mission, and we of course made sure that freedom was baked into the deal structure itself.

Our partnership with IAC is a big one, and it's truly built for the long-term. IAC is helping us in a huge way, through funding and through sharing expertise and resources, to build an awesome new game network, alongside our existing commitment to providing great developer tools (and we've got a bunch of exciting stuff to talk about on that in the coming weeks as well).


Why did we want to work with IAC?
Simply put, IAC was and is the perfect partner for us. We couldn't have dreamed of a better deal structure, or a better company to work with.

As anyone watching the industry sees today, games are heating up, and all kinds of investment is pouring into the industry. This is actually a great thing for developers and for gamers, because it means that there is more funding available out there, and that new kinds of games and distribution channels are being built.

At GG, we were and are offered funding on a regular basis. However, we never found a partner who really seemed to get the industry, to share our vision, or who we found willing to work with us in a way we honestly felt would allow us to stay true to who we are. We were very hesitant about VC or any such form of funding, as we didn't want to be under pressure to "flip"... eg sell the company to the highest bidder, or go public really quickly, which is what most VC is built to do, but obviously not what we're all about here.

So, even though we've always had a big vision and we figured it'd take more than we could hope to bootstrap on our own to truly fulfill that vision, we were always hesitant to take on any funding, or bring in any sort of partner. Call us untrusting... but that's smart in the world of big business. :)

With IAC, we finally found a perfect partner, though. To me, there are three overarching reasons why this is true:

Vision. IAC had an uncannily similar vision to ours at GG. They'd been looking at games for years, hoping to see an opportunity to help transform the industry and carve out a new market by building a great new online game network. We shared practically all the same ideas. I met with Shana Fisher from IAC in New York a long time ago, and it was eery talking to her... the challenges and opportunities she and IAC saw facing the games industry were the same exact challenges and opportunities we saw. IAC's ideas were uncannily similar to the vision that Jeff, Mark, myself and really the whole founding crew and team here had.

Entrepreneurship. With IAC, we found a partner that truly understood us, and how to build and support great businesses in general. IAC has a very entrepreneurial approach, and we have the physical and mental space to really do what's best. At the same time, we have access to amazingly talented, strategic thinkers, and the resources of a huge organization to lean on. Truly, we now have the best of both worlds... we run and operate as a small, nimble, entrepreneurial company with a big vision and a lot to get done... yet we have the support and resources of a multi-billion dollar, publicly traded, well-connected company with a great deal of web expertise and experience backing us up. That is amazingly cool and powerful.

In case you didn't hear it... GG just dinged. Level up!

People. Straight up, IAC is full of incredibly bright, super talented, dedicated, strategic, passionate people. Shana Fisher is one of the smartest business people I've ever spoken with. Barry Diller's track record speaks for itself, and it's incredibly exciting to be able to work with him and the reast of the team there. Jeff and I met a lot of the team at IAC, and the people there were a big factor in deciding the partnership with IAC was the right call. In fact, we recruited one of IAC's lead people to come work with us directly at GG. We hired Andy Yang a few months ago to spearhead our web efforts and InstantAction! Andy, truly, is one of the most impressive, intelligent, and dedicated people we've ever met, in any setting. It is an honor and a pleasure (and a huge win for us) to have the opportunity to work with the people at IAC.

Really, these are the overarching reasons we proceeded to talk with IAC, whereas we normally dismissed offers for funding and the like.


When did this happen, and why did it take us a while to talk about it publicly?
Our deal with IAC actually went down several months ago. As you can tell... we're still the same place we've always been (just better, more effective, and able to do more). We didn't announce it right away because we didn't want to do one of those vaporware releases you so often see. In most cases, people jump up and down about doing a deal, talk about all the crazy stuff they'll be doing, and then go dark for several months as they scramble to actually get something done.

We didn't want to do that. We wanted to hold off until we actually had something worthwhile talking about... not just brag about the fact that we did some big deal.

We finally announced because the InstantAction.com closed beta is starting in just a few days, and we're accepting registrations for early access now. We've poured a ton of work into InstantAction already, and with IAC we're investing millions of dollars into its continued development. We already have a bunch of cool stuff running, and we'll be taking the veil off it all soon.

IA beta testers get access to the games we're working on, and all the games our partner teams and studios are working on, as well as all the features we're building into InstantAction itself. Beta testers will even get sneak peaks at new concepts and newly proposed games, and can help us decide what to work on next and how it'll look and feel. So, we wanted to wait to get the word out there until we had this truly worthwhile stuff to talk about.


What is InstantAction?
I can't do InstantAction justice by answering this question briefly in the middle of a long blog. So, we'll be talking about this a lot more in the near future. For now, I'll keep this very brief.

InstantAction is a new place to play games. We're working on games here at GG and we're working with great indie studios of all kinds, from some of the biggest names in the industry to total unknowns with great ideas and the ability to get them done. We're building a bunch of great new games that focus squarely on being fun. They'll all be playable in the browser, and they'll be rich, core-oriented, and often multiplayer games. Effectively, we are building a web-based console... and just like a console, we'll have a wide variety of games and will be working with lots of developers and eventually perhaps even other publishers to create games for it.

For gamers, InstantAction will be and is a place to find great games and to connect with friends to play.

Again, many more details to come, and we'll look forward to seeing all of you in the IA beta, soon. :)

What kinds of games are we looking for?
Again, we'll be talking about this a lot more soon, so I'll be brief here. Fundamentally, we are of course just looking for fun games. We want games that appeal to a core audience of gamers and ex-gamers, pretty much anywhere in the world. We're building games that are designed to interface with the web, and leverage the unique advantages and cool features we are building into InstantAction.

We're looking for lots of games too, and are even funding some. So, if you've got a great idea and truly have the chops to get it done, get in touch with us at games@garagegames.com.


How are we working with developers?
As I said above, we've now been able to become the publisher we always wanted to work with. We're funding many games, and doing so in a way that lets everyone involved win. We have the best developer terms in the industry, and they're right in line with our long-standing philosophies.

This is one of the most exciting parts of this announcement, and we'll be sharing a lot more details on this in the near future. And, by the way, if you want the full scoop, IGC is for you.

What does all this mean for Torque, and the GG community?
Very good things. We're getting more done on Torque than we ever have before. As you've seen, we recently pushed out updates to TGB, TGEA, and TGE, while shipping Torque X and more. But all of this work pales in comparison to what we have to announce in the coming weeks for Torque, and the community here at GG. We're pushing Torque forward in a huge way, re-vamping and overhauling the engine and tools in ways we couldn't have before. We can't wait to share the updates with everyone, and we have a bunch of cool stuff for the community up our sleeve. More details coming very soon.

Suffice it to say, we're getting more done on Torque than we ever have. Honestly, for a long while there, it was really hard to break out and make big, important changes to Torque. We were bootstrapping GG, which basically meant we lived hand to mouth, month-to-month on the business from licensing Torque. That makes it hard to try and do anything really revolutionary, or take any big risks. So, I feel like we were starting to stagnate. For the past few months, we've been able to truly step back and look at the big picture, and figure out what we want to do with Torque and our developer tools, and how we can really make them better. That's lead to some great work getting done, and we're excited to talk about it with everyone very soon (suggestion: again, come to IGC, and get the story).

What's changed at GG since the deal happened?
Well, we're bigger now, but actually not by a lot. A couple years ago, we doubled size in one year. We haven't grown that much this year, and in fact our growth rate is about the same as last year. But overall, we've added a bunch of great new members to the team at GG.

We've been building out InstantAction. We've been making new games! :) And we've been pushing forward harder and faster on Torque.

We're constantly trying to improve internally, to become more effective and efficient, and to do a better job defining and achieving our goals and promises. Like any company, we're growing and changing, but our soul is still the same. We're just empowered to do more, now.


Fundamentally... did we sell out?
Being perfectly honest, no, we didn't. On a philosophical level and in terms of what we're working on and how we're operating, we just took the right steps to do what we always wanted to. I'm sure we could've cut a better deal with someone, if all we cared about was making bucks from selling out GG. But we have to sleep at night, and look at ourselves in the mirror every morning, and money in and of itself is only so valuable. So, no souls were sold, I'm happy to say. :)

Of course, we obviously traded in the majority of the economic interest in GarageGames, so in that regard we did sell a lot. But we did so in exchange for a great partner and a better way to do what we've always wanted to. And even economically, the deal with IAC is structured such that it'll work out better for everyone involved (IAC, GG itself and our employees, and our external partners) now that we're supported by a great partner in IAC and have the resources to truly bring the longstanding visions Jeff and others originally laid out for the company to reality.


So, there's the straight dope on this whole announcement, and our new partner, IAC. I hope I answered the the most important, immediate questions that seeing this hit the stories and blogs brought to mind for everyone. Thanks very much for reading, and I'll do my best to reply to comments as soon as possible. We'll be talking about all this-- especially our plans for InstantAction, Torque, and new games-- in a lot more detail in the very near future! This is all very exciting stuff, and we can't wait to talk about it all more.