An Itch That Can't Be Scratched

Being a serial entrepreneurial is almost an addiction. It is the thrill of starting new things that are nothing but promise, have no baggage, and cannot yet be fully quantified. Once the vision is mostly realized, however, the itch comes back, and the cycle starts all over again. For me, the time has come to start the cycle over again. GarageGames has mostly fulfilled it vision, and I will be leaving on 6/2/2008 to start a new company with another vision and a new set of promises.

GarageGames via Instant Action has become the publisher that I always wanted to work with, so that is one of the thing that I will be doing. As I was pulling together teams and helping decide which games were going to go on IA, it was literally killing me to not be in a more creative, game development position. Every day I was helping people do what I wanted to do, so finally I decided to find out how I could get back into start up mode. Josh Williams and IAC have been very gracious in working with me to create this new win/win situation.

I thought about writing a sappy post about how the GG vision changed the landscape of indie gaming, and took a sentimental trip back though my old .plans (blogs) to support a bunch of thank yous and milestone reviews. It was fun reading, but I'm not going to put you through that. But I do reserve the right to do so in the future on my www.makeitbigingames.com blog that I will continue to maintain and grow :)

Meeting all of the people in this community in real life and in virtual space has been the biggest reward of being involved in GarageGames. I don' think any of us will ever recreate the feelings of friendship and camaraderie we built during late nights at IndieGamesCon, GDC, and other ad hoc indie game developer meetings. Rubbing two sticks together to make a fire in the rain, as Jay Moore and I always put it, was thrilling, dangerous, and had so much meaning. Jay, thanks brother.

I won't be leaving this community, in fact, I still check in every day, and I will continue to do so in the future. Instant Action is going to be a hit, and I still want to help get it there, just in a different way. Stay tuned for more information about my new company. In the meantime, feel free to check out my personal blog at jefftunnell.wordpress.com or jefftunnell.tumblr.com or www.twitter.com/jefftunn . Mostly, you will read about Colleen and I's 200 acre sustainable farm, but more game stuff is on the way. Oh yeah, my email address is jeff.tunnell at gmail dot com.

See you all in the community...

-Jeff Tunnell, Co-Founder GarageGames