What Got Me Into Games

The Extra Credits group had a Q&A panel at PAX where the question was raised to each of them, "What game or experience made you decide to make games your career?"  I thought that was a very thought provoking question, so I've decided I'm going to answer it myself.  I was very blessed to have parents who introduced me to games when I was little (or maybe lucky to have older brothers who requested things when I was still tiny/non-existent).  My first console was the Atari and my first computer was an Apple IIe.  Also, during elementary school, my mom was in charge of the carpool area (making sure kids found their parents and vice versa) so I had to stay late after school with nothing to do.  Fortunately, I was allowed to play the educational games our computer area had.  I think these games - Think Quick, Midnight Rescue, and Challenge of the Ancient Empire - fostered in me the idea that games can be educational AND fun.  With the Mac IIsi came World Builder, which helped me learn how to build and design simple graphic adventure games.  After that came Marathon, whose physics/game editor started to teach me how parts of game systems work and how they interact.  I think all of those, combined with my desire to tell a story like all the RPGs I played growing up (especially Chrono Trigger), are really what made me want to make video games to tell a story, improve peoples' lives in some way, and to make them happy by letting them have fun.

However, I've also had a strong desire to make board games that currently outweighs my desire to make video games.  Board games are capable of achieving those same goals I wanted to achieve with video games (and still do), but games like Fireball Island also taught me that board games can come with some really awesome pieces.  There's something about the physicality of the components that make them even more enjoyable to me and I want to bring that to others.  This is why my dream is to bring a touch screen table akin to the Microsoft Surface plus some physical pieces to combine the best of both worlds into the world.  For example, imagine Settlers of Catan without the tedious setup of the hexes/numbers on the board, but still with individual roads, houses, and cities.  Fortunately, that sort of idea is already being done.