Trainwreck Interactive

“Rick, we should start adding real posts to the Developer Blogs section on Trainwreck’s site.”

“… I’ve been doing that for two weeks.”

“…”

“…”

And so I admit that I haven’t been reading this site recently, as I was under the impression that it was a test-tube baby still awaiting implantation in Rick’s womb of content.  Wow, that’s awful imagery; let’s move on.

I started playing video games on the Intellivision before I turned three.  I was regularly defeating my father at NFL Football for said Intellivision before I turned five.  In the years since, I’ve thought a lot about why I work in this industry, and why I associate myself with it so strongly, even before I worked at a game developer.  I have many different charming rationalizations, but the early exposure has implanted a reptilian, “just because” directive into my cortex.  Unfortunately, that’s really boring to talk about, so let’s discuss the rationalizations instead.

The most charming rationalization I have is that game development combines my two loves:  performance and engineering.  I’m driven to perform for people, and like everyone who has ever been successful on the stage, I crave applause.  More generally, I crave appreciation.  In fact, I think everyone craves appreciation, and that desire manifests itself in various ways.  Engineering combines logical “solving” – what Rick would call “hard fun”, or at least Rick channeling Koster – and artistic creation from the aether.  In one video game, I wrote the code that made it rain, and I was the first person to see it rain in this game.  This powerful act of creation, and the fact that millions of others experienced that creation (albeit without associating it directly with me), is like a drug.

Like all drugs, the desire for more “hits” can lead you down some undesirable short-term paths.  At this point in my career, I don’t want to work on crap, and I don’t want to work for no possible reward.  I don’t want to just complete my assigned tasks as an employee; I want to play a meaningful role in the creation of the game.  I don’t want to make any old game; I want to create something special – hopefully many somethings.

Unfortunately, I realized a long time ago that the only IP that I can create doesn’t pass my own “crap” filter.  Fortunately, I found Rick, who has many compelling ideas and is even interested in doing all the boring businessy work.  I just want to entertain people and make money at it, as money is a meaningful barometer of success at entertainment.  More than that, I want to lead a group of people to collectively entertain others in ways I could never do by myself.  The DaVinci to my Edison is definitely Jim Henson.

Rick once told me that there are four aspects to a career in the games industry:  “creative”, “technical”, “business”, and “people”; you get to pick two.  He had chosen “creative” and “business”, and my talents and interests obviously lie in “technical” and “people”.  This should work out fairly well for us.  On the other hand, I am mindful of the wisdom of Homer: “I lost creative control of the project.  And I forgot to ask for any money.”

Matt Developer Blog Personalities

I’d been waiting to generate some more content for the website – especially some logos or other expensive-looking things to show that we’re putting the force of dollars behind us. But that would be a lie; I am very poor ever since I bought my house. So for now you get a WordPress template and a promise that after I purchase a new AV receiver, a half-ton backyard smoker, a new gaming PC, and a new car, I’ll take what’s left and splurge on some custom embossing for our corporate logo billed at $200 an hour.

So what are we doing here?
Trainwreck is a side-project of mine that lets me exercise some creative and organizational skills outside of my day job. During the day I work in the game industry too – but in a tremendously uninteresting capacity. Rather than bore you with details, I’ll just say I work on game platform technology, and when that technology is working, you don’t even know it’s there.

I started Trainwreck as an entity to which I can attach and protect my IP. Like every asshole out there, I have game ideas – lots of game ideas. There’s a folder on my machine at home with something like 180 1-pager descriptions of games I’d like to make. I have probably 20 or so 10-page write ups and a handful of robust design docs. However, I’ve never released one of my own titles commercially. With Trainwreck I plan to rectify this shortcoming in my resume.

I don’t imagine I’ll sell a lot of product under the Trainwreck label, but I’m optimistic that our games will be different and entertaining enough to generate some buzz and delight some gamers. If I thought I could make a living at this, I’d quit my job in a heartbeat and develop my own intellectual properties full-time. But the games business, frankly, sucks. If there’s one truth that is drilled into my consciousness every day of my life, it is that without a franchise, game investments are some of the longest odds you can take. It’s like playing the lottery – the odds are low, the payouts potentially large, and the stakes are whatever you’re willing to spend.

I believe in ultra-transparency. We’ll be talking about everything we do here at Trainwreck, and we’ll be making up a bunch of stuff we didn’t actually do. We’ll talk about what we’re working on to a certain extent. If there are interesting IPs or concepts that we don’t want to reveal, we’ll keep it to ourselves until the time is right.

Our first project is a game called Arc Tactics. It’s set in a sci-fi/fantasy universe I’ve been daydreaming about since I was 10-years-old. My experiences over the years have refined my inclinations, and the Arc Universe has evolved from childish re-hashing of other material to something that is (hopefully) relatively new and exciting to people. While our first game only gives a tiny slice of the continuity we’ve developed, I hope for it to stand on its own merit of having genuinely new gameplay.
I’ll be blogging about lots of stuff – tech, game business, and production – but my real passion is for design. I’m interested in both the aesthetic and interactive parts of game, and I strongly believe in a stronger coupling between the two. It feels to me like people attach IP to a game or vice versa – I feel that they should be developed sympathetically to one another. This is an extreme challenge considering what games are relative to non-interactive media. I won’t go into detail on this yet. I’m not yet comfortable enough with my processes to start detailing them yet.

I’ll shoot for bi-weekly updates. Once I’m more comfortable with this format, I’ll have a regular update schedule. All the popular guys do it, and it’s what I prefer when I’m reading a blog.

Rick Developer Blog Personalities