Day Two - Keynote

Day two came around and this time Rich and I came prepared with bagels and drinks in hand. Of course this time they had muffins placed out when we got there. Go figure right? ? They were huge muffins too – I ate one just out of principle. So Josh Williams, GarageGames’ CEO and CTO, took the podium first after a brief introduction given by Mark Frohnmayer, one of the company founders. Josh spoke about his beginnings with the company, being in college at the time when he noticed Jeff Tunnell’s interview on GameSpy and realized there was a cool company in Eugene worth checking into. He’d always wanted to be in the games industry, at the time he was studying mathematical finance (and probably bored out of his skull – I dunno sounds boring to me), and so as he says he “stalked” GarageGames, constantly looking for a way in. When he heard they would be open to anyone who offered to write documentation, Josh jumped at the chance and emailed them saying “I want to write documents!” (or something close to that affect). And so his career began with the Garage. He was promoted to CEO at 25 two years ago and is now in charge of overseeing GarageGames’ strategy, which greatly involves the IAC acquisition of GG.

It’s understandable that many people thought of GG as selling out to a larger corporation – giving up their identity, going against their mandate, and so on and so forth. Josh is working hard to assure developers that none of this is even close to true and in fact the IAC deal has brought GG closer than ever to achieving the goals set forth by its original founders, which was to make game development accessible to the masses. While I could go on to describe the details, I don’t really feel the need to paraphrase, and that’s what I would mainly be doing from Josh’s blog, since I don’t have copious notes on the talk. So I direct you to his blog entry on IAC over at GarageGames.com. Additional coverage on the IAC topic (and InstantAction too) can be found in a GameDaily Biz interview with Josh. In addition, long-time indie developer Russel Carroll also offers up his views over at his blog. So divert your eyes from GDnet for a few minutes and study up.

My take? Well from talking to Josh and being around the Garage offices and seeing everyone’s enthusiasm first-hand, it’s hard to deny that GG made a sound decision in accepting IAC’s offer. The fact that a huge media corporation was able to gel so well with a studio in an industry they aren’t actively involved in and share the same vision on a technology platform (InstantAction) is a pretty rare thing. IAC’s putting a lot of power in the hands of GarageGames and I feel independent developers will be able to reap the benefits. Of course, time will ultimately tell but I do feel encouraged rather than disappointed with GarageGame’s decision.

Day Two - Roundtable