I’ve been asked a few times why Space Monkey? Well, I knew I wanted an animal this time around, some sort of mascot character and monkeys are awesome when they’re not flinging sh*t at you and although it might seem sort of foreboding to name a studio after an animal that was used in experiments and essentially crashed and died in horrible ways but the name just happened to stick.

For me though it symbolizes a personal and professional journey into territory I haven’t trekked, like the first monkeys shot into space exploring the unknown if only for a brief moment and if I crash and burn at least I’ll be able to say I gave it a shot.

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

-Marcel Proust

Gather around everyone, it’s time for a story. This story is about the formation of an independent video game studio, partnerships and for the most part common sense.

Hope is something that can drive you to do great things however reason will get you there in one piece. I do think that if there’s one positive thing to come out of all of this it’s the life lessons learned and the experience gained – because it sure as sh*t wasn’t the sanity I kept. It did come with a sacrifice though – namely things like a social life and while most people my age spend their time drinking and doing drugs (or maybe starting a real career) I had my own escapism namely staring into a screen playing video games.

I grew up on the Atari 2600 and the NES to the now classic Sierra and Lucas Arts adventure games and on through the FPS boom but I’d say it was when I discovered the Duke Nukem 3D tools on the CD and started making levels I was hooked and wanted to actually make games for a living and thus my decent into a self loathing pudge ball began.

Like so many others I’m an aspiring game designer and when I’m not organizing game designs into neat (or sometimes gargantuan) documents I’m making myself semi-useful in producing them. I’ve recently self published a project called Orb Blast. Orb Blast represents a long road of mixed emotions, learning and poor judgment.

I would like to go back to the beginning of my semi-professional career which started in 2006 when I joined a start up company [THE FIRST] that promised to mold new ideas into something the world can enjoy and give young upstarts a chance to reach their goals. This start-up company showed a lot of promise, especially to someone who just graduated and was looking for such an opportunity to not only gain some great experience but work with some really talented people. I was introduced to this company by my former business partner who was a one of the founding members of [THE FIRST].

At the time I was focused on creating pitch material and a demonstration for a new project and for a time it was good but then team members started dropping off rather quickly, either they saw what was coming or maybe I just missed an important memo. My contact within this organization was the Director of Operations [THE FIRST DOO]. Team Leads reported to the Director of Operations who discussed the situation with the other executive staff members. One day I received an e-mail from [THE FIRST DOO] saying that the he was leaving the company however he still wanted to work with me (later this will be known as a snake in the grass). This is a very tough position for someone new because on one hand you feel obligated by loyalty to an organization however you also want the best for your project.

This was the start of a long sad history where [THE FIRST] would see many, many new Director of Operations. One individual promised to secure funding in 6 months, he was gone in less than 6 weeks but he did manage to go on to help form a successful studio which has shipped a few titles. So myself and others left to continue our work with the former DOO of [THE FIRST] and formed [THE SECOND], by this time I was swallowed up in the world of business and that excess baggage that comes with it – politics. I still saw this as a great way to learn and strongly believed I could do something great under the guidance of someone we thought brought a lot of experience to the table. It wasn’t long until something small set him off and he disappeared never to be heard from again – thanks!

I was left with what I started with, myself and a few others who just wanted to make a really cool game and any other unreasonable jargon we could throw around since it had to be BIG. Mobile, casual, and anything considered “small” was beneath us. Yes, we were going AAA (gee I wonder what will happen).

You see, this is a common problem with a lot of people who are just starting out; and it’s great to dream big but for the love of god you have to be reasonable. You can usually spot the ones that are likely to fail by the size of the project and the experience of the team. The larger and more complex the project the more likely you are to fail, however this isn’t true of everyone and a few have managed to do great things but the majority reaches epic fail in no time flat. Those who do succeed usually have a nice body of work behind them or fully grasp the size of the project – it might even be a little luck. My favorite is the group of people with no experience whatsoever that is going to make the next World of Warcraft – it’s a good learning process and I wish them all the best.

My first studio was [THE THIRD], it had 4 founding members and despite the advice from people smarter than ourselves we set off to do what seemed reasonable, start a game studio and fully expect everything to work out great without any problems, now start the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism. Our friend inexperience quickly joined in on the fun (among a few other factors) and everyone went their separate ways. The lesson learned here is to be very careful if you’re going into business with your friends. This is something that can be debated but in retrospect it was a disaster, I suspect it was this that may have prompted me to go into business later with someone I never considered a friend.

What now? I just spent over a year not only failing at business but not achieving much in the way of video games so I swallowed any pride I had left and rejoined [THE FIRST] which by this time had become a contract service provider for content and custom games. I was accepted back although understandably with hesitation, however I did genuinely want to see them go somewhere (still do in fact) and at this time it looked like it would as they had a new DOO (8th, 9th?) and a new contract for a small 3D game. I jumped on the opportunity to work on this project as soon as I could.

It wasn’t long after completing the game when I once again found myself in a dilemma, the new DOO was splitting and taking his team with him.  Was I to go with the new DOO and his team or stay with [THE FIRST]? Having been in the situation before I decided that enough was enough and I had to stick with something. I stayed with [THE FIRST] and as for the new DOO it wouldn’t be until much later that I would receive news that they befell a similar disbanding fate that I ran into.

So having chosen a spot and feeling better ethically I started trudging away with whatever came my way. Things were looking up, there was a competition held at our former school for new game designs in the areas of PC, Console, Mobile, etc…

Both I and my [business partner] entered our ideas into the competition. His was accepted to be presented and I worked with him on presenting the idea to a panel of judges. If you ever saw that show Dragons Den where entrepreneurs show their ideas to a bunch of business people it was a lot like that. I saw it as a great opportunity to receive advice for the project even if we didn’t win. After our presentation we received an invitation to pitch the game at a local publisher for their own consideration.

It was both a very busy and joyous time, the competition also served as a lecture presentation by various speakers on topics from securing funding to project management. During an important presentation on funding and pitching I was surprised to learn of the complete lack of interest by the other board members of [THE FIRST], the only other one who actually showed up mentioned how he didn’t know they would be talking about all this “business s**t” and left during the break.

By this time we had a meeting with the publisher to hear our pitch. We were also in the middle of talking with the other board members about getting focused as everyone had tended to get unorganized rather quickly, communication being a major problem – and I was really starting to see why no one stuck around for very long. In light of nothing being resolved and in an ironic twist of fate Space Monkey Games Ltd. was formed shortly after we left [THE FIRST] in 2007.  So what happened?

In the beginning everything was great, at least better than anything had been going in the past. We were hard at work producing demonstrations of technology, outlining our plans for the future and building on past experience we intended not to make the same mistakes. Instead we made all new ones! No rock left unturned it seems.

What can you do to ensure failure? Well the first thing you can do is work on a project that is well beyond your capabilities and resources, that’s a sure fire way to fail which was something that survived throughout this whole experience, it was the common element in every situation and the second thing you can do is pitch a game to a publisher and then deliver something entirely different then what they asked for such as my former business partner demonstrated.

It was also around this time that I did something very difficult, it was however the best thing I could have done for myself – I shelved the project that I had carried with me this whole time. It was hard to do but it was like waking up from a coma, having everything you’ve ever done snap into place and wondering why the hell you didn’t do it sooner.

While my former business partner continued working on his large (and at the time ever-expanding project) I started thinking differently about games and what I could do. At this time The Orange Box was just released and I happened to try Peggle Extreme, I loved it. My former business partner had also played and recommended the game. Peggle is simple, fun and easy to get sucked into. You don’t need cutting edge next generation graphics to make something enjoyable.  I set out to start over and create something simple and fun. In retrospect I should have done a bit more research on what the market was asking for but the main thing is that I was thinking more reasonably. My former business partner joined in after much coaxing from me to be an executive producer and actually pay people for their work as contractors and not mess around with trying to get free labor from people like in all our previous ventures. He hesitantly agreed and we started production for what would become a 6 month project.

At this time my business partner liked this new found direction and seemed to abandon his large scale adventure project and do a smaller version however as we neared the end of Orb Blast he had given up on Space Monkey and wanted to dissolve without even giving it a chance, he also seemed to have abandoned his project which had ballooned out of control and started over. He recruited from the internet looking to form what I can only see as another [THE FIRST]. I truly wonder if they know what they’re in for.

So I bought his shares of Space Monkey, we parted ways and I released Orb Blast.

So what was I thinking? Well I wasn’t, for a long time. I was kept going by hope, hope that things would come together, hope that I was making the right choices but not stopping to listen to reason. I can’t say I’m 100% glad things worked out the way they did because friendships were lost and some bridges were burned in the process however it helped get me on what I believe to be the right track finally.

Today I try to approach things more carefully and keep my goals reasonable. Looking back though I have to laugh, laugh at what it took to find something as rare as common sense.