Interview: Brian Robbins: CGDA Coordinator and Sudio Head at Fuel Games Denver
Wherever you are, local game development is growing. Well, Colorado is a location and fits into the ‘wherever’ category, thus, game development is growing there, too.
Here we interview Brian Robbins, the Colorado Game Developer’s Association Coordinator and Studio Head at Fuel Games. We get his take on the growing of the game industry along with a few anecdotes surrounding his personal experiences within. He talks at length about how organizations like the CGDA are nurturing that growth. He even talks a bit about the iPhone and it’s impact on the industry and his Studio’s game for it.
BeefJack: How long has the Colorado Game Developer’s Association been around?
Brian: The CGDA is actually the longest continually meeting group of game developers in the country, possibly the world. It was started up in 1987 by three guys: Eric DybSand, Bob Racoski, and Mark Baldwin and we’ve been meeting every month since. It started out in Eric’s living room and since then has grown into something that has seen between 40 and 80 people at the last several meetings. So, it’s obviously a much bigger group now than it used to be.
BeefJack: You obviously weren’t involved way back then, but why was it formed?
Brian: No, I was eight or nine when it started. Basically, the reason that it started was that we wanted to talk to other game developers. Their original goal was, since they were making computer games and they knew a couple other people in town that were, to just get together and talk about games once a month. Partially it was to help educate each other, but mostly it was just to be able to keep in touch with each other. I think lately what we’ve tried to do is shift our focus a little more towards trying to help educate people as well, but it’s still a big goal to help local developers network and know who else is out here. There’s a lot of development in other towns and not too many people think of Colorado as a big game development hub. We want to make sure that everyone knows who everybody else is.
BeefJack: Are there any national organizations that you’re officially or unofficially affiliated with?
Brian: The Colorado Game Developer’s Association is actually the Colorado chapter of the International Game Developer’s Association. That’s the [IGDA], which is a global organization. I think we have 15,000 to 20,000 paid members worldwide. And [there are] chapters all around the world; everywhere from San Francisco and Vancouver and Toronto and Montreal, which are kind of obvious places, to a lot of chapters in Europe and Asia. And actually if you go to IGDA.org website, they actually have a stat on there about how many chapters there are (78).
BeefJack: What does your role as coordinator involve? And, who makes up the leadership now? Is it still that initial bunch, like Eric?
Brian: No, actually Eric passed away a few years back.
BeefJack: I’m sorry to hear that.
Brian: He was a great man and was actually very big in game [Artificial Intelligence] several of his friends have led the charge to create a scholarship to [the Game Developer's Conference], specifically around AI, in his name. So, he is well remembered and beloved. But as far as running the chapter goes, the primary goal of the coordinator is just to coordinate the chapter; making sure that we have meetings each month and helping to make sure we have locations and getting emails out; just typical coordination stuff. It largely revolves around making sure people show up and giving them a good reason to show up. That’s sort of the primary driver and the primary task for the coordinator.
BeefJack: So who does make up the leadership then? Do the guys who created the scholarship have any places up there?
Brian: That’s actually an IGDA-wide thing, the AI scholarship; it goes through the IDGA foundation. For the Local Colorado chapter leadership, we’re in a little bit of a transition period. Myself and three or four other people are nominally helping out; Gary Rosenswyke, who was the previous coordinator, is still maintaining the website and sending out the email updates. And then we have a couple other people that are helping to organize the group, but not in a specific named-roll kind of capacity at this point.
BeefJack: Who shows up to the meetings? And, beyond networking, what are the benefits?
Brian: Who shows up is definitely a variety of people. Certainly we have professionals, people that are in the game industry, whether it’s myself, who runs a local studio, or some of the people that I work with, who are programmers or artists at some of the various studios around town. There’s definitely several hobbyists, people that are interested in the game industry, maybe doing it on the side, but not actively doing it as their job. And then, we’ve had quite a lot of students. Lately, our last several meetings have actually been on one of the campuses around town, so that obviously encouraged more if those students to show up. I think going forward we will probably have less students; some of the locations won’t be quite as student friendly, but we’ll always have them showing up. As far as reasons to come, it’s networking. Networking is certainly a really big part, getting to know who else in town is doing stuff, and I hope a big part of it is also to learn about the industry, learn about what’s going on and learn about games that people have done locally, techniques. It’s education, but hopefully, for people in the industry, it’s entertainment and not just education. That’s the goal, in two parts, networking and education.
BeefJack: In signing up, assuming there is a signing up process, are there any dues?
Brian: At this point no. If you join the global IGDA organization there is a fee of $48 dollars a year. But, the Colorado chapter doesn’t have any specific dues, no.
BeefJack: That’s great, free to all.
Brian: Yeah, Absolutely. We’ve got the mailing list and the primary way you join, as much as joining matters, is to sign up for the mailing list and show up to the meetings. None of that costs anything.
BeefJack: Awesome. Is there anyone that, as far as showing up goes, holds a strange title in any industry? For example, does anyone outside of the game industry show up?
Brian: Honestly, I don’t know. There’re a few people that are kind of hobbyists, so they do this on the side and their day job doesn’t really come up a lot. We do have one guy who’s been fairly active, although he hasn’t been able to make meetings as much of late, who works down at NORAD and is a senior AI programmer on some military projects. He always has interesting things to talk about, but that’s the only person that I know. Other people might do interesting things, but like I said, it’s outside of the scope of what they’re typically talking about at the meeting.
BeefJack: Fair enough. Well, this technology is all relatively new, but do you feel like you’ve seen the industry change with the IDGA? And with your chapter specifically, do you feel like you’ve seen a change locally? The game industry in Colorado is bigger than many people perceive, but I would risk saying that it’s not as big as a lot of other areas.
Brian: No, it definitely isn’t. For me personally, I grew up in Denver and my first job was for Clever Media, here in town, and I worked there from ‘99 till 2003. I left because there weren’t a lot of other options in Denver at the time. So, if I wanted to stay in the industry, I kinda had to leave. I moved to Ottawa and lived in New York and just recently came back last spring. Now, there’s definitely more: there’s Idol Minds, Net Devil, SOE Denver. Those are the three biggest studios in town. But then, there are a lot of other secondary studios that have five to ten people. I don’t have official statistics on this, but my guess is that we have between 350 and 450 people actively getting paid to make games in this state. The numbers are nowhere near the biggest hubs of game development, but we’re certainly doing some really interesting stuff here. As far as the industry as a whole goes, you’re absolutely seeing a really big change right now. You still have the big EAs of the world that are doing your mega-humongous titles, but you’re also seeing a lot of growth with social gaming and stuff like the iPhone and web-based games. These are smaller titles that don’t take 500 people and three years and $50 million to build; they take two or three guys three or four months to build. That’s something that’s definitely changing the industry a lot, is this focus and acceptance of smaller games, smaller projects and more independent development.
BeefJack: Since were on the subject, do you want to plug your Vans game?
Brian: Yeah, I’d love to. My studio here, Fuel Games Denver, is the Denver office of Fuel Industries, which is based up in Ottawa. Our latest game is Vans Sk8: Pool Service for the iPhone. It’s the first major action sports title for the iPhone. The closest correlation to it is an EA skate or Tony Hawk skate game. It’s all about playing as Bucky Lasek or Omar Hassan, which are two of Vans’ premier riders, taking them in the pool and performing tricks. You try to get as many points grinding, doing Kickflips and Backflips and 540° airs. That’s the ultimate goal for it. So far, the response toward it has been really good. People have definitely seemed to really enjoy the game and we’re obviously very thrilled about that.
BeefJack: That sounds great. Now, you mentioned earlier that you hold CGDA meetings at local game development schools or at least schools that have game development programs; do you see any students making the jump into the industry with help from the CGDA meetings?
Brian: Well, we definitely see a lot of students attending the meetings, and there have definitely been some success stories of students making the jump into the industry. A really obvious example is this group called Team Phobic, that’s here in town. I don’t believe they had gone to too many of our meetings, but they have recently graduated from Colorado University, and the six of them have started their own company. Their biggest title is one called Bounce On, which has been doing fairly well for them. They just scraped things together. They were four or five friends that decided to make a go of it and have managed to turn that into a valid business. So, there’s definitely some stuff like that. Over the years there have been a lot of people that have gone from school into the industry; some of them have been able to stay local and work with Net Devil or Idol Minds or something like that, and some of them have had to go elsewhere to get their game industry jobs. Well, myself, I started out as a student coming to these meetings and got my job through some contacts I had made at the meetings, and eventually I was able to come back and I’ve hired a few more people that have attended the meetings or that are interested in the game industry as a whole. I don’t know how much of that is because of the group, but certainly, the group is a big part of that and it’s great to have it so everybody can know where the industry is at and know who around town is working on this stuff.
BeefJack: Thanks for your time.
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