Current Game: Doom (PS4)
I can’t remember a time when video games were not a part of my world. I was born in the mid-80s, so of course my first system was the NES. It was technically a gift that we (my sisters and I) got for Christmas one year, but the system quickly became mine.
Every subsequent Christmas and birthday, I received some new game or accessory for whatever the current system was in our household. I went through the full gauntlet of Nintendo systems; NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, Wii. Eventually, I switched over to Xbox 360 and now PS4. I always had a friend who was a “Sega” kid, and I even knew someone with the not-so-popular, Atari Jaguar. In addition, PC was always an option, and some of my favorite memories involve gaming on a PC.
Video games were always around, and they let my imagination soar. I could travel through space (sometimes even as a fearless space janitor), fight in a medieval battle, or even just build a hamburger while salt shakers chased me around. There were endless possibilities. Games helped me forge relationships, either through a mutual admiration of a genre/story, or purely through friendly competition, whether it be actual multiplayer or simply trying to get the high score Spy Hunter.
While playing games, I was always thinking of the ways that I would have made it differently. Not that I thought it necessarily would be better my way, but more that it would be a different way to experience the “simulation” of the game. There are plenty of games that are basically clones of something else, but they usually add some twist of their own. That one minor difference could be what makes that game perfect for someone else.
I’m not going to get into why I got into software development right now; I’ll save that for a later date. I’ve been “professionally” developing non-game software for the last 10 years, and while each job has its ups and downs, they all still feel like work at the end of the day. When I’m working on a game for Moonlight, it never feels like work though, and that’s what most people want out of a job. For now, Moonlight Games will be part-time, but the dream will always be to make it a sustainable full-time endeavor.
It sounds simple, but I make games that I want to play, and I hope that others want to play them too. No game is going to be perfect for everyone; All I’m trying to do is give people a chance to escape from their everyday lives and experience something new.