October 31, 2008

i’m an ngmofo

by Andrew Stern · , 5:07 pm

I’ve been an absentee blogger, and I apologize. The last time I posted, in July, I mentioned I had started a new game studio Stumptown Game Machine here in Portland, that has been consuming my time. I had said we were working on a game for a reality-TV show, and in fact it was coming along swimmingly — until the publisher ran out of cash a few weeks before the game was complete. And, they still owe us money. Ah, the fun life of indie game development.

But then, we signed a deal to make an iPhone game with ngmoco, the upstart founded by ex-EA honchos Neil Young and Alan Yu. It’s top secret for the moment, but I can say we’re having a great, stressed-out time making what we hope will be a fresh, compelling game for this new platform. More when I’m allowed to tell you more…

A few other tidbits: I gave a talk at Austin GDC in September in the Future of Interactive Storytelling track. I went out a limb a bit with it, it was a difficult talk to pull off. I think it went alright; it generated a small amount of heated discussion, and at least one blog post reacting to it (thanks Rubes, for the writeup). I was working heavily on the iPhone game while I was at the conference, so didn’t get a chance to liveblog or see more than a few other talks.

Also, I will be giving a keynote next month at the 1st Joint International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling in Erfurt, Germany. ICIDS is the offspring of the recent mating of TIDSE and ICVS. Maybe I’ll see some of you there.

I was sad to have missed AIIDE last week. I did find some live blogging here (1 2 3).

3 Responses to “i’m an ngmofo”


  1. Mary Flanagan Says:

    hang in there Andrew. Can’t wait to see what you cook up with ngmoco!

  2. Rubes Says:

    No problem at all…it was a very good talk, which succeeded in many ways — especially in the way it generated discussion during and afterward. It was also good to finally meet you. Look forward to more of those talks in the future.

  3. Grand Text Auto » An Opertoon Moment Says:

    […] life has been all iPhone all the time, whether it’s reading news and blogs wherever I am, developing a game, even the occasional phone call. If I had time to play games though, I’m not sure the iPhone […]

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