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Game Development, Midwest Values: A Chat with Pyramid Lake’s Josh Garity
27 Plays18 hours ago
Summary: Greg interviews Josh Garity, the founder and CEO of Pyramid Lake Games, to discuss the ins and outs of indie game development. Josh shares insights on their latest project, Varsity High School Football, detailing the challenges of creating a game that represents hundreds of high school football teams across the U.S. He highlights the importance of community feedback and how Pyramid Lake Games stays connected with their players through platforms like Discord and Patreon. Josh also reflects on his partnership with Midwest Games and how shared values helped secure the future of their family-friendly title Floor is What. This episode gives listeners a fascinating look at the indie game development process, the complexities of building realistic games, and the value of community in the industry.
Key Topics:
- Introduction to Pyramid Lake Games
Josh Garity shares the journey behind Pyramid Lake Games, based in Madison, Wisconsin. He discusses their growth and upcoming projects, including their new game Varsity High School Football and the evolution from Doug Flutie's Maximum Football. - The Genesis of Varsity High School Football
Josh reveals how the idea for Varsity High School Football came from the popularity of high school football culture in the U.S., particularly in states like Texas. His team did in-depth research into high school classifications, divisions, and how to best represent the sport in a video game. - Challenges of Game Development
Josh talks about the complexity of managing the data for hundreds of high school teams across 50 states. He touches on balancing realism and gameplay accessibility, ensuring players from different regions feel represented while keeping the game fun and manageable. - Community Engagement and Feedback
The importance of community feedback is highlighted as Josh explains Pyramid Lake Games’ approach to interacting with fans through platforms like Discord and Patreon. He discusses the challenge of building a broad community outside of a small core group of followers and the value of direct communication with players. - Collaborating with Midwest Games
Josh reflects on his experience partnering with Midwest Games, sharing how their shared values and open communication made it a perfect fit for publishing Floor is What. He emphasizes the importance of having the right partners when working on indie games. - Future Plans and the Power of Feedback
Josh outlines his ambitions for Pyramid Lake Games, with a strong focus on continuing to involve the community. He mentions plans for a winter playtest of Floor is What, encouraging players to wishlist the game on Steam and join the development journey.
Timestamp Highlights:
- [00:02:27] – The origin of Varsity High School Football and the inspiration behind focusing on high school sports.
- [00:06:30] – Josh discusses the research that went into representing hundreds of high school teams across various states.
- [00:10:39] – Josh shares the critical role of community engagement in indie game development.
- [00:14:42] – The partnership with Midwest Games and how shared values created a strong publishing relationship.
- [00:27:35] – Josh talks about the development process behind Floor is What, a family-friendly party game inspired by Mario Party and Fusion Frenzy.
Transcript
Introduction to Player Engage Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody, Greg here from the Player Engage Podcast and I want to let you know what you're about to listen to. We are continuing our series leading up to MDev and today we are talking to Josh Garrity, the founder of Pyramid Lake Games. We are going to be talking about the challenges of game development. We're going to be talking about community engagement and feedback, collaborating with Midwest Games, the power of feedback and just being a part of the larger community that is the Midwest. This is continuing our series, like I mentioned, and it is a really fun episode with some cool conversations about the games that they're building at Pyramid Lake Games. So I hope you enjoy this episode. If you have any feedback, let us know in the comments and enjoy.
Meet Josh Garrity: Wisconsin and Midwest Insights
00:00:45
Speaker
Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Player Engage podcast. Greg here. Today we are continuing our MDev series to talk to different studios from the Midwest. And today we are joined by Josh Garrity. He is the founder and CEO of Pyramid Lake Games. They are out in Madison, Wisconsin. They're doing some really cool stuff with some new titles that are coming out, which I'm excited to explore and also talk about kind of early access and stuff they're doing. Josh, thank you so much for joining me today. Is there anything you'd like to say about yourself?
00:01:15
Speaker
No, thanks for the opportunity to sit here and ah chat with you and your listeners and I guess watchers too, right? Hopefully, yeah. but yeah no i'm Josh, founder of Pyramid Light Games based out of Wisconsin, ah lived here pretty much my whole life other than a few few months that I spent in Florida. and Then I got kicked out by Hurricane, came back to Wisconsin.
00:01:39
Speaker
Yeah. And this is an unfortunate timing for that because it looks like Tampa Bay is about to get hit by another terrible hurricane today, but you're in Madison now. So so yeah you're good sit safe from the hurricanes. Yeah, right. But I came back to the Midwest, couldn't couldn't leave it for too long. It's just ah such a wonderful place to grow up as a kid. And now I've got, a well, he's a teen now, but You know, raising a kid in the Midwest in Wisconsin, there's just something special about the, you know, suburbs riding bikes around. Like you see in Stranger Things, like that's very much like what it's like to grow up around here at its place. Without all the demons and aliens, I guess. That's a shame. I imagine like giant manhunt games just in the woods, everyone's backyard, just woods. And I always, I know people from there, they all play disc golf. I feel like, I feel like the Midwest is the place to be. And I'm out here in New Jersey where it's just expensive.
00:02:33
Speaker
Well, in New Jersey, you don't have to get out of your car to pump gas, so that's pretty nice, right? It's a life. Everyone gives New Jersey crap for that, but I'm sitting here in luxury getting my gas filled for me. That's right. I'm excited to talk today. You made an announcement
Varsity Football Game Development
00:02:46
Speaker
a few days ago. I mean, the game's been announced for a while, but you put some more information out there. You're making varsity high school football, and that's awesome that there's a high school football game coming out because college football just came back, but high school football's got this huge, huge following, and you guys are tackling that.
00:03:02
Speaker
Let's start there. I mean, can we talk about varsity high school football? What was the idea behind that? How did you kind of come to say, Hey, let's make a, let's make a high school football game. Yeah. Well, um, so yeah, I think you can see behind me, there's a couple of games that pyramid light worked on as kind of a very minimal consultant role with, um, Doug Flutie's maximum football. We partnered with spirit interactive. They were a partner of conduct play, which is the original developer of maximum football.
00:03:31
Speaker
ah We worked with spirit interactive directly on some marketing did a lot of the UI UX designed for Redesigning the dynasty experience for college because that was kind of a new element Once we got involved because originally was just Canadian football um Then spear came involved in 2019 release to make it kind of a US American college football experience and we have billboard outside of the NFL and draft and everything to announce you know college football is coming back. and We were the first college football since NCAA 2014, so it was a huge deal. ah Learned a lot during that experience. Spear Interactive and Pyramid Lake decided to part ways with the original developer.
00:04:18
Speaker
And shortly thereafter, we we um sold the IP to the physical publisher, Maximum Games. I think Modus Games is also involved in that. So they've kind of gone on to make their own thing now, and it looks great. ah Excited to see where that goes.
00:04:37
Speaker
But Spear Interactive and Pyramid Lake decided to kind of take about a year, year and a half to really explore what the marketplace was. ah We knew EA Sports was coming back with um College Football 25, so there was kind of a credit marketplace for that, and we we already experienced that a little bit. So we were curious what what opportunities there were that were kind of untouched right now.
00:05:00
Speaker
and um the the high school football, depending on where you are, anyway, like Texas is just a whole different lifestyle. I mean, there's TV shows and movies about it. So because of our experience in Army and Pyramid Lake Inn, Spirit Interactive with business the business side of independent games, we spent a lot of time doing research on kind of the opportunities of what's out there and the high school marketplace of you know how many many high schools are there, how many football teams are there, how many kids are playing it. so It just became a no-brainer to kind of expand our experience from you know Doug Flutty's maximum football to build our own thing from the ground up and build our own team.
00:05:46
Speaker
Um, to make a simulation, very realistic style of, you know, high school football. And we're, we're now, I think formally about two years into a, maybe a little bit less of full-time development. We've been sharing monthly updates and we haven't really formally announced or like released a trailer for the game. We're still trying to fly under the radar a little bit.
Managing Game Data Challenges
00:06:10
Speaker
Um,
00:06:11
Speaker
But everybody's kind of found us out and we just finally released or launched the Steam page, I think maybe a couple of weeks ago. And that's goingnna been going really well. So yeah, it's kind of a ah really hard and fast, quick overview of all the stuff going on there. But it's been a really great experience. Wonderful team that we've built over with Stir Interactive. It's really exciting to see what what we've been able to do over the last couple of years with the small team.
00:06:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's a super cool idea. You know, I was watching some of the videos you did release. I saw one with a QB scrambling a bit, which looked super smooth and fluid. Like it's funny. I was watching some of the maximum football clips and I realized those were years ago. And like, you can see the evolution of how smooth things have gotten. You also have, yeah you were like selecting the county from within. I think it was like a Tennessee or some states just like, Oh my God, there's going to be so many options in here. Like how do you, how do you set those expectations? And obviously you want to keep some of those stuff close to your, close to your sleeve right now, but it.
00:07:09
Speaker
It's super cool. I imagine it's a very ambitious project, but it's yours to build out, right? like it's It's an awesome piece of me. Yeah. The amount of research that we did the first year and um Danny, our our our first full-time lead developer that we brought out of the team, like how he's also explored what each state's structured is for classifications and divisions and regions and it's It's absurd. Like how how different each state is, how many teams there are. So right now, and this may change obviously once we get closer to launch, but right now we have, I've got like a piece of paper over here. Where is it? We have between like 200 and like 800 teams per state and there's 50 states. So yeah, it gets a little ridiculous. i Trying to manage the data of that in a realistic way, but then
00:08:07
Speaker
handle the user experience to make it fun and accessible at the same time. that So it's it's a really fun challenge to kind of represent the different states and experiences there, but also standardize it a little bit to make it um a little bit more manageable for us. Yeah, I didn't even really think about the data side of things, right? That that must be ah fun and anxiety-driven thing to look at. and like I love data. And then you guys start saying, how can we make these pieces of data talk to each other? How can someone from Tennessee be talking to someone in Washington and and so on? And where do they eventually meet? And maybe they never meet, which would be normal because it's high school football. um But that's awesome. And like every player has their own personality type and their own positions they want to play. So you have to juggle that. And then their parents have different things where they reach out and say, my son needs to be starting quarterback.
00:08:59
Speaker
or you don't gee hu Yeah. So it's, we're we're finding the balance of like, this is like ridiculous, built for streaming, creates its own storylines, like emerging narratives, which are really cool. Yeah. Just on some of those, you know, messages you get from parents and students and things, but, but then making it also accessible enough for the casual market and, you know, fans of other games too in the area. So it's not like hardcore RPG, but there's definitely more of a,
00:09:29
Speaker
management aspect to it, which is cool. Yeah, that's awesome.
Community Feedback's Role in Development
00:09:32
Speaker
you You mentioned you just launched a Steam page, and what does that really mean? Obviously, people can see the game now, but like from from your side of the the coin, right you're thinking, all right, I'm building this game. It's been two years. I'm going to launch a Steam page. Why now? What goes into that thought process? ah That's a great question. so It's funny because even though we kind of have a track record of releasing actual games, um anytime you release any kind of update on social media, there's still those people they're like, this game is never coming out. if This isn't a real game. and um
00:10:11
Speaker
well felt all the jamit of things Yeah, exactly. And you know, you can't take that personally because everybody has their own experience that they're basing that on. but This was kind of one of those small little steps in showing that it's a legitimate real game. and um Obviously, it doesn't really mean too much to have a Steam page like that, but it's just kind of another step in that ladder to get to where we're going to launch. and We've been doing private play testing with ah some of our Patreon group through Steam already, even prior to the the Steam page launching. so We've kind of always been set up there. but
00:10:48
Speaker
I think we have enough visual assets now, whether it's menus and some gameplay, like you mentioned, the QB kind of mini camp drills. Now we have enough to actually show people versus just talk about it. um So it seems like a great time to showcase some of that on a Steam page. I love it. That's a great answer. The fact that A, you have a Patreon to kind of get probably some eyeballs on it, get some funding or or some community help. I see you guys also have a Discord.
00:11:16
Speaker
Are you guys very focused on community or is it kind of, how do you work with your community or or interact with them? Yeah, community is the biggest thing. I can't say enough about how important it is to build a community of not only just supporters, but you know critical members that may be fans of other games and not necessarily yours, but they can provide feedback and view it in a different perspective, because one of the problems that I've found with indie game development, especially like solo developers and things, you're very passionate about what you do. you're You're making a game because you're a fan of the game, too. And that's really cool. But you end up in kind of an echo chamber of, yeah, you should release this game. I would totally buy it ah to your 50 followers you know that are on Twitter. so You might have thousands, but only like 50 core members that are always engaged.
00:12:10
Speaker
um But you can't make a living off of those 50 people buying your game. So you you really need to expand the community into something much larger. And it's very hard to do. That's why people sign with publishers because it's hard to develop a game, have that creative vision, manage the the project, but then also have the time to communicate with the community.
00:12:32
Speaker
So the community aspect is what really makes a game successful, right? Without that, you're kind of just crossing your fingers and hoping it becomes viral, which is not a good strategy at all.
00:12:45
Speaker
So yeah, we we spend you know every day we're in Discord, Patreon, we post something maybe you know a few times a month. It's not more depending on what it is. We're on Instagram, TikTok. we're We're always communicating with the community everywhere because they they're passionate fans and they know what they want. And the secret to success is just listening to the people that want to play the game and give you their money, right? so Why create a barrier between you two? Just have real conversations, be transparent, and take feedback in direction when it's applicable. I love the one thing, I love everything you said there. But specifically, you know, you can have hundreds and hundreds, you could have thousands of followers, but you probably will only have a small percentage of that. You said it's 50, right? It could be 5%, it could be 1% that are the vocal aspect of your community. And those are probably going to be, everyone's important in your community, don't get me wrong, but the vocal people are going to be
00:13:40
Speaker
The ones that you want to engage with, yes, you're going to have haters that are just going to be trolling you, but whatever. But like people that play NCAA football 25, right? People that play Madden, people that want to interact with football, right? like their feedback's important because they will be players of this game. So it's important to hear what they like, what they don't like, what we can improve on. And obviously you can't address all of what they say, right? But you can take that stuff and bring it back and say, all right, here's what we heard. What can we do to help address that? And I think that's such a great way to interact with your community. And I think that's important for anyone that's building a game. Yeah. You don't want to bank on it going viral, but if it happens to go viral, that's don't in the jackpot. As long as you, you got the the funding and and ability to finish the game.
00:14:21
Speaker
yep I think that ties back to like the Midwestern values of it all. like ah I don't know if it's just a me thing, a Midwest thing, or or what, but it's so important. Whenever we post a new video on TikTok, for example, or Instagram for our monthly updates, I will respond to every single comment on there for at least the first day or two on that new video. um I can't always go back to previous videos because we just get comments every day. but Anytime somebody asks a question in Discord, if it's not me, it's one of the team members on the the varsity project. and We're always answering stuff all day, you know throughout every day. and it's It's so important because we get direct feedback on what people want. to you know it's They're there to help us give them a good game. yeah
00:15:12
Speaker
You know, you mentioned Midwest values. You talked about publishers earlier. How did you actually connect with
Partnership with Midwest Games
00:15:18
Speaker
Midwest games? Right. Cause they did publish the first game, which is floor is what, which looks fantastic. And we'll talk about that as well. But how did you connect with Ben? How did that relationship start and how do you kind of building a community from there? Yeah, that's a great question. So I think I stumbled upon some of his LinkedIn posts.
00:15:38
Speaker
maybe his Twitter um last summer. I don't remember exactly how we did that, but then he kind of announces he's got this new company, ah Midwest Games, and they're starting to publish games from the Midwest. So I'm like, perfect, I've got a game. ah So I had a pitch deck that I was creating to send out to other publishers, spoke with a couple of different publishers leading into that. um A lot of great publishers out there, but I just didn't feel like, um, and I want to say that we weren't a priority because I mean, who, who are we? Of course we're not going to be, but when I reached out to Midwest and I think I spoke to Chris directly first, um,
00:16:26
Speaker
With feedback like there was just this communication like this. It was very casual but professional um, it's like you just ran into somebody at the gas station or something and you're having a discussion about something and That really stood out to me because there's so many options and opportunities in the gaming industry to work with people reach out to different publishers and stuff like that, but If you don't feel comfortable with them on like a personal level like this, it becomes very you know black and white business and you're not getting the the feedback creatively that maybe you want. and I don't um think I'm may answering that really well, but what stood out to me about Midwest was their values aligned with with my own. and the Going back to the community building,
00:17:20
Speaker
Being able to just shoot them an email or talk to them on Slack or wherever it may be, um it's just they're so accessible and professionally casual. ah yeah I don't know how to describe that, but like that's very much what stood out to me. and um I think I pestered them into reviewing the game the first month because I would always follow up. I'm very persistent.
00:17:46
Speaker
I'm like, uh, where are we with this? Did you like it? Anything you'd like to see changed? And, um, I think within the first couple of months from submitting that to, I think M Dev, uh, you'll be at M Dev, right? I will be there. Nice. I'm looking forward to seeing you there. So I think, uh, I had a booth at M Dev last year showcasing a very early build of the game. And shortly thereafter, I think we announced, um, we're officially partnering.
00:18:14
Speaker
Well, at least internally we partnered. I don't think we announced it until like May of this year, baby. It was a bit after that, but yeah, we became partners late last year. It's kind of arrived about story as I'm thinking through it, but um yeah, man, I got really lucky finding a publisher based out of Wisconsin, been from Wisconsin here, going to school here, everything like that. And it's just, I couldn't have been more fortunate.
00:18:41
Speaker
I think the story is perfect. I think it kind of comes full circle to what we have been talking about outside of the gas station thing. Because again, I don't leave my conversations at gas stations. Man, that's maybe it's a Wisconsin thing. Like everybody goes to quick trip for not just gas, but like food, you go there and you buy like breakfast sandwiches and chickens. And we have Wawa for that, but we're antisocial there in our car. But you know, the whole community building and that fact that you were just able to reach Ben by seeing him on social media, and reaching out the accessibility of it, I think is something that's important. You hear about it from community members and again, you're the community of another bigger
00:19:16
Speaker
publisher here, right? and And the fact that they're reaching out to you must be like a, Oh my God moment. Like they actually got back to me pretty quickly here. Like this is awesome. And and then you kind of have these casual conversations. And I think these are the best ways to partner with people. You can have these conversations with them. You can bounce ideas around where you, you know, I talked to a lot of indie indie game builders now that are stressing out about publishing and like, was there a nerves going in? Were you comfortable? I don't know if that's a weird question to ask.
00:19:45
Speaker
That's a good question. I don't know my ah personality type or my kind of Perspective on it all is you know I'll send something out to somebody and as long as they're open and honest and provide feedback even if they're not interested Totally cool. I get it. It's not that they don't like me as like an individual or what I'm doing It's it just doesn't align as a business need for them at that time and totally understandable. So I Yeah, I never really go into anything like being anxious or like, God, I hope they really like it, you know? It's just kinda like, here it is, I get the business side, here's where I'm at, here's the research that I did to support the business decisions on this game. If it aligns with you, cool, let's keep chatting, otherwise I'll just move on.
00:20:31
Speaker
You know, again, we talk with a lot of different people in the studio. ah Some are engineers, some are developers, some are studio heads. When I were to, if I were to ask you kind of what is your specialty, your background, or what would you say you kind of, what is your day to day mostly like? Wow.
00:20:50
Speaker
Um, all of the above.
Creation of 'Floor is What?'
00:20:53
Speaker
Yeah. I really jumped between doing development on floor is what I do the design work for floors one varsity. Um, the team day to day for varsity right now is fairly automated because we've been into that for a couple of years and the process is established. Um, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, we have meetings for that just as a team.
00:21:16
Speaker
um So it's pretty straightforward and then jumping around and social media to respond to stuff. um Yes, I mean, it's kind of everything. And I love that, like the the startup mentality of some of these things. um Prior to founding Pyramid Light Games, I founded a ah marketing agency working in the user experience and design space. It's very similar to that, where I had a team of you know five or six full-time people. um It was kind of that camaraderie of excitement of, let's see what we can build. Let's see which projects we can bring in and you know secure. and
00:21:56
Speaker
It's just a different experience and working in a fortune 500 or even in a very established kind of organization. That's not larger, but you're kind of building it as you go. And that's really exciting. and Yeah. I love how you're a jack of all trades here. You're doing it all. And it's extremely respectable because I can't develop. I can't do that stuff. and And having someone that's taking care of both the business side and the technical side and the community side, right? that That's multiple full-time gigs all rolled into one. So.
00:22:24
Speaker
So congrats on that for doing what you're doing there. ah The floor is what looks awesome. I've been watching it on the Steam page. If anyone is listening and you've played games like Fusion Frenzy, that's the first thing that came to mind for me and we spoke about, but it's also Mario Party. It looks like it's a very accessible way to kind of have you and a group of friends play these mini games. What was the driving reason you made that game? I mean, what what was your interest in it?
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. So originally, it was about 2020. Pandemic started. My son was doing remote schooling from home, just like you know a majority of other people. And what was that, four years ago? So he would have been about 10, nine or 10 at the time. ah He was getting into Roblox and trying to learn how to develop on that. He wanted to make like a Floors Lava style game.
00:23:19
Speaker
um So we ended up doing kind of a weekend prototype in Unity just to see, to show him kind of how to develop a project and start a project. And um it was it looked terrible, but it was functional because it was I think we took like three or four hours to build it out. And from that point on, it was cool. And then we tried to add in like other elements to not just like the tiles falling into the lava,
00:23:45
Speaker
But if you run over a tile, it changes into your player's color. So who has the most tiles at the end of the timer? um And about that time, he moved on to other things because he was young. And yeah he's like, there's enough time on this. I'm going to go do something else. So I let it sit there for maybe a couple of months and was building out a different prototype and came back to it again, I think, because there was social media engagement, um I think,
00:24:13
Speaker
I've spoken with a lot of publishers and one really cool thing that stood out to me to validate a business is not just the research into numbers of things, but creating content, little 15 second snippets to share on social media, whether or not it's an organic post or you're putting like ad revenue or ad dollars behind you to get it out to more people.
00:24:36
Speaker
It's a really great way, especially for a solo developer or any studio without funding yet, to validate that something they're working on has a bigger community behind it versus just something that they think is cool. so As I saw that getting more and more popular, again, on a small scale, but it stood out above other prototypes I was working on at the time, I'm like, okay, maybe there's something here. I'm going to dedicate more attention to this.
00:25:05
Speaker
um I worked out it off and on, just prototyping what it could be. And then I think in 2020, maybe late 2022, early 2023, I decided to just work on it full-time. So I stopped consulting work. I stopped doing those things and focused entirely full-time on floors what? And by the time that we prototyped through that for a couple of years and just explored it, the the really,
00:25:34
Speaker
big differentiator for me was I want this to be accessible for a lot of people. Like my wife, my son and I will play Mario party or Mario car or whatever. Um, and our skill levels are all kind of the whole range in there, you know? So I want to make a game that parents can play with their kids or, you know, teens can play with each other and still be competitive in different ways and still be fun.
00:26:00
Speaker
So that was kind of the underlying purpose of the structure of some of the minigames and the simplicity of one or two buttons per minigame. Because as Mario Party went on, it became, I don't want to say it's complex, but there's more complexity to it than it was in, let's say, Mario Party 1, 2, 3, 4, something like that. So then building on top of that for the accessibility, I wanted to create customization for players. Because everybody loves to customize and build their own stuff, right?
00:26:30
Speaker
but That's a big thing that's lacking in games like Fusion Frenzy or Mario Party or Crash Bash. You have to select from pre-existing characters. In games like Fortnite, you can buy skins, you can do all these different things.
00:26:45
Speaker
so I wanted to combine this family-friendly atmosphere into customization. so mike My son loves Funko Pops and ah Legos and things like that growing up. so I wanted to combine all of that like the Lego games like Lego Marvel and Lego Batman. Those are such fun games.
00:27:08
Speaker
So I wanted to kind of take from that inspiration from that and make it so you can make your own characters, select different heads, different faces, bodies. And because we have an announcer in the game, you can actually select your name from like three different options. So there's, I think, 200 different names. So you can kind of combine them in any order. um And the announcer will actually say your character's name in the game, which is pretty cool. That's awesome. i mean I have a six-year-old. and he's going to eat this up. I mean, the fact that he is into the Marvel games, like the Lego games, like you said, but I agree with you. People just want to create stuff. People want to have characters that are their own that they can create. And I love the family friendly, easy access of it, right? You can play it with your kids. And then later at night when everyone's asleep, you can play it with your friends and you can make a game like that. Like anyone can do it. And I love it. And I think it's such a great idea. And it came from the community. And eventually your son's going to ask for royalties from it. So good luck with that.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah. He's like, what's my name? What do I get in the credits? Like, what are you listing me as? I'm like, Oh man, I've created a monster. I've created a monster and he's what 14. So, so good luck with that. Yep. Yep. Um, I want to talk a little bit about end dev, but before I do that, I'd like to do the little fireball around, which you may have heard, but I'm going to throw some quick questions at you. Um, good to go. Um, yep. He's drinking his coffee. Okay. My coffee. Good to go. Uh, what is, what did you have for breakfast?
00:28:35
Speaker
Uh, I made an egg sandwich, like an egg McMuffin, but from home and this horrible tasting coffee. There you go. Hey, it's coffee. It's caffeine. ye need that caffeine ah This would be my first time to the Midwest. Which type of cheese should I eat? Wow. Yeah. Well, cheese curd, I don't know if that's a type of cheese specifically, but a cheese curd for sure. best of cheese um I don't, I don't know if Culver, some,
00:29:03
Speaker
Are you aware of like, do you have Culver's by you? I'm not, I'm not sure if you do. I know it, but I had to come near me. They just kind of re-release this year, the Kurta burger. There's a mouthful to say it's a giant flat cheese curd on a hamburger. Wow. Um, so I don't know if they'll still have that in like early November, but, um, that's an option for you. I hope they do. Cause that sounds amazing. If you were going to go to a bar, what drink are you ordering?
00:29:32
Speaker
That's a good question. I don't drink very often. Man, I don't know. Probably just like a spotted cow or something like that. There you go. That works. What is your dream vacation?
00:29:48
Speaker
Well, funny enough, I'm actually going on that vacation next week. Where you going? um So every October, my friend and I go down to Universal Studios in Florida. Sweet. For their Halloween event, where they close things down and kick all the kids out and at about six o'clock. They bring in about 10,000 more people to then go through
MDev Conference Experiences
00:30:09
Speaker
haunted houses. They're just like walking through you know movie sets with actors and stuff. It's c incredible. That's awesome. That sounds like a great time. All right, the last question is, what is the last game you played? Wow.
00:30:23
Speaker
The last game I played was actually yesterday, ah college football 25 I played. Who's your team? my My coach, after I think 14 years of playing in the game, I'm finally an offensive coordinator of Wisconsin. Nice. You yeah you made it. Yep. I was hoping for head coach, but maybe maybe maybe next year. hey keep keep a Keep grinding.
00:30:47
Speaker
um All right. That's all I got for you for the hot seat here. um Was last year your first MDev? It was. It was my first MDev and it was my first overall video game conference of any kind, actually. Can you kind of tell me how it was? What stood out? Yeah, my experience was probably a little bit different because I was in kind of like the creator's row where we had a table and a TV. I guess it's over there so you can't see it, but I had this banner.
00:31:18
Speaker
um get four controllers out on the table. And that was cool being amongst kind of the other indie developers and seeing what everybody else is working on from the area. um So then every half hour or so, I would go into one of the the talks, like the keynote speakers and the Q and&A sessions and things. And it's really cool to gain some knowledge from people that have been in india in the industry for so long, whether it's indie developers or AAA studio ads or whomever it may be. so
00:31:50
Speaker
Um, that was a really cool experience and I'm looking forward to coming back again, uh, November 8th. What are you looking to accomplish this year at M Dev?
00:32:00
Speaker
Um, that's a good question for Midwest games. I think, I think we'll, we'll have the game at their booth this year versus having my own. Um, but then.
00:32:12
Speaker
Now that the game has grown a little bit and we have the support of Midwest games, um just talking and getting more feedback from people in person is always wonderful. um Sitting in on some of the the panels would be wonderful. So nothing specific to gain other than just having a good time meeting a lot of new people and including yourself in person and just taking in the industry.
00:32:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think I'm excited about that too. I think, you know, until I really started talking to Ben, I didn't realize the kind of growth that the Midwest is having in gaming. And it makes a lot of sense, which I think is awesome. And I think I've seen this sense of community amongst the studios I've spoken to so far, i was speaking to Film and Games the other day. And she was telling me how, you know, how there's tons of going on there and they used to just not talk with each other. And now kind of because not because of them, but with Ben's help, right? He kind of helped unite everyone there, kind of create one stronger force there. And I think that's what I'm excited to learn more about and actually witness it, right? I heard it's at a much bigger arena this year, there's gonna be a lot of things going on. So I think you guys have some great stuff going on in the Midwest and excited to kind of see it all in person and see and hopefully eat a burger because that burger sounds delicious. Really kind of see all the different studios and see what they need. I mean,
00:33:32
Speaker
You got triple A's like Respawn and Raven out there, right? You got single A's, double A's. So I think you guys have such a unique mix of everything in a, not gonna say a small area, but a smallish area where you can all really start to form that community. Yeah, it's incredible. though The triple A studios are, you know, headquartered here in the Madison and Milwaukee area. And I don't think to your point that a lot of people realize that. And I, you know, I've lived here for 40 plus years and I didn't really acknowledge that either until M Dev last year. I think it was Ben's talk to kick off the event where he showed a map and was talking through all the studios and some of the games that they'd worked on. I was like, man, that's incredible. And I'm from here. How do I not know that? How did you actually get into the gaming side of things, right? You had a data platform you were working on, kind of looking at those insights. How how did that transition to, Hey, let's make games.
00:34:29
Speaker
um So I've always been a big fan of games. I don't know how old I was, maybe like seven or eight. I was over at my stepdad's friend's house and his kids were playing. ah yeah it would the The living room was dark. Let me kind of set the stage here a little bit as I'm remembering it. So we were about to leave, we're we're walking out, we pass the living room and his kids, um his friend's kids were kind of huddled around the TV in the corner and it was just kind of illuminating the room, right?
00:34:58
Speaker
I'm like, ah what's that? So I walk over and they're playing Super Mario Brothers. And I'd never seen a video game before. I didn't know they existed. And seeing that, I just kind of sat down and was just in awe of all that it was. You know, you're sitting there controlling this guy and the screen and running it around. And from that moment, I was really hooked into getting a Nintendo, playing Nintendo games.
00:35:24
Speaker
And then, you know, I've been hooked ever since then, you know, 30 plus years later. And it's just, <unk>s it's crazy to see how far the industry has come, um how accessible it is for someone like me to just download, you know, whether it's Godot, whether it's Unity, whether it's Unreal, GameMaker. There's so many different ones out there that it's accessible to download that and follow along with all these tutorials on YouTube.
00:35:50
Speaker
and figure out how to do it. It's, it's, it's incredible that I remember in high school buying a book to learn how to program, but you had to program your own engine and see sharp and do all this stuff. And it was, it's much harder. The the barrier of entry was much more ridiculous. Um, I actually, in high school, I tried to take a a Japanese language course over the summer because I'm like, if I work in the video game industry,
00:36:18
Speaker
like Nintendo's headquartered over in Japan. There's so many that are over there. I should probably know how to speak the language a little bit. I was the only person to sign up for that class, so they did not have it. That's a funny way to look at it. In this whole story, I thought you were going to poltergeist. You walk by this room, and the TV is just shining again. Oh, man.
Josh Garrity's Gaming Journey
00:36:36
Speaker
But I love that you saw a video game. I think that's how a lot of us kind of we see a video game for the first time when we were thinking that that's what I want to do. And I love how you pursued it and and you made it. You're here. You're you're making games. um If you could go back to high school, you and you're taking a look at language courses or other coding courses. Right. And you can do anything differently, whether it be learning a different skill, doing something different. Is there anything or any choice you would make that would be different?
00:37:04
Speaker
Honestly, no, because all the decisions and things that I did at that point led me to this point. So I feel like it did serve to me well. I spent a lot of time when I wasn't hanging out with friends, modding games like Doom, like the original Doom backend.
00:37:19
Speaker
the 90s. There are probably some other ones too, but Doom was a big one because it made it so accessible for everybody with level editors and the modding community was huge. So I got my start really figuring out how to do things very poorly back then because of that game. And that just kind of um spearheaded a lot of learning how to develop games, learning the the creative focus that it takes to take an idea and implement it, because the ideas are the easiest part. Everybody has just phenomenal ideas, but actually seeing it through in a way that scales for a business to support employees and things like that, is it's a totally different skill set to have. So anybody getting into this industry,
00:38:05
Speaker
Um, if you don't have interest in the business side and like the data side, definitely find a partner that does to support you building the game. So you can approach it from that side because without it, it's, it's nearly impossible to be successful. I think there's so many things there. I just kind of, everything clicks and I love it. Right? Like, Hey, you got your start making mods for different games, right? And we'll hit your son now, right? He's trying to do Roblox. So this.
00:38:32
Speaker
such a great connection there. And you're not the first person I've heard similar stories. I've also talked to someone, Patrick Jasmine, he's also from, he'll also be an end there, right? He and his son building a game together. It's, I love the ability to be able to teach kids, whether it be with real code or, or, you know, just modding games. That's why I always tell people to get started. If you want to do it, just do it. Mods now are so much simpler today than they were when you were doing stuff for Doom, right? Cause there's actual platforms to help you do that. Um, yeah you mentioned about,
00:39:00
Speaker
find what you like to do and find others that can do the other side of things. right Maybe you like making games, but not the business side of it. Maybe you like the business side of games, but not making them. right Find a partner that can help you and do this stuff. I think there's so many people grade who are out there that are great at doing these things and know looking for partners. I think it just makes so much sense. of I love kind of the values and how you're doing this. I think it's fantastic. and and i think but more people I hear talking about this from the Midwest, that's really kind of what it's hitting me with is that like, these values on teaching others, as helping others making grow something from your own. I think it's fantastic. So I give you nothing but credit again for doing all that. Thank you. I think that's all I have for you today. Josh, is there anything I missed that you want to talk about? Oh, man, no, I mean
00:39:48
Speaker
Nothing comes to mind. I'm just looking forward to meeting some new folks at MDev this year and excited to hear if you can get ah some cheese curds to try those out. I know Ben's a big fan, so he'd be very upset if you didn't try any. and do i will First of all, I've had cheese curds before, but I imagine they're a hope imagine they're better out there than they are by me.
00:40:09
Speaker
So let's talk about Pyramid Lake Games before we go. Pyramid Lake Games, you can find them at pyramidlakegames.com. They have a Discord. Check out their Discord. They have, what else you guys got? ah Yeah, so anything you can find at pyramidlakegames.com should link you out to our games like Floors What? ah The Steam page, the website, and then from the Steam page, you can actually find all of Midwest Games' is kind of games that they're releasing as well, which is really nice.
00:40:37
Speaker
And we've got also varsity football that you can find from our website. Floor is what I believe we're trying to get into some kind of a winter play test for everybody. So definitely go wishlist the game so you can ah find out when that launches publicly and then varsity. Go wishlist them because ah why not?
00:40:58
Speaker
why We love college, or we love high school football. So yeah, we'll have links to all the stuff Josh mentioned to their website, to their Discord, to the Steam pages. Josh, this is a lot of fun, this interview. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. I am so excited to meet you at MDev and get a chance to meet everyone from the Midwest out there. Again, thank you so much for coming out today. And I hope you have a great rest of your day. Yeah. Thank you so much, Greg. I appreciate the opportunity and excited to see everybody. Thanks.