Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#345: Jarryd Huntley (Game Developer) (pt. 1 of 2)
This week on the podcast is part one of our interview with Jarryd Huntley. He’s a game developer with a portfolio career that includes founding Polytrundra LLC, a studio that works on original titles; he helped organize a the large game development community “Cleveland Game Developers,” and he’s senior lead optimization engineer at Owlchemy Labs.
You’ll be impressed with Jarryd’s methodical and practical approach to building his business! https://jarrydhuntley.itch.io/, https://polytundra.com/, https://linktr.ee/clevelandgamedevs, https://owlchemylabs.com/, https://x.com/JarrydHuntley
Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making art work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heise and Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Hi Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. My name is Andy Heise
Nick Petrella:and I'm Nick Petrella.
Nick Petrella:Jarryd Huntley is with us today. He's a game developer with a portfolio career that includes founding Polytundra LLC, a studio that works on original titles. He also helped organize the large game development community, Cleveland Game Developers. He's also Senior Lead Optimization Engineer at Alchemy Labs. We'll have links to all these sites in the show notes so you can better understand Jarryd's activities and the impact he's having in the field of game design. Thanks for coming on the podcast, Jarryd.
Jarryd Huntley:Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Nick Petrella:Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into game design?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, so my background is originally in computer science. I majored in that in college and I was always kind of interested in game development when I was a kid and in high school and at the time there wasn't really any good ways for kind of a young person to get into game design. I remember getting a book on how to make your own video games I think from like Borders and brought the book home and it had like a CD in the back and the CD was like a PDF of Teach Yourself C++ and a PDF of Teach.
Jarryd Huntley:Yourself like graphics programming. So like that was a no go. But when I was in college I found a game design or a game programming book at a discount bookstore and I was like, oh, I'm learning how to program, I guess I can learn how to kind of program games. And so I kind of dove into that and started teaching myself and got more involved with it and that was kind of the start of me getting into game design as a hobby.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, so it was a hobby, but now it's how long has it been a career?
Jarryd Huntley:That's. That's a hard question to put a number on, because it wasn't like you know, there was one day when it was a hobby and one day when it was a career. It was kind of you know a slow kind of building and you know a change over time.
Andy Heise:Okay, Are you? Were you, are you a gamer? Were you a gamer yourself? Did you play video games growing up or yeah, no, I definitely played.
Jarryd Huntley:You know all types of video games growing up. Um, pc games, uh, it was a big Nintendo kid. Um and uh, I guess in high school like there was a couple of times when I saw somebody throwing out like a broken PlayStation and was able to repair it and I was like, oh, I guess I have a PlayStation now, so awesome.
Andy Heise:Yeah, yeah, very cool. And so, nick, in your intro, in the intro of you mentioned several things that you're involved in. Uh, you founded your own studio, you've contributed to community building. We'll talk more about that. Uh, and now you, you work in a leading role at alchemy, like o w l, c, h, e, m y, alchemy for the listeners. Um, was there a moment or a tipping point when you realized that you could actually build a sustainable career in game design? I know you just said it was kind of a gradual thing, but was there a moment or a tipping point when you realized that you could actually build a sustainable career in game design? I know you just said it was kind of a gradual thing, but was there a moment where it was like, okay, this is actually going to be something?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah. So, like I mentioned before, it was kind of a, you know, a uh growth over time and that was intentional, um, kind of. The first point when I wanted to pursue games as a career was when I was awarded a scholarship to go to GDC, which is the world's largest game developer conference. It's out in San Francisco every spring, and just being there for a week, you know talking with my housemates, you know being surrounded by the industry, it was like I don't want to go back to working at a bank.
Announcer:You know, this is what I want to do.
Jarryd Huntley:But you know, I'm, you know, had a part. I have a partner, we had a young child at the time and it wasn't like I could just, you know, quit my job and start, you know, pursuing this other dream. So it was like, what can I start doing now, you know? And so I started teaching game programming. Then, you know, I started giving workshops, and then, you know, I was working on my own game, and then, you know, I was working on the book, and it was just kind of this progression and at some point it was like, actually, you know, if we do the numbers right, I can probably quit my job at the bank, take a job that's a little less demanding, halftime, and then work halftime for myself. And that was, you know, a rough transition, but you know, especially that first year. But after that first year it was like, okay, this is working and I was able to continue to grow my business and consulting and things from there.
Andy Heise:Yeah, so even the shift from like the banking is the main job to the game design stuff, it was still like you weren't just designing games, you were doing workshops and books and all those things like you were describing. Yes, it was a multitude of different activities around game design or all sort of somehow associated or tied to the game design aspect.
Nick Petrella:Yep Correct. Yeah, Yep correct, yeah, and doing all those things. I bet it gave you a better insight into game design from the user experience and so on. Is that true, you think?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, you know. They say, you know one of the best ways to confirm you know something is to teach it and you know teaching, you know game design and game programming, you know, teaches you so much. Going to different conferences and talking to people with you know different backgrounds from different countries, um, different you know ways of looking at things uh just kind of opens up your perspectives and um lets you, you know, just kind of appreciate, uh, different types of games as well.
Andy Heise:Yeah, I'm curious when you, when you decided to sort of make that shift from full-time bank to part-time something else and part-time working for yourself on the game design aspect, was there a primary revenue stream that you were getting from the game design? Was it teaching classes? Was it workshops? Was it freelance work? Was there a primary revenue stream from those activities?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, so you know one of the primary streams. I mean I think there's probably two. One of them was definitely teaching. You know that was consistent, it was predictable and you know I'd been doing it for a number of years. And then the other one was I started like consulting or subcontracting for studios. So you know, if a studio needed help finishing a game, if they needed, you know, specialty optimization work, I was, you know, able to come in. You know, do some engineering, do some consulting, recommendations and work with those clients.
Andy Heise:Yeah, that's awesome In terms of the teaching. Did you just start your own sort of platform or did you use, did you jump on some other existing platform? What did that look like? Were you partnering with an existing organization?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, so when I started teaching, I started at a local community college, lorain County Community College. They have a game design program there and it was actually fairly early. Yeah, that's awesome. They've been doing it for quite a while. So I was able to start teaching there remotely and a little bit in person and then I was able to, when I quit the bank, start teaching at a coding boot camp that was here in Cleveland and it wasn't specifically games, but it was still programming related, so kind of in the same wheelhouse.
Nick Petrella:Yeah. So I'm just curious the students who would take those courses at the community college. Were they non-traditional students? Were they high school students who wanted to get into game design? What did that population look like?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, it was a little bit of. You know a mix of a lot of different backgrounds. You know some non-traditional students, some kind of you know first generation students. You know a lot of students from your rural backgrounds being out in Lorain and you know one of the things I emphasized when I was teaching you know game programming is. You know we're talking about games and how to program games and you know the thought that goes in designing games. But you can also apply all this programming to you know a job working at progressive insurance or you know, these other places as well.
Jarryd Huntley:So, you know, just reminding the students to kind of keep those things in mind because, um, one of, because one of my strengths in game programming is that I did work at a large bank, that I did work at some large corporations before and I had exposure to different types of systems that aren't super common in the game industry.
Nick Petrella:And you understood enterprise and how it works and things like that. That's interesting and you understood enterprise and how it works and things like that. That's interesting. I was just wondering because you know we teach musicians. Not all of them become professionals, so my next question was going to be did you have any students that went out and worked professionally in game design?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, it's hard to kind of put a number, you know, on it, but there are some students, you know, who moved out West and were able to work for companies, some students who stayed locally and you know, worked, you know, outside of games for a little bit and then we're able to kind of, you know, work their way back into working in games. Um, some that just went straight into making their own original games. Um, but yeah, got it.
Andy Heise:That's, that's so cool. And last follow-up question, I think, and then we'll get back to our uh, our scripted questions here Um, in terms of the, the subcontracting you were doing, how did you find those opportunities?
Jarryd Huntley:Ooh, that's a really good question. Um, so that was something I wasn't sure how to do. And, um, in talking with some mentors, like the plan I decided was, I was just going to start telling everyone like, hey, you know, I'm available for subcontracting. Hey, you know, if you need optimization work, just let me know. And whenever I was going around to conferences and whenever I was meeting people, that's what I would say.
Jarryd Huntley:And it didn't turn into any contracts right away and that's part of the reason why I mentioned that first year was really difficult. But after about a year those conversations started coming into hey, I had this thing, are you available for this? And it was almost like, know, about a year to year and a half of kind of you know lead in time. But you know, for a while it was just you know, I had those kind of you know conversations pop up, you know, every other month or you know, every three months. Somebody would send me an email or, you know, send me a DM asking if I was available or knew someone who might be able to fit some type of role.
Nick Petrella:Yeah Well, and I have a practical question as far as game design. And how long does it take to bring a game to market? So, from concept to release, and what are common hurdles your teams face?
Jarryd Huntley:I think I'd say how long it takes to market is about twice as long as you estimate.
Jarryd Huntley:That's one of the things is that game design is oftentimes really unpredictable, because when you're designing software for a bank or some type of company, they say, hey, we need software to do this, this and that. So you make software that does this, this and that. So you make software that does this, this and that, and more or less you're done. You come up with a concept for a game. You're like I want the game to let the player do this, do that, and they can do this as well. You put it together. You're like this isn't fun.
Jarryd Huntley:This isn't interesting, and so there's a lot of iteration and there's a lot of exploratory work and so you know, even for a small kind of, you know, mobile game, it can take, you know, one to two years. And then you know you have to factor in marketing time and, depending on the type of game, even after you release it you might be supporting it with kind of updates and, you know, responding to player feedback. Um, so yeah, it can take, you know, quite a bit of time, yeah.
Nick Petrella:So a few years, and then there's always the upkeep, the maintenance and updates and things like that.
Jarryd Huntley:Yep, absolutely.
Andy Heise:And hopefully it takes off right. Hopefully, hopefully, people like it and download it and play it right yeah, yeah, that's, that's the hope.
Jarryd Huntley:And, um, you know there's a lot of things you can do to give your game, you know, the best shot at, you know making it and connecting with players, but, um, it also is, you know, kind of a hit driven. And media, you know industry, and so you also have to find and connect with that audience.
Nick Petrella:So I'm wondering I don't know if we asked this question here, but when you're doing work as a contractor, are you typically work for hire or if they just pay you for what you're doing, per hours or per project or do you ever get any residuals or any royalties? Yeah, how does that?
Jarryd Huntley:work. Yeah, when I've contracted in the past it's usually just work for hire. It's usually you know we have a specific feature, we have a specific need. You know we'll write up the contracts and you know kind of get to work. You know we'll write up the contracts and you know kind of get to work when sometimes you know you can get into the residuals or kind of you know percentages and things like that is if you're kind of the core part of the team, if you're kind of you know, contributing to the design early on, contributing to the concepts, and you know you're kind of there from either the start or, um, early on.
Andy Heise:Yeah, yeah, that makes sense so game design is, you know, I think correct me if I'm wrong it seems like a notoriously competitive field, right, there's a lot of people who want to design games, but there's only so many people that actually get to do that. Um, how do you think about positioning yourself either your own games that you create or the work that your studio does, so that they sort of stand out or, you know, surface to the top when it comes to this competitive environment?
Jarryd Huntley:Mm-hmm. Yeah, so you know this is talking about. You know kind of me and you know my personal studio, polytundra, and kind of the work I do. But whenever I'm designing a game, I usually like to start with either like a feeling or kind of a message or something that I want to, you know, communicate to the player and you know thinking about. You know I want the player to, you know, feel nostalgia, or I want the player to feel.
Jarryd Huntley:You know the longing to travel or you know whatever concept, and then you know kind of work backwards and figure out you know well what kind of game would evoke this feeling. You know what kind of experiences would you know help communicate that. And so if I'm trying to say something through the game, that's something that you know I want to communicate and I feel like you know that helps the experiences I work on kind of, you know, have a personal message to it and aren't just kind of you know, a cookie cutter. You know let's make another match three Not that there's anything against match threes, but yeah it is. It is competitive and you know it is kind of hard to uh stand out. But there's other things you can do, like you know, presenting your game at, you know, places where games aren't traditionally shown. You know at a museum showcase or you know, um, at a festival, things like that, just kind of you know, trying to think outside of the box, a festival, things like that, just kind of trying to think outside of the box.
Andy Heise:Yeah, Because I mean it's a huge industry. I mean the gaming industry is a giant industry. Do you have, can you help us get, an idea of macro? What are we talking about here with the gaming industry?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, I don't remember the exact numbers, but I want to say I think it was.
Andy Heise:Maybe that's okay, I put you on the spot?
Jarryd Huntley:No, no, it's fine. I want to say like 2018, 2020-ish. It was like $150 billion industry. I know that it's larger than Hollywood and the music industry kind of combined, Right.
Andy Heise:Yeah, yeah. So that's the part I think people, if you're in it, I think you get it, but those who aren't like you know, daily users or gamers or whatever forget that it's such a giant industry.
Nick Petrella:Yeah.
Jarryd Huntley:And I think one of the things that people often overlook is, you know, they think, oh, video games, it's just kind of. You know, call of Duty and Mario and things like that oh, video games it's just kind of you know Call of Duty and Mario and things like that. But you know your aunt who plays Candy Crush. You know, for an hour every morning, people who play Wordle. You know all these kind of you know mind. You know puzzle, thinky games. Those are also games. Those also absolutely count.
Nick Petrella:What about gamification of learning in corporate settings? Do you do any of that too? Is that also in that number, that 100?
Jarryd Huntley:million? That's a good question. I don't think that gamification, would you know, with some larger corporations on how they can, just you know, integrate a little bit more fun or whimsy into their experiences, or you know, the products that they offer? Sure.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, take a few of those Safety HR things like that, you know Anyway.
Andy Heise:You don't want them to be too fun. They weren't got a long ways to go before the Jarryd didn't work on those.
Nick Petrella:Yeah so, Jarryd, a few years ago you received a peabody award as the lead programmer, for we are ofk for the PS5 and Nintendo Switch platforms. What was that process like, and what did you learn from that experience?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, so you know, I was just one of kind of a large team on Team OFK. You know, Teddy Deep was the director, claire Geo is the writer, jenny Yu and Nafisa Tong were co-art directors. We had a. It was honestly an amazing team to work with and one of my favorite experiences it was just a game that was really non-traditional in a number of ways.
Jarryd Huntley:The game was telling the story of a band called OFK, how they met, the story of 20-somethings in Los Angeles, kind of, you know, figuring things out and creating a band. At the same time we, you know, had the virtual band OFK. We released their music on, you know, spotify and Apple Music, and then we released the game episodically and so, over you know the course of four weeks we'd release a new episode People would be able to play through it, kind of like a TV show, and you'd need to wait for the next one to come out. So there was just a lot of things that we needed to figure out, that there weren't necessarily standards or a precedent for figuring out how to release a game episodically on certain platforms or you know the best way to create an experience that anybody could kind of pick up and play.
Jarryd Huntley:They didn't necessarily have, you know, have to have a, you know gaming background, right, but you know, so proud of the project, so proud of the team and all the work that we were able to do the project, so proud of the team and all the work that we were able to do, and, uh, I didn't even know that games were eligible for p bodies. Uh, until teddy, the director, texted me. It was just like we just got nominated for a p body. And I was at one of our local like game developer meetups at the time, just sitting at a table and I just yelled what? And everybody was like everything, okay, I'm like, yeah, I'll be right back and it it wasn't announced then, so I couldn't tell anybody. So the next month I was like that's what I was yelling about.
Nick Petrella:But when did that happen? What year was that? I didn't uh, this was last year, so yeah, and and so last year, and so for the list, you can listen to this anytime that was 2024. So they didn't have episodic, like it didn't exist episodic releases and rollouts for games.
Jarryd Huntley:This is the first one. So there had been kind of episodic games released, but the way they were released for the most part like they'd release an episode of a game and then they'd create the next episode, so it might be eight months or it might be a year or two years, and then they'd release episode two. And then it was like, okay, well, now we got to wait like another 10 months for the next episode. We created all the content upfront and so we were able to, you know, release it every week.
Nick Petrella:Gotcha. So it's a game design version of a podcast.
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah.
Nick Petrella:Well, how we do it. I mean, I don't know how other people do it.
Jarryd Huntley:But, yeah, the Peabody Award was one of the coolest experiences of my life getting to, you know, go to Hollywood and be able to, you know, accept the award with some of the members of the team. We had a great time and, yeah, it's something that I'll treasure forever.
Nick Petrella:Has that opened any other doors for you?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, has that opened any other doors for you? I was able to speak at the Cleveland Public Library and give you know kind of a workshop there and a few other just kind of you know, either speaking opportunities or mentorship opportunities. But I think what I appreciate the most is just opportunities to give back, especially to you know youth in the area or underserved youth, just letting you know kids know that, hey, this is something that you can do. You know there's somebody out there you know that looks like you that's doing this. You know this is, you know, something that you can consider and you know, potentially learn how to do. Totally Wonderful yeah.
Andy Heise:Well, and with all of those opportunities, as you just mentioned, there's a lot of things you could do. How do you decide which ones to pursue and which ones you know you think you should be devoting your time to?
Announcer:Hmm.
Jarryd Huntley:That's a really good question. Um, early on in my career, um, the answer would have been just say yes to everything, because you don't. You know, at that point I kind of had this, um, you know, scarcity mindset that like, oh, I don't know how long I'll be able to do this, I don't know. You know if these leaves will dry up, um, and that was okay for a time, but you know, if you keep on doing that, that can really lead to burnout.
Jarryd Huntley:Um, and I guess you know some of the ways that I evaluate and think about things now is like you know, how many people am I able to kind of work with? You know, is this kind of you know, a lot of one on one work, or is this kind of like a talk type scenario? Am I able to, you know, kind of remix some material I've used before that way I'm not starting from. You know, kind of remix some material I've used before that way I'm not starting from. You know, kind of ground zero? Um, and you know, is this something where, uh, I'm able to kind of deliver the content in a way that's kind of holistic, and you know, people can kind of have something, you know, a chunk to take away, you know, some knowledge or something like that.
Andy Heise:Yeah, yeah. So it sounds like the it's not just the doing of the work that's important to you, it's it's the, it's the community around the work that you're doing.
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, cause you know you could just, you know, put together a talk and you know say some things and you know call it a day. But you know, at least, the way that you know I approach things and you know I want to kind of, you know, build community is, you know, being able to connect with people, being able to, you know, help them, you know, move forward in some way or think about things a new consideration, things like that.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, yeah for sure. Stickier, more engaging yeah, that's a good word, stickier. So I see you've written a book titled Game Programming for Artists. What do you cover in the book that artists would know, or need to know.
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, so that was a really fun project to work on. I co-authored the book with Hannah Brady, who is a narrative designer and writer for games. With Hannah Brady, who is a narrative designer and writer for games, and the idea for the book kind of started out as just an idea I had, for I thought what would be? Maybe a blog or, you know, maybe an online kind of resource. At GDC I mentioned the idea I had to a friend. They're like that's a really good idea, you should talk to my publisher. And I was talking to a publisher. Then they're like that sounds great, send us a, you know a pitch. And I was like I have no idea what I'm doing. So thankfully Hana was on board and was able to help me put together the pitch. Then we decided to kind of co-author the book.
Jarryd Huntley:But the kind of reason that I started, you know, compiling these ideas for the book is I kept on hearing these kind of questions repeated from artists who were looking to get into programming games or artists who wanted to understand programming, and a lot of programming books are written by programmers for programmers, and so if you're not a programmer, it's kind of a non-starter, and so we wanted to position this book, from you know having zero knowledge, to feeling comfortable enough to start.
Jarryd Huntley:You know following some tutorials, and so we, you know, break things down into just kind of real world terms. You know comparing things to. You know storing objects in, you know a cubbyhole on a shelf and you know how programming is kind of like knitting, and you know just using different real world concepts to explain things. And we found, you know, from you know, talking with people, doing some questionnaires when we were working on the book, and then just the reception afterward, that you know it was really successful in connecting with people and teaching things in a different way than pretty much most programming books. And so we know that it's being used in a couple of different universities and their programs now, which is super cool, yeah.
Nick Petrella:Because I'd imagine there's a visual, there's an artistic aspect to game design. Now, am I remembering correctly that you have a musical background? You're a musician. Yeah, any art, visual art or no.
Jarryd Huntley:Not in a traditional training sense, but it's, you know, something that I enjoy. You know especially going to museums and you know consuming. You know historical art as well.
Nick Petrella:So you were able to make that transition from the coding to the more digestible I assume, well more digestible from a coding aspect to help artists understand what they need to do to convey their ideas.
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, Is that accurate you?
Nick Petrella:think.
Jarryd Huntley:I'd say I mean a big part of it, especially early on, was working with Hana, my co-author, because you know, Hana at the time had pretty much, you know, no exposure to programming.
Jarryd Huntley:You know I had the programming background but not the writing background, and so we'd work on an outline for a chapter. I would kind of write something out, hannah would do an editing pass and then she would kind of explain it back to me and I was like, ok, this is right and this is. You know, that's right, but this needs a little bit of tweaking. It's a little bit more like that. That's right, but this needs a little bit of tweaking. It's a little bit more like that.
Jarryd Huntley:And through the process, you know, we learned how to come up with a you know process that worked for us for putting that book together. And you know, the book is kind of just a combination of our two kind of voices and our two kind of perspectives and, um, yeah, it just. You know, the output is this, uh, programming book that's really easy to read. I think it's roughly 150 pages. You could finish it in a day if you wanted, and even if you're not looking to become a programmer, just understanding a little bit more about how it works. Or we know that it's been used in some game studios as a communication, communication tool for you know the artist, to understand the programmer's perspective a little bit better yeah, and we'll link to it in the show notes definitely thank you thanks for listening.
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