Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#346: Jarryd Huntley (Game Developer) (pt. 2 of 2)
This week on the podcast is part two 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. Jarryd Huntley is with us today. He's a game developer with a portfolio career that includes founding Poly Tundra 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.
Andy Heise:You know, I I hear this from my students at the Kansas City Art Institute all the time. They're either in illustration or animation and they want to get into game design, but they don't have that programming background or experience or training or anything like that. And so it's it's it seems like a big jump uh to me, anyways. Uh so something like your book seems like a really good entry point into somebody who has that sort of visual um visual art background and making the transition into well, what would it actually take to turn my game concept and characters that I've created into an actual game.
Jarryd Huntley:Yep. No, we've definitely heard from you know artists or people who haven't really touched programming. They're like, I wanted to work on a game, I got your book, I was able to start understanding things, then once I got to a point, I was able to, you know, find some other resources and kind of you know run with it.
Andy Heise:Yeah. And the other thing I'm sitting here thinking is it's it totally reinforces that game design is a team sport, not necessarily like there's no one person that's gonna be able to do all of this and do it all really well.
unknown:Yeah.
Andy Heise:And if you if if there is, it's gonna take him like a decade, right?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah. I mean, you know, in the game industry, you'll often hear these, you know, stories about oh, you know, this game was put together by, you know, the solo developer, it took them eight years, yada yada. Yeah. And you look at the credits and it's like, oh, there's like, you know, 35 people here. Exactly. Um and it's like even you know, the solo developers, they have support, um, they have you know people they're able to work with, collaborators, and yeah, it's really, really extra extremely rare for someone to do it actually solo by themselves.
Andy Heise:Yeah. And then for it to be good, like sound visual animation, like storyline, like all of those, like to make a game like that by yourself, I think would be even more challenging or impossible.
Nick Petrella:But and plus when the solo when they're doing that by themselves, what else are they not doing? Yeah, if you're doing that for eight years.
Andy Heise:Yeah.
Nick Petrella:Anyway.
Andy Heise:So um Jared from Poly Tundra, which we've talked a little bit about here, and uh to Cleveland game developers, we haven't touched on that yet, but maybe you can tell us a little bit more about that. Um, you've created space for others in the game design field, and you've you've alluded to that as well a little bit here. Um Has community building been a business strategy? I don't want to discount the that notion of that, but like as part of your portfolio of revenue streams, uh, the community building aspect, uh a creative outlet, something else entirely? Like what what's what's behind that, the community aspect?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, uh that's a great question. And so, you know, first, you know, I'll give the the pitch about the Cleveland game developers. You know, it's uh a local group of artists, writers, programmers, musicians, just anyone and everyone who's interested in game development in the area. You know, we don't require people to have experience. We have, you know, members who are high school students, members who are retirees, um, and kind of everybody in between. And we're just, you know, a community that's there to support each other and help each other learn more and you know, get better at making games together. And so um it hasn't really been, you know, kind of a business strategy, you know, in on the one hand, it's been just kind of my way of giving back. Um I have, you know, so much of my career and the opportunities and experience um, you know, I have was, you know, directly related to people mentoring me, um, you know, taking time to uh explain things to me, or you know, passing leads on to me. And so just kind of you know, continuing to pass that on and you know, continue the cycle. The other thing is um, you know, with building a community, it's kind of you know, rising tides, you know, rises all ships type thing, where um if you look at some of the larger cities that have um active, you know, and very strong game industry presences, a lot of them started out with just you know small indie developers, you know, one of them kind of you know has a hit, hires a couple of people from the group, you know, a couple people break off, they you know, start another studio, and it's kind of you know, um, in some markets have been this kind of you know, grassroots kind of um bottom-up situation.
Andy Heise:Yeah. Sort of cottage industry, and then eventually sort of you gain some efficiencies and attract the new talent or whatever, and then it sort of develops from there.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, spins off and does it again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I I want to go back to the coding question because as you were talking, I was wondering have you ever had a great artistic idea that you didn't pursue because coding was too difficult?
Jarryd Huntley:Hmm, yeah, that's a really good question. I'm trying to think of like a specific example, and one doesn't come to mind, but there have been just a number of times, uh, like I mentioned, game design, game development is a really iterative process where um, you know, you've been working on something and you're like, you know, this is I can kind of see the bones of it, and I kind of see where this mechanic is going, but you know, I don't want to spend five weeks working on this for it to just be, you know, 10% better. And so how can we pivot? How can we, you know, take this idea and kind of run with it, you know, in a slightly different direction? And I think that's honestly one of the more important skills in game development. Um uh we we say, you know, it's you know, you you need to know when to kill your babies whenever you know the thing that you're super proud of and you know you've put time into isn't just gonna fit the experience and you need to let it go. And especially for you know younger game designers, it's gonna be a really hard lesson to learn. Yeah.
Nick Petrella:So so always in the back of your mind, then you have this sort of attitude, I'm not gonna spend ten dollars to save a quarter. Is basically behind yeah, okay.
Jarryd Huntley:It you know, you just decide when you need to ship it. Um if there was you know unlimited time, right? Who knows if any games would have come out? Because we're always trying to do one more thing, we're always you know a little bit unhappy with how you know this thing turned out. But the other lesson that's important to learn is that whenever you're working on a game, you're looking at it from you know three inches away for you know three or four years on end. And so you're gonna see all the flaws. You're gonna know what, you know, oh, this isn't something we got to finish or we didn't have enough time. But for a player, for someone who's experienced it for the first time, you know, it's a completely different experience, and they rarely see any of those things that you know you're kind of um you know obsessing over.
Nick Petrella:Yeah.
Jarryd Huntley:Exactly.
Andy Heise:That's a really good point.
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah.
Andy Heise:Well, I think going back to something you said earlier, you start with sort of what's the emotion that you want to evoke in the in the person playing the game, or what do you want them to feel or think? Um, you know, when you're creating these these digital spaces, you know, technically anything is possible. You could do whatever, you know, anything, but um having that sort of guiding, having those boundaries, certainly time and resources, right? But also like, does this help the the the player feel may have that feeling or whatever, right? It helps sort of hone in some of those um possibilities and help you filter out maybe things that don't make sense or uh actually help the game uh yeah.
Jarryd Huntley:I mean you can you know use kind of a concept or you know, a game design document or a mission statement to use as a barometer. And you know, if you're like, hey, this would be super cool if we did this thing, but it doesn't align with you know our core concept or what we were originally shooting for, yeah. You have to make the call whether you know you want to include something like that because it's cool, or whether you know, you want to do something a little bit different because it fits the game or experience um closer to the vision.
Nick Petrella:Yeah. Just because you can. I was gonna say just because you can doesn't mean you should. Right.
Andy Heise:Yeah. And it also makes me think about like the project management of of an entire like game production cycle. Like, you know, you have this idea and you're like, well, it's it's a it'd be a nice to have, so now we're gonna move it over here to this other part of the board. Do you use like the software development like uh processes for game design, or is it a little different? You have your own processes?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, uh so there's a lot that's similar and a lot that's different between you know software development, traditional software development, and and game development, but a lot of the you know same kind of you know core concepts still apply, you know, like we use Jira to manage things, you know, we follow kind of you know the agile development uh processes with you know sprints and um putting things on a board. Um, but then you know there's different ways of kind of coming up with your goals and kind of evaluating whether you've met the criteria. Um but one of the most you know crucial things in my opinion for kind of nailing those is having a great producer. And you know, a producer, you know, great producers worth their weight in gold. You know, the producer we had on OFK, Michaela Foote, um, was one of the best producers I've ever worked for. You know, you'd have a need and you're like, you know, you'd reach out and you're like, hey, I need, and she's like, oh yeah, I already have that, you know, ready, or you know, uh was planning for that. So um just in helping the process kind of you know move forward. Um producers are incredible.
Nick Petrella:Yeah. And follow-up question. So it's just like in film, I mean, do they do they raise money or how does that work? The role of the producer, you mean? Yeah, yeah, role of a producer.
Jarryd Huntley:Um, so sometimes the producer might be involved in that. Um, I guess it really depends on like either the studio structure or uh the type of project it is. Um sometimes you know you'll have um kind of the core design team um pitch to different, you know, um publishers and try to seek funding. Um sometimes you might have a studio that's internal to a larger studio and they'll need to do kind of an internal pitch. Sometimes it will be self-funded um or like the Kickstarter model, uh early access. So there's there's a lot of different kind of business models for setting up and funding games.
Nick Petrella:So people interested in starting this, just knowing that, I think that'd be very helpful.
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, and and one thing I always like to emphasize, um, especially when um folks are getting started in game development, is you don't have to release commercial games. Um every game you release, you don't need to sell. Um and a lot of times if you're not working towards, you know, oh, this game needs to get, you know, this many sales to be profitable, this and that. Uh, you can work through a lot of those um problems with getting the game ready to submit to the platforms, um, meeting the criteria criteria for certification on a platform. Uh, you can work through a lot of those things that the first time you're going through is really difficult. Um and not having the stress of, oh, this needs to make, you know, yeah X number of dollars.
Nick Petrella:Hanging that over your head. Or having that hanging over your head, yeah. A few weeks ago, at least at the time of this recording, I read that AI will soon be writing code so well that it'll reduce the need for developers. How do you think this will impact game design?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah. Um, so yeah, there's there's so much, you know, um surrounding kind of AI and you know the current um state of things. Um as far as you know AI writing code better than humans, uh, I think we're probably still a number of years off from that. Um there's certain things that um you know I think AI could, you know, kind of put together maybe quicker than a person, but um a lot of the models right now really lack an understanding for context. And so maybe if you're working on something that's a little bit more discrete, um it might be able to do it. But as you're getting in a larger and a larger concept with multiple things interacting and you know, coordinating between different departments, like I don't see that being as efficient as you know, a person being able to talk to another person. But then the other, you know, and um in my mind, you know, kind of um really important aspect is just kind of the impact of of AI, you know, the environmental impact, the you know, energy usage, and um, you know, they need to be more sustainable, um, I think to be used in a good way. But also a thing that I don't hear enough people talking about is profitability. Uh, there's a ton of money going to these AI models and startups, but none of them are really making money back yet. So how long is this gonna go for?
Andy Heise:Yeah.
Nick Petrella:Well, if it can take a solo developer, if it can shave a year off. Yeah. I don't know.
Jarryd Huntley:But yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's it's also just kind of an interesting space to um, you know, keep an eye out for because um I was having a conversation with a mentor, you know, earlier this year who um was doing you know some reach, some research into, you know, ethical AI models, and um, you know, we were just having conversations on, you know, some of the potentials and um yeah, it's you know a really fast moving space, and so who knows what it will look like in a couple of years. But um the other side with game design is like I said, um, when I create games, I like to start with you know, a feeling or an emotion or something I want to communicate. If you don't have a human communicating that, like I feel like it would really just be missing that human element and that ability to connect through you know the art of another, you know, human being.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, yeah. You know, and to to be clear, I'm not for or against AI, I'm just genuinely curious how this is all playing out because it's it's playing out in real time. Yeah.
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah. And, you know, um, I'm, you know, you know, the the for or against, you know, that's something I could, you know, get into a long discussion on. Um, but you know, I think having conversations about why we want to use these tools um and how we want to use these tools, do we want to use it to replace people? Do we want to use it to augment people and help them, you know, be more efficient? Do we want to use them to solve problems that humans, you know, can't solve or it would take us way too long? Um because if it's just, you know, hey, we're gonna replace a bunch of actors with, you know, AI models, like you gotta ask yourself why.
Andy Heise:Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And I uh I something you said earlier too that that uh made me think this as well. But um when the outcomes are subjective, subjectively measured, um, I think it's even more difficult. And I think it comes back to all the things you're talking about, the human involvement, the context, the the judgments that we make, the things that we feel when we're interacting with it, um, that's that's even harder. Like in terms of the one-to-one replacement or two to one to two replacement, whatever replacement ratio you want to talk about, uh it becomes even more difficult when the when the output is is subjectively measured versus objectively measured, right or wrong.
Jarryd Huntley:Yep. Yeah that's a good point.
Andy Heise:How do you define success for yourself right now as a as an artist, technologist, entrepreneur? Um, and how has that changed over time?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, um so I think I would, you know, define success as um my ability to continue to create things. Um, you know, um, I gave a talk earlier this year at GDC and I was talking about, you know, ways of kind of um planning your career with a model I came up with called a career tree. And um one of the things I was kind of emphasizing in that talk is, you know, when I was starting out on games, like when I was working on my first original game, I was still teaching, you know, I was still working a full-time job and I was working on my game. And um I hear a lot of you know, younger folks or you know, newer game designers that feel like the only way to be successful is if you're making games, you know, full-time and that's your day job. Right. And I think that's you know, kind of selling yourself short. Um, there's you know, a ton of people who have their day job that's sustainable and allows them to create, and then they have their creative pursuits and they're separate, and sometimes that's actually more healthy to have those two things separate. So um that's why I like to um define success as you know, what helps me to be able to continue to create my art? Do I have the um energy to create my art? Do I have the stability to create my art? Um things like that.
Andy Heise:For sure. So it's not it's not just uh, you know, a dollar amount or a salary or an income, but it's also the space that you can hold for your creative endeavors.
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, because you know, if you're maybe working for yourself and you know, you're scraping by and you're able to make it work, but you don't have the energy and you're burned out and you're not feeling creative, then it's like, you know, you're not able to create at your best capacity.
Nick Petrella:Yep. Andy was just fishing. He was hoping you'd say being on Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast, making art work is your definition of success.
Andy Heise:Yes. Colbert used to call it the Colbert bump, and we call it the It's entrepreneurship. No. Yeah.
Nick Petrella:So before Andy kicks off the final three questions we ask everyone, I just want to know since your art is interactive, how much do you rely on player feedback and how do you collect that information? I know you said you had a survey with, I think, one of the books or one of the games, but uh how how uh how do you do that?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, so that's one of the, I guess, you know, challenging and really interesting parts of of game design is that um you can have 10 different people play a game and they have 10 different experiences. Uh, they approach it 10 different ways. And really, you know, really the best way to get that type of feedback is something called playtesting, where you hand the game to somebody. Um, ideally, you don't tell them anything, you don't, you know, prompt them or say, oh, you know, try to do this. You just see what they do with the game, how they interact with it, uh, what their takeaway is, where they get stuck, and um, you know, doing that kind of over time as you tweak your design. So um, if I'm working on like a solo project, I'll take it to different, you know, conferences or different um game dev events, our local meetup. We have a playtest night um once a quarter. Um, and then just finding, you know, different types of people, different groups. Um, here in Cleveland, we have an event called Ingenuity Fest, which is kind of a big arts and culture music fest, um, not you know related to games in any way, but related to, you know, people making creative things and projects. And so that's one of my favorite events to you know play test a game because you get all these people who are open and excited about creative experiences, and you know, you show them a game and you know they'll give you kind of their you know unfiltered feedback, especially kids. Um you can take that and kind of uh iterate on it from there.
Andy Heise:Ingenuity Fest. I love that. It it breaks away from like the creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, what of the ingenuity? It's like yeah, yeah.
Jarryd Huntley:No, if if you haven't checked it out, uh it's it's one of my favorite events like that I've visited, you know, in the country, and it's kind of you know right here.
Nick Petrella:That's awesome. It's an annual event.
Jarryd Huntley:Yep. Um, every like every September, like early fall.
Andy Heise:Coming up. Oh, coming up, yeah. Well, Jared, we've reached the point of the interview where we ask all of our interviewees the same three questions. And the first question is what advice would you give to others wanting to become an arts entrepreneur?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, so I think the advice that you know I'd give others and the advice that I, you know, could have used early on and kind of figured out over time is um kind of what I was talking about earlier with you know, um, how do you define your success? Like find what makes find what allows you to make your art sustainably. Um and that answer could be different for you know different people. Um and you know, I think figuring out what makes it sustainable for yourself, whether that's working in a studio job or you can contribute to a larger project, whether it's doing on the side, you know, creating your own, you know, company and kind of pursuing um the solo route. Um and I I think when you ask that question of yourself, you're less likely to try to force yourself into, you know, a mold of success that you've seen, or um, you know, force yourself to follow your dream a specific way. And um I think when you avoid that, um you can end up in a situation where you know you're able to create your art more genuinely.
Nick Petrella:What can we do to ensure the arts are more accessible and reaching the widest possible audience?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, um I think you know, one just a practical one is is outreach, you know, just um trying to connect with schools, especially um younger folk. Um, you know, game design is is fairly new, even honestly, computer science. Um you know, when I was in high school, uh I didn't know computer science was a thing and didn't realize that could have been a career. And so, you know, letting kids know, hey, there's you know, these different career opportunities out here. Um uh you can do different things with this, you can work on games, you can work for, you know, a hospital, a startup, um things like that. And then um, yeah, just you know, the other thing I try to do is just create um art that's accessible from you know multiple fronts. Like you don't need to have a certain background, you don't need to be, you know, a high precision, competitive gamer to experience it. Um and so, you know, just creating things that people can um experience and it meets them kind of where they're at.
Andy Heise:Lastly, what's the best artistic or entrepreneurial advice you've been given?
Jarryd Huntley:Yeah, um I mean it it might sound a little cliche, but I mean I think it's just be authentic. Um and you know, when you're committing yourself to a you know entrepreneurial pursuit, um, I think you need to be authentic. If you're not, you know, kind of pursuing something you're passionate about, it's just gonna end up in kind of burnout or disappointment. And, you know, if you're you know really authentic about something and you believe in it, that authenticity will show when you're talking with other people, it will show when you're asking for funding, it will show when you're looking for, you know, co-founders or collaborators. And I think if you're doing something because you're like, oh, you know, this is a surefire way to, you know, make a bunch of money or something like that, like it's not gonna connect in the same way as if, you know, it's something that you deeply believe in and want to see exist in the world.
Nick Petrella:Absolutely.
Jarryd Huntley:Absolutely. Yep.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, Jared, thanks so much for coming on. Your methodical and practical approach to building your business is it's just something that all of our listeners can learn from.
Jarryd Huntley:Thanks so much for having me. I had a great time chatting with y'all.
Announcer:Thanks, Jared. Thanks for listening. If you like this podcast, please subscribe. Visit Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast dot com to learn more about our guest and how you can help support artists, the arts, and this podcast.
