Deep Plaid Games, one year later

[Reblogged from the Deep Plaid Games blog.]

The news just broke that OMGPOP has been shuttered by Zynga, just a year after the big acquisition that I walked away from. I had worked for OMGPOP's Austin branch, and my coworkers there moved to Zynga Austin - and it sounds like that studio has also been axed this week.

Wow.

What do I have to say about all this? Not terribly much. I haven't kept up with Zynga folks much sense then - for various reasons I've tried to keep that a "clean break" for me. For one thing, every time I meet a Zynga employee, I'm afraid that they're going to punch me in the face because I (more or less) called their company evil in a very public way.

Instead, the response I always actually get in those Zynga-employee-encounters is: "Oh yeah! I loved that article! And you're right, Zynga is TOTALLY evil." (I have yet to meet a "Zynga loyalist.")

At GDC, I had that exact encounter... but then the developer told me that Zynga had changed some policies in the wake of my article, and that this allowed him to finish his indie game in his spare time, release it, and keep control of its IP, without having to quit his day job with Zynga. That was awesome to hear. Not all the fallout from writing that article has been positive for me, but if it led to changes within Zynga that allow their developers to have a creative outlet and keep control of things that they make on their own, then I'm more happy than ever that I talked about my experience publicly.

I'm honestly kind of tired of talking about Zynga but here are the last two things I'd like to say:

So. What has Shay Pierce been doing in the last year? I made a dramatic leap from the jaws of Zynga to freedom - have I been making the most of that freedom?

Well I've had to spend a lot of time paying the bills as a freelance programmer. But I've been also been spending every spare moment I have making "indie games" in one form or another. Here are three projects I'm working on, two of which you can play very soon.

#1: "Get On Top" [Ouya port]

One night here in Austin I found myself at a local Ouya developer meetup, where Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman was in attendance to answer developers' questions. It shed a lot of light on details about this console - I've always been excited about what the Ouya represents.

Austin has a lot going on: that same night I went to a meetup at Indiecade Annex, where friends Robin Arnott and Davey Wreden host monthly public parties for playing sweet new indie games. One of the most popular games that night was a gamepad-enabled setup of Bennett Foddy's "Get On Top"... a simple 2-player wrestling game infused with the physics-based hilarity that Bennett is known for perfecting in QWOP.

I got home that night and couldn't resist: I emailed Bennett (who I had met at GDC) and begged him to let me port his game to the Ouya. Hey said something like "sure, why not." I think I had a version of it running on the Ouya about 24 hours later.

There was a lot more work after that, of course - but, it's almost ready to ship! Watch my twitter for a launch announcement - which will probably be within the next day or so - and give it a try (for free!) once you get your Ouya!

#2: Organ Trail: Director's Cut [Ouya port]

I wasn't alone at that Austin Ouya developers meetup - I was accompanied by my friend and sometimes-client Patrick Curry, CEO of Fun Machine. Patrick also has a storied history in professional game dev, but he's a notable figure in the "indie game" world as well, being best known for mentoring the "Octodad" team. But he mentored many students, and some of them made "Organ Trail" - the game that has everything you loved about "The Oregon Trail", plus zombies. 

At the Ouya meetup we were proud to show the port of Organ Trail that I've been working on with Patrick and Fun Machine - also in my spare time. There's a demo version of it already on the Ouya store, and the Men Who Wear Many Hats just approved a new version, that's waiting for approval on the Ouya store as we speak.

Note that while Get On Top is made in Flash (Flixel, which I ported to Axel and AIR Mobile), Organ Trail is made in Unity. These are two platforms I love make games in, and I'm happy to have games in both up and running on the Ouya.

#3: [The secret project]

I've been working on this game for a long time now, pouring my heart and soul into it... but I've never formally announced it. I haven't been ready to talk about it for various reasons, but I'm finally ready to start doing so. Announcing:

...Stay tuned.

Shay Pierce has been designing and coding games since he was 13 years old, and has worked as a professional game developer since 2003. "Deep Plaid Games" is his one-man micro-studio for developing indie games and doing freelance game development work for various clients. Follow Shay's adventures in the wild world of games on twitter at @IQpierce.