Gaming For Everyone: John Austin, Joystick Labs, the East Coast Game Conference

April 11th, 2011

By Joe Procopio

Joe Procopio

It’s a little known fact that I developed my first video game in the 1980s.

I know. Shut up.

The source code is long gone – in fact, I believe the hardware and the language are long gone as well – but the game involved translating and then conjugating verbs in Spanish under top-secret orders from the mysterious and powerful Dr. Pedro (remember, this was the 1980s and you could get away with that kind of thing).

The kicker was if you conjugated too many verbs incorrectly, you would fail to stop the countdown of the accidental launch of both the US and Soviet Union’s entire nuclear arsenals.

Everyone you love, dead, and all because you forgot that the present indicative of saber (to know) is “yo sé.” It was a weird time in history, but everyone in my Spanish class got an A that semester.

Destrucción Mutua Asegurada

Like I said, this was a weird time, when video games were more about quarters and degenerates than mobile phones and sheep breeding.

When I look back on those days, I don’t get too nostalgic. Within the space of six months, I quickly figured out the looming social struggle of being the only kid from my grade in the “computer class.”

Not too long after that realization, I latched on to much cooler pursuits, like BMX bicycles for instance, and I ran away from the world of technology screaming “Thank God I got off this path that would most certainly lead me to a top-notch education, a stable and lucrative career, and the ability to wake up every day and enjoy what I do… PHEW!”

Back then, there was no support structure for someone who had an interest and passion for technology, let alone gaming. Gaming was the red-headed stepchild of corporate technology, something that required years of study (and social isolation), massive amounts of capital (and social rejection), and arcane knowledge (and social exclusion).

Back then there weren’t too many dudes like John Austin around.

Gaming for Everyone

John Austin

John Austin heads up two initiatives that exist mostly to bring both the creation and the consumption of gaming to the masses. He is the co-founder and conference chair of the East Coast Game Conference (April 13^th and 14^th at the Raleigh Convention Center) which, among other inclusion-sparking practices, is using extra sponsorship revenue to lower registration costs and also offers a student track at an even lower cost.

He’s also the new Managing Director of Joystick Labs, RTP’s gaming incubator. Joystick, along with LaunchBox Digital and CED, anchors American Underground, the hub of entrepreneurial Durham. Joystick is currently accepting applications for their second semester, and anyone with an idea and the drive to get their game polished and built can apply.

Both the ECGC and Joystick offer copious opportunities for your average everyday kid to create the next Dr. Pedro’s Global Thermonuclear Verbs or even the next Angry Birds. But it’s not just everyday kids – it’s twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings, and in fact it’s pretty much any-somethings.

Gaming is Not Cool, It’s Core

This will be my third (out of three) attendance at the ECGC. I’m not going because I want to build video games (I don’t). I’m not going because I’m a hardcore gamer (I’m not). Nor am I going because they’ll be handing out beta copies of Gears of War 3 (they won’t).

I’m going because we’ve reached the point in the history of video games when it has become more than apparent that gaming drives pretty much everything else in technology. And I’m not talking about Zynga and their over-ubiquitous presence in social networking.

What’s Your Game?

I’m actually talking about social networking (and everything else). The impetus of why you have a Facebook account and collect friends and publish status can be boiled down to the concepts of gaming. It’s fellowship, competition, and rank, and it’s this oddball sort of living the digitized and streamlined version of you while interacting in a digitized and streamlined manner with digitized and streamlined versions of your friends.

The insides of Facebook likely look a lot like the insides of Tron — 1982 Tron, not the recent forgivably cool one — and the discovery of this ugly secret would be a huge bringdown for 95 percent of Facebook users.

Let’s face it. Facebook is essentially a heavily disguised World of Warcraft.

So eat it, nerd.

But gaming is no longer a nerd’s world. And it’s a little more than coincidental that the only sector of gaming that’s really suffering is massively multiplayer online. According to Austin, it never really took off like it should have, and he agreed with my theory, smart-aleckly proven above, that these social networking games, and in fact social networking itself, has replaced MMO, but not so much the massive and not so much with elves.

Revenge of the Jock

The console, another step in bringing gaming to the masses, is not as dead as you might think, also according to Austin. Madden and the rest of the sports franchises brought in huge numbers of first-time gamers, who converted pretty quickly over to Halo, GTA, and Gears. These types of multi-million-dollar investments in the cutting edge of absorption, be it ridiculously life-like video or Kinect-style control, will always have it’s following.

Also, as the console becomes an entertainment hub with the addition of Netflix and ESPN3 and so on, it’ll maintain a place in the living room.

Small, Smaller, Smallest

The rest of gaming is going micro: 99-cent titles on your iPhone or Android, low-footprint social games like Farmville, games that require a tiny investment and, if done right, can provide huge returns.

This is where Joystick comes in.

While Joystick still believes and will hopefully incubate at least one console-style title, the focus is on the mobile and social gaming sector. The fact that these games require less overhead allows for the democratization of the creation, thus keeping the vibe of inclusion alive.

Further, what they come out with on the other side of the semester is more than just a handful of viable titles, they could stumble upon that next great turbo booster in technology itself. Like I said, gaming drives pretty much everything.

If you’re in the technology field and you’re not going to the ECGC, you should. Whether you’re a developer, a designer, an executive, or a student. Whether you’re designing 3D-graphics for mobile handsets or creating accrual algorithms for insurance software, there’s something to this stuff that everyone can use.

And you never know, you might get inspired by ECGC, apply to Joystick, and come out of the other side with the next mobile social farming masterpiece.

Joe Procopio heads up product engineering for sports media startup StatSheet (StatSheet.com). He also owns startup consulting firm Intrepid Company (IntrepidCompany.com) and creative network Intrepid Media (IntrepidMedia.com). You need cred? Friday night he was playing a networked game of Quake II Action Mod with former co-workers on both coasts. There’s your damn cred. Joe can be reached via Twitter @jproco.

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