Posts By Brandon

Indie Dev Q&A: Luke Burtis from tinyBuild, HouseOgames

Luke Burtis is one of the most connected indie developers in the Seattle game industry, and for good reason! He’s doing exciting things with his own game incubator, House O Games, which is producing excellent work. Read on to find out how he got into game development and where he hopes to go from here!

1. Name and location

Luke Burtis – tinyBuild Games & HouseOgames – Both based in out of my house in Bothell, Washington.

2. How long have you been an indie dev?

Technically I’ve been an indie dev for the past 18 months or so.  Before that I helped out indies while I was the production director at Casual Connect for 7 years.   We’ve hosted different award shows, provided places for indies to demo their games for free, provided free hostel stays during our conference, etc.

3. Games released to date?

HouseOgames has released one game so far that we partnered up with tinyBuild to publish it on Steam.  This game was called “Not The Robots”  http://store.steampowered.com/app/257120/

tinyBuild have released the following:

• No Time To Explain  http://store.steampowered.com/app/227280/
• SpeedRunners  http://store.steampowered.com/app/207140/
• Not The Robots  http://store.steampowered.com/app/257120/
• Fearless Fantasy  http://store.steampowered.com/app/282100/

4. Sum up your game / studio style in 3 words?

tinyBuild – Indie Game Publisher

HouseOgames – Seattle Game Incubator

5. Your career path – in a nutshell – to here?

I started in the industry way back in the day of the Xbox.  I worked for 3 years doing certification testing.  I then applied that knowledge to a company called Oberon Media (no longer around) whom put together the first XBLA games and need to pass certification.  I helped them for 6 months which is where I met Jessica Tams (Oberon Seattle office GM).

After Oberon — I worked at Microsoft doing DRM testing for a year at which point at the end of my contract Jessica called me up and said she was starting the Casual Games Association and wanted me to help.  At this point in time I had a choice to either take a job offer at Bungie working on Halo 2 or work with Jessica as a conference organizer.  Obviously I was going to choose Bungie, but Jessica sent me a check in the mail and said welcome aboard… So, having money in my hot little hand persuaded me to work at the CGA.  Which turned out to be the best choice thus far in my career.

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Student Highlight – Eric Sexton (Game Designer, Blizzard, Gearbox, King Maker Games)

I am often astonishd by the creative talents I get to interactive with from the classes. Eric Sexton, a veteran game designer from Blizzard, Gearbox, and many other game companies has set out to make his own games with a tighter team. Let’s find out what’s keeping him busy these days.

Q: You’re a former designer at Blizzard and Gearbox. Tell us a little about why you wanted to learn the technical side of making games / Unity.

ES: I have been in the video game industry for nearly 20 years and I have always believed that great tools will return the industry to the days when small teams of 1-10 people can make amazing games. As the industry has moved forward the tools have become better. Unfortunately the development team sizes have kept growing to a point of unsustainability. I think we are finally at the point where that pendulum is swinging back in the other direction.

For me, learning Unity 3D was a vital step towards building my own games with a smaller team.

Q: What were your thoughts about the OMGS class?

ES: Your One Month Class to learn the basics of Unity was fantastic.  I learn best by doing! This is something your class allowed me to do.  Jumping in and start making things very quickly was fun, exciting, and reasonably easy.  I really appreciated that.