August Meetup - Featuring the founders of Tiger Style Games

Ever since starting this meetup, we've wanted to feature the crew at Tiger Style Games. So, we're excited to host Randy Smith and David Kalina of Tiger Style for our August event! Randy and David have witnessed many changes in the mobile game business since founding their company nearly 6 years ago. In their talk, they'll examine these changes using their first game and its sequel (currently in development) as a lens.

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Both Randy and David have a long history in game development. From 1997 to 2000, Randy worked at Boston-based Looking Glass Studios (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Glass_Studios). While there, he served as a designer on the critically acclaimed stealth action games Thief (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief:_The_Dark_Project) and Thief 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief_II:_The_Metal_Age). When Looking Glass folded, he was hired by Ion Storm Austin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Storm_Inc.) to be Project Director on Thief 3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief:_Deadly_Shadows). Between 2004 and 2008, Randy was a contract game designer, consulting with many companies around the world on various AAA titles. He also spent time at EA's LA studio working on the later-cancelled Steven Spielberg collaboration code-named LMNO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LMNO).

David Kalina got his start in the game industry at Ubisoft Montreal. He worked there from 1999 to 2002, developing non-player character AI for the first Splinter Cell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_Splinter_Cell_(video_game)) game. After that, Dave headed to Ion Storm Austin where he worked on AI for Thief 3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief:_Deadly_Shadows) and Deus Ex 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_Ex:_Invisible_War). Between 2004 and 2008, he served as Lead AI Programmer at Midway's Austin studio. His code was used prominently in the Midway title Blacksite: Area 51 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackSite:_Area_51) for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.

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In 2009, Randy and David shifted gears away from building AAA titles. They formed Tiger Style and decided to focus on indie and mobile games, two areas of budding interest at the time. 2009 saw the release of their first title, the award-winning Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor (http://tigerstylegames.com/Spider/tsobm/) for iPhone. The game was widely praised for its innovative touchscreen-based gameplay. Over the following years, Tiger Style released versions of Spider for iPad and Android. In 2012, they released Waking Mars (http://www.tigerstylegames.com/wakingmars/) (for iOS and eventually Android), in which players explore underground Martian caves and cultivate an ecosystem of alien lifeforms.

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Currently, Tiger Style is working on a sequel for their first game, called Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon (http://www.shroudedmoon.com/). Randy and David will use their talk to explore the differences in the development, design, promotion, and business strategy between the first Spider and its sequel (due for release in 2015). Their discussion will help illustrate the incredible evolution of the indie and mobile markets in those 6 years and its impact on developers. Don't miss this rare opportunity to hear their perspective on the changing face of mobile and indie game dev!

Schedule for this event:
• 6:30pm - Arrival and socializing
• 7:00pm - Intro and announcements
• 7:05pm - Tiger Style talk
• 7:50pm - Q&A
• 8:20pm - More socializing