June Meetup - The Business of Mobile & Indie Game Dev

For our June event, Todd Simmons (this group's organizer) will discuss the current state of the mobile/indie game market. He’ll also cover the business considerations behind building your own mobile or indie game, and how to increase the chances of your game (or studio) being financially successful.

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The idea for this talk was inspired by a recent email exchange Todd had with a member of the meetup group. The individual had a number of questions about Austin’s mobile/indie game dev scene — in particular how to get funding and where to meet potential collaborators.

Todd has met many folks who are in a similar position. They either want to build their own games, or they’re already developing games on the side and want to do it full time. However, it’s not always clear what steps one should take to form an indie studio, or how to achieve financial sustainability in the highly competitive mobile/indie game market.

So, to mark the 2-year anniversary of starting this meetup group, Todd will give a talk summarizing some of the best business-related advice from all the previous events. He’ll also cover points not discussed by previous presenters, again with a focus primarily on the business side of mobile & indie game dev. This talk won’t provide easy answers or fool-proof strategies for success, but it will hopefully arm you with the knowledge to move forward in achieving your game dev goals.

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Todd has been working in games and digital media for over 15 years. He started his career doing sound design and audio production for various Austin game companies, including Human Code, Ion Storm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Storm_Inc.), and Retro Studios (http://www.retrostudios.com/). As a sound designer, Todd had the opportunity to work on iconic games like Deus Ex 2, Thief 3, and Metroid Prime 2 & 3. He also met and worked with many talented game designers, artists, and engineers at these studios.

For over 10 years, Todd has served as the volunteer Executive Director for a small nonprofit organization called the Austin Museum of Digital Art (http://www.amoda.org/). He has organized many events for AMODA featuring video artists, interactive installation pieces, and electronic musicians from around the world. He also regularly assists with fundraising, volunteer management, marketing, and much more.

Based on this experience, Todd eventually decided to get an MBA in Digital Media from St. Edward’s University (similar to a regular business degree but focused on games, internet, music, film, etc). Since then, he has worked as a project/product manager at various startups, ad agencies, and edtech companies. Todd is also a voracious consumer of articles, books, and podcasts about the business of tech and digital media. He's excited to share some (hopefully helpful) insights with the group!

Schedule for this event:
• 6:30pm - Arrival and socializing
• 7:00pm - Intro and announcements
• 7:10pm - Todd Simmons talk
• 8:15pm - Q&A
• 8:30pm - More socializing