So there you have it. You’ve met everybody. You’ve met Lyndsay, quirks and all, you’ve met Will, who I am pretty sure was actually asleep during the composition of both his posts, you’ve met Jon who I am positive was asleep during the composition of his post (to his credit we work him pretty freaking hard), and you’ve met me, James. You’ve heard a little bit about our current projects, future aspirations, and history but what you haven’t heard about is Dash.
It all started about three years ago. I was a freshman in college, I was doing like four jobs to make ends meet (Accountant, Music Teacher, UPS employee, etc.), and most importantly, I was very very unhappy with my work. Up until that point, I had always assumed that I would finish college and be an accountant. They make pretty good money. Why not?
It was early on during this year that something occurred to me, which should have been obvious all along. I desperately wanted to make video games. I had always been an incredibly creative person. I could literally fill volumes with my backyard childhood fantasies, my middle school scribblings, and my high school compositions. I even attended a school for the arts during my high school years. It had just never occurred to me to think of games as an art form, so it never occurred to me that I should make games. I don’t know exactly what it was but something clicked for me and I knew what I wanted to do.
I called my best friend Jonathon Wallace, who was well on his way to graduating from a college about two hours drive from mine, and said something to the effect of “Hey man. Let’s start a company and make video games.” To my surprise he enthusiastically replied yes. Honestly to this day, I am not really sure why but, man am I glad.
So he and I set out to make a game. If I remember correctly our first idea for a game, well my first idea for a game, was all about using the colors of souls to fight demons and save the world but here’s the catch, you were half demon and wait for it… in a street gang called the angels. I know. I really am this generations Hemingway. I really think it goes without saying but I’m going to go ahead and say it anyway. That was a pretty stupid idea, which brings me to the first thing DreamClash taught me. You need to listen to people you trust, even when you think you are right and they are wrong. You need to at least hear them out. Remember, you trust them for a reason.
During our very first meeting, Jon had had the idea of building a game around the concept of gaining and keeping momentum and I had sort of blown him off because, I knew what game I wanted to make. I mean come on. It had demons. It had artistic game play. Who wouldn’t want to play that? In retrospect, probably not even me. I owe Jon a lot, for standing his ground and telling me my idea was stupid. We wasted about a month of development and preproduction meetings on a game that would never see the light of day as a result of my inability to listen but in the end we didn’t offer the world a stupid game.
Once I’d learned my lesson and listened to my partner, we decided together that momentum really was a good concept around which to build a game. And that was it. That first idea was where DreamClash began. We named it Project Dash and though it evolved greatly over it’s year in development, its development taught me more about running a company and making a game than my entire college education thus far. This entry has gone on for a while, so I think I’m going to make it a two parter.
Thanks so much for reading this and not something else. I know you’ve got a lot of other options out there, so I’m going to do my best to make reading worth you while.
-James
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