game studio spotlight

The Overnight Success – 20 Years in the Making - An Interview With Grey Alien Game's Jake Birkett

Question #1: Tell us a bit about yourself and your studio/company/work.

I’m Jake Birkett, I live in the UK and I’ve been working in games for 20 years (and making them for even longer). I’ve now shipped 16 commercial games and am co-owner of Grey Alien Games.

A lot of people recognise me from my 2016 talk at GDC: How to Survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years Without a Hit. It seemed to strike a chord, and has gone on to be one of the most popular GDC talks on YouTube, with over 1m views.

Question #2: So, why are you in games, anyway? Why not plumbing, since that industry doesn't implode every 8 years?

I started making games as a kid in the 1980s and it remained a hobby throughout my 20s when I was making business software.

So, I finally took the leap to go full-time indie in 2005 and haven’t looked back. It’s not easy, but I love it. I cannot imagine myself doing anything else now!

Forbidden Solitaire

Forbidden Solitaire is a card-slashing horror game about unearthing the contents of a cryptic 1995 CD-ROM that should have never existed. From the creators of Ancient Enemy and Home Safety Hotline.

I find the business aspects interesting but my real passion is “crafting” games. I enjoy the whole process including design, programming, art, audio etc. I spend far too long on tiny details that only I will notice, but it makes me happy.

Question #3: Why not pinochle? No, wait, don't answer that. Talk to us about what calm walks can do for you as a designer.

Well on the subject of calm walks, I do like to make social media posts when I’m out and about in beautiful or amusing locations. I started a series of images, which are basically me seated as though I were staring at a computer screen.

It’s called ‘where’s my computer gone’ and I’ve made over a hundred now, from local spots and other locations around the world.

Some people find them fun, and it’s a good reminder to me that getting out and looking at stuff without a PC or console in front of me is a good habit.

Question #4: Please talk through the most exciting thing you're working on now. Why'd you choose that instead of, say, a plumbing simulator?

We’re working with Night Signal Entertainment (of Home Safety Hotline fame) on Forbidden Solitaire and it’s a really fun project.

They contacted us after playing Shadowhand Solitaire with a wild idea for a card-slashing horror game, which is found on a banned CD-ROM from the 1990s. We fairly rapidly put out a trailer for it which went viral and got us a bunch of wishlists.

So that’s what we’ll be doing for the rest of this year!

Question #5: Favorite non-game inspiration that you think people should experience (book, movie, song, visit to the Maldives in early July)? Set the scene about why this is important to you.

Gah, so much to choose from! Probably everyone has seen Robocop, but it’s one of my favourite movies. Jean-Michel Jarre is one of my favourite musicians since I first heard Oxygene in the 1980s. I’ve read every single Terry Pratchett book, and so should you.

Finally, I love the countryside in West Dorset, which is why I go on so many walks around here.I guess the common thread with books/movies/music that I like is that they are sci-fi and fantasy - an escape from the mundane. This is also true of my walks, because, although they are in real life, they are an escape from work and civilisation!

Question #6: Biggest regret to date? (We've all screwed something up—lesson learned? Could be related to game dev, but doesn't have to be; it could be about pipe fixtures.)

As a parent I have many regrets about things I could have done better but let’s not get into that. In terms of games, I wish I’d managed to pivot to making a game more suitable for Steam in the glory years of 2010-12 instead of continuing to make casual games.

But I was constrained financially and couldn’t take big risks, so I continued on my path, which has worked out in the long run as a stable career. I just never had a hit game on Steam, like quite a few of my friends have managed to do. That would have been nice!

Question #7: Can you share with us an interesting story from your game dev career?

The first commercial game I shipped was a Christmas-themed clone of Bejeweled (by Popcap). I really enjoyed Bejeweled and ended up making seven match-3 games.

Anyway, a few years later after I made Fairway Solitaire with John Cutter (as a contractor for Big Fish Games), we got an email from the creator of Bejeweled to say that they thought it was a really great game! So this was pretty satisfying.

Question #8: In the finite amount of time you have on this planet, after which you shuffle off into the great unknown and are never heard from again, what's one thing you want to do in games?

Maybe return to GDC to give a follow-up talk: The Overnight Success – 20 Years in the Making. Let’s see if Forbidden Solitaire lives up to its very promising reception so far, so that I can make that happen!

You can find out a lot more detail about us and our business here on our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GreyAlien

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