So Where Do I Begin?

“If I ever start a game company, I’m going to call it ‘Number 8 Production Department.'”

That was, what, a year ago? Two years? Honestly, I don’t know. All I remember is that Kojima was on his way out of Konami, I was still playing MGS V, and I had no idea I wanted to get into game development. Hell, I was looking at getting a Master’s up in British Columbia.

Fast forward three months, and I’m interning for my department.

I’m watching Extra Credits when my phone rings.

It’s my mother. My sister’s in the hospital for an appendectomy. I’m 400 miles away, in a dorm all by myself.

So I started making a board game. Nothing too fancy, just a map with different borders that I printed at Staples and taped on a piece of cardboard.

A few weeks later, and I’m home. My sister’s alright, and my cousins came by to test it. One of us was the guard player hunting the rebels, and the rest were rebels trying to take over the map.

And it failed horribly. We spent about two hours arguing over mechanics, and we only got about two turns in. And to compensate for the lack of another board, we kept kicking out the guard player when his opponents played.

Well, at least Geoff got a good tan out of it.

Fast forward a few months, and I’m starting Senior Year in University. I’m sitting in the department study room, with this underclassman, Ben. We get talking about what we’re going to do after we graduate, and I tell him about my board game, and how I’m not the best at coding.

“Have you ever heard of Game Maker?” he asks me. Or something like that, anyways.

I tell him no.

He tells me it’s pretty easy to use. Kinda like MATLAB, the software us physics students use because we are lazy bastards for large calculations.

So I look at it.

I try some tutorials, and quietly thank whatever deity exists that it’s similar to MATLAB.

Then I got to work.

And changed the name to cGh ONE. Turns out it’s a lot easier to type.

It was an obscure reference, anyways.

-Chris