Looking Back and Looking Forward

2017 was an interesting year. Not interesting in the “may you live in interesting times” way entirely, although there were certainly a share of challenges during the year. One challenge that was a welcome one was the challenge of becoming familiar with my new home in Toronto and getting to know a city I haven’t had much contact with for twenty years. But instead of focusing on the challenges that 2017 had brought, I thought I’d focus on some of the highlights:

• Won first place for Game of the Year for 2016 with Mandatory Upgrade: X Marks the Spot
• Became an Associate Writer/Game Designer with Talespinners
• Started writing a tabletop role-playing game based on the world of Mandatory Upgrade
• Attended my first Breakout Con, played many games, and met lots of tabletop & RPG game folks
• Got to work on some great games: Primer for Headless Chicken Games and Depot for Villainous Games
• Returned to Raleigh NC for another terrific time at the East Coast Game Conference with friends new and old
• A game I worked on was released – Raid: World War II. I’ve now officially worked on a thing that features John Cleese.
• Ran the WordPlay Festival in November as Festival Director. It was my first event that I ran since arriving in Toronto.
• Finished an outline for an interactive novel about ghost hunters (now I just have to figure out what to do with it)
• Was interviewed for a “featured developer” article by EveryDownload

And all of that is just stuff I can talk about. There are also a few things brewing up behind the scenes that I hope to be able to talk more about soon. Unfortunately, this means that the “looking forward” part of this post is going to be a bit light in detail at the moment. Rest assured that more news will be forthcoming as 2018 progresses. You can definitely expect to see more news about Mandatory Upgrade related projects, and possibly something around a certain web-comic that remains near and dear to my heart. Oops! I may have said too much, ignore that. Regardless, 2018 is shaping up to be an exciting year for Ironic Iconic Studios and I hope you’ll be joining me for the ride.