What Inspires Us

These are our personally-written responses to the question "When it comes to game development, what inspires you?"

Sean Ennis

My own inspiration comes from my own thoughts.

Andrew DeBronkart

Games have been a huge part of my life since I was like, 4. I went to my great-aunt's house one day in the Summer to go swimming, and two of my cousins were inside playing Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis. I was all “THIS IS AWESOME” and they were all “LOL YOU SHOULD TOTALLY PLAY CUZ YOU'RE LIKE 4 YEARS OLD.” Then I totally was better at Sonic than them and they convinced my mum to get me a Genesis myself. Looking back at home movies and such, there's a lot of time where the rest of the family is doing something, while you can see me glued to the TV with an NES controller in my hand.

I've found repeatedly that the games I enjoy the most are the ones that really tweak my mind, story based games like Heavy Rain and anything that keeps you guessing/questioning morality, and my overall goal is to make games along the same line. In my eyes, games are, more than anything else, an interactive storytelling media which is not having its full potential accessed by most developers, and I strive to one day make bigger console games along those lines, games with stories which are captivating and new, which let the players play through new experiences they wouldn't be able to have otherwise.

Outside of that, there's also the place for quick little addicting games with no substantial story whatsoever, and I'm sure to pump out a few of those as well over my career. We wouldn't be anywhere without games like Mario and Sonic, and let's face it, I need my Angry Birds.

Muhammad "Mo" Abdul-Rahim

Pretty much anything presenting an amazing story along with a beautiful artistic image, regardless of medium. From mainstream games, I find myself looking to older Nintendo games like MOTHER and Majora’s Mask the most due to them being emotional character studies as well as fantastic games. However, independent games I find more inspirational when it comes to game creation. Works by Terry Cavanagh and Christine Love I find visually phenomenal and compellingly captivating, respectively. From a non-game perspective, the artistic images presented in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and the German film Metropolis also stuck with me since I first experienced them, and often come up in my mind when I do graphics design.

I also find great interest in how older games dealt with issues like graphics, memory, and whatnot. These low-level technologic feats not only are impressive, but also are incredibly smart. It's that type of smart, logical design that I try to emulate when I work on a coding project, be it for games or otherwise.

I was originally a Sega fan, but in the midst of their financial woes, somehow became very attached to Nintendo and their intellectual property.