Fireside Chat with Matt Householder and Jeremy Kassis

This past Tuesday, SoftNet sponsored a Game Developer's Workshop hosted by YetiZen and held at Temple Nightclub. The speakers were Matt Householder and Jeremy Kassis.

The man behind Diablo II

Matt Householder has a lot of experience in the game industry, most notably as a producer and writer for Diablo II. He created the "!" above NPCs that is also used in World of Warcraft.

The men behind Kitchen Scramble

Matt Householder and Jeremy Kassis worked together on for Kitchen Scramble Playdom. Now the two work together on their own startup. They dispensed some solid advice based on their combined decades of experience in the game industry and their experience as a startup.

Matt Householder and Jeremy Kassis

Takeaways

One takeaway was that when choosing a game idea to work on, pick something that works with your strengths. Between the two of them, they have many years experience in design and programming, but not art. This affected their decision in what type of game to make, deciding on a word game to minimize the art aspect and focus on their design and programming skills.

Also marketability is a factor, though it doesn't have to be the leading factor. A good game will sell itself. People will enjoy playing it and want to share it with their friends.