Especially for our Patrons in Tier 2 and 3, we have made another Indie Dev interview! Consider joining us on Patreon in Tier 2 or Tier 4 for as little as $3.00 a month and unlock it all! This time our developer interview is with Martyn and Fay, the husband and wife team from Imaginary Friends Games. Here at LadiesGamers, we reviewed Imaginary Friends Games game Shindig.
Shindig is a narrative adventure game released on Steam. I summed my conclusion of the game up by saying that Shindig is what I call a happy game. A game that you will find it hard to keep the smile off your face while you are playing. You can read the rest of the review for Shindig here.
Imaginary Friends Games have also released a spot the difference game, Happy Holidays Calendar which is released on itch.io.
Imaginary Friends Games
Who are Martyn and Fay, can you both tell us a little about yourself?
Hi, and thanks for having us! We’re a married couple of Brits who met when we were in our late teens (in the late 90s) and have been together since then. We’ve both always loved video games: Martyn on home consoles like the SEGA Master System, and Fay on BBC Micro and then early PC.
When we met, we clicked straight away and fell in love while playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time together when it first came out. Years later we had the music from it at our wedding, and many years after that, we both worked for Nintendo for a decade!
Martyn’s been in the games industry for over 20 years as a designer, advisor, analyst, and business developer at places like Sony, Codemasters and Nintendo. A lot is under NDA, so he’s keeping schtum!
Fay’s worked in games for 16 or so years, with roles in QA at Codemasters, and then at Nintendo in technical testing, followed by a decade as a writer, working up from Junior Editor to head of the team, writing Nintendo websites and Nintendo Direct broadcasts. Two years ago, we left the big corporate side of the games industry behind to set up on our own as Imaginary Friends Games.
What’s behind the name of your game studio, Imaginary Friends Games?
Naming your own company is a really tricky task. Something that resonated with both of us was the idea that the characters in books, shows and games are kind of like your friends: they stick with you for years, they’re there when you need them, you can turn to them when times are tough, and they can help you to learn about the kind of person you want to be.
Those characters can be like the grown-up version of imaginary friends from childhood and we wanted to create things that offer all that to anyone who plays our games. Fay suggested it one day and it just sort of stuck.
How did you both start out as game developers?
Martyn started out with a summer job in QA, then moved into designing at Sony, working on EyeToy games, as well as a host of prototypes. From there he worked as a designer at Codemasters before moving to Germany to work in Nintendo’s strategy department, helping out hundreds of companies with their games, as well as advising on Nintendo’s own properties.
For a year he worked in business development, scouting for great projects for Nintendo platforms, before the pull to become indie himself became too strong.
Fay started in QA at Codemasters (we were married by this point!) and did some script editing and voice acting on a title called Overlord. When Martyn got the job at Nintendo, Fay went to Germany too and started writing games reviews for fun to stave off the boredom of being home alone.
Those reviews got her a foot in the door for freelance writing with Nintendo, and for a while, Fay worked in Nintendo’s Lotcheck (technical testing) department by day and wrote for their websites by night. After a while, that evolved into a full-time junior position, and from there she worked her way to head of the team.
LadiesGamers would like to thank Martyn and Fay for agreeing to take part in our Indie Dev Interview.
Want to read the rest of the interview too? About where they found inspirations for their Shindig game, what the early versions or prototypes of the game look like, what kind of games Martyn and Fay want to make in the future and what advice they have for aspiring developers.
So keep reading and become a patron in Tier 2 or 3!
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