Wow! No Images? Click here Seven YearsIt's been seven years since April 2012, when Fullbright (at that time, The Fullbright Company) was founded. It's kind of crazy to think about.. a child born at the same time we started the company would be in 1st grade now! In those seven years we've shipped some games, won some awards, and been lucky enough to bring a bunch of awesome, inspiring people onto our team. We started the company in a house in Portland, OR. Well, not true. We started the company in my wife's parents' house in Aloha, OR, a suburb outside the city. That was April 2012. My first desk was in the computer nook in Rachel's parents' house downstairs; Karla and Johnnemann worked at the dining room table that we pushed up against the wall. It was another month or so before we found a little house of our own to rent in the city, in the Hollywood District in Portland. Our office was in the basement, and not long after moving in we were lucky enough to meet Kate, who joined the team as our environment artist for Gone Home, working remotely from Vancouver, CA. We shipped Gone Home in August 2013-- tracking our progress on our production whiteboard for the final months of development. After that, I dunno, a lot of stuff happened?? We were fortunate to have Gone Home recognized by reviewers and players for doing something new, and were able to move forward into working on our second game, Tacoma-- a game set in 2088, a speculative future a world away from Gone Home's grounded 1995. We expanded our team, bringing on some old friends like Tynan, whom we'd worked with on BioShock 2 at 2K Marin, and Sarah, the voice of Sam Greenbriar who's now our producer and office manager at the studio. And we expanded what our games could do, filling Tacoma with animated scenes voiced by a cast of incredible actors that we were lucky enough to get to record with on-site, ensemble style, on a soundstage in Los Angeles. Tacoma was released on PC & Xbox in August 2017, and came to PS4 about six months later, adding developer commentary mode where all the folks from our team got to speak about their contributions to our biggest project yet. Going back and recording commentary mode for our games is a wonderful opportunity for us to look back on the game we made and all the different kinds of work and thought that went into it-- and to share some of those anecdotes and that insight with players who want a deeper look into how games like ours come to be. Now it's April 2019, and we're working on our next game, supported by the fine folks at Annapurna Interactive (publishers of games like What Remains of Edith Finch, Florence, Goragoa, and Donut County.) We've brought a few more excellent developers onto the team, and are putting all we've got into Fullbright's third game... a title we're excited to share more about, when the time comes... But for now, from all of us here at Fullbright, we want to say thank you again for making these seven years possible. I can't overstate how much we appreciate your taking the time to follow what we do, play what we make, and welcome us into your inbox with missives like these! And to celebrate our seventh anniversary... A "thank you" sale from us to you!Earlier this year we worked with Limited Run to bring Tacoma to PS4 in a special physical edition, and we know some fans of the game weren't able to grab it when the Limited Run promotion was on. But we found some final stock of the game (and our adorable ODIN plush!) that we're making available right now, straight from the Fullbright shop! As well as the PS4 physical version, we also have the last of our little baby ODIN plush in stock, perfect for hanging from your rear view mirror, or to watch over you in your home. He is all-seeing, after all-- but in a good way! Such a little cutie. And, while supplies last, I guarantee we'll throw in an extra little goodie or two with each order... We honestly only have a handful of ODINs and a double-digit number of physical copies left, and when they're gone, that's all we've got! So apologies if you click through to the shop and we've already sold out. But I wanted to give you, the subscribers of the Fullbright newsletter, first crack at what we have, so... And for those who haven't grabbed both our games in digital format (or are looking for an excuse to get a friend into what we do) we're also celebrating our 7th anniversary by putting both Gone Home and Tacoma on sale for 70% off on Steam! The Anniversary Sale runs for a week; we appreciate you checking it out, or sending the link along to a friend who might be looking for a good excuse to discover Fullbright's games...! Missed us at GDC? No worries......because the organizers have been kind enough to put Fullbright folks' GDC talks up on the GDC Vault for free! Nina was part of the Indie Game Summit microtalk series on Personal Experiences as Games. She spoke about her approach to making games about her own life with a focus on a series she's working on right now about her relationship with her boyfriend (and personal game collaborator), Jake. The games they're making together are really inspiring, and I'm so glad she got to speak about them! All the microtalks in this series are fantastic, and you can jump to the 04:51 mark in the video to check out Nina's section specifically. Also in the Indie Game Summit, Leighton did a 30 minute talk about her experience following the release of her last game, Dream Daddy, and shared some insight into the aftermath of dealing with sudden success (and sudden scrutiny) while being terminally online. Follow along to learn some tips for managing your own relationship with the web as a game creator, or just for insight into what it's like on the other side of the curtain for folks who ship games and end up under the microscope. Thanks for watching!! Welcome to... the Reading ListAs I noted above, we're working with Annapurna Interactive on our next game, and while we don't have anything specific to share yet (and probably won't for some time) I thought I'd transition this section of the newsletter from Portland Stuff to what I'm calling the Reading List! Each newsletter we send out between now and our next game's launch will include some "suggested reading" that might be relevant to what we're working on... in some way, shape, or form... and that hopefully you'll find interesting to check out regardless of exactly what we might be up to... This month's Reading List item is a primer on Film Noir! I made a Letterboxd account pretty much just to make this list, so forgive my fairly spare profile-- but I've had a long-running love affair with film noir, and a fairly strong self-education in the genre, and wanted to share my picks for a guided tour through the dark side of mid-century Hollywood. The first proper noir film I saw, oddly enough, was Kiss Me Deadly, as part of an intro to American film course I took at the University of Florida, gosh, almost 20 years ago now. If they wanted to jump us into what film noir was, they sure picked a hell of an entry point; Kiss Me Deadly is one of the more twisted examples of the genre, a brutal, nuclear-powered fever dream that built off of everything noir had established and turned it into something otherworldly and unsettling. From there I worked my way back through the classic foundations of noir (Casablanca, Double Indemnity) and was introduced to a number of lesser-known entries like Thieves' Highway and Gun Crazy by the wonderful Noir City film festival when I lived in San Francisco. And now I share my learnings with you: a list of what I'd call "essentials" for experiencing all the twists and turns of what noir film can be, from its origins through to the endpoints in the spectrum of noir. If you're looking for a way to get into this unforgettable era in filmmaking, I hope you'll find what you're looking for as Entry Number One in our newsletter's Reading List! Thanks again, friend, for subscribing to the Fullbright newsletter! On a personal note... I'm just days away from becoming a father! My wife, Rachel, is past her due date, and time is ticking down til a new little life will join us in this world-- so if there's a bit of a delay before you receive another newsletter from us, forgive me. But, on the other hand, next time we send one of these out it'll almost surely include at least one baby picture, so look forward to that! 👶 For now, I just want to thank you again for following along with what we do at Fullbright. It's kind of impossible to get my head around the fact that it's been seven years since we started this whole thing at the dining table of Rachel's parents' house. Fullbright has brought so many things into my life that I'm incredibly grateful for-- not least of which is all of you who play our games and care about this thing we do, and the wonderful team of people who have put their trust in us and made the creation of these games possible. The team we've gathered are the kindest, most dedicated people I've met in the games industry (or anywhere)-- and so above all, this is a thank you to them. Running an independent studio like ours is hard a lot of the time-- but all of the time, I'm beyond grateful for the people I get to work with every day. Thank you all for being here. Til we write again, don't hesitate to drop us a line at hello@fullbrig.ht! All the best,
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