The key theme at FarBridge this year has been growth. As a company, we welcomed new team members, helped create some amazing video games, announced new partnerships, traveled for the first time in years, and launched a new blog series to show support for our community of game developers from all walks of life.
We were very touched to have been nominated for the Best in Austin award for Local Video Game Developer by the Austin Chronicle, our weekly alternative newspaper here in Central Texas. Of course, our team is more than just in Austin, but most of us call the Austin Area home. Even though we didn’t win, it’s an honor to have been nominated.
We are so proud of the work we’ve done and all we’ve accomplished as a growing and thriving game studio this year, and we’d like to take a moment to share what we’ve been up to!
Projects we worked on in 2022
Battlefield Mobile
First off, we’re still working on Battlefield Mobile with our partners at Industrial Toys and Electronic Arts. The game’s open beta is live in a number of countries, but not yet available here in the USA. We’re looking forward to talking more about our team’s work on the game soon — not to mention playing the game with y’all!
Rumbleverse
This year also saw the release of Rumbleverse, a game Patrick Curry, our CEO, is more than a little obsessed with playing. The FarBridge team did a little work on the game, and we’re thrilled to see the game grow now as players and fans! Kudos to all our friends at Iron Galaxy and Epic Games for putting an all-new spin on the battle royale genre!
Walkabout Mini Golf
Walkabout Mini Golf continues to release new content and be a super fun chill place to hang out with friends in VR. We’re excited for Mighty Coconut’s ongoing success and growth, and proud to support them and their use of our FarBridge Worlds technology. Walkabout remains one of the most-played games in the studio. How cool is it to have a golf course based on the classic adventure game Myst?!
Political Arena
FarBridge also continued work on Political Arena this year, helping create a one-of-a-kind strategy sim game about American politics. We’re thrilled we got to support Wayside Press at the Higher Ground Labs accelerator in Washington, DC, and create new features and prototypes of this groundbreaking and important videogame.
We also worked on some projects that we can’t say too much about just yet…
As we teased back in July… we’re still working on something secret and big with Gearbox Software. We can’t give a ton of details… but we’re cleared to say that it’s “secret” and “big”. Keep an eye out for more information on this project in 2023!
We’ve also been working with our pals at Wizards of the Coast on something cool and equally secretive this year. We’re not even going to make vague allusions here — we just want to say that we appreciate the partnership and we’re delighted to continue on this journey with them into 2023!
And finally… we’re also cooking up some original new concepts at FarBridge. While we’re not quite ready to share them with the world, our team has been doing tremendous work and we’re bursting at the seams to show it off. If you catch us at DICE or GDC next year, there’s a good chance we’ll give you a sneak peek!
As a remote studio, we welcomed folks from all over the country to join FarBridge.
We’ve been super lucky to be able to grow our team and even hit our stride as a completely remote game studio. The most important thing to us at FarBridge is our team and community, and this year we’ve been able to welcome some amazing all-new folks to our team, welcome back some prior contributors who are now full-time, and continue to support the growth and careers of our existing team.
We’re striving to make FarBridge one of the best companies to work for and with in the games industry. Our team continues to set the bar for us, and we couldn’t be more proud and grateful for the way they take care of each other, themselves, and the community we make all together. You can learn more about the FarBridge team, values, and culture on our website.
We traveled to cons, talked on panels, and met new friends
This year the FarBridge team was fortunate enough to participate in many travel and speaking opportunities. We had a great time meeting and catching up with friends we hadn’t seen since early 2020.
The team traveled to Las Vegas for DICE, San Francisco for GDC, 20 minutes to downtown Austin for SXSW, across the world to Cologne, Germany for Gamescom, and out west again for PAX West in Seattle.
Sharing Our Knowledge
One of the best parts of participating in conferences again is the opportunity for us to learn from our colleagues, and to give back and share some of our wisdom with the gamedev community. Here are some of the highlights of the year!
At the Game Developers Conference our Studio Creative Director, Richard Rouse III, hosted his annual “Rules of the Game” session. This popular session brings together game designers to talk about rules that are important to them, rules of thumb they use in making games, and other outside the box ideas that can challenge the way Richard and designers everywhere think about design. He’s scheduled to head up the presentation again at GDC 2023; make sure you check it out!
At this year’s Game Devs of Color Expo, our Executive Producer, Donald Harris, gave a presentation on The 10 Commandments of Business Development. Donald gave attendees guidance on his key rules for the business side of the game industry, to help them with their money-game as they make video games. Donald can be found on LinkedIn for all things business development.
Richard also joined this year’s LudoNarraCon to discuss storytelling in games on the panel “Shocking Developments: Subverting Expectations with Game Stories.” This discussion featured designers and writers from the industry and dove deep into the process of how they write stories. Make sure to check out the video if you’d like to learn more and rewatch the panel.
Last, but certainly not least, we were fortunate enough to be a part of this year’s CONEXION career fair organized by Latinx in Gaming. CONEXION was a month-long virtual career event in June focused on connecting the Latinx community to professionals in the industry with a career fair, panels, webinars, resume reviews, and networking opportunities. A few folks from FarBridge were invited to participate in the career fair on June 24th alongside companies like PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, Iron Galaxy, and Owlchemy Labs.
We’re excited to see what opportunities for learning, teaching, and growth await us all next year. Getting to connect with like-minded and like-passioned folks makes this industry great, so if you’re looking to connect with us, please hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
We launched our #GoodCommunity blog series to highlight organizations that foster good communities
In March of this year, we introduced our new series #GoodCommunity to highlight all the great organizations and companies we have had the honor of working with over the last five years.
The goal of #GoodCommunity is to uplift and celebrate the folks that help make our industry and the world at large a more inclusive and empowering space for everyone. As mentioned in our Being an Ally and Uplifting the LGBTQIA+ Community installment, we are committed to making a safe, welcoming environment for all humans we work and come into contact with. This is a responsibility we take very seriously, and we strive to keep this community welcoming as we grow our game studio, team, and online community.
Good community is a community that works for, supports, and lifts up everyone — and we’re excited to be part of our industry and can’t wait to see how we all grow together. Make sure to follow our blog on Medium to be the first to know when our next #GoodCommunity installment is published.
We prioritized having team hangs both virtually and in person.
As a fully remote team with folks on each coast and everywhere in between, getting to spend time together in-real-life has become extra special. We’ve made it a priority to have at least four in-person gatherings a year to help cultivate our community, see our colleagues, and play lots and lots of games together. Here’s a quick recap of past team hangs:
We celebrated our five-year anniversary during an unexpected cold front in Central Texas, but our folks were good sports about it.
In July, we treated the team to a private screening of Thor: Love and Thunder.
We planned a virtual get-together online and folks on our team hosted a Summerween Carnival. We played some online games and enjoyed running around an environment our colleague Autumn put together. The fun included a maze, party and trivia games, a piano, and lots of fun little Easter eggs with FarBridge lore.
Our team LOVES playing board games so naturally, we had to host a board game night.
A few weeks ago, we threw a holiday party in Austin and were lucky enough to have most of our team attend. Although a few of our folks weren’t able to make the event, we feel grateful to have had the chance to spend an evening almost-all-together enjoying good food and nice weather. (Games were also played, don’t you worry!)
2022, A Year Coming to an End
2022 has been an exciting year for FarBridge, and we’re beyond grateful that we get to share this journey with our amazing team, our family and friends, our advisors, and the broader community of game developers all around the world. Without y’all, none of this would be possible — or fun!
As the year draws to a close, we raise our glasses to the triumphs of 2022 and the promise of 2023. We’ll see y’all next year ;)
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