You’re in front of a row of apartments less than a block away from the Montrose El stop. It’s raining, and just a bit too windy. You’re trying to find a particular apartment, but for some reason these addresses don’t seem right.
…> open inventory
Inventory: Wallet, dorm keys, hoodie (with the hood up), shirt (on), blue jeans (on, zipped), notepad, cellular phone
> read notepad
It says, "Craig Stern, independent game developer, off Montrose stop"
> call Craig with cellular phone
Craig says he’s outside already. You look around and quickly find him. You are just on the wrong side of the street.
> write profile
Craig Stern is a 26-year-old independent game developer who works in about a ten-square-foot studio with little more than a computer, a piano keyboard, and a box full of notepads to create games that anyone with an internet connection can play anywhere in the world. And he just passed the bar exam.
“I started [game development] the summer before I started law school. I had three months to kill, because I had left my old job, and I said to myself 'I’ve got three months before law school starts, I want to do something with this time'… So I got myself a Flash trial version and sat down and I started learning ActionScript, and trying to make an RPG,” Stern explained.
That RPG Stern worked on would eventually see release as Telepath RPG Chapter 1, which won a prize or two and made it onto the front page of Newgrounds.com, the famous Flash game and movie website, but Stern disowned it, saying it was his sloppy early work. “[Fledgling developers] always want to make an RPG and it’s terrible, and they never finish it, and they never make another game again. I did finish it. It was still terrible, but I finished it,” he said. Afterwards, Stern entered law school and spent nine months creating Chapter 2, which saw greater success when it was sponsored by Armor Games and spread across the internet.
Article comments