Life is a Game, My Friend…

We all know the stereotype of a gamer: socially dysfunctional; lives in their parent’s basement obsessed with all things sci-fi and fantasy; only has a job so they can buy the latest updates on Steam…blah, blah, blah. For those of us who take the leap into game design, you would need to kick that stereotype up a notch. Now, you’re not just obsessed with games, you are obsessed with your game. It gets to the point where even your gamer friends (the ones you haven’t roped into helping develop the game) are putting you off. “Wow! Will you look at the time! I was supposed to meet Jared at the club for a game of racquetball. Ta-ta!” And before you realize that your friend doesn’t even know a Jared, he is off and running.

Beyond talking about A’Kyria, playing A’Kyria, developing pods for A’Kyria, drawing pictures and writing software for A’Kyria, and having Our Own Game Company meetings about things typically related to A’Kyria, we do stuff…life stuff. We have our J.O.B’s, spend time untangling our kids and their various paraphernalia, feed pets, liberate the chickens; the usual stuff. We keep on top of current events. We know that Scalia bought the farm and now Congress and the White House are going to start slugging it out again. We know that 150,000 penguins were wiped out of existence by a thoughtless iceberg. We know the Zika virus is poised to run amok in South America if it doesn’t mutate and kill us all. But our nerdy little hearts are singing for a joyously raunchy and irreverent Deadpool, that a new Star Wars movie is in production and the predicted chocolate shortage hasn’t hit us yet. Firefly is still a classic, Carrie Fisher and Stan Lee are going to be at the Denver Comic Con and all is right with the world.

Gamers of every stripe can appreciate a good obsession. While Our Own Game Company is firmly living in Nerd-dom, our obsession just happens to be something that everyone isn’t talking about…yet. Before you go off to find a Jared to play racquetball with, take a moment to check out the world of A’Kyria to see if “mi casa loco es tu casa loco”…my crazy house is your crazy house. You’re welcome!

We are Our Own Game Company…Playing for the fun of it!

A Blog By Any Other Name

Hi! My name is Louise and I am one of the creators of A’Kyria. Along with my husband, Darrell, our best friend, Rick, Rick’s nephew, Zach, and our newest recruit, Tyler, we have created a role playing game system that we absolutely love playing and, because we love it, it only stands to reason that others would love it, too. Right? As they say, build it and they will come.

Well…

Evidently, it’s a little more involved than that. You need this; you need that…you need a blog. What?! Why?! When every face in your clan of misfit toys looks at you, you know you are in trouble. As the only member of our nerd hierarchy with any kind of social skills, I was thrown under the blog bus. Yay, me.

Don’t get me wrong! We are all fanatics of our game. You can’t spend eight years working on a project like this and not feel like you have metaphorically given birth, with all the joy and pain that that implies. Why did we decide to bring this lovable beast into being?

Well…

We love games. We love role-playing games. Years ago we used to play another role playing game, but there were always elements we did not like. Darrell, being the idea man/self-starter that he is, decided to create software that would help with some of those things. It worked great! We truly enjoyed what it did for the game and, naïve and hopeful, we trotted it out in front of a representative from said role-playing company. Representative was interested. Happy faces for everyone! However, several weeks passed by with no word and then he called to say (and I’m paraphrasing here): ‘We have decided to create software of our own. So sorry and oh, by the way, if you try to sell your software or even give it away for free, we will sue you for everything you have. Have a nice day.’ Sad face!

Well…

What are you going to do? In our case, we decided to dust off an old role playing game my husband had started in high school and see if we could rework it into a system that we liked to play…and use the software with that game. And…voila; A’Kyria was born! (O.K. – it wasn’t quite that simple and painless, but you get the idea.)

Now, A’Kyria is the only role-playing game we play and it isn’t just because we created it. We actually like this system better than any others we have played. And, despite its initial learning curve, every person we have sat down and played the game with has become a fan. It is this kind of response that encouraged us to take it from a hobby to a business; to bring our world of A’Kyria to other gamers.

It’s a tough market to try to break into. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of games and systems out there, but it is our hope that word will spread. A’Kyria has its unique elements, its own stories to tell, magic and combat and creatures; oh, my! And as long as we are having a blast working and playing A’Kyria, we will be adding to the A’Kyria world and expanding its scope. So we invite you to take a stab at something beyond your ‘go-to’ games and give us a try. You may just like it as much as we do.

We are Our Own Game Company…Playing for the fun of it!