Many may recall the infamous appearance of Stephanie Morgan at the 2009 Worldwide Developers Conference. But she is more than a mere quote generator. Alongside shepherding Star Defense into the App Store, Stephanie has also worked on WordFu and Topple 2. Now she’s overseeing Star Defense updates and sinking her teeth into an unannounced project. You’re a producer. What does that actually mean? Stephanie: I do pretty much everything from working with developers on game concepts and game design–everything from mechanics to level design to tuning–to managing the [development] schedule and profit and loss. I also work with our marketing team to come up with marketing plans. And other stuff. How’d you wind up at ngmoco? Stephanie: I had been running the game studio at a company called Hands-On Mobile [where she worked on WPT Mobile and Guitar Hero], which really specialized in connected, cross-platform, multiplayer experiences. I’ve always been really interested in the cutting edge of mobile. I had heard a lot about ngmoco, and I had a very good friend (David Glowacki who runs Plus+) who had started at the company at its inception. From talking to him, it sounded like ngmoco was doing really amazing things and looking to advance the platform. And I was really interested in the iPhone and didn’t feel like I could really take advantage of the platform within the context of a traditional mobile company. What attracted you to the iPhone? Stephanie: There’s not really one thing–there’s a series of things that together make the iPhone so compelling. First of all, in classic mobile there’s crazy device fragmentation. The ability to really concentrate on one device–to refine and hone your game rather than getting distracted by a bunch of different SKUs–was incredibly appealing. Now the thing that allows you to support one device is the amazing App Store and the general market that has developed around it. And along with that–what built that market–is the philosophy of accessibility and the idea that anyone can publish things. That really forces innovation and growth within the market, which is also very different from classic mobile where the carrier is really a pronounced gateway and you have to be a large, established player in order to get in. What game inspired you to make games? Stephanie: I’ve been playing games since I was four. Non-stop. So I’ve definitely grown up loving them. The first time I tried to make a game was on my Commodore 64 with the little tape deck. I was writing in Basic, and I felt all futuristic, science fiction techie. I would make little flow charts and then try to code it all out. I made this incredibly bad adventure game. What inspired that was “games are cool,” [not a particular game.] But it wasn’t until way later in my life that I actually realized that I could do that as a career. Like way later. You were a professional card player for a while…how did you transition into a game producer extraordinaire? Stephanie: Well, going into playing cards definitely tied into the fact that I really like games. It was a really fun experience. I did that for a couple of years. But it really wasn’t a very inspiring or creative environment–playing in a casino everyday. I was looking around trying to figure out how to blend a lot of my core loves–games, creativity (I worked in film for a while), and technology (I had a dotcom as well)–I wanted something that would merge all of those because each of them sated me but in very different ways. It occurred to me, ‘OMG, videogames!’ So I looked around. I kind of checked out the console and PC space, but that wasn’t really interesting to me. I wanted something that had the same vibrancy of the whole dotcom era. Mobile seemed the right sort of nascent spot. I started out at Glu, which at that point was called Sorrent. The very first game I made there was Baldur’s Gate [mobile], which was received incredibly well. It was an amazing experience. I fell in love with it, and I never looked back. What would you say is the defining moment of your career so far? Stephanie: Probably being on stage at WWDC, which has nothing to do with gamemaking. It just showcases how random gamemaking actually is. What I like about it is it’s never the same thing. Every new game is totally different. You’re constantly relearning your craft. You try to apply theoretical best practices, but they’re only best practices for like 10 minutes on one project. On the scale of most terrifying things you’ve ever done, where does WWDC rank? Stephanie: Oh probably at the top. Did you think that “BAM!” would become an Internet phenomenon? We’re so turning it into one. Stephanie: No. I did not at all. If Neil booted you onto the street tomorrow and decreed that you could never work in the games industry again, what would you do? Stephanie: I would go back to making movies. And I’m convinced that there is a way that the intense personal response that you get from videogames can inform filmmaking and make it more personal. Filmmaking, like music, is very evocative and you have intense emotional responses [to it], but it’s all a little bit outside of yourself. At some point I really want to explore–no matter what–a way to integrate those philosophies and see what that does. If you could change one thing about the current iPhone gaming market, what would it be? Stephanie: I would like to see ways for people to give feedback outside of iTunes. I’d like to see a way to integrate all the information that is within iTunes to outside communities, like Twitter and Facebook. I think that the community feedback loop is one of the most interesting things about this space overall…because the other cool thing is [developers] can respond with updates on the fly all of the time. Being able to aggregate all that in a way that is useful for the gamer and useful for the developer would be awesome. What app on your iPhone would you be embarrassed to show a random stranger? Stephanie: If you’re forcing me to name one, it would have to be 24: Special Ops. What’s the most recent game you’ve played that ngmoco had nothing to do with? Stephanie: Resident Evil 5. I haven’t touched anything but Star Defense since March. What game do you wish you had made? Stephanie: It’s a toss-up–and they’re both oddly made by Square Enix. Either Final Fantasy VII or Parasite Eve. Those were two defining games for me. Outside of the gamemaking and gameplaying universe, what eats up the most of your time? Stephanie: Movies, writing, hiking, drinking…definitely not in that order. true 2009-08-14T12:32:09Z Many may recall the infamous appearance of Stephanie Morgan at the 2009 Worldwide Developers Conference. But she is more than a mere quote generator. Alongside shepherding Star Defense into the App Store, Stephanie has also worked on WordFu and Topple 2. Now she’s overseeing Star Defense updates and sinking her teeth into an unannounced [...] 13 image/jpeg smorgan.jpg 12820 2009-08-24T19:00:11Z http://wordpress.ngmoco.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/smorgan.jpg true meet-ngmocos-stephanie-morgan 2009-06-23T19:11:37Z 2009-08-24T19:00:11Z 119