ORGANIZER’S NOTE: Please be aware that this will be on the 8th floor of Austin Center, on the Capital Factory side (not the Omni Hotel side,) in the Captain America room. Will be streamed on Capital Factory’s Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/CapitalFactory

In this chat, game developer and filmmaker Richard James Cook takes us through his career experiences over the years, successes and failures, and his thoughts on mental health and progression among the community and game industry in general. The chat will also touch on topics like the changing landscape of the games, hiring practices, the independent scene, and career advice for aspiring developers.

Richard started out pursuing computer animation and 3D art at Full Sail University in 2003. Over several years of growing his skillset with indie teams (and a little bit of soul-searching), he began to turn his focus to videography and filmmaking in 2012. This lead him to create 3 documentary films within the gaming genre, 2 of which were published by Devolver Digital (“Pixel Poetry” and “Surviving Indie”). The continued flow of video work also created an opportunity for him to create trailers for many high profile indies, chief among them being New Blood Interactive (Dusk, Ultrakill, etc).

During this time, Richard returned to game development and publishing for a period, going on to pursue his own projects, while working on others that eventually found their way to Nintendo Switch, and other major platforms at Graffiti Games (Blue Fire, Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion).

He is currently a video producer at Kabam in Austin (Marvel Contest of Champions, Transformers, etc).