Justin Gary Makes Games for a Living

My guest for this episode is Justin Gary, an award-winning game designer, author, and speaker. We discuss how Justin turned his passion for gaming into a lucrative career, the key decisions he made that led to his success, and a few of the many lessons he’s learned along the way.

Episode notes

Justin Gary is an award-winning game designer, author, and speaker. He started his career in gaming at the age of seventeen when he won the Magic: The Gathering US National Championships. He went on to play Magic professionally for several years, winning a Grand Prix, Pro Tour, and World Championship along the way.

Justin dropped out of NYU Law School to pursue an opportunity as a game designer. He went on to lead-design the DC Comics: Infinite Crisis set and create the World of Warcraft Miniatures Game. Justin left his job as a game designer to start his own company.

In 2010, he created the smash hit deck-building game Ascension. Justin’s latest project, Ascension Tactics just raised nearly half a million dollars of pre-orders on kickstarter, more than triple the original goal.

In this episode we talk about:

What Justin learned from playing Magic professionally and the biggest distinction between those who succeeded as professional gamers and those who didn't (9:40)
How Justin found the courage to quit in the middle of law school and pursue his passion instead (19:40)
How you can tell if you are on the right path in your own life, or just following someone else’s plan (22:30)
The key to happiness that most people get backwards (40:30)
How to get started as a game designer (44:45) -- like most of what we discussed in this episode, these principles apply to any creative work (art, starting a business, writing, etc).

Books Mentioned:

Links:

JustinGary.com - Justin’s main website
Think Like A Game Designer - Justin’s book and podcast (look out for the online course coming soon)
@Justin_Gary on Twitter