MICHAEL AGUSTIN

Birth of place: Filipino

Michael Agustin, 44, is founder, co-founded of Gendai Games, which recently launched its GameSalad game creation site at SXSW. GameSalad allows users to create games for the desktop, the Apple iPhone, the web, and on Facebook without having to know how to program.

While the tool is free for anyone to make games with, the ability to create a version of your game for publishing to a platform like the iPhone requires the developer to be a subscribing member.

We do not take any royalties from games made with GameSalad so 100% of the profits (minus Apple’s cut of course) belongs to the developer.

Overall, it was an eye-opening experience to see designers create “fun” in an emergent manner with tools that I created.
Realizing the power of design tools, I decided to apply to Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology masters program.

After a year in development, we reached Alpha with around 200 creators. Six months later we launched our open Beta just before SXSW. We now have over 1400 creators in less than 3 weeks, uploading games every day.

“As a grad student, I researched processes and tools for the rapid ideation and prototyping of games or other project. In the games or other industries, like industries wise decided late into the production after millions were spent. It’s like working on a project tools without storyboards or even a script”.