About
The Factory Games Story
Factory Games is based in San Francisco and was founded in early 2009 by Andrew Littlefield and Eli Delventhal. The objectives for Factory Games as a company are very simple:
- Produce enjoyable videogames.
- Expand the range of stories and characters that are associated with videogames.
- Give back to the communities from which we have drawn inspiration.
Working out of a small study in Andrew’s loft, the small self funded startup team started development immediately on a number of concepts both in terms of gameplay and the story and characters that Factory Games wanted to introduce into the market.
The initial focus was developing a game that was enjoyable and addictive and after a number of experiments the concept for a game called Valet Hustle emerged. Valet Hustle combined elements of the best puzzle and resource management games that the team had played over a combined 30 years of gaming experience.
The team only had to look at the gay and lesbian communities in San Francisco for inspiration for characters and stories that definitely challenged the norm for traditional videogames.
A vague rags to riches storyline emerged and the team drafted one of their friends, Lulu Magdangal, to develop a back story for the Valet Hustle based on her experiences growing up as a lesbian and running her own business.
After the basic gameplay and storyline was in place the team expanded to include artists and the look and feel of the game went through a number of iterations ranging from stop motion based graphics, through traditional animation before settling on an Anime style look for the game and backstory.
The combination of the gameplay design, Lulu’s backstory and an Anime look and feel resulted in two characters emerging: Akira and Ren. The characters had a very similar background, they grew up in Tokyo and rebelled during their teenage years. Akira and Ren where both expelled from school at least partly due to being very open about their sexuality. This resulted in starting their respective careers at bottom of the career ladder working as a Valet at their fathers restaurant.
The iPhone was chosen as a platform due to the low startup costs and an older, mixed demographic would be more likely to accept gay and lesbian characters than the teenage male demographic that dominates most game consoles.
As the gay and lesbian communities that inspired the backstory for Valet Hustle and characters of Akira and Ren, Factory Games will be donating a portion of the proceeds to the Human Rights Campaign. We feel very strongly that gay and lesbians should have the same rights to marry as heterosexuals.
Near term Factory Games will be releasing more levels for Valet Hustle and building on the initial storylines' introduced with Akira and Ren. Factory Games will also be introducing a version of Valet Hustle for the iPad upon it’s release.
Longer term Factory Games will continue to expand on the characters and stories that are associated with videogames, and will continue with donations to worthy causes.