Design Education from Ideaplatz, LLC

Learn

Enduring Play S2 E11 Released: From Reviving to Thriving with Backyard Sports featuring Lindsay Barnett and James Deighan [Season Finale]

CategoriesEnduring Play
Enduring Play S2 E11 Released: From Reviving to Thriving with Backyard Sports featuring Lindsay Barnett and James Deighan [Season Finale]

Are retro games truly lost to time? Lindsay Barnett and James Deighan are at the forefront of a massive revival: the return of the Backyard Sports franchise. Once beloved, it faded into a loss so complete that the source code was destroyed, leaving only the IP rights in a form so hard to find that Lindsay, now CEO of Playground Productions, had to hire a literal private investigator to track them down on her mission to create gaming experiences worthy of her students at Chicago Public Schools. IP rights in hand, she found James Deighan and his unique company Mega Cat Studios – a retro-focused studio who had been telling anyone who would listen about their desire to work on the Backyard Sports games. Fast forward a few years, and they’re about to release game number 7 together. 6 reverse engineered retro titles that breathed life into the games originally produced by Humongous Entertainment but in a way that captured today’s charts – and built a passionate community of both old and new fans. Now, they’re applying everything they learned as they prepare to launch their first modern game, simply titled Backyard Baseball. In this episode, we explore the history of the Backyard Sports franchise and the role of education as a motivator of play. We explore retro and classic gaming and the role that genre plays in today’s gaming market. And we get a unique peek at a truly thriving developer-publisher relationship, which is not something you get to see every day in game development. Don’t miss this Season 2 finale as we go for an unexpected 11th inning with Lindsay and James at this unique inflection point between the release of their demo in April and the release of their full game in July. This conversation captures an important milestone in their journey: moving forward with purpose, with hope and theory, ready to iterate on the dream of Backyard Sports with their community no matter how the launch lands.

Listen Now: Season 2 Episode 11

Enduring Play: A Game Dev Podcast Season 2 Episode 11: Lindsay Barnett and James Deighan for Backyard Sports [Show Notes]

Key Quotes

Lindsay Barnett

It was actually a very easy decision for us to partner with Mega Cat and James on the Backyard Sports titles. There’s a couple of elements to this. The first is, this is not a job to anybody on the Playground team. This is our purpose and our our legacy and what we want to be doing with our lives. And we really believe that we’re working on a project that can change the landscape for children’s and family entertainment. And that means that we have to do things in a certain way that might not be the traditional way, because we’re always going to be thinking about our fans first. And that is where James became a really great partner, because he shared that exact same passion and vision for this franchise. It was very much “What can we do to make this a great experience for fans, and how can we bring Backyard back in the most positive way possible?”

When I was able to acquire the rights to the brand, I did not know that any retro titles would be able to come back. I thought that they were completely gone. When I met Mega Cat, they were able to do something that I thought was impossible: reverse engineer and really rebuild the retro titles to make them playable on modern devices. And I thought, “hey, we’ll release Backyard Baseball 97 for fan service, and some people will like it,” but I did not expect for it to become the number one game on mobile. It knocked off Minecraft from the top spot. I didn’t expect it to become a top release on Steam. The fans just came back in droves, and people started streaming it and playing it, and new fans started joining in on the fun. And so the brand was able to come back in a much bigger way than I ever could have expected from these retro titles and from the love of these types of games.

Our chief product officer, Chris Waters, has been building brands for 25 years, and he’s worked on some of the biggest brands: Robot Chicken, DreamWorks stuff with Kung Fu Panda, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And he said that he’s never seen a fan community like this. Because what I think people really resonate with about the Backyard Sports games is not like, “Oh, these were just great games.” What they resonate with is: it represents a part of their childhood in which the best thing that you could be is a kid and the best job that you could do is play. And for a generation of millennials who grew up with that as the value system from the game? To just have fun being a kid? It’s celebrating a spirit of play and just having fun. And we really need a lot more of that, especially as sports and gaming become more professionalized. This is a way for every single person to play the game, how they want to play it, and just enjoy it and have fun.

James Deighan

And something about the Backyard fans, they’re like the most patient, happiest fans I’ve ever seen. It’s unlike anything I’ve been part of. And we’ve worked with some global franchises that have massive cult followings and super fandoms and people that just have tattoos and memorabilia. And we see that same fandom in Backyard Sports now, but it’s almost like the franchise previously had never made it to that same kind of cultural zeitgeist, but we see it happening now. And it’s, it’s many, many people’s favorite game, and they just almost forgot that they loved it as much. And it’s such a strange and magical thing. Because from teachers to the kids that grew up in that era, like, oh my god, “Backyard Baseball, that’s amazing!” And it’s every single day, there’s a new moment like that that we have to just kind of step back and have this kind of gratitude for having an opportunity to participate in that moment.

Sometimes when you say accessibility, people start thinking more about color blind mode and, you know, allowing unique audiences and differently abled players to participate. That’s actually like the tip of the iceberg. I think really well done and thoughtful, accessible design is actually just making the game a better quality experience for each player to play and experience the game their own way, using the inputs and the style ofengagement and difficulty they want. Remappable inputs are not just for different players. It’s actually everyone has a preferred input scheme. And when you think about things like high contrast modes and cognitive and auditory and visual accessibility features, these are actually just people tuning the game to what makes it more likely to be their favorite experience, and more immersive and more satisfying, you know, for what they want from a video game.

But I have articles all about this now where I talk about how pixel art is timeless, and I’m a huge fan of it. But it can be the right design choice for some cases, it’s not – it’s not for every IP, for every execution, for every place. I think what makes retro design really accessible and interesting is that you have this, this like distilled pick up and play intuitive nature to it. When you think about the term retro gaming, sometimes people think niche, but I think so much of what I consider retro is like, there’s this timeless quality to it. Like, if you would play Super Mario World today, or, as we saw with Backyard Baseball 97: in Backyard Baseball 97 you could be a brand new fan who’s never played it before, and still be entranced and immersed and lose two hours because you’re having a ton of fun.

Social Media Gallery

Lindsay Barnett: "It was actually a very easy decision for us to partner with Mega Cat and James on the Backyard Sports titles. There's a couple of elements to this. The first is, this is not a job to anybody on the Playground team. This is our purpose and our our legacy and what we want to be doing with our lives. And we really believe that we're working on a project that can change the landscape for children's and family entertainment. And that means that we have to do things in a certain way that might not be the traditional way, because we're always going to be thinking about our fans first. And that is where James became a really great partner, because he shared that exact same passion and vision for this franchise. It was very much "What can we do to make this a great experience for fans, and how can we bring Backyard back in the most positive way possible?"
James Deighan: "Sometimes when you say accessibility, people start thinking more about color blind mode and, you know, allowing unique audiences and differently abled players to participate. That's actually like the tip of the iceberg. I think really well done and thoughtful, accessible design is actually just making the game a better quality experience for each player to play and experience the game their own way, using the inputs and the style of engagement and difficulty they want. Remappable inputs are not just for different players. It's actually everyone has a preferred input scheme. And when you think about things like high contrast modes and cognitive and auditory and visual accessibility features, these are actually just people tuning the game to what makes it more likely to be their favorite experience, and more immersive and more satisfying, you know, for what they want from a video game."
Lindsay Barnett: "When I was able to acquire the rights to the brand, I did not know that any retro titles would be able to come back. I thought that they were completely gone. When I met Mega Cat, they were able to do something that I thought was impossible: reverse engineer and really rebuild the retro titles to make them playable on modern devices. And I thought, "hey, we'll release Backyard Baseball 97 for fan service, and some people will like it," but I did not expect for it to become the number one game on mobile. It knocked off Minecraft from the top spot. I didn't expect it to become a top release on Steam. The fans just came back in droves, and people started streaming it and playing it, and new fans started joining in on the fun. And so the brand was able to come back in a much bigger way than I ever could have expected from these retro titles and from the love of these types of games."
James Deighan: "And something about the Backyard fans, they're like the most patient, happiest fans I've ever seen. It's unlike anything I've been part of. And we've worked with some global franchises that have massive cult followings and super fandoms and people that just have tattoos and memorabilia. And we see that same fandom in Backyard Sports now, but it's almost like the franchise previously had never made it to that same kind of cultural zeitgeist, but we see it happening now. And it's, it's many, many people's favorite game, and they just almost forgot that they loved it as much. And it's such a strange and magical thing. Because from teachers to the kids that grew up in that era, like, oh my god, "Backyard Baseball, that's amazing!" And it's every single day, there's a new moment like that that we have to just kind of step back and have this kind of gratitude for having an opportunity to participate in that moment."
Lindsay Barnett: "Our chief product officer, Chris Waters, has been building brands for 25 years, and he's worked on some of the biggest brands: Robot Chicken, DreamWorks stuff with Kung Fu Panda, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And he said that he's never seen a fan community like this. Because what I think people really resonate with about the Backyard Sports games is not like, "Oh, these were just great games." What they resonate with is: it represents a part of their childhood in which the best thing that you could be is a kid and the best job that you could do is play. And for a generation of millennials who grew up with that as the value system from the game? To just have fun being a kid? It's celebrating a spirit of play and just having fun. And we really need a lot more of that, especially as sports and gaming become more professionalized. This is a way for every single person to play the game, how they want to play it, and just enjoy it and have fun. "
James Deighan: "But I have articles all about this now where I talk about how pixel art is timeless, and I'm a huge fan of it. But it can be the right design choice for some cases, it's not - it's not for every IP, for every execution, for every place. I think what makes retro design really accessible and interesting is that you have this, this like distilled pick up and play intuitive nature to it. When you think about the term retro gaming, sometimes people think niche, but I think so much of what I consider retro is like, there's this timeless quality to it. Like, if you would play Super Mario World today, or, as we saw with Backyard Baseball 97: in Backyard Baseball 97 you could be a brand new fan who's never played it before, and still be entranced and immersed and lose two hours because you're having a ton of fun."

Follow Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast

By Cheryl PlatzOn