Over a year ago, Anthony “Tony” Arias, the co-founder of civic tech startup OrganizeTogether, began to wind the operation down. Founded as a tool for activists and volunteers working on progressive political campaigns, OrganizeTogether counted more than 10,000 volunteers on its platform as of last summer, but it failed to gain long-term traction.
“So much of my job was just banging down people’s doors and begging them, ‘Hey, just try this software,’” Arias recalled. “I put all this effort in.”
After making the decision to scale back OrganizeTogether, Arias hit the road with his partner, award-winning graphic novelist Abby Howard. Howard was working the convention circuit, meeting fellow cartoonists in city after city. In October last year, at New York Comic Con, Arias and Howard started to toss around the idea of making a video game together.
It was new territory for both of them. Howard was used to comics, not animated drawing; Arias had never worked in video game development. But the idea was enticing, and the timing was right, as the two were between projects and the pandemic limited travel.
“It was one of those scenarios where the stars sort of aligned,” Arias said. “Both of us had been pretty close to each other, wrapping up major projects that we’d been focused on for a long time.”
Arias and Howard co-founded an indie game studio, Black Tabby Games, and got to work dreaming up the story that would form the backbone of their first game. In April, Howard wrote the script for “Scarlet Hollow,” a horror novel and adventure game. Navigating the fictional town of Scarlet Hollow, the player must make choices that will determine the fate of individual characters and, ultimately, the entire town.
Over the spring and summer, Howard drew the assets for the game, while Arias handled the technical side of the game. They hired contractors to handle the music and sound design. The couple toiled away from their shared apartment in Allston, which they had already grown used to working from during their years of semi- and fully remote work.
By last month, it was complete. Black Tabby Games released Episode I of “Scarlet Hollow” for free on Steam on Sept. 25, where it was immediately received with great fanfare by users and reviewers.
Howard launched a Kickstarter for “Scarlet Hollow” on Oct. 1. The project was funded beyond its $25,000 goal in a single day. The money, now totaling more than $37,000, will power the release of the next episode, enabling Black Tabby Games to avoid seeking outside investment.
“I think that we have something highly valuable here, and I think the Kickstarter put us in a very good financial position to keep ourselves going from release to release,” Arias said. “If we don't have to give equity to other people, why give equity to other people?”
Arias, who thinks of himself as a “product person” first and foremost, said it was rewarding to put his effort into a creative role, rather than a business-minded one.
And for Howard, Black Tabby Games could provide a whole new kind of creative outlet.
“Since I've been working in comics, it's a still medium,” Howard said. “It does have a lot of flow through the pages, but the characters just don't quite come to life the way that they do in a video game. They just feel so much more alive than I'm used to. Seeing my images move around, seeing the interactivity, has been incredibly rewarding for me.”
