Our Studio
Demon Jam Games (LLC) was formed in November of last year (2023) in the great state of Texas between Kay Bell and Michael Arman-- who actually met through the touring music scene! Kay is a former AAA game producer, with credits on Fortnite, Minecraft, and WWE games, while Michael hails from the narrative side of TTRPGs, brewing up adventures for players to explore through some dice rolls. We're about to enter our first round of funding to pay salaries, licensed and commissioned music, and any other fees we will need.
Demon Jam consists of 12 folks around the world. We're dedicated to creating the studio game developers deserve to work in: one of trust, open collaboration, and lots of photos of guitar axes. Michael and Kay both have a background in social justice and political advocacy work in anarchist circles and strive to bring these themes into our games as well.
Our long term studio goal is to make games with and for musicians with an incredible group of queer, trans, and other marginalized people. We also hope to set up a 'First Tour Grant' which will help pay for bands to take their first tours after our first game release -- truly putting our money where our mouth is.
State of Development
Currently, we are still in pre-production, with about six months of development finished. We are finalizing style and engineering guides, creating our starter assets of Morgan and enemies, and beginning to reach out to musicians for licensing or commissioned work.
When possible, we are looking to license songs off of albums musicians own directly rather than going through labels. We are aiming for first rounds of funding discussions to take place during the Game Developers Conference in March. This funding round will go towards licensed and commissioned music, paying for subscriptions and other fees, and financially supporting our team, with plans to pay full, equal salaries.
Beyond VC funding, we will be setting up a kickstarter with our demo planned for Summer 2024. A large part of our project is allowing any musician we license or commission from the option of joining our project during its production, even if they have no experience in game development. We *want* to make games with musicians and let them have a hand in the art we create, whether that's assisting with design or narrative, looking into marketing and community, or sticking to their roots on the music side. Even when going through labels, we still want to offer this option to all musicians -- it's cool to know your music is in a video game!