WRITING
From long, ponderous prose set in far away fantasy lands to compelling literary reportage to sardonic media reviews to technical writing to straight journalism, I continue to write for purpose and pleasure. Here are a few examples.
Joe Granato IV
Ever since reading your mission statement, I've felt a connection to OCP. I have always believed that video games have the capacity to be a tangential form of personal expression, and that everyone with something to convey should be empowered to create in games' unique vernacular. I have spent the past ten years putting the power of game development in the hands of people who had once found it unapproachable, and this is something I am very pasionate about. I am inspired in finding a team with that same vision.
Empowering Others to Create
The high concept - turn passionate players into ambitious creators. From its roots as an in-house utility to make working with ASM 6502 code more accessible for the creatives on our team, NESmaker has since become a go-to for retro development with over 10,000 active users around the world. It has become about much more than nostalgia. With NESmaker-created projects releasing in parallel on modern platforms, it has become a legitimate development environment for expressing oneself through the art of games.
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"Joe has done something incredible in bringing NES development to the masses and ushering in a game development renaissance for the classic system. He has created a tool that is easy enough for a someone who is not technical to easily understand and yet sophiscated enough for a seasoned game developer or software engineer to tweak freely for their needs; that delicate balance is very hard to achieve."
FRANK LIMA
Dreamworks Animation, Lead Animation Pipeline Technical Director
NESmaker
Director, ASM Programmer
My current flagship game-related project is NESmaker, a software for gui based development of cartridge playable NES games. It started as an ambition to create a game, and soon grew into a mission to create a vehicle through which others could create their games. From a seedling of an idea, the software has grown into an international lightning rod for retro game development. As director, I managed a quarter million-dollar crowdfunding campaign, successfully courted investors, created and presented pitch decks to major retail outlets such as GameStop, and handled all update roll outs based on consumer feedback. I have managed the busines, the brand, media relations, email campaigns, social media, complex tangential projects, and a diverse team of creatives and programmers.
But the conceptual puzzle is what I've truly enjoyed. The dramatic question - how to make NES development accessible to someone who has no experience with code? It was both a creative and technical puzzle to strike the right balance that not only made game development accessible, but made game development within the NES constraints and built on archaic 6502 ASM accessible.
As lead programmer for the NES Assembly, I developed malleable, manageable libraries of 6502 ASM that can be recombined and repurposed to create various modules of games. I have created extensive design documents to illustrate the complicated series of hooks to tie ASM to front end controls, and I have developed learning resources to help users understand both the tool and low level programming.
Beyond the tools themselves, I have cultivated a community of brand ambassadors that have invigorated the retro development community and led to hundreds of quality new NES games, some of which have achieved significant financial success. To meet the needs of this community, I have also created a showcase website that acts as repository, arcade, and user marketplace.
Most recently, I have reconceptualized the software based on community feedback and engagement with a high focus on UI/UX, and have built a single system that can deploy to multiple consoles (the current build, NES and SNES with a backdoor to output for others). Added to that, I've literally written the book on using the software and through it, learning 6502 ASM.
Teaching to Build Digital Worlds
In this video, you can see in real time how I approached programming this boss, Kesali, in 6502 ASM for the NES game Mystic Searches. The purpose of this video was to demonstrate to users of the NESmaker platform how to take ideas from concept to gameplay through programming, explaining the function and purpose for every step, and how custom code bases can be used with the GUI based NESmaker tools to infinitely extend its functionality.
This written tutorial is from an instructional series aimed at helping users build entire engines from scratch, still making use of NESmaker for asset creation and management. In this particular lesson, I demonstrate how to get controller input and apply it to movement of the player object on the screen. Beyond that, it looks at how to regulate frame timing so that the main game loop occurs exactly once per frame. Click on the Summer Camp image to access the PDF.
Building Communities
Ask any user of NESmaker and they're likely to assert that the best thing about the software is its community. I have long understood the importance of the emotional connection that comes with building a vibrant, active community. Before NESmaker, I galvanized filmmakers in the Tampa Bay area into Manasota Films, culminating in the nerdy film Caster's Blog. Prior to that, I helped drive the Baltimore music scene, hosting festivals, supergroup recording sessions, and transmedia projects, ultimately earning mention by Rolling Stone as having the best indie music scene in the country.
"Joe is a talent magnet. He has not only synthesized a brilliant core team, but through his constant engagement and and clever brand strategies that continue to cut through the noise, has built an international community of thousands of passionate developers proud to be ambassadors of what he has built."
ADAM BOHN
Artix Entertainment, CEO
The New 8-bit Summit
Organizer
This past March, we collaborated with Midwest Gaming Classic to hold the first ever New 8-bit Summit. With developers traveling to Milwaukee in the dead of winter from places as far away as Scotland and France, I think this guerrilla captured video truly expresses the sum of my efforts to keep the community inspired and engaged.
Ringling College of Art And Design Game Jam
Organizer
On Labor Day Weekend, students, staff, faculty, local professionals, and interested amateurs gathered together at Ringling College for an insane weekend of video game building. This event was a cross-major collaboration between students, organized by Rick Daikin, Ryan VanCleve, and myself, and this video demonstrates the dynamic community of creatives we were able to assemble.
Video Games as an Expressive Language
Since I was 7 years old, I have always maintained the belief that video games are a unique and expressive form of communication. They exist as their own language, the tenets of which supersede the boundaries of language. Combining conventions of all other arts, and driven by subjective player experience, they are an empathic tool that can resonate in a way that no other art alone can hope to. For the last 17 years, I have been on a mission to express games as such through education, both as a formal proffesional vocation, and as a personal passion.
"Joe is a strong leader, an excellent communicator, a passionate educator, and has a boldly creative mind. He fosters the ideation process without stifling any creativity. Perhaps most notably, Joe is able to get everyone excited about any project he is involved in with his high energy and positivity."
MARK RIVINIUS
Mind Ramen Games, Founder and Operations Manager
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Helped to write and pilot game development curriculum for Baltimore City Public Schools
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Taught classes and workshops at Ringling College of Art and Design, New England Institute of Technology, University of Baltimore, Towson University, and UCLA's Game Lab
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Held panels and workshops at events such as SXSW, PAX-E, GDC, and several smaller niche gaming conventions
In this video, you'll see students with whom I worked this past summer on video game projects around themes of health and wellness. Most had no experience in development or coding walking in the door, and by the end, they each had a finished game.
Bringing New Products to Market
Realizing the growing market for game streaming, M-Audio hired me to help manage the creation of its M-Game series of products and launch the associated new sub-brand. This required deep analysis of the competitive landscape, focus studies on needs and wants in order to create minimum viable product, conceptualization and design of both hardware and software, and working remotely with global partners in all departments to bring M-Game to life. Ultimately, I also had to create (write and film) an education and training series for the product's use.
M-Game
Product Manager
It started with assessing a need. The popularity of streaming had ballooned during the pandemic, but there were very few audio interfaces catering exclusively and specifically to the needs of the game streamer. M-Audio, known for it's audio interfaces, realized the potential in this market, and M-Game was initiated.
Developing not only a product but a product around which an entire brand would be built involved deep research into direct and indirect competition, focus groups and studies, research and development, and pitching and presenting concepts to the team at large.
I created pitch decks, developed design documents and financial planning worksheets, and worked with every deparment through initial concept, revisions, prototyping, software development, and on to final tooling, marketing, packaging, and pitching to major retailers.
Ultimately with my experience in video and voice over, I also was able to help with tutorial resources on M-Game's general usage. I wrote marketing copy and scripts for all public facing videos, and shot and edited the getting started videos for product launch.
Other Related Skills, Projects, and Acolades
Because of my experience as a multidisciplinary creative and my participation in several transmedia projects, I often find that creative impetus can originate and manifest in many ways beyond considering the conventions of the prose. Sometimes game mechanics yield themes, sometimes music inspires tone, sometimes marketing informs character. For that reason, I'm including some the following supplemental work samples.
Realizing Fantasy Worlds
From long, ponderous prose set in far away fantasy lands to treatments and film scripts to topical literary reportage to sardonic media reviews to technical writing to straight journalism, I have been writing for professional purpose and for pleasure since I was a child. Here, I have compiled a few pieces that outline some process and show some prose, and are most relevant to developing narrative and world building for a fantasy game.
Mystic Searches
A Holistic Approach to Narrative
This link shows a small cross section of the fairly comprehensive approach to world building and narrative development for a transmedia project centered around a fantasy game. For Mystic Searches, we use agile management systems with rich media support to keep consistency while the expanding the lore into novelizations, musical orchestrations, comics, scripts for animations, and more. These various mediums feedback on each other and continue to drive an adventure of epic scale.
Beyond The Veil
Anchoring the Bizarre and Fantastic
In this link is a glimpse of character driven approach to building an allegorical fantasy narrative through high level character summaries and the resulting prose. The featured chapter highlights the odd party's unorthodox interactions through a metaphysical world. In the cerebral story that serves as a metaphor for the pains of the creative journey, the characters have to exist as more than a sum of their dialog.
Musing the Wraiths of Verekai
Establishing Voice (and the major role of understanding minor characters)
Providing a unique and intimate voice to the world of Mystic Searches, this self contained ghost story gives a first person vignette to a side character's strange accounts, and provides a direct link to, and dramatic justification for, the prologue game Mystic Origins.
Building Digital Playgrounds
One of the reasons I love creating video games is that it has always been a medium though which I could synthesize multiple creative pursuits into one experience. Because of that, it is the most agile form of expression, approachable from many artistic impetuses.
Mystic Searches OST
Theme Composer
I approached the soundtrack for the Mystic Searches OST like a piece of program music. Each biome was connected to a Mystic, each Mystic, a particular aura. From the spritely bounce of movement inspired by spirited celtic rhythms, to a march of exigence to a somber, vulnerable passage invoking loss and death, to the fugue-like recursion to represent meddling with time and space, this mosaic arrangement guides the listener through the fantastic world of Myrinda in a sonic portrayal of the hero's journey.
The New 8-bit Heroes
Writer, Director
The narrative challenge for this documentary is that it had to both celebrate the homebrew scene while showing the process of what goes into developing this sort of game. It had to do both of these things while telling an engaging, entertaining story. The final feature film was carved out of over 30 hours of footage captured over the span of 2 years, and the narrative was developed organically from the several orbits of common themes. It went on to win several awards, be featured at film festivals internationally, and find a home on Amazon.
Over my career, I have written much more than imaginative fiction and fantasy world building. As a Product Manager, I've written technical specifications for both hardware and software. As a journalist, I covered important stories pertaining to the Baltimore music scene for Shockwave and for Music Monthly. As part of the communications team at Ringling College, I also wrote informational articles for the bi-annual magazine. Here are a few samples.
Occupy Boston
Narrative Journalism
This article was intended as an experiential piece to dissect the lingering ubiquity of the occupy movement as it spread in a spiderweb pattern out from the epicenter in New York City.
Bill Gaal
Profile and Interview
While in Baltimore, I had a column in Susie Mudd's Music Monthly Magazine and was an occasional writer for Shockwave Magazine. The work would generally include, but was not limited to, album reviews, articles, and profiles of musicians and producers. This was a piece about Bill Gaal's post-Nothingface glory as an aspiring producer.
CONTXT Magazine
Columns for the magazine of a premiere arts college
In addition to doing extensive video and marketing work, I wrote regular articles for the official magazine of Ringling College of Art & Design. These included interviews with students, alumni, and visiting artists, news about new programs, event coverage, and more. Contrasting the elaborate world building above, these pieces demonstrate range by being straight, dry journalistic copyrwriting.