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The GGJ Podcast brings the spirit of Global Game Jam to your headphones, with people from around the world sharing how they found their way into game development. Each week, Susan Gold talks with developers, studio founders, and festival organizers about the twists, risks, and side doors that shaped their paths and communities. You will hear honest stories about creativity, collaboration, failure, and the messy, beautiful reality of making games.
Engineering Connection | MatthewMoss
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Intro
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[00:00:00] Susan Gold: This is the GGJ Podcast, a show about the games industry, the people who make them, and the communities that grow up around them. I'm Susan Gold, a game education trailblazer and one of the founders of the Global Game Jam. Each week, we will be sitting down with a new guest, highlighting their own path and journey.
[00:00:26] This is a space for honest conversation from makers about creativity, collaboration, failure, and the messy, the beautiful reality of making games. So whether you're a young dev or seasoned, an educator, a student, or someone who just loves games and the people behind them, welcome to the GGJ Podcast. Take a breath, settle in, and let's hear directly from the makers themselves.
[00:00:49] Shirley McPhaul: This episode is made possible in partnership with the Global Game Jam, the world's largest game creation event, bringing together creators from around the globe. A big thank you as well to the Global Game Jam's headline [00:01:00] sponsors, Epic Games, Games for Change, and Xsolla, for helping make this creative community a reality.
[00:01:06] To learn more and to get involved in the upcoming jams, visit globalgamejam.org.
[00:01:13] This podcast is proudly supported by the PlayStation Hero Project, championing and empowering emerging developer talent across the globe. Discover new heroes at PlayStation.com China, India, and MENA Hero Project pages. Find the links in the show notes in the description down below
[00:01:36] Susan Gold: hello, and welcome to the GGJ Podcast. Today on the show, I'm delighted to welcome Matthew Moss. Matthew is the creative director and game designer and community builder based in Tokyo, Japan, with a career that stretches from editorial cartooning and motion graphics to digital and tabletop games.
[00:01:56] In today's episode, we will talk about Matthew's [00:02:00] path, moving from Miami to Tokyo and all the points in between. There, he created a new opportunity to grow new games. For almost two decades, Matthew has shipped video game projects across platforms, and most recently founded Tokyo Game Bridge, a community that connects Japanese developers, international creators, and publishers who might never otherwise sit in the same room at the same table together.
[00:02:28] He is both a mentor and an industry veteran. He helps teams create board and tabletop designs, and he is helping the next generation find their voice in games. Matthew, thank you so much for joining me today.
[00:02:42] Matthew Moss: Thank you for having me. It's nice to be here
Growing up in Florida
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[00:02:44] Susan Gold: you grew up in Miami, and you grew up in a family that was very eclectic. You had an artist mom, an electrical engineer for a father. Tell me a little bit about your early life in Florida
[00:02:58] Matthew Moss: my early life in [00:03:00] Florida, so both of my parents are Jewish. We-- They're both from Miami Beach. They're both very creative. Even though my father was an electrical engineer or had an engineering background, he was an extremely creative guy. And my mother, being an artist, was a working artist, a working decorative artist in interior design.
[00:03:19] And,from my earliest days, there were always projects going on, and my mother was painting murals places, and my father was working at different places doing engineering jobs, whether it was, in the aerospace industry or the game industry. So,when it comes to games, my earliest memories of games are either playing like Atari games or my dad working, you know, putting game cabinets in buildings, in, in hotels and resorts around South Florida, and having the ability to repair them and fix them and knew what was going on inside.
[00:03:54] So, I grew up in a very kind of creative household with a very, eclectic [00:04:00] sense of taste, a lot of music, very open-minded. They were hippies, so you know, that was a big influence also on my upbringing as well as, really grateful for growing up in South Florida with all the, Cuban and Latin American and Caribbean influence as well from, the people around me and where I lived.
[00:04:20] Yeah
Art, Drawing & Theater
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[00:04:20] Susan Gold: So you had a lot of different, influences that, that made a profound,impression on you. What was the thing that you saw amongst all these threads that got you to thinking that you wanted to be in the arts and you wanted to convey stories?
[00:04:40] Matthew Moss: you know, some of the earliest photographs of me, i- as a two-year-old or three-year-old, I was drawing in all of them, so just that was the first thing that I was attracted to. And then my uncle, my mother's brother, who was a well-known photographer, he was always running around taking pictures, and he was a big personality.
[00:04:59] [00:05:00] So,being creative and creativity were really kind of base core value tenets of what I grew up with, knowing and thinking was important. and on both sides, my father's family and my mother's family both had a lot of, like, art, even if it was just rough or crafty artwork around the house.
[00:05:21] Um, so art was part of life. they were very interested people, even if they weren't necessarily, super highly educated with high pedigree
[00:05:30] Susan Gold: that's always just like there's so much at your table and so many things for you to play with. and I think that's what having an artistic mother really afforded to you, was that you were comfortable being a non-conforming type of kid. It was, almost your place
[00:05:50] Matthew Moss: Tell me, 'cause you didn't really have the traditional education that most kids grow up with, and you found ways to teach yourself through experience. [00:06:00] Can you tell me a little bit about how you came to understand yourself a little better through that?
[00:06:06] Sure. I knew for me personally drawing was really the thing, the skill that I wanted to be the most talented and best at. And actually I struggled a lot because my mother really wanted me to be in the theater, so I actually grew up around the theater.
[00:06:20] And this has a lot to do with some of the nonconformity stuff. I was the littlest kid around a lot of bigger kids. and doing theater production on the weekends, and it was a pretty, it was a pretty full-scale operation. Like, you know,we would do musical theater, and I would be practicing.
[00:06:36] This was outside of the classroom, Coconut Grove Children's Theater in Miami. and it was a huge influence and actually I think that thinking of things that still correspond relevant, to my contemporary life is the idea of working with other people and that art doesn't happen in a bubble.
[00:06:57] You know? We need, we, w- we create [00:07:00] together. And especially anyone who's been in the game industry long enough, having a team that you work with, like working amongst a team, esprit de corps. Like I remember being a kid in the theater and esprit de corps was a phrase that was something that was taught to us.
[00:07:13] And when I would go to school, at my, you know, public school in Dade County Public Schools, it was back to, sitting and trying to learn fractions and math equations and diagram sentences, and, take standardized tests. And from the time that I was a kid,
[00:07:30] if I couldn't find a reason to do something, I had a very difficult time staying focused and doing it. And so I was just not having any parts of being, judged by what was gonna be on a Scantron test when I was a child
From Non-Conforming Child to Teacher
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[00:07:44] Susan Gold: One of the things that I go back to is that despite your having trouble in school as a kid, you became a teacher. So you had a different understanding in teaching art and [00:08:00] mural projects. When did you first put together that I can take this love of drawing, theater of the mind, a little dungeon mastering, and create a job?
[00:08:15] Matthew Moss: Um, that took a long time. To be honest, I really wanted to be a cartoonist. That's all that I thought about from the time that I was about 12 years old until I was working as a daily editorial cartoonist. I, that was it. it was a very singular driving,motivation.
[00:08:31] But gaming was, especially tabletop gaming, was such an integral part of my childhood experience. and I didn't realize... I really had very little thought about there being some kind of connection of these things.
[00:08:47] I mean, there were times that I tried to engage in projects on my own when I was like 18 or 19, where I would try to design a game or like a game module to print myself and put a comic to it and package it [00:09:00] all up. But it wasn't-- I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't think about it. I really didn't have the framework to think about it as, how to put something together as a product, what that could be, how to shape that a- as, on an editorial level.
[00:09:15] and also, I was really fascinated, by the art in the games, but
[00:09:20] but I had no idea that not only that there was a way to get into games, that I would be living in a country that was so influential to, you know, my upbringing, 40 years ago, right?
[00:09:31] So I got kicked out of high school, because I was so non-compliant, and I went to a school that was pretty well known for, its test scores in Florida. and I just was so adamantly like, "I'm not taking these tests." You know, I refused. I don't know even why to this day. Like now I have a broader perspective on the approach to things. But,I get it. It was hard. It didn't make sense to me. I, [00:10:00] you know, I would say, like, standardized tests equal standardized kids, you know?
[00:10:04] and like filling out bubbles doesn't prove that I know anything, that was the attitude that I had. and, I would just get bored taking the tests and y- so I'd, I wouldn't do them. And I remember a vice principal at my high school sat my mother down when I was 15, and he said, "When your son turns 16, I'm gonna kick him out of this school because we don't like the kind of student that he is here."
[00:10:28] And so they had to send me to an alternative high school. My alternative high school was actually a much better experience, because my educator, or the founder of that school, Dr. Marvin Dunn, was involved in civil rights in Miami, and that really aligned a lot with, the values that my parents had as hippies and the kind of thing that I was brought up to believe, And so having that as the backbone in a much smaller education, like a secondary education system at a school at that time was pretty useful.
[00:10:55] However, then came a big hurricane and destroyed our house, and I had to go live in a different [00:11:00] neighborhood, and I had to change schools yet again. And by the time I was, 17, I'd run the course and it was, I was phased out and went and got an equivalency diploma. I remember a kid that I went to school with told me, "You know, there's a test you can take, and it's the same thing as getting your diploma."
[00:11:17] And I remember hearing that, and I was like, immediately, "Oh, th- this is all done. I'm done. I'm, forget it. l- get me out into the world. I wanna be out in the world. I don't wanna be in this cage anymore. Give me the test. I'm outta here." I knew immediately. being bounced around schools and feeling like I didn't really belong anywhere in the secondary school system was really...
[00:11:40] It was really kinda crazy, that I ended up working in a classroom literally the year after What would've been my graduation year. And that was as a result that my mother and her work in mural painting and design, she was very well known in South Florida.
[00:11:58] She had been contacted by my much [00:12:00] younger brother, who's eight years younger than me, his, his elementary school to, see if she would be available to come work with the kids and paint at the school. And my mother, who was pretty fed up with me at the time, even though I was working for her business, 'cause she said, "Hey, if you're not going to school and you're not doing anything else, you gotta come and work in my business 'cause I'm too busy, and you know how to do all this stuff, so you gotta be on the job site. There's..." and I, it was a better situation for me than being in school at the time. But when my brother's elementary school went to her and asked, "We need a mural, and we'd love you to bring you in," she referred them to me. And so I went into the school, and I met the art teacher at the school, and she asked me to stay and talk to the children, and then they asked me to come in and plan a mural with the kids.
[00:12:49] And after about three days of doing this, she came to me and she said, "Our school has a budget for an additional [00:13:00] non-instructional staff person," which in, in, Dade County charter schools at the time, all I needed was my equivalency diploma. I didn't need to have a degree in education at that time. And these kids were, my brother was like a sixth grader, and I would've been, like 19 years old, 18, 19 years old at the time. so he was there in the school, and I was also there at the school teaching the kids and working every day with them in the art class.
[00:13:25] And, it was, a transformational experience because, I was teaching something that was the one thing that I had the most passion for at that point in time. And it also made me really realize a lot about communication, a lot about trying to understand what the kids were doing, you know,
[00:13:48] 'Cause they didn't know how to use these materials, and they would get frustrated, and helping them get on track with what they were doing. and another thing that comes to mind was I remember I had a sketchbook that I carried every with, everywhere with me, and I was, still a teenager [00:14:00] myself, and
[00:14:01] I would get hip hop magazines and decoupage all my favorite artists all over the cover of the book. And some of those artists were pretty controversial figures as far as language, and I remember one day, some of the kids coming to me, "Oh, we saw that on your book, so we had our parents go and get us this album."
[00:14:19] and I remember thinking like, You know,I realized the impact of influence. and not that I n- not that I wouldn't stand by the artistry or those things that were influential to me, but was it appropriate for a nine-year-old? Probably not, right? so it was a really good introduction also to the influence that you can have on people, whether you realize you're having that influence or not.
[00:14:45] so it was a really wonderful experience. And also it really made me appreciate teaching because it slowed me down in helping other people try to understand something. And
[00:14:57] you know, like, I don't think I was treated that way very often. I have a [00:15:00] few, I have a few exceptions to that, but... so learning that part of, like, how important communication and how important a little bit of patience can be, in the education process really helped me re-approach my whole understanding about education and learning myself.
[00:15:19] Teaching other people helped me to become a better learner
Off to College in Pursuit of a Dream
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[00:15:21] Susan Gold: Which is interesting because from someone with your background, you wouldn't think you would've landed in college. And there you did. Off you went to Memphis College of Art, and I think it was because you were really in hot pursuit of that dream for being a cartoonist, correct?
[00:15:40] Matthew Moss: Sure. Yeah, I spent a year at the Joe Kubert School in New Jersey, before that, which was a technical school, and that was an amazing experience. however, at the time it was like 1997, I'd been out of school, I'd been out of ... I graduated in '93, and I'd been taking some art class at community college and working for my mother's [00:16:00] business and working at a newspaper in Miami as a gofer.
[00:16:03] And, going to the Joe Kubert School This was really the first point that was valuable in learning the technical processes of publishing. However, at the time, they were still teaching like cut and paste and how to cut a rubylith, and there was no ... there was one computer in the school, and it was in the library, and you could use it to find books, in the card catalog.
[00:16:24] and I-- and already, it was '97, so I knew that I needed to be learning the digital skills as well. and so the reason that I really decided not to stay at the Kubert School im- one of the largest reasons was I felt like I was not getting the technical side. I was getting the process side, but not the technical side of where things were headed.
[00:16:45] And so I stepped out of school for another year. That was '97, '98. And then I was looking around for options, and
[00:16:53] I was dating somebody at the time who was a ballet dancer at Miami City Ballet, and she got ... She transferred to Ballet Memphis. And I was looking [00:17:00] for schools, and she said, "You should bring your portfolio and come out here."
[00:17:03] And it was on Christmas,'99, and I brought my portfolio, and I made an appointment. I went in and they reviewed it, and they said, you know,this is great. You should come to school here. Let's talk about what the numbers look like." And they showed me, "Oh, you'll have this much,"
[00:17:20] And at the end there was like $2,500. And at the time I was trying to get by, and $2,500 was a lot of money. I said, " Whew, I don't know where I'm gonna get that." Well, they said, our semester's starting, January 20th. in just a few weeks." And I thought, "How am I gonna do this?"
[00:17:34] They said, "Oh,no, that's your refund after scholarship." And so I said, "All right, I'm headed to Memphis." And, I went to school at the Memphis College of Art and finished up my, BFA in visual communications and illustration.
[00:17:47] Susan Gold: Now, one of the things that you did while you were getting your degree was you landed a kind of a dream job and you got a daily gig, but not necessarily the audience you were [00:18:00] thinking you would land in front of
[00:18:02] Matthew Moss: actually the paper that I was at Memphis was a pretty open, free-spirited paper. and that was my senior year,while I was in Memphis. and I was juggling getting out of school and drawing, daily editorial cartoons. But after that,
[00:18:17] I got picked up at a paper in Central Florida, at a paper called The Villages Daily Sun in The Villages of Florida, which is now a notorious location. and, at the time it was just kinda picking up and becoming what it is now.
[00:18:32] And yes, The Villages is a, the largest privately owned, or was at the time, privately owned, housing development in America, and also the largest retirement facility for community for people 55 and older. And also very aligned with Jeb and George W. and the Bushes and way more conservative [00:19:00] than, where I came from in South Florida, or even, what I was exposed to in Memphis, Tennessee.
[00:19:06] Yes
Sensing the Shift and Taking Action
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[00:19:06] Susan Gold: All right. So I'm gonna go from you doing this daily Sun, serving the villages, and, being a part of this cultural landscape and a newsroom. But then you have a realization, which I think is something that very few people really caught as early as you did.
[00:19:27] Newspapers started shrinking, and you started to look at games. Tell me how you made that leap and made it more of a lateral move as opposed to a totally jump into the abyss. You looked at it more like a new publishing medium.
[00:19:44] Matthew Moss: Yeah. at that time, there was, it, w- there's two things to consider. So I was watching, shrink the classified section at the newspaper and, watching the salespeople sweating bullets, right? even in The Villages, even in Central [00:20:00] Florida. And,hearing all the complaining about it.
[00:20:02] and a few years before that, when I was at the paper in Miami, I was at the Daily Business Review in Miami, and watching the transition from cut and paste guys and people talking about Photoshop's gonna take over everything. And my time at the Joe Kubert School a couple years after that, knowing that, digital was the way that things were gonna go.
[00:20:20] So,it was very clear that there was a pathway, and that the other part of it was, by that point, Flash had become a web platform that was something that people could build in and were making games, and some of those games were being commercialized. And, it just seemed to make sense, like, you know, the game market kind of seemed to be growing a lot.
[00:20:45] PlayStation 2 had blown up. online, web-based gaming, was really becoming, viable. And so it didn't seem like something that would be outlandish to think I could penetrate my way into. I [00:21:00] really didn't know what I was doing, but I thought, "Hey, I'm just gonna do this."
[00:21:03] And My family had, connections in New York. So I was like, "All right, this is the time. I'm gonna go, just go to New York and find a job in games."
[00:21:10] And,that's w- like the dream, right? whatever that dream is that people have. and I had done good at the newspaper. I'd gotten a couple press awards,I'd won a national and a couple of regional press awards. So I was feeling pretty good with myself, like I could walk in and figure something out, and so I just did.
[00:21:26] That's what m- I went to New York and I found a job
Sponsor: PlayStation Hero Project
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[00:21:30] Speaker 5: And now let's take a moment to thank the sponsor for this episode, the PlayStation Hero Project, an incubator program founded by Sony Interactive Entertainment focused on identifying and supporting emerging developer talent from India, China, and the MENA regions. You can be a hero too if your game was made in one of these regions.
[00:21:52] Check out the games getting the support, like Tsuri: The Seventh Note, a rhythm action platformer set on the mysterious [00:22:00] island of Tsuri, where music is its lifeblood. In the game, players are thrown into the role of Ajira, a brave girl racing against time to save her mother from a dark, bewildering sickness.
[00:22:12] Her only hope lies in finding a magical fruit that blooms deep within the heart of the island, torn apart by a mysterious corrupting rhythm, a dark force that has taken hold, warping its melodies into something sinister. To overcome it, Ajira must learn to master the rhythm, channel its power, and fight back through a world that shifts and reacts to every beat.
[00:22:36] Tsuri: The Seventh Note is available for wishlist on Steam. For more information on the PlayStation Hero Project and the teams they support, go to playstation.com China, India, or MENA Hero Project pages. Find the links in the show notes and in the description down below. And now back to the show.
Transfering Skills from Print to Games
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[00:22:57] Susan Gold: Tell me about your first jobs and tell me [00:23:00] what of your skills as a cartoonist allowed you to thrive in that environment? Were there things specifically that helped, or do you feel that your ability to adapt?
[00:23:11] Matthew Moss: both, uh, I mean, equally both parts. But one thing that was really important, which was, when I was at the Village's Daily Sun, I started getting assigned more and more doing special section art direction and layouts. And I would do other illustrations outside of just the daily editorial piece.
[00:23:31] So, um, you know, holiday sections, coming up with a theme. and so I started to really learn from that job. and one of the greatest gifts, it being a daily paper, is like you make a mistake, doesn't matter. Tomorrow there's a newspaper. Just keep on moving, right? keep on trucking. Keep on going.
[00:23:48] Tomorrow's the next day. And you don't have time to ask questions. Just keep producing. And that was invaluable. Also laying out the newspaper. ... I had been taught to hand letter my comics, but during my time at the paper [00:24:00] I started digitally lettering. And that became something that was up and coming, for comic publishing as well.
[00:24:05] And so I learned to do that. And that led to me learning about typography in a much deeper way than I understood it as just a cartoonist. And how to do a layout, and how to format, and how to put a whole concept together for a special section. So these skills were really important, aside from just the drawing part when I jumped into games.
[00:24:26] And so I jumped into a studio. I was at a studio called New Play Media, and they were basically doing, flash portals for media companies, and I would have to re-skin games on a daily basis and come up with ways to do 15 different games by the end of the week
[00:24:43] once I jumped over to games, there was some difference for sure, but those basic necessities of how to put something together, how to engineer something together. And that goes back to my father, which was, like, the technical side of [00:25:00] things.
[00:25:00] seeing the creativity and the technical became extremely relevant to how to, how am I gonna knock out 15 Collapse games by the end of the week, right? And and then the other part that was invaluable was drawing. I gotta draw all of these assets constantly. there's just this waterfall of assets that has to get created, and I gotta il- I gotta illustrate them.
[00:25:24] And at the time, I was getting more into doing, I'd been doing all my cartoons with pen and ink, but I was toning them using Adobe Illustrator and lettering and doing all of my other layouts in Illustrator. So then I got to be kind of an Illustrator wizard, and then I just started using ev- just doing everything, thinking in Adobe Illustrator.
[00:25:44] literally thinking everything in Adobe Illustrator, which at the time didn't integrate exactly perfectly into Flash, but it still got me everything that I needed to be able to do scalably. I could rework assets to fit other styles, and I was off at the races. And that was really [00:26:00] those things that I learned at the newspaper, the things that I learned from, my father growing up, all of these different production parts started to come together at that point.
Moving Abroad
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[00:26:08] Susan Gold: Now, you spent several years in New York and you continued to work at game studios, if not one, another, and you met and worked with some really great people. But at some point, you made a choice to leave the country. And I need to, move this ahead because this was a tremendous change in your life as well as cultural, observations and all those other things about how people work are very different in Asia.
[00:26:41] So from the idea moment, to the making it happen, how long did that take? And what gave you the chutzpah to do it
[00:26:51] Matthew Moss: you know what? I think I, I've always been somebody who just goes somewhere. Like, you know,I felt, like I said, when I was a kid, when I was a [00:27:00] teenager growing up, especially in Miami Beach, I was much more interested in what was going on out in the city than I was interested in being in a high school classroom.
[00:27:08] I wanted to be out and down in South Beach in 1991 when it was hot and there was fashion photography going on all over the place, and the ballet was blowing up over at Lincoln Road, and there were, it was international. so that, that desire to be, part of or to see or to be, in, in the middle of the action, I think you know, that...
[00:27:28] Look, how many people told me when I was, when I went to New York, "You're crazy. You're just gonna go to New York?" But I went to New York and,I thought I would never leave New York. Once I was there, I was, "This is home," right? so when I came here, the same thing. everybody was, referring to Lost in Translation and, "You're gonna be a fish out of water."
[00:27:46] And I got here, I had friends from New York who were Japanese who were back in, in Japan. I had friends from college who were here in, in Japan. And, you know, at the time my wife, who I'd met in New York, but, she was born in [00:28:00] Japan and had lived in New York City for 18, 20 years, and she didn't think she would ever leave New York.
[00:28:06] But, her family was also very, welcoming. And at the time I spoke no Japanese, but it was really amazing when I got here immediately to feel like I was not a fish out of water. It was the opposite of that idea of Lost in Translation. it was warm. and,there were cultural gaps and divides, sure.
[00:28:31] but,my wife at the time said to me, on the flight over there, because this-- We had booked the tickets, and during this time it was right in the middle of the economic downturn. in, the Great Recession was in full swing, right? It was the, or at least the tail end of it even. She had been working for a, not-for-profit for the family court system in New York, and at that point I was doing some freelancing on a couple of projects around New York, but work was very much not [00:29:00] steady.
[00:29:00] And she had just gotten let go, and she was very good at what she does. And on the way to the airport She said to me, "What do you think about living in Japan?" Because it was funny, years before that I had asked her, "You're never going back to Japan, right?" 'Cause I couldn't fathom the idea of living here.
[00:29:16] And, she f- you know, she said, "No, I'll never... I love New York." So we, I thought I'd never, I thought I was gonna live the rest of my life in New York City. and so she said that to me, and I said, "All right. let's see how it goes." And who'd have thought? that was 15, 16 years ago, 14. And so after that, I got back to New York and I said, "Okay, let's do it."
[00:29:36] And it took about, it took about a year, because there were lots of little things that needed to get taken care of. For example, we had two cats. You can't just come to Japan with two cats from the United States without them having all kinds of FDA-approved testing to make sure that they're okay, and isolating them, for six months ahead of time.
[00:29:52] there's all kinds of requirements that needed to get done to, to leave New York. But we did that, and we came here, and, [00:30:00] I've been here for what? 12, 13, 14 years since. Yes. It's been a long time.
[00:30:04] Susan Gold: It has. It's been over a decade. When you made the move, did you do so with a job or with the hopes of getting a job?
[00:30:15] Matthew Moss: with the hopes of getting a job. and I did not know the landscape. I think I was pretty naive. and I think I was a lot less, confident in my point, at that point in my career than, I was when I went to New York. But I just powered through, and it took a couple of years to figure all of that out and get situated and start doing...
[00:30:40] I thought I would start with doing branding work because what I would see is that I would go around Japan, Tokyo, and I would see all these terribly ugly logos and horrible websites. And I thought, I could at least find some freelance work while I get myself back into, the place in my career that I want [00:31:00] to be."
[00:31:00] And, I did that, and that, that's exactly how it happened. and actually a predecessor to, building Tokyo Game Bridge was, I started a meetup group prior to COVID that was for people in design, business, and technology. And through that, I made a lot of new connections, and it got me people in the game industry here in, at Japanese game studios, at a couple of smaller Japanese game studios that got me onto games, and then boom, I was back in the game market.
[00:31:30] it just came right back to me, right? boomerang. Yeah
[00:31:34] because I always think of the Japanese market as, especially with language being very difficult to break into. I feel like it takes a certain personality to be able to bridge that, e- especially when you don't have language on your side. How long did it take you to really start to feel like you were no longer foreign and that you were a part of the [00:32:00] community?
[00:32:00] I think it happens in phases. one big key moment, it took a, it took, let's say realistically to just get to a real,a real intermediate fluid intermediacy, right? being able to go out to a bar and meet people that you don't know and just hang out and interact, I would say that probably took about four years.
[00:32:18] and then now I mean, I still work to improve my Japanese. I still have days that are bad days when I can't get, I can't explain something the way that I wanna explain it. but my ear and my sense of being here for so long and understanding all the cues and listening to other people, you learn to listen first.
[00:32:38] and listening is the important skill. People know when you're listening 'cause you respond in the right way. When you listen, you know, your reactions indicate whether you understand what is going on and what is not going on. just paying attention and understanding what you're paying attention to is invaluable.
[00:32:52] so yeah, no, it took about four years. and I would say that I still continue to improve even 12, 13, 14 years [00:33:00] in
The Bottom of the Barrel
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[00:33:01] Susan Gold: now that you've been there and you did art direction and you wor- worked on games, et cetera, but at some point you found a greater need and this need to build community in Tokyo. And I think that what you've built is something that's truly novel, and I'd like you to explain the reasoning behind it and all of the things that you've started to achieve
[00:33:27] Matthew Moss: Sure. during COVID, my mom developed dementia in, back in Miami, and it was pretty fast. and I couldn't go, and I didn't also realize that her husband had slipped into such a bad state of mental health with his borderline personality disorder and pretty extreme alcoholism, and they had a scam artist living in their house.
[00:33:46] And I went back as soon as I could, and I spent 15 months in the United States, and basically, I couldn't facilitate any kind of change to protect my mother's property, to protect my uncle's photography, to do any of the [00:34:00] things that I was trying to do on behalf of my family. and I basically was run off of the United States and came back to Japan.
[00:34:07] And,through that time, I also went through a separation in my marriage. and COVID also, I had been working on a big game, for a train company here, and that got furloughed during COVID, so I had been struggling to find work for a while. And everything had just-- I was basically at the ground floor with nothing, you know, and came back here in, in the very, very start of 2024, and, it was time to do something.
[00:34:32] and I was depressed, and I was-- it was grief more than depression. I was profoundly in grief. and I learned, you know, I, I chose Al-Anon as a tool because I didn't know how to deal with my mother's husband. And, a key person that was,involved in the very beginning of Al-Anon and teaching, Wilson, the guy who founded AA as well, was Carl Jung.
[00:34:54] And Carl Jung's whole statement about spirituality that a addict will not [00:35:00] pause in their addiction until something spiritual happens for them, like having to protect a child or a fear of death. And so it made me look at what Jung's definition of spirituality was, from which I boiled out two important words, which were awe or wonder, right?
[00:35:17] That's one. And the other one being connection. that was really meaningful to me. And I knew for myself, even though I was dealing with profound grief and needing to get my whole career moving and didn't know what the hell I was gonna do, I, I went to BIT Summit in Kyoto a couple years ago. It was 2024 BIT Summit, and I saw some of my old colleagues, people that I, suddenly I thought nobody knew me.
[00:35:40] I fee- I felt like I was at the bottom, the absolute bottom of the barrel, and I was really well received by, by people that knew my work or knew something about me. And suddenly I didn't feel at the bottom of the barrel, and I felt this sense of community, and I was really blown away by the quality of that event.
[00:35:59] [00:36:00] And I remembered my organization or my meetup group, and I said, "You know what? I gotta bring this feeling of connection and community back to Tokyo from Kyoto." And so the, some of the people who I was with, we started talking about, who I was with in Kyoto, I started talking to them about this.
[00:36:17] And, a f- just maybe five or six months later, I started hosting events. we called it Tokyo Game Bridge. I wanted to create an open door organization that could facilitate, the opportunities for connection, for coming together, for businesses, for individuals, for learning, for innovation,a space to create, connection.
[00:36:40] And that was really the seeds for Tokyo Game Bridge, and that was, it's like 16, 17 months ago. And since that point in time, every month I went from hosting one event a month to two events every month, to going back last year to BIT Summit and hosting a spillover showcase of games from the actual conference, to this year we were just there last [00:37:00] weekend and, we hosted, an event Saturday night that was way over capacity.
[00:37:07] We're blown away, people from all over, we have, we had folks from all over the world in attendance. a lot of people said that it was, it was one of the best events at BIT Summit. and it's really amazing to see the level of growth and change and things that can happen in a short span of time when you start operating to a mission instead of, getting your own ego in the way of things
Tokyo Game Bridge & the Value of Connection
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[00:37:29] Susan Gold: And now that you've actually accomplished something, that you're bringing people together from around Japan, what do you feel you're gaining from this?
[00:37:42] Matthew Moss: Wow. I mean, a tremendous amount. I think that I had gone through so many difficulties both in my long career in games and living around the world and rebuilding, and starting over again. And I, I would say one thing that on a personal level that's been For [00:38:00] my esteem,I didn't recognize the value of my own experience, and how deep and how useful that was, because I was always just looking for the next freelance project and having to re,re- reconvince the next client that I was worth the money that I was putting down instead of having the actual confidence in knowing what I was doing.
[00:38:23] And in building a community, and like I, I don't... I still take on projects, but I don't really spend my time looking for freelance work anymore. And not only that, what's happened as a result is people know me, people come to me, they wanna talk about games. I recognize trends around the market, not just because I run this organization, but because I've been watching the game industry since I was a child, and I've been in it for, what, 20-something years now.
[00:38:50] And, I think one thing that's really invaluable is helping people connect. I- I've already seen jobs, careers get, get, [00:39:00] g- get to the next step. Friends tell me, or colleagues in the organization tell me that if it weren't for Tokyo Game Bridge, X, Y, or Z wouldn't have happened to them over the last year.
[00:39:09] so being able, and seeing where there's opportunity for my community here in Tokyo, for my global, network of colleagues in the industry, and businesses here in Tokyo that are looking to, get an opportunity to get outside of Japan, which can be overwhelming for them, to be able to be in a position to facilitate, to help, to creatively see how to address some of these issues, to w- listen, to ask questions, to wanna help people, to wanna figure out who to connect with who, to put events on that, that people come out and have a good time and get excited, and to see their excitement, it's a very rewarding, very spiritual thing under that definition
[00:39:55] that I boiled out from Young on spirituality, which is, there's an [00:40:00] awe in watching people grow, and, making that connection, making those connections happen for myself and for other people is, it's a spiritual thing in a way. in lowercase, right? in, in the most pedestrian sense
[00:40:13] Susan Gold: No, I totally understand it, and I have been in similar situations where that is what gets you out of bed in the morning and gets you excited about what's happening next. And I really love how you've created community, and one of the things that you talked about were, like, the conversations you're now allowed to have and the, conversations you're seeding amongst young people and people that you're working with.
Finding Alignment
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[00:40:42] Susan Gold: And as we c- kinda try to flesh out the end of this conversation, I was wondering, when you think about the younger designers and artists who are coming up through your events or that you've reached to, out to, what kind of collaborative culture [00:41:00] are you trying to model for them? And then how do you think you'll be able to continue to create these spaces you help create?
[00:41:08] Matthew Moss: I like this question. one thing that I see a lot and just coming back from BitSummit where I had so many, meetings, meet to match and hanging out and people wanna meet and people pulling me aside and wanting to show me what they're working on is one thing that I really see a need for, 'cause, there's so much turbulence in the industry, is that two things can exist simultaneously.
[00:41:34] Those two things are a creator or a team can be, can have a very creative voice, and that the other thing is that even though I'm a pretty progressive guy and there's a lot of things that... But I think that, a lot of people wanna poo-poo on the commercial side of, what it means to be a game developer, being artistic or the expe- But when you're an artist, there's always an audience out there.
[00:41:59] [00:42:00] Otherwise, you're a hobbyist or you're just doing it for your own sake, and that's totally valid, too. I'm not knocking the people that wanna just tinker and do things and create for their own satisfaction.
[00:42:10] But for the young up-and-comers who are really looking to get something published or get into the industry what I see is that the lack of security creates,a real, gap between self-worth and putting one's ego before one's project
[00:42:25] And so if you're making a game, Who are you making this for?
[00:42:28] Give them something to experience joy, right? And think about what those things are that they're interested in, and how to connect that to them, not just because that helps you think about how you're gonna market your product, how you're gonna brand your product, but also how that's gonna connect with your audience, how that's gonna become meaningful to them.
[00:42:47] and to look at it from that perspective, because so often, this process of, making games and game development requires so much of us, so much creativity, so much thought, so much brain [00:43:00] computation that, that the vessel that is our project is filled with the ego and energy that we're trying to put into that, that it, that it becomes an extension of ourselves, not a mission or not a product of its own right, and how to kinda get into alignment with those two spaces, and that when you're operating from your creativity, let that be the place that fuels the decision-making because you understand what you're doing and who you're making it for, and what's gonna be fun about that.
[00:43:30] and that part I feel very strongly about, especially, in, with talking to different people in different sides of the industry and seeing all, the developers and games and projects, and seeing big projects not connect with audiences, and seeing smaller developers not understanding how to get things in front of people in a way, how to pitch their projects, how to get things, tightened up and looking nice for who their audience is.
[00:43:53] thinking of it from that perspective, each game, every decision you make, every decision you make from your game design [00:44:00] document to your trailer is the brand of the game. It's not you. It's not a testament of your own creativity. It's this product. It's this thing. now let's get th- let's get you in alignment, and let's get your thing in alignment, whatever you're making, and, help you get that and communicate that and be true to that, and not get hung up on the part of yourself that, when you pour so much of your energy into something, your esteem can get a little bit twirled around and lost in the process.
[00:44:30] Susan Gold: thank you so much. I think it's truly beautiful to think of it that way, and I really feel you have created something that opens up doors and opportunities for people, not just in Japan, but for people to work across, languages and across cultures, and create an opportunity for that exchange of ideas, opportunities, conversations, and, we need more people like you creating [00:45:00] these opportunities for makers out there.
[00:45:03] Thank you so much for your help in creating a more equitable and, opportunities for people in Japan, and I truly wanna thank you for your time today.
Find Out More About Tokyo Game Bridge & Matthew
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[00:45:14] Susan Gold: Can you tell me a little bit about where people can find out more information about the Tokyo Game Bridge and more about you?
[00:45:23] Matthew Moss: Sure. for Tokyo Game Bridge, you could definitely go to tokyogamebridge.org. our Discord server is a place that is active with conversation, and we have a lot of people from all over the world, not just Tokyo, there communicating. And, we're also on LinkedIn and, other social media platforms.
[00:45:45] And we're hosting events twice a month here in Tokyo. usually one event a month is around a theme. We have one coming up which is focusing on, women in software development and in, in game development here in Japan. and [00:46:00] that will be, that'll be a day with display and talking and, bringing together a couple communities.
[00:46:05] And then later in the month we'll have our regular... We have usually once a month, like a networking kind of party kind of night for people to get together and blow off steam. and actually our next one after that was really cool 'cause it goes along with what I was just saying, is that, I'll be teaming up with, Meiji, University's media department, master's media department, and we're gonna do a different type of game jam.
[00:46:27] We're gonna do a pitch jam. And, we're gonna team up some of our Tokyo Game Bridge members with some of the master's students, and, they're gonna have to come up and we're gonna gamify the whole experience where, people, all, ev- each team is a publisher, but each team has to pitch a concept, so they all get to vote at the end and see who comes up with the best pitch, because it's that idea of thinking through a project from the initial stage to where you want it to go at the end stage, and using that as an exercise to ins- to inspire conversation and thought and creativity.
[00:46:57] and, yeah. For me, I have a website [00:47:00] at matthewmoss.com. and,that's my personal portfolio site. or you can find me at Tokyo Game Bridge's Discord server. I'm there. I'm active. I love talking to people there and getting to hear what people are doing.
[00:47:14] Susan Gold: Thank you so much, Matthew. Thank you so much for your time. Have a wonderful day. Thank you for being a part of the GGJ Podcast
[00:47:22] Matthew Moss: Thank you so much for having me on
Outro
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[00:47:25] Shirley McPhaul: This podcast is proudly supported by the PlayStation Hero Project, championing and empowering emerging developer talent across the globe. Discover new heroes at PlayStation.com China, India, and MENA Hero Project pages. Find the links in the show notes in the description down below.
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[00:48:28] Catch us on Substack and on YouTube and anywhere else you find podcasts. This has been the GGJ Podcast. Thanks for listening, and keep making games