page_title: Andy Schatz
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Andy Schatz / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Logo for Pocketwatch Games
context_page_description: Andy Schatz is a video game designer based in San Diego. He began developing video games at a young age and graduated from Amherst College. After graduation, he worked for various video game development companies, including TKO Software, before founding his own independent video game development studio Pocketwatch Games in 2004. Attempting to expand his company, Schatz tried enrolling into business school; all applications were rejected. As a result, he began working on games he was passionate about. Schatz has released four video games: Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa, Venture Arctic, Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine, and Tooth and Tail. His design philosophy revolves around taking inspiration from already existing media, such as films, and transforming it into a video game.
context_section_description: Schatz' first job after college was at the viral marketing firm e-tractions, where he helped create a virtual Christmas snowglobe. After his work at Netplay, he worked on his first commercial release at Presto Studios, where he helped develop Star Trek: Hidden Evil (1999) as a level builder. He left Presto Studios temporarily to work for e-tractions again, only to return later to help with the AI on the Xbox Live version of Whacked! (2002). After leaving Presto Studios, Schatz moved to Santa Cruz to work for TKO Software, and in the early 2000s helped develop Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Breakthrough (2003) and GoldenEye: Rogue Agent (2004) among other games. During a time when the development team had nothing to work on, Schatz proposed a prototype of a game he had been working on described as "a house-robbing game" where players would build a home and defend it, then attempt to break into other players' homes. He sent this prototype to Microsoft, but it did not interest them.
  Schatz founded Pocketwatch Games, an independent video game development studio as a sole proprietorship in December 2004, before TKO shut down in 2005. The first game Schatz developed and released was Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa (2005), a tycoon game designed to appeal to the same audience as Zoo Tycoon (2001). Set in the African wilderness, the game focused on a number of themes including balancing the ecosystem, species' relationships and weather cycles. It was a success and became an Independent Games Festival (IGF) finalist helping Schatz' secure the budget for the sequel: Venture Arctic (2007). Venture Arctic had the same premise as Venture Africa. While some critics praised it, and it won Gametunnel's simulation game of the year in 2007, it had complications that players did not enjoy. As a result, it was a commercial failure compared to Venture Africa. Schatz was then hired by Jim Safka, co-founder of Match.com, to develop a flash game for Green.com. This contract slowly waned, and Schatz began to work on Venture Dinosauria. It was cancelled before its 2009 release date. Looking back Schatz said he had failed to find "a way to make it both fun and open-ended, but also a small, self-contained experience at the same time". Throughout this period Schatz wanted to expand Pocketwatch Games from a studio to a business and applied for enrollment in various business schools. He was never accepted, something he now considers "the biggest blessing of [his] entire career".
  In 2009, Schatz, feeling despondent after the failure of Venture Dinosauria, began learning Microsoft XNA to enable him to develop games for both PC and Xbox 360. Having been rejected by business schools, he slowly discarded that idea and focused on making "whatever game [I'm] passionate about in the moment". In 2009, he was low on cash and gave himself one last chance before getting "a corporate job". He began to code a game inspired by Hitman and other games that resembled Pac-Man without the ghosts. This was the foundation of Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine (2013) and within a week Schatz had added enemies, ambience, and abilities. Shortly after, he began to look over design documents he made years earlier. After fifteen weeks of development, he had a prototype that won two IGF 2010 awards—the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and the Excellence in Design award. With the game still unfinished, these awards allowed Schatz to continue to work on what became, as Polygon described, "a magnificent return to the four-player couch madness of '90s console games". Schatz originally planned to release the game on the Xbox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) marketplace. Having received these awards, however, he changed his mind, describing XBLIG as being "a roll of the dice".
  Soon after, Valve (the company behind Steam) and Schatz began discussing the idea of selling the game on Steam. Before this he had contacted Microsoft to discuss selling the game on the Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA). Schatz's idea was rejected by Microsoft for its lack of marketability. Microsoft gave him another chance, and with a "no-ri
caption: Logo for Pocketwatch Games, Schatz' independent video game studio
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