Our guests for this episode are Boyd Gittins and his daughter Renee Gittins – the Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), an organization that supports and empower game developers around the world in achieving fulfilling and sustainable careers.
In addition to leading the IGDA, Renee is also the CEO and Creative Director of her own indie game studio “Stumbling Cat” where she is leading her team in the creation of a new video game “Potions: A Curious Tale.” Renee is also a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree.
We’re excited to be experimenting with a slightly different format in this episode by hosting both the father and his daughter. The episode starts with the conversation with Renee and then transitions to a conversation with her father, Boyd.
Topics we discuss include:
- Renee’s perspectives on personal leadership
- How Boyd helped Renee to learn how to push through difficulties
- Boyd’s focus on encouraging effort more so than results
- And, a story about how Renee and her parents responded when Renee asked her elementary school teacher for extra math work and was told “girls don’t need to know more math”.
Enjoy the episode!
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Renee on Social
- Twitter: @RikuKat
- Facebook: @ Renee-Gittins
- LinkedIn: @renee-gittins-46195343
Links to the IGDA
- Webpage: https://igda.org/
- Twitter: @IGDA
- Facebook: @IGDA.org
Please forgive the errors in the transcript! Enjoy the episode!
Jonathan V.: Starting out, could you just tell me a bit about yourself, what you do now in terms of a career and your career path to get up to where you are today?
Renee Gittins: My name is Renee Gittins and I am the executive director of the International Game Developers Association, the IGDA. The IGDA supports and empowers game developers around the world in achieving, fulfilling, and sustainable careers. I also act as the CEO and creative director of my own Indi game studio Stumbling Cat, which is working on the game, Potions, a Curious Tale.
Jonathan V.: How long have you been working on leading Stumbling Cat? And when can we look forward to Playing Potions, A Curious Tale?
Renee Gittins: I started Stumbling Cats, I believe in 2014, at the time I hadn’t really planned on making it a career. It was just a place to work on titles and portfolio projects that I was interested in. And then I started Potions, A Curious Tale and was able to launch a successful Kickstarter, which was funded in 2016. And now I am, yeah, I’m working on developing that game while juggling my other efforts. I launched the beta or the alpha for it in may of this year. And the beta should be coming out in late Q1 or early Q2 of 2021.
Jonathan V.: Exciting looking forward to it. So you are extraordinarily accomplished for someone.
Renee Gittins: I’m 30, if that’s what you are wondering.
Jonathan V.: Thank you. What would you say are some of the skillsets that have contributed to your success? Are there any pivotal moments or decisions that you made that have helped you to get onto this career track and to succeed in the careers that you’ve pursued?
Renee Gittins: I think what contributes most to my success is what I call personal leadership. It’s the concept of leading yourself and leading your life with a plan with motivation and with empathy for yourself. It’s not something that I have been perfect about my entire life, but it’s something that I’ve refined over time. And I think that approaching your goals with a strategy and with an acknowledgement that you have to market yourself, you have to work on your own growth. You have to work on building your network. You have to be kind to yourself when you do run into failures, is an approach that can help anyone be successful with their goals.
Jonathan V.: And how did he come to develop that personal leadership approach? Is this something that you kind of developed over time yourself? Did you have mentors, were there other experiences you drew upon to take this approach to leading your life?
Renee Gittins: Yeah. I definitely developed it from a number of sources, but I will admit that my father and my mother, my parents are a large part of that. My dad and my mom really taught me that I was empowered to pursue what I wanted to and that I also needed to work on the tools to get there. So for example, my dad made sure that I was studying math over the summers, even in elementary school to keep up that knowledge, yeah. And, you know, he also taught me to push through on the difficult things we would run together and he would encourage me to push through the difficulties I had when I was first learning to do long distance running and learning to run three miles in a row at 10 felt really difficult. But learning how to push through those difficulties was an really important life skill.
Jonathan V.: Yeah. I’ve heard long distance running described as a very mental game and the pain management part, you’re in your head a lot. And I’ve done some running myself, but not competitive, but I could see where that would contribute a lot to your mental fortitude.
Renee Gittins: Yeah. I mean, truthfully giving up is easy, right? The difficult part is pushing through and every time you practice pushing through something difficult, it makes it easier. The next time you have to do that.
Jonathan V.: Are there other things that you can think of that your parents did or your father in particular that helped contribute towards you becoming the amazing person that you are today?
Renee Gittins: Yeah. My parents really encouraged me to stand up for what’s right. Obviously I have faced adversity just like everyone has in the growth of my career, and even in school, and my parents were always there to support me and to support my growth and learning. For example, in second grade, the teacher, I had said that we had a certain math unit for the year. And when we finished that math unit we were done, and math was my favorite subject. So I finished it in the first two months of the school year. And then I asked him for more math and he said, you’re done with the math unit. And I said, but I want more math. And he said, girls don’t need to know more math. Well because my parents had taught me to be open with them. I came to them and said, Hey, my teacher won’t let me do math more math and says that girls don’t need to know more math. And then they raised hell at my elementary school. And I got to learn more math. I think I actually started learning pre-algebra at that point in time. So yeah, I got really, really far ahead in math. And at one point I was doing math with the advanced class a year above me. And then after that point, my parents worked it out with these school where I would have to take math tests with the rest of the class. But during math time, they gave me like a high school math textbook or even college, I think math textbook. And I would just do math problems out of that during math time, instead of the same worksheets the rest of the class were doing.
Jonathan V.: Wow. And you were self-teaching yourself out of that book?
Renee Gittins: Yeah, I guess so. I think if I had questions, you know, my parents would help me work through them, but textbooks do tend to be pretty self-explanatory.
Jonathan V.: I think we may, we may have had different experiences with textbooks. I’ve had that experience, I think with some of my bio books, which I ended up majoring in, but with math, I did try over summer to try to self-teach myself, some just out of personal interest and I just was utterly confused.
Renee Gittins: Well, I think my parents did a really good job raising me because they encouraged me a lot. When it came to mathematics, they used to drive about an hour to practice martial arts. And during that drive to entertain me, they would ask me math problems. And I had to do them in my head because I didn’t have paper to write them down on. So I think that actually was really, really good practice and good mental practice because when you’re doing large math problems in your head, if there’s a lot of stuff you have to juggle, which really encourages you to approach the problems in different ways. So that was beneficial. And then as a younger kid, even my parents tried to encourage me to be very insightful and explanatory about things that I was feeling or experiencing. I wasn’t allowed to say I didn’t like something just, I didn’t like something. I had to say why I didn’t like it. Which did result in me hiding under the living room table and saying I don’t like it. And I don’t know why after my father chased me around the house asking me why I didn’t like peanut butter.
Jonathan V.: It seems like they did a really good job with the encouraging. Any thoughts on how they did a good job of balancing encouragement while still giving you the space to be self-motivated?
Renee Gittins: Yeah. I think that when it came to things like sports or math, it was always a time block. Right. You know, we’re going to go, yes, run three miles, but that’s going to take approximately 30 or 40 minutes or we’re going to go practice basketball, but we’re going to do that for an hour. And it was never really results focused. It was effort focused. Now, admittedly, if I was running three miles and I stopped running and started walking, I do feel like I got a lot of criticism for that. And there were some parts of my childhood where I remember crying and just be like, I can’t run. And he’s like, if you stopped crying, you’d run a fine. So I definitely think he pushed me really hard when it came to those kinds of activities, but when it came to studying math and things like that, it was just, Hey, here’s your time to do some math today. And I never felt it to be particularly pressuring or over the top.
And then in terms of empowering me to do the things that I was interested in, if I expressed interest in an art or craft or sport or activity or modeling, my parents supported that. I was privileged, right. My parents could pay for me to go to classes. I took many art classes growing up. I was also particularly privileged. And I think this is actually really critical. My father worked night shifts when I was an infant. And so I had the benefit of having a parent with me, anytime that I was awake. So I had my dad taking care of me during the day while my mom was at work. And my mom taking care of me in the evening when my dad went to bed. So I think that was really beneficial for my development because I was getting that additional interaction and attention during those critical development moments.
Jonathan V.: Interesting. I would have thought maybe that would have been a downside. I hadn’t looked at it as you often had a parent around in those early years.
Renee Gittins: Yeah. I think it was really beneficial. I think the only downside that I probably faced is my parents are actually much older than my peers parents were. And I was an only child and I did not live in a neighborhood with other children. So I was very used to socializing with my parents and their friends who tended to be about 15 years older than my peers parents. And I think that that made me a little less confident in socializing with my peers. I always felt really awkward around people my age until probably the end of high school or college. I was not a popular kid growing up.
Jonathan V.: Thinking about gaming. How did you get involved in gaming?
Renee Gittins: So my dad actually got me involved with gaming. My dad liked computers and I’d pull up a chair next to my dad when he was playing on the PC. And I would watch him. And almost anytime he was playing video games, I would be sitting there and watching him. And of course, you know, he encouraged me to play as well. I didn’t like playing in front of him, I guess I’m kind of shy when it comes to playing games in front of other people unless they’re competitive games. And yeah, it just sort of grew my love from games there. I think again, since I was an only child and I had a little bit of difficulty getting along with my peers, I found video games to be a really wonderful refuge for that. I spent a lot of time playing games to entertain myself when I had spare time. And then I actually started practicing my social skills in online games and on online forums. And that helps me build up my confidence to then interact more with my peers.
Jonathan V.: Did you find other benefits from gaming? I know you have an engineering background academically, you have an affinity towards math. Did you feel like it helped with your problem-solving skills or any other sort of characteristics?
Renee Gittins: Yeah, absolutely. Truthfully, my parents actually provided me with a lot of educational games, so there were a lot of math focused games. There was some algebra based game and then there was a different one that was geometry based. And I think that those did a really good job of keeping me engaged with math and learning, even when I didn’t want to read textbooks, it was really easy to just play games and feel the confidence and success of solving those math problems. I think that games also helped me develop an appreciation of storytelling. I was a huge book reader as well. Mostly fantasy novels. In fact, if you were to look at my, the books that I read as a child, I would imagine it would be 95% fantasy novels, 3% Sci-fi, and then 2% something else that was forced on me through school. I was the kid who sat in the back of the class, when people started getting cell phones, even not texting under the table, but with my fantasy novel shoved under the table. And both those fantasy novels and video games really gave me an appreciation for transporting people to another world, for storytelling, for creating characters, with complex backgrounds and emotions and interactions. And I think that helped sort of encourage my own development of not only my interest in stories, but my interest in people and human interactions and things like that.
Jonathan V.: It seems like it may have influenced how you’ve approached developing Potions, A Curious Tale as well. It strikes me as a very story-based game, with a lot of complexity and nuances to it.
Renee Gittins: Absolutely. Yeah. My consumption of fantasy games and novels 100% had a huge influence on the creation of Potions, A Curious Tale as did something that people might not expect. You know, my parents met through martial arts and they are truly martial artists to their core and the approach that they have and the approach that their style has is, you know, self defense. Use of force only when it’s necessary, avoiding confrontation, unless that confrontation is required. And that’s actually a really big theme in Potions, A Curious Tale. In Potions, A Curious Tale, it’s an adventure crafting game where you play as this young witch named Luna. Who’s recently discovered her ability to brew magical potions. And she can use these potions as spells to battle monsters, overcome obstacles and solve puzzles on her quest to become a potions master. Since potions have to be crafted each single one, it encourages proper use of resources which means unlike many games where you’re supposedly the hero, it doesn’t benefit you to go slaughter every fluffy bunny you see.
Jonathan V.: That’s different. Yeah. That’s interesting. You need to be much more thoughtful, not just going out and winging it for lack of a better word, which seems to be more of a, the premise of a lot of other games where you just, as you were saying, just shoot everything, right?
Renee Gittins: Yeah. I mean, I love fantasy games. I love adventure games. And even in ones where you’re supposedly the hero, it has an experienced system and you get experienced for killing things and you get experience for almost killing anything. And then you just sort of become a maniac slaughtering the countryside to get more experience, helps you battle monsters. But whether or not that feels very heroic, I think is questionable.
Jonathan V.: Right. Right. Is there any advice that you would give to youth who are considering careers in the gaming industry?
Renee Gittins: Yeah. My advice is if you’re considering a career in the game industry, try to make a game. It doesn’t matter how old you are, just use the tools you have available. If you don’t have a computer, you can actually do paper prototyping where you build out the components of your game with paper and move it around and see if it feels good. And see if you like the concept. If you do have access to a computer, there’s a lot of really wonderful software out there that can allow you to try making a game. You know, there’s unity and unreal engine and game maker and RPG maker, all of those have different levels of skill that’s necessary, but they also all have really wonderful tutorials. And you can go through and work on trying to make your own title. If there’s a game that you’re really passionate about that also has a modding community. A lot of game developers get started through modding games that they like. So if you really like Skyram or something like that, go ahead and check out the modding community and the tutorials and everything else that they have there, because really what studios look for when they’re hiring developers is passionate self-starters and it’s never too early to start trying to pursue your dreams.
Jonathan V.: And you called it a modding community and M O D D I N G?
Renee Gittins: M. O. D. D. I .N. G., Modding. So game mod is where you’re modifying a game that currently exists. Many game studios, support that by putting in special tools or opening up APIs and portions of their code for players to write their own code or asset packages, art, things like that for it. And there’s whole communities built around working on those little assets. And that can be an easy way to start because you can see results in a game that you like with just a little bit of effort.
Jonathan V.: Ah that’s interesting. Well, thank you very much for your time. I really enjoy talking with you. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation and I really appreciate it.
Renee Gittins: Yeah. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
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Transition to Conversation with Boyd Gittins
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Jonathan V.: So Boyd, thanks again for your willingness to participate. I’ve really been looking forward to the conversation. Renee seems incredibly accomplished at a very young age executive director of the International Game Developers Association and CEO of her own game Studio Stumbling Cat. That’s working on developing and hopefully soon to be released game Potions, A Curious Tale and a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree. You must be very proud.
Boyd Gittins: Always. Yeah, she’s always one of my happy topics to talk about.
Jonathan V.: And do you have other kids as well?
Boyd Gittins: Nope. We figured we’d do one and try to do it as well as we could. And it seems like it was our plan worked out.
Jonathan V.: It sure does. So, could you tell me a bit about the Gittins household? Where was home when Renee was young and, and what did that look like?
Boyd Gittins: Well we’ve lived in the same house ever since before Renee was born. Which of course is totally opposite of what I went through as a child. So I figured once we were to have a child, I wanted to stay in one place, one school district, one situation as best we could and keep the trauma of moving around to a minimum.
Jonathan V.: And where was that?
Boyd Gittins: It was in Edmonds, Washington state.
Jonathan V.: Okay. So you’re still in the same house where Renee grew up?
Boyd Gittins: Yup. Yup. From the day she was born until now, we’re still in the same place we call it the homestead.
Jonathan V.: I think that’s pretty rare and really nice to be able to go back, you know, as an adult to the home where he grew up in.
Boyd Gittins: Oh yeah. She started throwing up the place.
Jonathan V.: So how did you approach parenting? It sounds like it was a very important role for you. Did you have any particular parenting philosophies in general or specific examples of ways that you approached being a father?
Boyd Gittins: Oh, I gave it a lot of thought. Believe me from the Beginning we just basically approached it with, we would give her as much information as she was capable of handling. And, you know, my philosophy of parenting was always just honesty. You’re as honest with the child as you can be, and you treat them as though they’re able to understand what you’re saying and how you’re saying it. And if there was ever any doubts about anything or any questions, and we tried to answer them as best we could, as honestly as we could. And we expected the same back and pretty much that’s what we got.
Jonathan V.: How did you and your wife share and or divide parenting responsibilities?
Boyd Gittins: Well, we both did was as much as what we could, I guess, you know, she’s, she takes it from one point of view. She was always there to make sure that Renee didn’t need anything. And I was there with there for, you know, emotional support. It’s like, it’s as much a father as a father could be a, we never kind of made a division line. We both just contributed as the need required.
Jonathan V.: Would you ever coordinate, were you purposeful about convening to discuss how you’re going to approach things or did it work out more organically?
Boyd Gittins: No. We’ve always had family discussions about everything. That’s one of the things Renee is so attached to right now is, you know, the family type dinner gathering. We always sat at dinner and talked about life and circumstance and procedures and everything as best we could.
Jonathan V.: That’s nice. And did you find the relationship with your wife? I think all parents find that, you know, obviously you don’t have as much time with your spouse as, before having kids. Was that something that you were purposeful about working on, did you and your wife find time to just be together as a couple? Or was it again, something that was kind of more organic in how that worked out?
Boyd Gittins: One of the things I think we’ve been most successful in, in our family is being able to communicate about all things, you know, and we never got together and made a great big master plan. We’ve made opportunities for the family to do things, always took Renee with us every place and did everything we could very little babysitting involved. You know, we both participate in karate and Renee was taken with us from the time she was able to be dragged out of the house in a bassinet.
Jonathan V.: She mentioned that if there was something that she didn’t like, you had an expectation that she would explain it.
Boyd Gittins: Exactly. And that’s what I was saying. You know, once, once we had everything kind of sorted out in our own minds, then we’d sit together and we’d discuss it. And you know, if I thought one way and she thought another, I always gave her the opportunity to plead her case and smart as she is often or not, she’d figure a way to get it done the way she kind of hoped it turned out.
Jonathan V.: So you, you would really listen. It wasn’t just a matter of giving her air time to voice her grievances or her point of view.
Boyd Gittins: Absolutely. If she had a good case, I listened to it and give it every consideration I could, of course, with always with the, with the parenting and caveat of, I still have the ability to say no.
Jonathan V.: Right. Yes. How did you approach discipline?
Boyd Gittins: Discipline was really not much of an issue if I felt my way was the way it was going to be. It just turned out that way. I never really had to discipline Renee as such, like I say, we discuss our situation and come to a conclusion. So it wasn’t a whole lot of punishment of any type involved.
Jonathan V.: And in terms of motivating her, it sounds like she was a very accomplished student from a early age. Were there things that you did academically to motivate her or to encourage her innate interest?
Boyd Gittins: Well, we always encouraged everything, any of her interests we encouraged. So she tried a lot of different things and either stuck with it or gave up on it on her own volition. So we’d give her opportunities. When we were starting her into athletics, I told her, Hey, listen, sweetheart, I don’t care which athletic endeavor you choose, but why don’t you choose one and make an all out effort at it? So she tried volleyball and basketball and cross country and track. And I think the one that she got the most enjoyment from was track and field, and some of her running, but in the end, she was, you know, she, wasn’t one of these people who got so involved in athletics, that that was her only, only direction, which is good, cause we really didn’t want her to be, you know, so uni-dimensional that she only had one interest. And so we encouraged her to try it all out, find what you like the best and give it your best effort and it worked out pretty well.
Jonathan V.: So thinking about track and field, and when she was in that, since you mentioned that was the one that it seemed like she gravitated towards the most. How did he balance encouragement? And I can think of a thousand times where I’ve done this. Do you ever feel like maybe you pushed too hard?
Boyd Gittins: Oh sure. Hey, you don’t know, you’re pushing too hard till you cross the line. The point is to find that line and not cross it too much or too hard. So, you know, if there was a few times in her training that I felt she was not making an all out effort and that’s really all I’ve ever asked for her is if you’re going to do something, do it the best you can. And so you know, yeah, there were a few times when I felt she was, you know, really not living up to that standard and I would mention it to her and she basically was still make the decision if that’s where she wanted to go or not.
Jonathan V.: Yeah. How would you describe that difference, trying to help another father understand what encouragement looks like versus pushing? How would you describe that?
Boyd Gittins: Pushing is, to me pushing I’ve got something that I think needs to be accomplished, and I’m going to put pressure on you to accomplish that. Encouraging is I’ve got something that I’d like to see accomplished, and that any effort you make in that area is rewarded rather than criticized or punished. Like I say, very little punishment winning going on in this relationship,
Jonathan V.: How would you reward?
Boyd Gittins: Oh, through praise. How was anybody ever rewarded? You know, that you praise someone for doing the things that you’re, you’re happy to see them. Do, you know, it didn’t have to have monetary or, you know, physical object type thing. You know, you can’t have that TV unless you get this or that no, the reward would just simply showing pride in how she was doing and how well she accomplished things.
Jonathan V.: That’s nice. You mentioned earlier that you’re a believer that all of our experience kind of influence who we are today. I found that’s a large part of how I approached parenting. I think that I drew upon all of my experiences, but I think that the biggest influence there was my own parents thinking about both things that they did well that I wanted to replicate. And also things that I think that, you know, that they didn’t do so well that I wanted to make sure I avoided in raising my own son.
Boyd Gittins: Oh, geez. Yes. Oh, yeah.
Jonathan V.: Were there things that you adopted so to speak from your own parents or learned from that experience that you should not do?
Boyd Gittins: Oh, yes, yes. Yes. I had a fairly abusive stepfather and yeah, his pet name for me was stupid idiot. So yeah, I definitely had some things in my childhood that I said would not happen. One of them, as I said, was that we were going to find a place to settle down. And so we’ve stayed in the same house when I was young. Sometimes I would change houses and even school districts as many as three times a year. And so I said, no, I’m not going to go through that. And I also told myself that no matter how bad things may or may not get with the wife, we were going to stay together. Of course never got much of a challenge on that anyway. But I was going to make sure that Renee had a stable family, at least till she was 18. And so yeah, my family was, was very fragmented. I was basically raised by a single mother until I was probably let’s see, she married my stepdad about time. I was eight. But other than that, you know, and then no. Yeah. And there were some, like I say, some abusive things in my life that I was dead set to make sure Renee had never experienced.
Jonathan V.: I think he mentioned earlier about family dinners. Did all, you have dinner together on a regular basis?
Boyd Gittins: As much as we possibly could, you know, because you know, school and everything and everybody going different directions, we seldom had a full family breakfast or lunch, but at dinner time we got together, that was our family meeting time and we all enjoyed it. It was in fact, Renee oftentimes will call us and chat while she’s eating, meal time is a time to communicate.
Jonathan V.: Oh, that’s wonderful. I like that. Is there anything that you found particularly difficult about being a father?
Boyd Gittins: Oh yeah. Yeah. I never realized how concerned you can be for another person, you know, always, always afraid that something’s going to go wrong or, you know, you’re just afraid that your child is in any way going to get sick or injured or anything else. I’d never realized how, how intense that could be.
Jonathan V.: Yeah. Has that continued?
Boyd Gittins: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You know, when she moved to Baltimore and drove cross country in November. Yeah. I sat on pins and needles for that.
Jonathan V.: Renee mentioned that you encourage her to go to college out of state for sounds like the very same reasons that I encourage my son to do the same, to, you know, see a different part of the world, different people, different experience.
Boyd Gittins: Right. And to get fully involved in maturity, you know, if you’re living at home and going to college, it’s just like extended high school. So I thought it would, when I went to school, I originally went to a community college and stayed at home and I came so close to flunking out of school a couple of times, then I got a scholarship to want to go to Washington State University had to go 300 miles from home. All of a sudden I’m on the Dean’s list and then, you know, doing life the way I’m supposed to. So I figured, you know, if it worked for me should work for the daughter, I encouraged her to get to a place where she was going to have to kind of woman up, and you know, be self-sufficient a little bit.
Jonathan V.: Yeah. Well, it sounds like she did that. She continues to level up, so to speak as she’s progressed in her career.
Boyd Gittins: She has very seldom failed to live up to the feet.
Jonathan V.: Can you think of any specific, difficult situations that you needed to manage through as a parent?
Boyd Gittins: She’s always been my go-to to get out of difficult situations. She, you know, she like any young person she’d had social situations when she was in junior high school, because she was smart, she got into some bullying situations, but that’s one of the reasons we kept her in the mainstream of public education. She, of course had offers to go into the gifted child programs where they went and took all those smartest ones and isolated them and gave them all kinds of extra teaching and stuff. And we just absolutely refused to allow that and we wanted her to suffer some of the difficult social situations. And yeah, it was a little hard for me at times to find that the awesome person that she is, that she was suffering some bullying, but, you know, yeah, she and I suffered through some minor difficult situations. You know, I just can’t believe how easy and pleasant raising Renee has been for me. And maybe it’s just because I enjoy her so much, that situations don’t really present themselves as difficult. Just as another challenge.
Jonathan V.: Would you say that you were emotionally accessible with Renee? Would you show affection?
Boyd Gittins: Oh, absolutely. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, she used to sit on my lap all the time and we hug and talk about life and stuff. So yeah, she was, she was a lap sitter and we just Huggle and snuggle and talk things over. That was, that’s always my fondest memories of her as a child.
Jonathan V.: Do you feel that that’s important as a father to be able to show that type of emotion and affection?
Boyd Gittins: Absolutely. I mean, it depends on how you want to present yourself as a father, if you want to present yourself as a hard met and all the rest of that and me tough guy, and all, I, you know, I never felt any particular need to show what a tough guy I was or show off. I mean, anybody wanted to challenge who or what I was, I was there for their criticism, but, you know, I I’ve never felt any need to be anything more than I am.
Jonathan V.: With the benefit of hindsight. What’s something that you might’ve done differently as a father?
Boyd Gittins: Oh, just, just take away all of the mistakes. I mean, you know as with anybody, you, you grow into a situation. So I know I didn’t just pop right into being a you know, a nurturing father. I had to fight through some emotional highs that, you know, when one time I was supposed to meet Renee at the mall and she wasn’t where she was supposed to be, and I had to go looking for her and I got angry. And when I finally found her, I rushed up to her in a very angry way only to find out that she was exactly where she thought she was supposed to be. And she wasn’t, you know, just off on her own. And so, you know, yeah, I wish I hadn’t popped off so fast, gotten all the facts and, you know, dealt with it differently, but Hey, and then we talked it over. She understood why I had gotten emotional the way I did and why I didn’t want to continue doing that kind of thing. So, you know, I’ve had little episodes where I wasn’t the best parent in the world, you know, hope to God nobody thinks that I was ever the perfect parent, but, you know, we always managed to work it out.
Jonathan V.: Well, she’s certainly made a good run of it. She’s doing fantastic. And I’m excited to see her continued success. And I’m looking forward to the release of her game. I just had one additional question, which is, is there any advice that you would give to other fathers, either fathers of aspiring game developers or just to fathers in general?
Boyd Gittins: Give your child every opportunity to become who they’re going to become, and don’t try to impose anything on them and just be encouraging and honest with them.
Jonathan V.: Well, thank you very much for your time Boyd. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Boyd Gittins: Right. Well, thank you. Once again, you have a great day.
Jonathan V.: You too Boyd, take care.