The future of fun is in games that you take with you. Games that help you meet new people. Games that help you explore the real-world, as well as the virtual world. These are the sort of games we make.
We build iPhone games that make your commute to work more fun. We make location-based games that introduce you to new people and new neighborhoods. We make alternate-reality games that send you scavenging across the Internet for clues. We make games that make the everyday world more fun.
We don't limit our games to any one platform, but instead seek to build the right game for the right situation. We have designed everything from mobile games to casual downloadables to web-based massively multiplayer games. Our appetite for games is wide and varied; we design games with the same philosophy. What's important is finding the right type of game and play for your audience.
We're constantly working on interesting new iPhone games and large outdoor game events. So stay tuned.
Our Games
iPhone Games
With the flick of a button Gigaputt transforms your neighborhood into an exciting 3-hole mini-golf course, complete with popping manholes, treacherous fire hydrants, and giant coins. More
Check out Gigaputt in the iPhone App store
Real-World Games
Cast yourself into the game. Shadowplay is a motion-based outdoor arcade game that uses the architecture of the city as its backdrop. The game plays like a cross between shadow puppets and Twister. More
In the first-ever live gaming experience inspired by The New Yorker players explore the city through clues drawn from the annals of the magazine. More
Events
Each year Gigantic Mechanic produces the Come Out & Play Festival, a three day festival of street games. More
With years of experience bringing games to market, we have a good idea of how to make everything from casual video games to huge outdoor game events. We focus on delivering casual, accesible game experiences that appeal to wide audiences.
Game Design Consulting
We're very good at getting out the whiteboard and helping clients design exciting new games.
Concept & Design
We help clients turn their ideas into full-fledged games. Gigantic Mechanic can help you create new game ideas, as well as develop initial concepts into full design plans and specifications. Through a combination of market research and iterative ideation we will make sure the game ideas are a good fit for your audience.
Playtesting & Insight
Having worked on numerous shipped titles we can help you refine games in progress through focused user testing and expert advisement.
Full Game Development
We work with first rate programmers and artists to bring game ideas to life.
iPhone games
With a touchscreen, powerful processors and high-speed Internet access, the iPhone has incredible potential for gaming. Combine that with an install base in excess of 30 million people eagerly looking through the App Store for fun new games and the iPhone represents an incredible new gaming market.
Event & Location-based Games
Event games can be a great way to bring a conference or festival to life. We design games tailored to specific events and audiences. These games offer new twists on familiar games and technology, providing exciting play experiences for hundreds of players at a time.
Alternate Reality Games
Alternate Reality Games provide players with a cross media experience through interactive narratives and games. Players spend weeks, even months interacting with the narrative and content as they scour the web for clues. To this end ARGs can be a great tools for viral marketing. We can tailor an ARG experience around anything, from a TV show to a consumer product.
Web Games
Web games kill time and suck in players. The good ones do, anyway. With our focus on intuitive, addicting casual game play, we build web games that keep players returning to your site over and over.
PC Casual Downloadables
The casual downloadable game market keeps exploding in size. We have years of experience making hit casual games, from developing original IP to working with licensed content. We can take a game all the way from generating pitches and concepts to gold release.
A few of the clients we have worked with:
Both Mattia Romeo and Greg Trefry have worked in the game design industry for years on a wide array of projects, from casual games to web-based MMOs to large-outdoor spectacles. But we always wanted to create more mobile games; games that you take with you everywhere you go; games that react to where you are.
With improvements in locative mobile technology we finally have the tools we've been looking for. And now we're off and running.
Mattia Romeo
Co-founder / Game Designer
Mattia Romeo is a game designer and programmer based in New York City. Prior to founding Gigantic Mechanic with Greg Trefry, Mattia was a Senior Game Designer at Gamelab - one of the largest indie game studios in New York. While at Gamelab, Mattia consulted on and designed for projects on a diverse range of platforms that included board games, live-events, PC casual games, the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo DS. Some of the notable projects he worked on include Arcadia Remix, Top Chef: The Game, Egg vs. Chicken, Miss Management, Gamestar Mechanic and the blockbuster casual title Diner Dash.
As well as more traditional forms of games, Mattia also designs and develops big games - large-scale games played in real-world spaces - and worked on some of the seminal examples of the genre, including Pac-Manhattan and Conqwest.
As part of his interest in big games, Mattia is one of the founders of the Come Out & Play Festival, a yearly festival based in New York dedicated to showcasing games that make innovative use of public space.
Prior to entering the game industry Mattia was a film editor and worked on a variety of independent films including Hamlet, The Kid Stays in The Picture, and Sundance winners Secretary and Personal Velocity.
Email: mromeo (at) giganticmechanic (dot) com
Gregory Trefry
Co-founder / Game Designer
Greg Trefry has wide array of experience designing games. He has designed everything from web-based MMOs to hit casual games to alternate reality games. Prior to starting Gigantic Mechanic, Greg was the Creative Director at Gamestar Mechanic, a web-based massively multiplayer game for tweens. Before that he was a Senior Game Designer at Gamelab where he created and led design on the hit franchise Jojo's Fashion Show.
Greg doesn't limit his design interests to video games. Greg created and served as director of the Come Out & Play Festival, a three day festival of street games that brings designers and players from around the world to New York City every summer. He co-designed the Webby-nominated Case of the Coveted Bottle ARG.
Before working in games Greg was a Vice-President at LPC/Reuters where he managed a suite of financial information web products.
Greg has been invited to speak at conferences around the world about location-based and social games. He also teaches about designing games and ARGs at New York Univeristy's prestigious Interactive Telecommunications Program and Parsons The New School for Design.
Greg has written an entire book on casual game design and how to create game mechanics and experiences that engage wide audiences of players. The book, Casual Game Design: Designing Play for the Gamer in All of Us was published by Morgan Kaufmann in 2010.
In his remaining time he wanders about Brooklyn on his bike. Personal site: www.iamtheeconomy.com
Greg Trefry's book on Casual Game Design
In this book Greg dissects a range of different casual game mechanics in an attempt to find out how they work and why they engage broad audiences of players.
He establishes general frameworks for game design then goes on to look as specific games and how the mechanics of the game work together to create specific experiences.
Email: gtrefry (at) giganticmechanic (dot) com
Press
How to Make Money on iPhone Apps, Inc., Mar 12, 2010
At GDC, iPhone game development breaks out, CNET, March 8, 2010
Sector B: The Business of Brooklyn - Brooklyn Creative League , Brooklyn Independent Television, February 2010
When All the World's a Staged Game, The New York Times, November 11, 2009
Big bucks for apps?, New York Post, September 12, 2009
Some of the games we've worked on:
Web-based MMOs
Gamestar Mechanic
Big Games
Come Out & Play Festival
Event Games
California Dreaming
Alternate-Reality Games
The Case of the Coveted Bottle
Casual Games
Diner Dash
Some of our recent writings on games and design:
Trying to Build a Franchise, Notes on Game Dev, 2008.
Do it Yourself Counter Strike Squirt, Kotaku, June 25, 2010
PacManhattan
Conqwest
Payphone Warriors
CounterSquirt
Insider
Gangs of GDC
Jojo's Fashion Show
Jojo's Fashion Show 2
Top Chef: The Game
Miss Management
LEGO Fever
Egg vs. Chicken
ShopMania
Plantasia
Arcadia Remix
Josefina's Market Day
Big Games: Playing in the Streets, Adobe ThinkTank, 2007.
Postmortem - Gangs of GDC: Rumble in the Moscone Center, Gamasutra, 2007.
A Shared Learning Process, MacArthur Foundation - Digital Media and Learning
If you're interested in receiving updates when a game launches, sign up for our mailing list:
Gigantic Mechanic LLC
540 President Street
Third Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11215
Phone: 646-807-8131
Email: info (at) giganticmechanic (dot) com
©2011, Gigantic Mechanic
