About
Walking Ideas is a one-person game studio. Shawn Chiao designs and builds the games. Friends pitch in along the way with help, ideas and support, and the studio wouldn't be here without them.
Where it started
Walking Ideas began in 1998 as two friends making board games by hand, cutting and sanding every piece, then playing them with kids and parents at a street fair. One of those games, Oshiro, became a Flash game in 2005 and won the grand prize in GameTrust's Casual Game Evolution Challenge.
After that, Shawn worked on an MMORPG at Gazillion Entertainment, co-founded companies in social games and interactive narrative, and spent years at healthcare startups, always meaning to come back to games. Now he has.
Why games
A game can be as powerful and moving as a novel or a film, and often more so. A reader or a viewer watches a story from the outside. A player stands inside it and makes the choices.
Games can also change how we see the world. Made with care, they build empathy, curiosity and tolerance, which the world needs a great deal of right now.