Matt "Game Dad" Dyet

Matt is a Producer, Lecturer, and man of many hats living and working in Perth, Western Australia. As a game developer his title might read Producer, but he also dabbles in a bit of everything from Programming to Art and Design. Having worked in the games industry for a decade now, he’s been a part of the development of games such as Symphony of the Machine, Safety Beach, The Dark Room, Ghoul Britannia, Omi Oh My AI, and several Scitech exhibits. You can also find some of my small projects here on itch.io!

Scitech

Scitech is a science learning centre that develops its own interactive exhibits to educate children on STEM. During his internship with Scitech in 2012, Matt was responsible for overseeing the production of their latest exhibition, Science Fiction Science Future. Given a substantial amount of autonomy, Matt introduced the team to production and project management techniques that would lead to the completion of over a dozen interactive exhibits by the project deadline. He would later go on to work with Scitech again as a contractor, and is responsible for overseeing or developing over 20 exhibits with Scitech to date.

Symphony of the Machine

During the Global Game Jam in 2013, the Stirfire team had developed an experimental virtual reality game that they now planned to turn into a released product. Matt joined the team in the same year in the early stages of pre-production on Symphony and was tasked with managing the project’s team, timeline, tasks, and budget. He also collaborated closely with partners at Steam, Sony, and Oculus during the publishing process.

Safety Beach

After proving himself during the development of Symphony and with his history developing serious games for Scitech, Matt was placed in charge of the development of a game for Surf Lifes Saving Western Australia. Safety Beach was developed with the intention of being used to teach children about beach safety rules. In addition to all of his production responsibilities, Matt also contributed greatly to the design of Safety Beach. The game was delivered by the client’s deadline and under budget, and is still used in West Australian schools today.

The Dark Room

A new Producer was brought on to work on the Dark Room, the development of which overlapped with the final months of work on Safety Beach. Initially uninvolved in the project, Matt was bought on later as the game went through a troubled development and was tasked with getting it back on track. He would go on to take lead of the production, identifying several major issues and working to resolve them, but mitigating circumstances within Stirfire hamstrung attempts to get the project back under control. Matt would leave Stirfire not long before The Dark Room released to Steam early access.

Ghoul Britannia: Land of Hope and Gorey

Going on to do production consulting, one of the teams that Matt was hired by was Binary Space for the development of Ghoul Briannia. The game had a distributed team across Australia, the UK, and the USA, which was causing development issues and communication problems. Matt’s short tenure on the project was used to develop techniques and processes that could get the remote team working together more effectively.

Omi Oh My AI

Matt founded EverySecond Studio with a team of other developers in Western Australia to develop Omi Oh My AI. Having received a small amount of funding from Screenwest in their games pilot fund, the small team started work on the game in 2019. Matt’s responsibilities on the project were extensive, including liaising with Screenwest as a stakeholder, managing the project, coordinating the team, handling the finances, and programming the game itself. Despite the impacts of COVID, Act 1 of Omi Oh My AI was released in late 2022.

Games Leadership Research

At present, Matt is undertaking a Masters in Games Production and performing research on games industry leadership practices. Titled “Games Industry Leadership: Training Sustainable Development Practices through Game-Based Learning”, this research aims to identify the practices of sustainable leadership in game development studios with the intent of training them through a serious game prototype.