Meet Daniel Stewart
Daniel Stewart was called to make games and has been doing so for over a decade. His experience includes Mojang, Riot, and Klicknation, as well as Christian studios, including SwordSharp, which he co-founded.
Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-s-06b26116/
SwordSharp
https://swordsharp.com
CrownBlades RPG (App Store)
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/crownblades-rpg/id6458346756
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I kept wanting to just ask God, what should I do? And then I thought maybe basketball is my calling. Maybe, you know, law enforcement, maybe something else. I didn't know, but then at some point, God was leading me to know games. I called you to make games. And God just put that on my heart. He didn't say it like audibly to me, but I just had an internal knowing. Like that's where God called me to be. (upbeat music) - Hello everyone and welcome to Faith Forms. If you're just joining us for the first time, my name's Brock Henderson. And we're exploring the question of what it means to be a Christian in the games industry.
And part of this podcast is I get to sit down with friends and new acquaintances
and explore that question and get to hear people's stories.
Today, I'm joined by Daniel Stewart.
We first met, I think it was around 2013, back at the Christian Game Developers Conference. Back in 2013, I worked for a Christian game company called Light Side Games, formerly known as Hexify. And today I think they're known as True Play.
But I worked there at the time, I was a producer there working on the game Journey of Jesus on Facebook. But that was my third job in the industry. If you don't count internships, where I had to work for free. - See, yeah, we first met there. And then we've been in contact on and off over the years. And this year, 2024, we hooked, ran back into each other at Imladris. And then we got to spend more time together at CGDC.
And in that time, you've interned at Riot, you're at Mojang now, you're a founder of SwordSharp. You have over a decade of experience in the industry. And some things I really love about Daniel, which I don't know if I've told him or not, but I love his heart for God.
I love his attention to detail and quality in games.
He is a mature believer, heart for evangelism. And I believe he moves with intentionality in all that he does. So Daniel, welcome.
- Thank you so much for having me. What a wonderful intro. Thank you so much, it means a lot, thanks. - Yeah, well, I'm so glad that you're here. And I'm so glad that we got to catch up again this year. So I know some of your story, but our audience doesn't. Would you mind just kind of telling us a little about your story about how you got into games, how you became a Christian, whatever you wanna lay out for us? - Okay, well, I would love to. In terms of how I got into games, I guess I'll start with how I became a Christian because that really was a driving factor in getting me into the game industry. That was totally an act of God. So I guess to start, I'll start when I was a kid, I grew up in the church like a lot of us do, just going to church every day, just as an American citizen, it's just what you do on Sundays, going to Sunday school. And one day I had a very unorthodox experience where there happened to be a girl in that Sunday school. And I don't remember her name, so I don't have to protect her identity at all, I just don't remember it. But yeah, she was probably maybe 12 or 13 at the time. And I was in a class full of like nine and 10 year olds at a well-known church in Los Angeles, in the Los Angeles area.
And at that church, the Sunday school teacher asks us, "Hey, kids, what would you like prayer for today?"
And they go to me and they say, "What would you like prayer for?" And I say, "I want my sister to stop being mean to me." And then some other kids like, "Oh, I want a puppy." And then you go to this young lady and then she says,
"I got demons, I've been dealing with witchcraft for a long time and I just want the demons to stop messing with me." - Oh my goodness. - And of course,
being a young boy at the time, I was just like, "What? Like you're not supposed to ask that, like what's happening?" Things got real, real fast. And for the sake of time, I'll just say, long story short, there was an actual exorcism being performed right in front of us, like nine and 10 year olds. - Holy cow. - So they just rushed all of us out of there like a military drill. And then long story short, the next time I saw the young lady, she just looked pure and clean and pristine and the spirit, I mean like, like just spiritually pure.
And I saw a real transformation that came from the power of Jesus. And I was like, "Well, if that devil is real, and I know it was real, because I was in that room.
And if Jesus is the name that conquered that devil, there must be something about the name of Jesus. There must be something about him. He's gotta be real." So that was my first introduction to like, there's a God and Jesus is Lord. And now what does that mean for me? And so time went on and then I got challenged with that. And as a lot of young men do, I won't go into too much detail on this program. I don't know our audience well enough to know what I should and shouldn't get into. But let's just say I got into some very bad, mature things I should have gotten into.
And it took an act of God to get me out of those things. But once I got out of them, God then restored me and basically showed me who I needed to be in him. And that was the start of the rest of my journey in Christ.
And so to your second question about how I got into the game industry,
I'll say as a maturing Christian, I was maybe 17, 18 years old, I kept wanting to just ask God, what should I do? And then I thought maybe basketball is my call. Maybe law enforcement, maybe something else. I didn't know, but then at some point, God was leading me to know games. I called you to make games. And God just put that on my heart. He didn't say it like audibly to me, but I just had an internal knowing. That's where God called me to be.
And in that process of knowing I needed to be there,
God just kept closing every other door that I even considered and let me exactly where I needed to be to get the exact type of education that I needed in order to get there.
And I guess I'll get into it really quickly. I'll just say coming out of high school, I got rejected from every single college except for one, every single college. And I ended up going to UCLA, which was a pretty hard, difficult to get into college. I actually thought it was a mistake when I saw that they accepted me. I thought it was like, wait. And it was the last letter I got. I got rejected from Howard, from just lesser colleges all around the country. But UCLA, I finally gets this letter and it's an email. And then I'm like, I don't even wanna read it, but whatever, I clicked on it and said, congratulations. And I was like, is this to me? Like, is that right? And I kept reading and they let me in. But God got me to one college. And so I said, okay, God, I wanna get into computer science because I wanna be a software developer when I make these games that you called me to make. But they rejected me from the computer science program. I got rejected from every program except for mathematics of computation, which is where I got into. And so I got through that. Just barely got through that by God's grace. I just got through, I graduated. And then I'm like, okay. Like I'm sending out all these resumes. No one is hiring me in the industry, nobody.
I said, okay, if they won't hire me to be a game developer, let me at least apply to these grad school programs. So these computer science grad school programs, they all reject me. And then I'm like, oh God, like I thought this is what you called me to do. And then I find this one random program in Orlando, Florida at Full Sail University for their master's program in game design and production. And it wasn't in software development like I thought God called me to do. It was in production and design. So I got into that program. I loved it, got exposed to it. I found out that that's exactly where I needed to be. And then I'll quickly say also, I applied to a bunch of different jobs. Everyone rejected me. I ended up getting into one internship and that was at Riot Games.
And Riot Games was like, hey, we'll let you come on, but you gotta work 40 hours a week for free. I was like, okay, I'll do it. So I did that for months.
And then after that, I ended up thinking, yeah, I love it, I wanna be here, right. Making friends, everything seems okay. And then my producer sat me down. His name was Steve Snow. And he sat me down and he said, hey, where do you see yourself working in the industry? And I said, well, I would love to be here. And I think I'm a great fit and things are working out. And he goes, I don't think you're a culture fit here. And I go, what? Like, what do you mean? Like, I don't say that, but I'm like thinking, like, what do you mean? Like, I'm having a great time. Everyone seems to like my bad dad jokes that I tell and I'm having a big mask and all that stuff. And he's like, I don't know. Just don't think you're gonna be a good fit here. But you can still stay on as an intern, working for free if you like. I'm like, wow. So then I was like, oh my goodness. So then I went home and I realized, I didn't realize it at the time, but I just went home and I was depressed. And I didn't understand the depression, didn't recognize why I was there.
At that point I said, you know what?
God, I'm gonna turn back to you. Cause I was doing other things. I was turning to my own ways.
And I just grabbed the only Bible I had and I just cracked it open, flipped it open and it just landed, flipped and fell down on Matthew 6.33. Cause there was actual puncture in the page at Matthew 6.33.
And then I just read it and it said, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you."
And I thought to myself, I don't think I'm doing that. In that section, Jesus is talking to his disciples and saying, "Hey, if God takes care of the birds of the air, how much more will he take care of his children? If he closed the grass of the field, how much more will he clothe me? But, you know, but seek first God's kingdom and righteousness and all of these things will be added unto you. Everything you need will be added to you."
Like, man, I really need a job cause I don't want to be at my mom's house any longer. This is not gonna work.
I knew I had to go one way or another. And so I ended up saying, okay. And God, I'm not seeking first your righteousness. I'm doing a bunch of dirt. Those mature things I was telling you about earlier, I was like, you know what?
God, I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna stop that. I'm not gonna do that anymore.
Okay. But that's your righteousness. How do I seek first your kingdom? What does that even mean?
And I said, well, if you're building up God's kingdom, that might mean helping out his people and doing his work. And I don't know, maybe I'll just go pray for people and do it that way. So I lived in LA and I grabbed that same Bible.
And the next day on that Saturday, I ended up going to Crenshaw and I just went up and down the street of Crenshaw and just started asking people if they had any prayer requests. I had no evangelism training, nothing at all. Just asked them if they had prayer requests and had some awesome prayers with people. And that was that. And I went home, went to church the next day and went to Monday, or Monday to just have a normal day.
That same Monday, the very first weekday after I had that encounter and did those things, I get a call.
And it's a call from a gentleman named Mark Otero, who is the founder of a company called Click Nation. And today, I think they're known as Capital Games because EA bought them out and now they're under the EA umbrella. But Mark calls me and then he says, "Hey, I got your resume here. "And I saw that you applied here "for an associate producer role. "I just wanted to talk to you about this. "I see you're interning at Riot "and you have your master's degree "and you went to UCLA and all this stuff." Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, great. Absolutely. And he's like, "Oh, okay, okay, okay." Have a pretty good conversation. And then he asked me, he says, "Okay, "but what was your GPA?" I try to tell him my master's program GPA. He's like, "No, no, no, I don't care about that." I was like, "No, no, that wasn't good GPA." I was like, "No, no, no. "What was your UCLA GPA?" I tell him that. He goes, "Oh, no, no, no, no. "Oh, no, whoa, no. "We do not hire people like that. "You need to have at least 3.5, 3.7, at least something. "You know, you're the least you can have a good GPA "if you're gonna be here." I was like, "No, no, but I'm a hard worker, "but I'm gonna do this and have this, man, no, no." He's like, "No, I'm not gonna do it." Then he starts stuttering.
(grunting)
I do not know why I'm doing this. I never do this. I have no clue why I'm doing this, but if you can get here, if it was in Sacramento, if you can get here to Sacramento, I'll give you an interview. I was like, "Oh, okay, okay, I'll do it. "Okay, great, great, great." I go, take everything I have, just drive to Sacramento,
and then have the interview, work with them for like half a day.
Then at the end of the day, he goes,
"I do not know why I'm doing this. "I never do this, but I'm gonna hire you." I got my first job in the industry.
What I learned there was the foundation of everything else that I did for the rest of my career. To answer your question about how I got in the industry, I would now, I should be letting you ask more questions, but I'll wrap up here. I'll say, to answer your question of how I got in the industry, this is how. I got in the industry by seeking first God's kingdom and righteousness, asking God where he wanted me, and then he led me, and then I just tried to honor him and do what he said to do, and then from there, he blessed it and added those things unto me.
- That's awesome. That is a powerful testimony.
I wanna just kinda drill into it a little bit, because it's kinda easy to gloss over some of the hard times and the things. We do this with the Bible oftentimes, right? We read that Joseph was in prison and all these things, but we see the arc of his whole story and how God came through, and it's amazing.
Listening to your story,
I have to imagine that that was a really hard journey. Just all of those rejections and door was being closed, and just over and over again.
So I wanna acknowledge that, and I want to kinda just briefly talk about that, because people are in that position now. They're trying to figure out how to get in the industry. They're frustrated.
It sounds like you were taking kind of just a whole bunch of shots
to see what God was gonna open up. Is that what you were doing?
- Absolutely. So we're at different phases of our lives.
As Christians, especially an early believer, some of us have the benefit of actually hearing from God, having a dream or a vision and things like that, and really powerful encounters, but I think most of us, especially in the West,
I think we kinda struggled to identify what God is exactly saying to us sometimes and where he's actually leading. And I was at that phase at that time where I didn't really know, and so I was really just trusting that the Lord would lead me, and I think God honors us where we're at. - Totally. - As long as you're trying to draw nearer to him, he's gonna honor you, and my sheep hear my voice. You're gonna hear his voice. He's going to lead you at some point. And sure, you may make the wrong decision at times, but then you recognize in hindsight, ah, I see why I shouldn't have done that. And I see how God might've been trying to lead me and how I might've ignored that, and that helps you for the next time. So yes, absolutely, at that phase of my life, I did not consider myself as one who could hear very well from God. And so yes, I shot many shots, and it boiled down to me doing all that I felt God allowed me to do within my power. - Yeah. - And knowing that he would,
ultimately at the end of the day, he would lead and guide where he wanted me to be. - Yeah. - That's, I think that's where I ended up being at the time. And I guess that's my advice for anyone now. Just if you are currently struggling
to understand what God wants you to do, first, you gotta be in your Bible. You gotta be reading it. Secondly, you gotta actually do that seeking first God's kingdom and righteousness thing, where like, you probably got some dirt that you're doing, that you probably shouldn't be doing. Just set it aside. Just turn to God, seek first God's kingdom and righteousness. And then see, God, what can I do for you? And if you handle God's business, he'll handle your business. And then at the end of the day, as you do that, you honor him in all your ways, just trust him with that. He's gonna lead you. And that's what he did in my story, and he's definitely gonna do it for you too. - Yeah, they say that it's much easier to, excuse me, turn a ship if it's in motion, right? Like, sometimes we...
Now, God might be telling somebody to just hold and wait for him, but other times,
he's waiting on us to take a movement, right? And then step out in faith. And I also wanna touch on, it sounds like you kinda had to surrender
some of your dreams about what you thought you were supposed to be like a software developer,
and God got you into a different program. Was there some surrender that took place there? - Always.
As a sheep of God,
he will use his staff if he needs to. And there's controversy over that when I say that, but however you take it, he's gonna use his staff. Whether you consider he's like, "Ah, no," or you think like this gentle grab, whatever, however you take it, there are times when he needs to use his staff to ultimately guide us. And so I remember,
so I was getting pretty decent at basketball, and I ended up saying, "Well, if I end up going to the NBA, I'll have enough money to hire someone else to build these games." And I said, "Oh, maybe I can do that instead. And so maybe I should pursue basketball and still be able to do what I know God's calling me to do." But that was my vision at the time. And I remember one day I'm just in the gym and just having one of the best pickup games I've had and just at UCLA. And if you have good pickup games there in front of the right people sometimes, then you can actually get opportunities. And they actually at one point didn't invite me to walk onto the basketball team. - Oh, wow. - God wanted me to say no to that too. And that was another story, but that was another tough note. But anyway, so I'm having one of these great games and saying, "I'm like, man, I'm getting nice. You know what, maybe, God, I know you said no, but I've gotta be too good to not do anything with this, right?"
So I ended up stealing the ball from somebody
and I'm running in the wooden center and just dribbling up and down the court, just dribbling this, I'm going fast. And someone starts chasing me and I was like,
"Chasing me? Whatever. I'm gonna go dunk this thing and it's gonna be easy." And so they ended up rushing me to the point where I jump a little bit too far and I take off from the free throw line. And I could dunk, but I couldn't dunk from the free throw line. I wasn't like that good. So I jump and I take off from the free throw line and say, "Oh, a little too far, I'm not gonna make that." So I'm just gonna finger roll this in and I made the layup, I was like, "Yeah." And right when I said yes, my knee went, oh, my knee capped, but from straight ahead to the side of my knee. And I didn't even know that was physically possible. I was like, "Ah!" And I just, I put my leg down, my leg is stuck straight and my kneecap is on the side of my knee and my leg is straight and I can't bend my leg. And I'm like, okay. Actually it was the opposite. My knee was bent and the kneecap was on the side and I couldn't straighten my leg. And so I said, "Okay, I gotta be able to straighten my leg at some point, so I'm gonna force my leg straight."
So at there I force, ah! And then kneecap is on the side, snaps up, my legs pops forward and then I can't bend my knee back. I'm like, ah! It was so painful.
And at that point I got injured and basically that was the end of my elite basketball career. And so that's one way that, I remember I was rebelling against God in my own mind and God was like, I told you, I called you to play to make Christian games. And I remember I felt that in my spirit. I was like, dang, he's right.
I was like, all right. And so that's what it was. So yeah, God's gonna lead us one way. Sometimes we get a little hard-headed like I was at times, but God will lead you if that's where your heart is. Again, you're in his hands, he's not gonna let you go. - And just decide, you're a tall dude. How tall are you? - About six, seven with shoes, I guess, without shoes, maybe six, six and some change. I don't know, somewhere in there.
I haven't measured it in many years, but now that I got more hair on the top of my head, sometimes I feel far indoors, so who knows?
- Well, that sounds excruciatingly painful. Oh my goodness.
So after you're in games in Riot and they're telling you to move on, and then you're at what, Kick Nation,
what happened after that?
- After that, I end up, essentially they say, you know what, oh my God, how can I make an impact here? How can I grow here? And I said, God, I feel like you're calling me to lead games and to manage games, and I just want you to make a way to help me just lead a game.
And so I worked on a game on Facebook called Superhero City. Superhero City did well, but there was a second game that was kind of just emerging, but wasn't really
all that great for us at the time, called Age of Champions.
And the Age of Champions team was pretty established and we're a profitable company, we're making some money, and so we say, you know what, if we're gonna grow, we're gonna need to make more games. So they take all the elite, talented people,
I was not one of them, all the elite, talented people, and they put them on all their new games, and they start building new games. And I say, well, we need someone to just manage Age of Champions, just to just keep it afloat, it's just kind of a whatever game, it's our secondary game, but let's just have someone manage it. And I ended up voicing to them that I felt like I could do it, and just, God put it on their hearts and say, you know what, Daniel, we're gonna let you manage it. And I think they promoted me from associate producer to producer. I was like, oh, praise God. So I ended up managing the team, and I just take my small, ambitious team, and then just, God just blesses us, and just with one idea after another, and we start implementing things like Guild Wars, and all sorts of things, and just, community loves it, and we end up just breaking records, and selling more and more than we ever sold on there. And next thing you know, Age of Champions goes from the secondary game that's just doing eh, to becoming the flagship game in terms of the money. And they're like, whoa, like, it's growing, and I'm like, oh, that's amazing. And so then I'm like, ha ha, yeah, amazing. I'm so blessed, I'm so good, you know, go, go, go. You know, I'm just, again, I had a bad pride problem early in my life.
And so I ended up getting married, and I went, and I got married, I had a two week honeymoon. And this was almost a year into my work there. And I get back, and I find out that after the two weeks when I left, they're like, you know what, we're making money now. Let's just put some more mature people in these roles. And they'd say, you know what, Daniel, we're gonna give your job away, and we're gonna give it to someone else. And we're gonna put you and have you lead another effort for all studios. But it really wasn't a promotion, they were just moving me aside. And they said, we're gonna have you lead design for all the games. And I'm like, you know, it wasn't that. But they gave my job away, and then I'd say a couple weeks later, I ended up being laid off, and then they sold the company, and that was that. So it was just, that was a big bummer. That was another, I guess wilderness season for me. An imprisonment moment, if you will, if you wanna go back to Jesse. But I was like, wow, like, I just helped make this company so much money, and made their books look so good to be sold, and they just discarded me, and had all these bad feelings and stuff like that. And like, God ended up having me forgive them, and that was that. And I don't even, I never really think about that anymore.
But I remember, I got laid off, and I was like, I got nothing to do. So I said, you know what? I'm gonna seek first God's kingdom and righteousness.
And so I ended up teaching Sunday school, ended up grabbing that same Bible that I took to get me my first job. I ended up taking that Bible and started praying for more people, and made a lot of beautiful connections, had a lot of beautiful encounters. And I think out of all that work, my most effective ministry was to Christians who were just kind of backslidden, as opposed to like, people who did not know God. But there was one person, and all of that time that got saved, one person. And I was very thankful for that.
But even though I guess I shouldn't be thankful, like it was just like, it was like my points that I'm winning or something like that. But I was thankful that God used me to be a part of that, to help save one. But definitely a lot of people that were backslidden were encouraged to get closer back to God.
And at the end of that three months, I remember just God just kept providing and providing and providing. And I ended up looking at my bank account, I had more money in my bank account at the end of those three months, being jobless than I did when I was working. And it was just a complete blessing. Like God really hooked it up. And then finally at the end of that time, I ended up getting two job offers. One was to Gaia Interactive,
and one was to Hexafy Incorporated, which is the Christian game company that ended up being known as Light Side Games. And I told Gaia that I accepted the job before I had the interview with Hexafy. So I ended up just going to Gaia, but in the process of going to Hexafy, I ended up meeting the CEO, we became really good friends and stayed in contact. And then over time, eventually he just essentially said, you know what, we've got a new game, it's called Journey of Jesus. I know you're a believer, you're the guy. But God has shown me, you're the guy, you have to lead this effort. And I prayed about it, and God led me to join Hexafy now, or again, Light Side Games, and then I ended up joining there. And that's where that process started, had a bunch of beautiful encounters there, and got to work on a Christian game. And then I met you at a CGDC back then. - When you think about your faith and how it intersects with game development,
how do you work that out?
What's it mean to you to be a Christian in the game industry?
- I can speak what it means to me, and then more broadly, what it might mean to others, because we're not all called to do the same things.
For me, I feel like God wants to use me in my life to help give him glory, and to save the lost, and encourage the saved to stay saved, and to know him better.
And so, like any, if I go get gas, right? And I just happen to bump into someone, the Lord puts on my heart to talk to somebody, whether they be homeless, or there'd be someone I'm getting gas next to.
I try to honor that, and when the Lord prompts me to, and then just do what he says.
And that, to me, is being salt and light, which I think is what we're all called to be on this earth, is salt and light. Wherever we are, whatever we're doing, be that salt and light, and honor God. And if they see your good deeds, they'll glorify God in heaven, right? So, that's what I try to do. And so, I think, for me in the game industry, right now I work for a secular company, Mojang, and I try to be salt and light. I try to respect every bone I work with, and bring a positive, joyous environment, try not to be negative, try to turn bad into good, and have optimism, all of that. And there were a few times when God prompted me to actually speak to people who actually were going through some things, and I didn't even know they were going through things. Like, God would say, hey, I asked them for prayer. I'm like, oh, but this is Mojang, but this is secular company. Like, is that okay? He's like, do it.
I don't mean to be rude or anything like that. You just wanna ask, do you have any prayer needs? And then I ask, and then, actually, I do. I'm like, what? And then it's like, actually, I have this, like, this horrible thing that just happened to me in this life, and I don't know what to do, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just pray about him, and God blesses him, and works in it, and then they're like, wow. And then now we're talking about the Bible, and like, that happens, right? So, you know, just, I think for me, it's just honoring God with my life in the industry. But that's second also to, well, not, well, it's first, but second also, I also, of course, as you know, in working with Sword Sharp, and working on games like Crown Blade's RPG, where the goal is to actually reach an anime, non-Christian community with the gospel, because if you look at anime today, man, it's so dark. Like, it's so depressing. There's like so many themes where you're like, oh my goodness, that is like, there's no hope. You could tell the people who are making a lot of this stuff have no hope. And it's like, that community needs hope, man.
And so that's what Crown Blade's RPG is an attempt to do, is an attempt to give them the gospel, and to put it in a compelling experience, where it's a world where the world is not overtly Christian necessarily, even though it's like, you know, the parable style, like, you know, C.S. Lewis, if you will, style. But it's, there is a gospel presentation in the actual game, so people who want the gospel can get it. But I just wanna give a hope-filled experience to people, where they can come to know the Lord at some point, if they want them, and otherwise, if they don't, they still get to have a positive anime experience. So that's kind of what the Lord has called me to do, in that sense, to just, to bring people the gospel, the good news, and if they don't want the good news, at least give them something positive and hopeful.
- That's good.
One thing I do wanna highlight, is that you have had the opportunity to be
a software engineer, right? Like, with your own game? - Yeah, I think that's, I would attribute that to like, God knows what he's doing.
All things work together for good to them that love the Lord and are called according to his purposes, right?
So like, I didn't know why I had a heart for coding, and that one major I told you that God got me into, gave me just enough programming knowledge that I needed, and all the mathematical knowledge I needed to develop Crown Blades RPG. Without that program, without that knowledge, I wouldn't have had the coding base I needed to get started to make the game. And again, I never thought I could make a game. Like, from scratch, I didn't think I could do it. I didn't, I didn't, I was praying to God, like, God, send me someone to make it for me. God, give me the money so I need investors so that they can give me the team that I need to build it. Right, that was my prayer. And then I didn't realize that God was like,
do as much as I've given you to do, as much as you can do by yourself right now. Take one step at a time. And I'm like, okay, okay, okay. Okay, I don't know how to build the whole game, but I can look up some YouTube videos and learn enough Unity to build a prototype. And so I did that. Okay, I don't have enough money to build, to take this prototype and to build a whole elaborate experience, but I can hire a team in Pakistan, which I did, and I hired a team in Pakistan to do another prototype, really cheap, actually works on a mobile device, which I did.
And so then that game, with that prototype, I asked them to develop a more quality game, but the quality that kept coming back was just poor and poor and poor. And I said, this is not gonna work, we can't do this. And so then I prayed about it, and I looked at the code, and then God just kept giving me knowledge and revelation. So hey, some of this was stuff that you studied. If you look at how they did it, maybe you can do it the right way. And then God was like, okay, just keep on studying in this area. Look at tutorials in this area. And God kept building and training me, developing me one knowledge set at a time. And then eventually I got enough to build, just prototype the battle on phone. Okay, just enough to just build the front end, build a menu. Oh, I can build more menus. Now I can build this script, just connect these data sets. Oh, what? This is working, this is actually a real game now. And then it actually functions. And so it was just a God thing, just looking back. I can't give you a prototype on how I did it, other than to say God was faithful in giving me everything I needed, and the encouragement I needed, for every moment I was like, I'm done. I need to quit. I don't know what to do next. I'm done. There's a bug here. I don't know what this bug is. I don't know how to solve this. I don't know how to fund this. God blessed and pushed me and gave me the encouragement every single time. But it all comes back to seeking first God's kingdom and righteousness, knowing that he's going to lead us. He's going to lead his children. You are his sheep. He's gonna hear you. You can hear his voice. And as you hear his voice, he's going to lead you, whether it be by staff or by closed doors. And he just leads you to an open door. He's going to lead you.
- That's good.
So I'm curious, what's God teaching you now?
- He's got teaching me now. - Yeah.
- That's a good question.
I am trying to learn how to be a vessel for God more consistently when it comes to like
the gifts of the spirit,
when it comes to seeing like the sick get healed, when it comes to like prophetic unctions. I'm trying to get more consistent in having him show me what to do there so I can more effectively reach those around me. There have been multiple times where God has like healed someone sick, prayed for somebody right in front of me and God heals them. They're injured, God heals them. And there have been a few times when God has just like put something on my brain that was not a me thought, it was a God thought. And I was like, "Wait, is that me or is that God?" And then I say it and they're like, "How did you know that?" Or, "That's exactly what I needed to hear." I'm like, "Oh, that's God." And so trying to harness those moments and harness putting myself in a submissive humble position to be able to at every point when God would prompt me, there it is, snag it and then give it out. That's what I'm trying to learn right now. - So when you look around at the game industry and even coming back from CGDC, is there anything that's like on your mind or sticking out?
- When I think about, if I had to like, I guess put a pin in what I felt was a theme
that I interpreted from the people of CGDC.
I felt like I heard a lot of,
"I need God to send me something, someone."
I felt that and that that thing or those things that I need God to send me are the barriers between me and getting to the destination that I feel God is calling me to get to.
And what's on my heart, the rebuttal on my heart is,
no, you don't need those things. You need God.
And so it's my heart that the people of CGDC
Christians around the world that are in the gaming industry that have some type of calling to make games,
that they would seek God, not what they want from God or what they think they need from God and to accomplish whatever they think they were called to accomplish.
And so I'm reminded of Gideon's 300 where he thought he needed this massive army.
And God ends up saying, "No, no, no, I'm whittling it down."
Wait, I'm good now though, right? No, less.
Okay, what about now? This how, I mean, we gotta have somebody. No, no, 300.
Those 300 water sippers, like them.
Okay, God, all right. It sounds like suicide, but I don't even know what I can, I can't do much with these 300 guys against them. But you know what?
I'm gonna listen to you, God. I'm gonna do what I can with what you've given me, with what you told me to use.
And he did it and God blessed it more than he knew.
And so my prayer for us as believers, especially in the industry is,
know God better, hear from him,
do his will, seek first his kingdom, his righteousness,
and then he will then provide everything you need.
And if you do really need that money, if you do really need that developer, he'll supply that too.
But seek God, not his stuff, seek God.
- Amen. Yeah, I got a very similar feeling from the conference.
I guess I was thinking of it in a slightly different way. Just another aspect is that we're asking for more talents when we haven't stewarded the talents that we have, to the full extent yet.
- I love it.
- And I really want us to be-- - That's a pun too. - What's that? - That's a pun too, because it's not just the talent you can bury, but you got talents, like actually talents. Are you using your talents to the fullest that God has given you? And are you just saying, ah, I need someone else's talent. I need someone else to do this. It's like, no, like you have talent too. Go do what God has blessed you to do and actually do it, do as much as you can. You wanna, I got new friends that, oh man, I want to make this book. Like, well, have you written it all out yet? Well, no, but I need to write the book.
Organize the pages, put it in PowerPoint, flip in PowerPoint, get as far as you can, as much as you can. You don't have art. Well, what do you envision art's gonna look like? Make sketches, use concept art, use free art online. Put it where you want it to go. Position everything you want it to be. Do you want paperback? You want hardback? What do you want? Do it all. Do as much as you can with what you have, as far as you can until you can't go anymore. And when you can't go anymore, God will then provide you with everything else.
Same thing with game development. Did you make the prototype? Did you try to develop that in the end? Did you try to build it on the phone? Did you like, what are you doing? Like, design document, like anything at all? Like, what have you done?
Anyway, yeah, use that sound. I love it, Rock.
- And I see that with your story over and over again, that you took the steps and tried to steward with what you had.
And God led you along the way. And my heart is just that we, I see things changing. I see investors being positioned. I think things are coming, but we need to be ready for it. We need to steward it well.
- Amen. - So Daniel, I have been so blessed by our conversation today. Thank you for joining me.
Where do you want people to go and learn more about your game and what you're up to? - People can reach me on LinkedIn.
Otherwise, connect at swordsharp.com. That's one way to just reach out or the swordsharp.com in general. We wanna go to the app store and get Crownblades RPG, free game on iOS.
Otherwise, just yeah, dstew at swordsharp.com, D-S-T-E-W at swordsharp.com. Reach out anytime. Just happy to talk, just answer Bible questions, just got a prayer need, whatever the case is. If you don't know Jesus as your Lord and savior and need to, you got questions, reach out. Happy to talk about it. So yeah, just yeah, reach out. - Thank you again. Love you, man. Love your heart. And look forward to spending more time with you. - Love you too, bro. Appreciate it.
