About Us
Hello and welcome to our little digital home. Five Fans Productions, Inc. is a very small indie game developer launched in 2012 and incorporated in December, 2014 with big dreams. Our focus is on developing family-friendly games that people of all ages love to play. Our motto “fantastic fun for all” is the focus of every game that we create. If we can put a smile on the faces of our players then our mission of ‘making fun’ and sharing it with others is accomplished. We hope you will enjoy all of the games we have to offer, both today and in the years to come.
Thank you very much for visiting.
Jeff Hester
Five Fans Productions, Inc.
The year was 1988 when I (Jeff) first experienced the Macintosh computer. I had had a few opportunities to use Apple IIe and IIc computers in school but when I first used a Macintosh I was immediately drawn to it. These ‘little’ computers, a Mac Plus and Mac SE, were both so powerful and easy to use. It was truly an experience(!) and with the wonderful help of my mom, it wasn’t long before I became a proud owner of my very own Mac SE. I felt so emboldened! I knew I could now rule the world, or at least my small part of it. My Mac SE was unbelievably useful as I pursued my aerospace engineering degree. (War Eagle!) But, I wanted to do more with it.
I have to confess that I was born with a particularly aggressive gene called the entrepreneur spirit. This gene was never about a desire to be rich but I yearned for the opportunity to work with my own business. I decided to learn how to program on my Mac SE and came to love it. In 1993 I decided to start game development and release some games as “shareware”, which was a very popular way to publish games at the time. My first games were HyperHang and TriviaQuest, two HyperCard based games.
I wanted to be able to do much more than what could be accomplished with HyperCard so I learned the C programming language and applied that skill to making more Mac games. I felt empowered with this new knowledge and developed a black and white game called Bedlam. I had so much fun making Bedlam, and I can’t deny that I felt a small sense of accomplishment. When the occasional shareware check came in I thought that was really cool, too. A few years after Bedlam two other games, Bedlam 2 and Temple Tantrum were developed and released. Making those two Mac games had another wonderful blessing about it and that was making new friends. Without the help of others I could not have made those two games. I was blessed with the opportunity to become friends with David Rehner, Susan Robbins, Greg Conway, David Johnston, Tim Petty and Justin Van Eaton, all of whom were very helpful and encouraging. I could write so much more about the help that they provided.
A few years after making the Mac ‘shareware’ games I was just floating along (as I like to say) and loving life until a wonderful thing happened to me. I met a truly special girl! My focus on programming waned while my heart and my time was focused on spending time with my new love, Melissa. It wasn’t long before life got even sweeter! We got married! I looked forward to each and every moment I could spend with my new wife and we had so much fun with each other.
As my story continues… a couple of years after we got married, other wonderful ‘little’ things started happening, four of them to be exact. Children! Life got even greater and busier! Being a great husband and daddy turned into my top priority (and still is) and I had almost zero time to put into, or even think about, game development. Bedlam 2 had seen its last update in May of 2004 and Temple Tantrum was last updated in January of 2005. Although my game developments had ended much earlier, in 2006 I officially dissolved Ground Zero Software, Inc. so my “free” time could be spent with my young family instead of devoting a tremendous amount of hours programming. (For the nostalgia lovers, a screenshot of one of the Ground Zero Software, Inc. pages is here.
Years and years continued to pass by and my life continued to be wonderful, being showered with God’s blessings! However, there was something that occasionally just kept gnawing at me due to that aggressive gene. 🙂 I still loved programming and especially when it came to making fun games. I loved having my own business and seeing a game development project come together. And with four children I knew, before a few blinks of the eye, we would have many other expenses (e.g. braces, cars, college, …) And as family expenses grew it would become more challenging to continue to give to others as we have always enjoyed doing.
The entrepreneur spirit continued burning within me so I discussed with my wife the idea of getting back into game development and starting another company. Our children were a little older and I felt I could spend time programming in the evenings once our children were in bed. Having my own children and being a kid at heart my desire was simple. I wanted to make fun games that everyone could enjoy, especially my own children. I needed a new company name and one day inspiration hit me in the face. Five Fans Productions was born (and you can guess who the five fans are).
Being an iPhone owner I knew that this second time around I wanted to focus on developing games for iOS. I jumped in with both feet into learning Objective-C and the more I learned about Objective-C and iOS development the more I loved it. It was so much better than the C language and my desire to do something fun and exciting pushed me harder to keep learning as much and as fast as I could.
As I started learning game development using Objective-C, in the back of my mind, I assumed that my first Five Fans Productions game would be a major restart of Temple Tantrum. But one night (as silly as it sounds) I had ‘the dream’. I was so excited and couldn’t wait to get started. As I write this (July 2014) and with the release of Fliggles around the corner I’m so excited. I truly hope that you will find Fliggles is ‘fantastic fun’. There are so many other games that I want to do and I hope Five Fans Productions will allow us to bring more ‘fantastic fun for all’. Thank you.
–Jeff