Story First
By always using a story first mentality, we strive to elevate games as
both the ultimate art form and the ultimate storytelling medium.
About Us
Our mission is to connect the world through a shared love of story by creating
unique and groundbreaking interactive experiences that can be played anywhere.
Studio
GoldFire Studios was founded by James Simpson in 2008 as an indie game studio in Oklahoma City.
We got our start pushing the boundaries of the web with cutting-edge browser-based massively
multiplayer games. Our focus remains connecting people around the world through gaming experiences that
can be enjoyed anywhere. We have a passion for creating unique, groundbreaking
interactive stories that players can both experience and make their own.
Values
One Community
We connect the world through great experiences by making our community
an extension of our team and by practicing player-focused development.
Curious
We have an unending thirst for honing our craft and taking risks with new
ideas, which is how we push boundaries and inspire the same curiosity in our players.
Open Collaboration
The best experiences are created through collective sharing of ideas, which
is why mutual respect and openness to feedback are vital to our process.
Freedom to Focus
Creating groundbreaking experiences requires distraction-free focus and
prioritizing realistic goals that allow for meaningful daily progress.
Juicy
Transformative work is created by focusing on the little details that
others might miss—that’s what separates the good from the great.
Team
James Simpson
Founder, Director & Developer
Benji Kay
Game Developer
Phillip Park
Concept Artist
Alejandro Moralo
3D Artist
Rafael Mogas
3D Artist
History
Arctic Awakening Story Trailer
As progress on Arctic Awakening continued, we revealed our first story trailer
during the "not-E3" version of the Future Games Show, where over half a million gamers
watched live from around the world.
June 11, 2022
Arctic Awakening Revealed
Our newest and first single player game, Arctic Awakening, was revealed at
the Future Games Show. An episodic narrative adventure set in the unforgiving Arctic.
Your plane crashed in a storm, leaving only your AI drone for company as you journey
to find your co-pilot and uncover the dark mysteries buried beneath the ice.
March 25, 2021
Going Rmote
Partly due to the pandemic and partly due to an increasingly geographically
diversified team, we closed our long-time office in downtown Oklahoma City and
went fully remote.
October 1, 2020
New Website/Branding
With a renewed focus on storytelling in our games, we built
a brand new website to better illustrate who we've become in the 12
years since our founding. An enhanced blog and newsletter are part
of our renewed efforts to connect with our community.
June 9, 2020
CasinoRPG Hotels Expansion
When you think about Vegas, you don't just think about the casinos.
You also think about the big, glamorous hotels! So, hotels were a natural
extension to the gameplay of CasinoRPG that had gone through various stages
of development over the years before finally being released.
August 27, 2019
Exocraft Released on Mobile
Exocraft was always developed as a fully cross-platform experience.
Our goal from day one was to enable the same action-packed experience on
browsers, PCs, tablets and mobile phones. It wasn't feasible for us to do
this all at once, so this date marked the culmination of that vision.
June 5, 2019
Exocraft Released on Steam
After a year of beta testing on the web, our sci-fi action-strategy game was
finally released for PC/Mac on Steam. We received widespread coverage in news outlets such
as Rock Paper Shotgun and introduced the MMO to an entirely new audience on desktop.
March 12, 2019
Exocraft Released on Web
After nearly a year of development and several months of closed beta
testing, Exocraft was released for the web. The initial response was
overwhelming with tens of thousands of players signing up in the first
few days, garnering praise on YouTube, Twitch and IO game forums for
its visually stunning and innovative approach to the genre.
February 27, 2018
CasinoRPG Released on Steam
After going through the final round of Steam Greenlight submissions
before that system was replaced, CasinoRPG rounded the bases and
was released on Steam. The launch was well received as CasinoRPG remained
at the top of the "new and trending" list for its entire first week of launch,
helping to introduce an entirely new audience to the game.
January 16, 2018
CasinoRPG Released on Mobile
The plan was always for CasinoRPG to be a fully cross-platform game,
which was one of the reasons for developing with HTML5. However,
mobile browsers still had their limitations, so releasing an official app
for iOS and Android was the logical next step for the game's evolution.
December 8, 2017
GoldFire 2.0 launched
A lot was learned over the first five years of the GoldFire Network,
and all of that was rolled into the total rewrite for GoldFire 2.0. What
started as a simple platform with basic chat and accounts expanded into a full
social network tightly integrated with our games and included mobile support,
live updating everywhere, private chat, forums, social feeds, leaderboards,
game switcher, ntofications, profiles, item shop and much more.
February 20, 2017
howler.js 2.0 Released
What started as a simple audio solution for CasinoRPG, turned into the
web's most widely used audio framework -- used by the likes of Google, Disney,
Lego, NASA, DC, EA, Ubisoft, Paramount, Warner Bros, Universal and thousands
of other websites and apps. Because of this, a multi-year rewrite ensued and culminated
in the 2.0 release that offered expanded capabilities, a pluggable architecture
and simplified core for a more bug-free and streamlined experience.
July 19, 2016
Third Office
After going a year with fully remote work, we found the perfect spot to
get back into some office space in the second tallest tower in downtown
Oklahoma City. For the first time, we had the opportunity to design our space
and also enjoy the view from the 22nd floor.
October 13, 2015
Heartland Gaming Expo
Always looking for ways to support the Oklahoma gaming scene, we of course
agreed to show CasinoRPG at the annual Heartland Gaming Expo in Tulsa, OK.
We were thrilled to be honored with the first place prize for indie games
at the show.
April 12, 2015
CasinoRPG Released on Web
Nearly a year after the Kickstarter beta began, CasinoRPG finally
released to the public on the web and Windows Store. A three-person team
operating on a $20k Kickstarter budget managed to released a full MMORPG in
just over a year -- a fact that we were very proud of, but there was still
more work to be done!
April 16, 2014
Second Office
In an interview with the Daily Oklahoman newspaper just months earlier,
we had dreamed of moving out of our "closet" office and finally having a
window to the outside world. Well, this second office had six windows and
more than doubled our space for the next stage of our journey.
May 22, 2013
Founded OKGD
We have always been passionate about growing game development in Oklahoma.
So, after we garnered so much community support for our Kickstarter, we
decided to give back by founding the first game development meetup in the
state, which continues to meet every month in downtown Oklahoma City.
March 28, 2013
CasinoRPG Kickstarter
Building such an ambitious game as CasinoRPG was going to take a community
effort. So, we reached out to our local and online communities to help fund the
development of this MMORPG that merged role-playing, tycoon, city-building and
casino games. We successfully reached our funding goal of $20k with just three
hours to spare!
February 3, 2013
howler.js Open-Sourced
We were rather early to the game in terms of building large-scale HTML5
games, and as such, the game framework we were using didn't yet support audio.
So, a weekend project to fix that turned into howler.js. Little did we know
that howler.js would become the standard in web audio libraries in the
years to come.
January 28, 2013
VentureSpur Accelerator
With the success of Y Combinator in San Francisco, new startup
accelerators were popping up all over the place. The first in Oklahoma City
was VentureSpur, and we were selected in their first batch,
which helped us double the team from one to two! We began early development of
CasinoRPG during this three month program.
August 6, 2012
First Office
Until this point, James had always been either working from home,
from the library or out of a co-working space. GoldFire Studios finally
had an actual office space, and even though it more resembled a closet
than an office, it was a big next step for the small indie studio.
June 1, 2012
GoldFire Network Released
The vision of the studio was to enhance the community elements
around truly social aspects. With this in mind, the GoldFire Network was
released in order to merge our games together and offer new social
capabilities such as chat, forums, friending and more.
March 5, 2012
BC Wars Released
The next major game release after PokerRPG was a prehistoric MMORPG
centered around cavemen and dinosaurs. Again, a mixture of text and 2D
graphics, this game allowed you to become a legend through time as you
battled dinosaurs, built up your cave, joined a tribe and explored the
vast reaches of Pangea. Another resounding success for the one-person studio,
reaching tens of thousands of players in just the first week of launch.
December 27, 2009
GoldFire Studios Founded
GoldFire Studios had technically been in operation for years, though
it wasn't an actual incorporated business until this date. This is the
point where James' hobby project took its next step towards the
game studio you see today.
June 9, 2008
PokerRPG Released
After a year of beta testing, this prequel to CasinoRPG was released
on the web. Using cutting-edge (at the time) web technology, a fully browser-based
poker game was wrapped with a largely text-based role-playing experience where you could work
your way up from your parent's basement to being the top dog of the poker universe.
July 2, 2007
NexGen Wars Released
A weekend project turned into a global phenomenon with the release of the
newest game consoles at the time: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii.
It was featured #1 on Digg (these were pre-Reddit times) and saw over
1 million unique visitors on the day of the Nintendo Wii launch, being cited in thousands
of news sources worldwide. Using historical data and statistical extrapolation,
NexGen Wars showed estimates for the live sales of each of the consoles, helping to fuel
the fanboy wars as the live counters could be found in the signatures of virtually every
video game forum on the web.
July 6, 2006
Eternal Kingdoms Released
The development of Eternal Kingdoms was funded through the sale of
Venetopia. This was a strategy game centered around medieval and fantasy
warfare. It was similar to Age of Empires, but largey text-based
and massively multiplayer. It went on to be acquired by Bored.com and helped
to fund future projects.
February 26, 2005
Venetopia Released
James began his online gaming adventures with a game called NeoPets,
so it was only natural that the first large-scale game he woulld go on to
build would be heavily influenced by that pioneer of browser games.
Venetopia was an online fantasy pet game that weaved a story through
its 2D and text-based world. Raise your pet, play the mini-games and climb the leaderboards.
May 9, 2003
Apex Web Gaming Released
There weren't app stores or sophisticated searching tools to find
new games back in 2003, so Apex Web Gaming was created as one of the
largest directories, news sources and top game lists for multiplayer online games
(mostly focussed on browser games).
April 18, 2003