Hidden at the end of a long driveway in Palo Alto, the five-bedroom house looks like a reality show set or the home of a strangely well-behaved fraternity.
Young men and teenage boys lounge in patio chairs in front, sit at long tables that fill the living room and family room, and sprawl in comfy chairs in the TV room.
But no one here is gossiping or plotting, and there’s no keg in sight. In fact, for a house with more than 30 guys in it, ranging in age from 13 to 25, the headquarters of MakeGamesWithUs is bizarrely silent. Wearing earbuds and leaning over their laptop screens, each of these interns is creating an original game for the iPhone.
The intense productivity is great for Ashutosh Desai and Jeremy Rossmann, founders of the indie game-publishing platform, who opened their headquarters and home (they live upstairs along with various employees and girlfriends) to dozens of summer interns to build up the company’s stable of games.
The interns aren’t paid, but if they complete a game and publish it through MakeGamesWithUs, they’ll keep half the revenue.
