Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Clayton Belcher. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Clayton, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Gosh, how do I pick just one? I try to fill as much of my time with meaningful projects as I can. Perhaps I can start with the basic principles, and then force myself just to give one example. Maybe two. Can I have two?

Cheesy as they may sound, these are currently my chosen salient motivations, in order of importance:
1. Love people.
2. Make things.
3. Experience the world (partly a reminder to be brave).

It’s little surprise then, that when I’m making things, the most energizing ones hit 1 or 3 as well.

I ply many crafts (there are so many things to be interested in), but one that’s particularly near and dear to me is video game development. They are a fusion of many other media, each very powerful in its own right. Games employ gorgeous visual art, moving music and sound work, engaging narrative design, and the intricate mechanisms of interaction design that build up to *fun.* And that’s not even to mention the challenges of technical design, execution, and business development.

There are wunderkinds out there who can do everything needed to make a game, but in my experience, it’s much better to be on a team, weaving in concert to make things that give others joy. The interplay of each other’s ideas and capabilities and preferences usually magnifies the end result. Plus, it’s just fun to do together.

For a number of years, I have volunteered as an organizer for the Cincinnati chapter of the International Game Developers Association. We put on events for networking, skill training, progress sharing, and general camaraderie. The connections I have made through those meetups and sundry associated groups have led to so much cool making and friendship.

I could pick our first title, Splotches, a game that taught me dogged persistence and scrappy resourcing, and through which I achieved a childhood dream of playing one of my creations on a Nintendo console. I could pick our second title, Match Point, a frenetic party game, which let me experience directly how our handiwork brought good feelings and laughter to people as we brought it to events. Or I could pick Franchise Wars, a poignant collaboration with a friend from Chicago, to whom we eventually dedicated the game.

Hm. Maybe the most meaningful project has been the overarching metaproject! Making cool stuff with people.

Nah, actually, I think it’s much sillier and only related to games in that there was some interaction design: a physical light installation our team of network connections made for the BLINK light festival. It was 10 toilets that shot fog, lit up, and played different (hopefully thought-provoking) sound sets as you sat, waited, and stood up. It was Absurdist Joy at its finest, and it reminded me of the why behind all creative toil: all it takes is to light up one person’s face to make a piece of art worth the sweat.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

‘Twas in a sea of beige boxes and old-timey, lint-clogged rollerball mice that I wrought my first video game. A wee lad of 9, I’d made a small Mario-like platformer game in a visual scripting engine called Klik ‘n Play. It starred my own comic strip character, an aged version of myself. The teachers at school let me put it on our classroom computers for everyone to play. It wasn’t very good of course, but I was hooked.

Ironically, I wasn’t allowed to play many video games growing up. Not for a while anyway. But friends had the latest game systems and eventually I got an older one, so of course, the fun I had playing games as a kid was a big inspiration. I particularly remember playing one video game with my siblings. It was for the Super Nintendo, a game based on Disney’s Goof Troop, and it was special because it was a multiplayer cooperative game. Solving action-based puzzles together as kids must have been a particularly poignant joy-memory for me, because my aspiration from then was to run a game studio, making games for people to have similar positive, social experiences with.

That studio is Jolly Crouton Media Ltd.!

Where’s the name come from? One of my childhood nicknames was Croutons, ostensibly because I was a picky eater at the time and liked to eat Croutons dipped in ranch. and jolly is the feeling I want to inspire with things we make for people to interact with. The tagline I often use is “Wot Play Ye?”

Yes, it’s a whimsical, silly name and tagline, but that’s kind of the brand. Whimsical, silly joy. Fond memories together goofing off. Levity on purpose, particularly in the face of personal journey stuff. Not avoidant levity, but purposeful levity. Affirmation of self and experience alongside others.

An important theme in my house growing up was community, and as I sit here thinking back, I realize how that played out in my teen artistic behaviors. I sought the like-minded in forums (back before social media) where I made this little thing and that little thing to share, saw what others were doing, facilitated teams, picked up new skills, learned a little about the world at large. That impulse to gather eventually led to helping organize the game developers in my home city, Cincinnati. Networking really is the magic they make it out to be. It leads you to opportunities and collaborators and good friends, connections, expertise, art. And if I’m around, maybe a little too much whimsical, silly joy and fond memories together of goofing off.

I didn’t really identify myself as a creative kid. It wasn’t until high school, when a parent used that word to describe me to someone offhandedly, that I took it up as part of my identity. Since then, I’ve delved into many pastimes and art forms, to get a taste for different kinds of expression. Clients take me up on graphic design, websites, apps, voiceovers, laser-cut artifacts, once even a steampunk gun made out of thrift-store candlesticks. But I always come back to making games. It was “the dream,” you know?

I’ve learned a lot, about perseverance, about pragmatism and compromise, about the incredibly complicated facets of the craft itself. But at the end of the day, all I want to do is make people laugh. Have a good time. Make settings for connection. Contribute something.

Y’all, it is so hard to summarize years of your experience in just a few paragraphs. Hit me up for a coffee, it’ll be more natural! Haha.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

In some sense, society already does a great deal to support creative ecosystems, since they exist at all. I often feel very grateful for the farmers, electricians, plumbers, mechanics, architects, doctors, teachers, and many others out there taking care of their parts of the tapestry, building enough collective wealth together to let us spend any amount of time at all on art, a higher level on Maslow’s hierarchy.

By the same token, being grateful too for what creatives bring to us all might help dissolve the notion that it is an optional component of a healthy community.

Subsidize the arts, I guess! Give attention and thought to crafted things you pass, and the brains, hands, and experiences behind their creation. They’re everywhere, even down to the greyest sidewalks painted into the ground for others to use, an artisan’s contribution.

Believe some things have intrinsic value, and not just in economic value.

Hm, I am not sure I am really saying much. Buy art!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I suppose it changes and evolves along with me. Right now, it’s making joy for as many as I can in a chaotic world. It’s doing something every day about waking up weary over there often not being enough love to solve all the human hurts.

Sentient comes from the Latin sentire, “to feel”. I think it is good to make the things that feel feel good things too.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jollycrouton.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jollycrouton/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jollycrouton
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claytonbelcher/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jollycrouton
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/jollycrouton
• Other: My personal website is at https://claytonbelcher.com/

Image Credits
Faith George, and technically Clayton Belcher but that feels weird