Game Changers

For fans of video gaming — at last count, roughly 215 million in the U.S. alone* — the Abdullah brothers serve as powerful examples of how family support, creativity and a strong foundation in computer science can have game-changing impact. We spoke with the two alumni and advisory board members about their unconventional journey from making paper prototypes in middle school to designing their first game in a Comp Sci 500 Flash class and launching it to widespread acclaim on Xbox. Fresh from concepting their next game, the founders of Decoy Games are already breaking color barriers as a Black-owned business. Now they’re poised to shake up the industry. 

How did you get into gaming, and who were your early influences? 

Khalil: Our mom got us into gaming. She worked at Toys"R"Us and would bring games home, and we would play anything from action games to role playing games.  

Ahmed: But we had a rule that we couldn't play games during the school week, so we got creative and made our own games. We would use paper prototypes and make the games that we really liked. We couldn't play Mario Kart, so we would cut out Mario Kart and then race them. And we didn't really know we were actually creating game design. We were just trying to find ways to be clever so we could still play games during the school week. 

So you were storyboarding them essentially. 

Ahmed: Yeah, and we had no idea that was a thing. We just wanted to have immersive experiences. And we weren’t patient enough to wait for the weekend.

You've both been gaming since a tender age. So, was computer science the obvious choice as a major? 

Khalil: When we went to school, there weren't a lot of options for game design or development, and computer science was the closest thing we could find. So, we kind of took a shot in the dark at computer science at UMass Amherst, and it gave us the foundation of software development skills that we needed to start our journey as game developers. 

Ahmed: And I just copied Khalil. 

And what sorts of games were you developing at that point? 

Khalil: The very first game I developed was in a Flash class in my senior year. It was Comp Sci 500, and one of the midterm assignments was to make a Flash game. I felt like I was waiting five years for this moment. I never was able to work on a game before this, and I got really excited. So I made a game called Swim Sanity!: The Adventures of Mooba Jiver the Scuba Diver, inspired by a game I used to play on the Game Boy called Mario Game & Watch Gallery. And the way the class worked is your games would be running so people could go in and play your projects. And whenever I watched in the class, people would be playing my game. And that was when I got the first feeling of maybe I'm onto something here. 

So Khalil, you were about to graduate. And Ahmed, you were still in school. But you guys were already talking about going off and doing an entrepreneurial thing.  

Ahmed: Yeah, but we always wanted to build games for Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo because that's what we played as kids. So I found a tool to build to Xbox, and I was like, we gotta change this whole game up. We gotta add more powers and attacks, and that's when we redesigned it. It went through a lot of iterations to get to the point where we could release it, but we were doing a lot of self-teaching with everything that we learned coming out of UMass. And we did that all part-time while working full-time jobs. 

So how was the competitive environment when you were trying to launch Swim Sanity and has it changed since then? 

Ahmed: With indies, it's very competitive. I think 70% of indie game launches are not successful. When you enter on consoles like Xbox, you either self-publish or you get a publisher. We always wanted in this first title to get a taste of what it means to self-publish across all platforms. But that’s tough. You have to manage the marketing, business side and development and make sure your game is stable. We had cross-play at the time, which lets you play on Nintendo and Xbox. And when we released, we were only one of 10 games to have it. And that's against Fortnight. 

We got some press from that, but the big moment was when we got on Nintendo's Indy showcase alongside some really big titles.

What year did you release? 

Ahmed: We released in 2020. And what really hurt was we would go to conventions, and that's where we found a lot of success. Then the pandemic hit, and that avenue just stopped. We had to release our game at a time where we needed the press the most.  

So, what did you do? 

Ahmed: We built good relationships with the platforms we were releasing on. Microsoft gave us a lot of support. We were part of their Summer Games Fest, and they highlighted us on the dashboard as some of their top 10 games coming out, it was building the rapport with those publishers. 

When did you decide to launch Decoy Games, and when did you know that it was gonna be okay to take that big leap into the great unknown? 

Khalil: When our hard work crossed our opportunities. We got to a point where if we had stayed working full time at our jobs, we were gonna start missing out on a lot of opportunities. So in 2018 we left our full-time jobs and went full-on into Decoy Games.  

And where were you working? 

Khalil: Our first job was working for a software sales company where we would create software demos for different companies around the world, and then basically convince them to buy the product. We did that on a pretty high level for eight to 10 years. And it was interesting because that wasn't necessarily what I would've told you I would have been doing after college. But it allowed us to gain some expertise on how to sell software from a marketing customer discovery and legal process. I know a lot of people who made awesome games, but don't know how to run a business or even generate awareness for sales. 

How big a role does social impact and diversity play in your company mission?  

Ahmed: With the game industry, we felt like we had almost an obligation to keep increasing awareness for marginalized communities to have a place in the creative side of game development. Only 4% of game developers in the world are Black, so we knew we were in a very small ratio. We knew almost all the other developers. And to be frank, our community drives the sales for a lot of these games and the content and culture around it, so it's about time we start having ownership. We held different events like Game On, and during Black History Month, we focused on Black excellence in the game industry. Our goal was to create paths, so we focused on the excellence and not the struggles. We know the struggles. We experience them all the time.  

Have you seen things changing?  

Ahmed: It’s exciting to be part of the UMass board now and go for even younger ages in computer science. Where Khalil and I were two of very few people of color in our class, we want to make it so people can see this as a viable path. When people ask me what major to take in college, I always tell them computer science. Personally, I feel like it doesn't matter what your interest is. There's a need on the software creation or problem-solving side. 

Have you seen more people of color getting into computer science and game design and development? 

Khalil: Gaming in general is more accessible. There's a lot of people in minority communities who are very interested. Our goal is to continue to drive that interest into opportunity and make something out of it. Over the past year or so there have been some efforts on corporate levels to highlight certain individuals or groups, but there’s always more that can be done. 

Have you guys become mentors to other game designers? 

Khalil: We have our own circle of people that we definitely talk to and help, and we're always trying to make ourselves available. For example, we have our own Dispo channel where we'll help people if they have questions about getting into game development. Our whole thing is we want to be an example to show we didn't have a gaming background. This is something that we were able to create from our own, from tools that we put together. And we want to show that it's not impossible for people from our background to do that as well. 

What are your growth plans? 

Ahmed: If you did this interview a year ago, the company was still just Khalil and I, but now we're 16 individuals, including us. People said hiring might take a while, but when we said we're hiring we felt like there was a flood of people waiting. And we have such a diverse pool of people of color and women. Our team makeup is not typically what you would see in the game industry. And we just opened our doors, and people just gravitated towards it.  

Who are they and what skills do they bring? 

Ahmed: Some of our comic book artists never worked on a game in their life but are unbelievably talented. We were more interested in people who wanted to learn things. So we have people who are literally coming out pf college and people who’ve been in the industry for 10 years. Our artists are very imaginative, and you can see it from what they've done in the past. We have Emilio Lopez. He's worked at DC and Marvel and DreamWorks. But they all never worked on a game. We're really confident about our next game idea. And when people see it, they’re gonna be like, okay, this is something I haven't seen before. 

So, how did your years at UMass shape your career path? 

Khalil: Computer science gave us a foundation in software development and challenged us to expand our minds. It gave us the basic tools we needed before we went out on our own. It also  provided financial stability by allowing us to jump into an industry as solution consultants and sales engineers. It also taught us the hustle and reward. Staying up nights in the library till 2 in the morning working on code and finally getting it to compile and work showed us how the reward of gaming felt. 

What advice do you have for future students interested in taking a similar path? 

Ahmed: I highly recommend computer science, especially if you're tech-focused and into problem solving. If you don't know exactly the field you want to be in, it’s a nice way in. 

Khalil: I think computer science does a great job of giving you the opportunity to get into your tech dream job, but also gives you backup options. We couldn't get into gaming right out of school, but we were able to get into software sales for 10 years, which paid the bills and gave us the flexibility to get into our dream job. For anyone getting into college now, my advice would be take some time to pick out your major and pick something in the middle of the happy path of passion and opportunity. You can't go only for your dream job degree and only for the money degree. It has to meet in between.