Larry DeMar: It's Always Been About Games | Casual Connect Video - Gamesauce: Global Inspiration for Game Developers

USA 2014 Video Coverage

Larry DeMar: It’s Always Been About Games | Casual Connect Video

August 6, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

“My thinking is that we’re currently at ‘Social Casino 1.0’ and that collectively we’re going to try things until someone comes up with the social features that take us to ‘Social Casino 2.0’,” said Larry DeMar during a panel at Casual Connect USA 2014. Leading Edge Design is working with Chicago’s 2 By 2 Gaming (also on the panel) and Ruby Seven Studios to create a new social casino and work toward that end.

Larry DeMar, the president of Leading Edge Design, has been making games for 35 years - different types of games, on different platforms, and for different industries. At this point, he can’t imagine doing anything else.

At 22 years old, on his first day in the business, Steve Ritchie and Eugene Jarvis took him under their wing. This photo of the three of them was taken years later at Eugene’s 50th birthday party.

It All Started With Pinball

He was an avid game player as he was growing up in the 60s and 70s, and, with Alvin Gottleib as a family friend, he was always intrigued by pinball machines. He played a lot of Pinball while at MIT and in his senior year, he discovered Space Invaders. Shortly after graduating, Ken Fedesna, a leader with the ability to find the best creative minds and manage them, brought him to work at Williams where he was part of the team that created Defender, Stargate, Robotron 2084, and Blaster, as well as innovating and developing pinball machines.

DeMar with Eugene and Mike Stroll, a visionary leader who had a knack for finding the best game creators and for setting up the atmosphere that resulted in greatness. In this photo is the 50,000th Defender machine, in the custom gold cabinet created to commemorate the milestone.

“The best developers in the business are little kids in an adult body,” he claims, “and I have had the privilege of working with some of the best.” He recognizes that these superstar developers all have a level of insecurity that drives them to keep tuning and piling on features, more often than not resulting in greatness.

DeMar thought it was magic working with the many developers it took to create Pinball 2000/Revenge of Mars under an un-makable schedule. This photo show George Gomez and DeMar doing hourly demos at the ATE show in London where the game was first unveiled. (Co-creator of the Pinball 2000 platform, Pat Lawlor, not shown).

DeMar considers himself fortunate to have been a part of many huge successes. For example, Defender, one of the best-selling games ever, was created by a small team that pulled off the impossible in an un-makeable timeframe. Pinball 2000/Revenge of Mars was another amazing project, which yielded an incredibly innovative product in a similarly impossible timeframe, but unfortunately it was not a commercial success. Recently, his current team worked closely with IGT to create the extremely successful Multi-Strike series of casino games. He is very proud of all these accomplishments, as well as creating the pinball machines that dominated the industry in the 90s.

A Team Effort

Leading Edge Design had its start when Williams ceased their pinball operations in 1999. DeMar decided to co-found this new business with his brother Steven De Mar. Scott Slomiany and Duncan Brown were part of DeMar’s pinball group and had also worked on casino games at Williams. Along with Mark Molitor, Brian Jared, and fellow Williams Pinball member Bill Grupp, they joined in and worked on the game development. Although DeMar is in the game development loop, he spends more of his time operating the company and working with customers. He emphasizes, “Everyone on our team contributes to our games, and you never know who will have the next great idea. This was the philosophy that the best at Williams/Midway always followed.”

A photo of the Leading Edge Design team with their flagship Multi-Strike Poker game. Pictured are Steven DeMar, Mark Molitor, Larry DeMar, Duncan Brown, Trish Lestelle, and Bill Grupp. Missing from our team is Scott Slomiany and Brian Jared. — A photo of the Leading Edge Design team with one of their slot machines.
Top Row: Bill Grupp, Scott Slomiany, Steven DeMar, Steve Katz, Mark Molitor
Bottom Row: Duncan Brown, Larry DeMar, Trish Lestelle (Missing: Brian Jared)

More To Come…

DeMar expects more and more convergence to come to the game industry; he is already seeing it happening. By convergence, he does not mean only console, PC, and mobile, he also sees it coming in the slot arena with bricks and mortar, online, and free-to-play.

In the little time he has away from work, he is devoted to nature and wildlife, serving on the board of Trustees of the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago and the Chicago Zoological Society. He also exercises regularly and can often be seen biking to work in the summer.

In the little time he has away from work, DeMar is devoted to nature and wildlife, serving on the board of Trustees of the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago and the Chicago Zoological Society.

His gaming is usually on his iPhone and iPad, playing free-to-play casino apps. He has been supporting the Kickstarter for Pinball Pro Timeshock, saying he is excited about the modernization of this company’s great games. He also plays Draw Something regularly with his son.

Console play was important to DeMar; he had one of the first Atari 2600 consoles and all the consoles from the 70s and 80s. Today, his children are the avid console gamers on Wii and Wii U, PS3, and DS consoles. They also play a lot of Minecraft on OSX; these consoles are all in his house, but he says they are not really his.

Leading Edge Design moved to Macs for the company’s use in 2006, and embraced iOS from the start, so it is no surprise that DeMar chose it for his personal use. However, he considers it important for the company to target both iOS and Android for their development.