Farragut entrepreneur launches Black Kite Games — local video biz
Farragut entrepreneur Cameron Reid, 26, has launched his own home-based business, Black Kite, LLC., also known as Black Kite Games, this month.
“We’re a company that makes video games,” Reid said. “The games that we make, in particular, are card games.”
He described them as similar to trading cards, such as Pokémon or the Solitaire app on Windows.
“But unlike the regular playing cards adults would use, it’s more like the trading cards with little monsters on them and stuff,” Reid noted. “We make video game versions of that.”
He said the business has been a slow process, bringing on contractors and legal registration, but “we’re going to start hiring (contractors, such as artists and sound designers) this week.” He added they would work remotely.
Reid said he always has been interested in computers and games.
“I’ve been playing games as long as I can remember,” he said. “I played a lot of these types of card games in college and in a couple small tournaments as well.”
That interest only grew after working on a cowboy game, Red Dead Redemption 2, right out of college.
“I wanted to start something where I had more control over the product,” he said. “I wanted to start an independent studio that was much smaller than (Rock Star Games, the company that made Red Dead Redemption 2).”
Most recently, though, Reid was a quantum software engineer with Oak Ridge National Laboratories but recently left to start his business.
“The combination of my work at Rock Star (from 2017 to 2019) and my work at ORNL (from 2019 to this October) prepared me to start something of my own,” he said.
”It’s an industry that’s designed for entertainment,” Reid added. “You have to keep in mind that you’re making something that the goal is to make people happy.
He said the market is growing 13 percent a year right now, compared to the stock market, which he said is growing at 7 percent.
“I’m sure, with everyone cooped up at home, Netflix and video games are probably selling higher,” Reid added. “I predict that would probably last, even when things start to return to normal.”
With Black Kite, Reid said he currently is working on a
prototype for a new strategy card game for personal computers he hopes would come out in 2021.
“It will be released on Steam,” he said. “It’s like the Amazon for computer games.”
For more information about Black Kite, LLC., Reid can be e-mailed at blackkitegames@gmail.com
