Keith Shepherd and Natalia Luckyanova aren’t names you likely know from the video game development community, but the odds are pretty good that you’ve played their Temple Run game. The husband-and-wife team moved Imangi Studios to the Triangle and immediately become one of the most successful game studios in the area, right up there with Epic Games and Insomniac Games.

Temple Run, which is free to play on Android, iOS and Windows Phone devices, has been downloaded more than 170 million times across. It’s even been turned into an arcade game. Shepherd talks about the game franchise and explains why the company chose Raleigh as home in this exclusive interview.

  • How has the game experience evolved over the years?

We had no idea Temple Run would be such a huge hit when we first released it. Our team built the game in about 5 months, which is pretty quick turn-around time. With such a compressed schedule, we had to really force ourselves to focus on the core of the game which meant there were a ton of ideas we had that we just simply couldn’t include in the first release.

One of the things that has been so amazing about the success of the game is that it has allowed us to explore all of those ideas and continue to improve the game over time. We’ve had the opportunity to add new worlds, new obstacles, new characters, new powerups, etc. We’ve even had the opportunity to build a sequel and work twice now with Disney on Temple Run spinoffs. It’s been an amazing journey and a ton of fun for us to continue to be able to add content to the game and to be able to give fans more of what they love.

  • Dave & Buster’s in Cary has the Temple Run arcade game. How did that come about?

Temple Run has reached hundreds of millions of players worldwide. We started to get approached by various companies wanting to license our IP for merchandise since we had such a wide reach. Over the years we’ve partnered with dozens of companies to develop licensed goods and build a strong merchandising program here at Imangi. The Temple Run arcade game you see at Dave & Buster’s nationwide (including the one in Cary) was one of the products that came out of this effort. We partnered with a fantastic company called Coastal Amusements that helped adapt Temple Run for the arcade. It’s proven very successful and an popular in the arcades. These days we also have apparel, comic books, board games, toys, and other products out there as well. It’s very exciting to see something virtual we created move into physical goods.

  • What has been the coolest phone call you’ve received to date from celebrities or Hollywood studios interested in working with your game?

That’s hard to say. We’ve been very fortunately to have a lot of cool opportunities come our way. Some highlights:

Working with Disney/Pixar – While working on Temple Run: Brave, our team got a private screening of the movie Brave at Pixar’s campus with one of the directors before the movie was even finished. I’ll never forget that!

Seeing various celebrities tweet and post about playing Temple Run. (Usain Bolt, Justin Beiber, Lebron James, Soulja Boy, Wayne Rooney, etc. Seems like pretty much everyone out there has played it. It’s just really cool to go from being a consumer of media produced by these people to seeing them also play something we’ve created.

Working with Usain Bolt – Natalia and I watched Usain Bolt win the gold medal in the 100m and 200m dash at the 2008 Olympics. It was really cool when the fastest man on earth started tweeting about playing Temple Run. Many of our fans noticed his love of our game and started requesting that we include Usain Bolt as a playable character in Temple Run. It just seemed like such a natural fit for our game so we reached out to his team and pitched the idea.

  • What are some of the things that attracted you to move to this area?

A few things that attracted us to this area:

1. Talent pool – There are a lot of highly educated talented people living in the Triangle area and fantastic university systems.

2. Game developers – There are lots of other game development studios based in the Triangle both big and small. So there is a nice sense of community here for people making games.

3. Cost of living – it’s much more affordable to live in this area compared to Silicon Valley or Washington, DC, where we moved from.

  • What opportunities do you see here for mobile start-ups in gaming?

The Triangle is a fantastic place for startups in general, mobile is no different. I think a lot of the things that attracted us to the area make this area attractive to other startups as well. The Triangle is a great plays to live and build a business!

  • What advice would you give to students graduating from a local university interested in game development?

Start making games now!

People often ask me what classes they should take or how they can get enough experience to work at a game development studio as an intern. It’s definitely important that you develop your foundation skills (Math, Art, Programming, etc), but it’s never to soon to also start trying to make your own games. Just start simple and try to make something. You’ll learn so much that way and end up with great experiences to show off when you start looking for a job in the game industry.