Hello,
I'm Trevor. I'm a game designer, a programmer, and a musician.
I've been making games for as long as I can remember. I guess I started by making jigsaw puzzles in early elementary school. I would just glue my drawings to cardboard and then use a box cutter to divide it into crude jigsaw pieces. This evolved into making board games. The two most notable ones were a game based off quidditch from Harry Potter, and a strategy game that used chess pieces. I remember the latter was called "Chepi" and it had something to do with putting a marble in the crown of a rook piece. I always played these with my cousins, who actually enjoyed them. In middle school I started playing Roblox, and this is where I learned to code. I made some fairly popular games on there and kind of became a Roblox celebrity. This evolved into making adventure games and redstone puzzles in Minecraft.
When I was in high school, I looked up "top 10 xbox live arcade games" and discovered Braid. I know that Braid isn't a fringe game but it was the game that made me think about games more seriously. I came into contact with Jonathan Blow and he recommended a designer by the name of Stephen Lavelle to me. I sort of fell in love with Stephen's strange, hidden creations.
Part of my reason to search for a community like this is selfish. I'm aware that most games that I make will pretty much only be played by people that are interested in fringe games. I went to college for music, but this is when I started to make games seriously. I haven't finished many, partly because I'm so slow (it took me a whole year to make a game that most people will play for 30 minutes). If you're interested in my work, you can find my (FINISHED) projects at http://trevorlovell.com/category/portfolio
I've been meaning to find a community like this for a LONG time. When I found this website today I got super excited. After finding designers like Arcane Kids, Stephen Lavelle, Jason Rohrer, Anna Anthropy, I couldn't help but feel that there were many, many others that I've been missing out on. I love things that people have made just because they wanted to make it, without any intention of making profit or becoming famous or whatever. I feel that a lot of fringe games would fit this criteria.
I haven't listened to the podcast yet but I plan to start today. I look forward to hanging out here.