Josh Hughes
www.parkworld-online.com
A chance encounter
By a twist of fate, the Park World team met a young man at IAAPA who had one hell of a story to tell. Here is that story in his own words…
H
ello Park World readers. My name is Josh Hughes, and I had the pleasure of meeting some of you as I volunteered
for both Park World and American Coaster Enthusiasts (ACE) during IAAPA 2024. 2024 was my first IAAPA, and it was quite the
learning experience. By day job, I work in the game industry (more on that in a minute), and I thought attending the world-famous E3 Expo ten times would have prepared me for IAAPA - how naive I was! IAAPA, at first, was overwhelming (in the best possible way). I did end up finding a rhythm and was very grateful to meet the people I did and learn more about an industry I love. So, who am I? Well, my family is a medical
bankruptcy family. Back in 2002, I had just graduated high school, and my brother, Trevor (then in 7th grade) was pressured by his friends to try out for football. After failing the physical three times we got
an emergency call: Trevor needed to be on medication NOW and needed to be in emergency surgery by the end of the week. It turned out his ureters (the lines that connect
your kidneys to your bladder) were identically kinked and had backed up urine into his kidneys (which were nearly poisoned to death).
so he took the family van and went down South. Our Mom (Cyndi), Trev and I lost everything
week, and we stopped counting after he had 70 surgeries. After a couple of years of trying to make it in
needed. While Trev was in one of his surgeries, I to try crazy. Crazy meant taking our love of video games and turning it into a job. Through a chain of events, a woman named
Rebecca Engum (now the Tourism Director of our city, but back then was with our small business development center) found out and told us that, entrepreneurs. So, we began the long process of learning how
to run a video game design team in 2006. We started our company, Add-A-Tudez Entertainment develop games! We went from knowing a little (I had a friend
train me at his game studio while I was in high school) to building a team that has since gone on Certified Game Studios. We now have two sides underneath Add-A-Tudez: our for-profit game studio (Team KAIZEN,
www.teamkaizengames. com) and our 501(c)3 educational nonprofit Ingenium (
www.teamkaizengames.com/ educational-outreach). game - Burst!) to be supported by the Montana
Film Office with a Big Sky Film Grant. Beyond Shattered Soul, where we had the extreme privilege of working with Chris Casamassa, a world-famous martial artist best known for playing Scorpion in Along the way, a consistent theme has popped
up: learning how to be entrepreneurs and game designers helped us take our lives back, so we wanted to pay that forward to the world. Especially towards kids who are traditionally tech-marginalized like girls, rural, Tribal/Native American Reservation, minority, low/moderate income, disability and special needs such as Autism Spectrum. This is because these kids are often subtly
the wrong place, or born the wrong person, for These kids need adults in their lives disproving
that lie, and who better than a medical bankruptcy family from the middle of Montana who have been these opportunities? So, we started running game design camps,
demonstrations and talks in our region. Sony PlayStation found out and did a video on our outreach programs (you can find it by searching for We first knew we were on to something when,
in our first year, one of our students (who was notoriously quiet) ended up leading several adults
2025
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