Live Oak Games was founded by Patrick and June Matthews in 2002 with the goal of creating high quality games that people can enjoy over and over again. Patrick is a long-time gamer, award-winning game designer, and award-winning children's author. June is an educator with Masters degrees in both Social Work and Early Childhood Education. Among other things, she teaches parents, teachers, and graduate students how to connect with children.
Live Oak Games focus is on games that connect people, games that bring people together around a dinner table
...or in a living room
...or in front of the TV
...or maybe even outdoors under the shade of a big old live oak tree.
In 2012, Live Oak changed its focus from producing games to licensing them. In 2013, we dropped off the grid for a few years (seven, actually) to deal with some distractions (no, not the game). In 2020, we came back to life. We launched Second Story Up, a publisher of middle grade fiction, and will be returning to licensing games to publishers.
All kinds. Pat focuses on the experience of the game. Is it fun? Is it new? Who would like to play it? June's focus is more on the educational and social aspects. The style of game is not important to us. Our goal is to design experiences that people can enjoy together.
The games that Live Oak published (SiegeStones, Ice Lake, StoryTellers, and Calaboose) all enjoyed world-wide distribution, but without Live Oak around to support them, they went out of print. We do not foresee republishing them, simply because that effort would distract from our current focus on designing new experiences.
If you're a publisher, and would like to acquire the rights to any of our games, please Contact Pat!
First of all "Live Oak" is a kind of tree. It's not just what you'd call an oak tree that happened to be alive. Well, I guess you could, but that would be odd.
Live Oaks grow to be
quite large and have strong hanging branches that provide shade and are great
to climb in.
When we were looking for a name, we wanted to pick something with a
little character, something with some personal meaning to it. Living in Central Florida, Live Oaks are everywhere - they really define
the landscape.
I guess it was only natural that we'd arrive at the name Live Oak Games. Besides, the other ideas we came up with (Homely Dog Games, Albino Toad Enterprises, etc.) just didn't fly.
For those history buffs out there, Old Ironsides was made, in part, out of Live Oak (because the wood is so dense).
Finally, the acronym for Live Oak Games is LOG, and how cool is that?