By Kathleen BergerRecord Staff WriterIf you flip through the Nov. 25, 2013, issue of Time magazine, you’ll find an article about a “slightly unkempt” video-game developer with a local connection.Warrenton’s Branden Turner, 23, laughs about the adjective used by Time’s columnist Joel Stein to describe him. “He called me slightly unkempt,” Turner laughed. “Um, I am very well ‘kempt.’ I emailed him about it. Kind of like, ‘Come on, man, really?’ I’m well-kept. I’m a very clean person, I shave and shower every day, I keep my hygiene in check.’”Turner didn’t take it personally. He said he likes Stein’s sarcastic writing style and “unkempt” falls under the video gamer and computer programmer stereotypes. After all, Turner’s career choice is one of the reasons why Stein wrote an article about him.The Time story is called “Taking Money from a Baby.” The online version is titled, “Why I’m Investing in a 23-Year-Old.” Stein writes about how he found Turner on a website called Upstart.com.In the words of Stein: “Corporations are impersonal. I’m betting on the future salary of an aspiring video-game designer. So I don’t want to buy stock in corporations anymore. Upstart.com lets people invest in recent college graduates in return for part of their future salary.”Turner was living in Los Angeles at the time, interning for Disney Imagineering. He turned to Upstart.com as a means to pay off $55,000 in student loans. And like the Time article suggests, Turner was a good investment.So good, in fact, that Turner said he returned his Upstart money, even Stein’s $100 investment. Turner explained how he’s been helping to build an innovative new company in his home of Seattle called Good Mood Creators. He said he’s making very good money doing what he loves and living his dream, which includes paying off his own student loan debt within the next two years.Turner’s a software programmer and technical lead, designing video games. He said he’s wearing many hats with the company and he’s working on something big, a video game that he can’t disclose anything about. The hope is that it will be released for PC, Xbox One and PS4 by the end of the year.Appreciating ArtTurner didn’t come from money. He said he’s the product of two hard-working, loving parents. His dad was a truck driver and his mom is a factory worker who encouraged his passion for video games. “They are really proud of me,” Turner said.For Turner, video games motivated him. “It helped me in ways that both film and literature helped me, it taught me about life,” he said. “Even at an early age, I knew hundreds and hundreds of people worked on these games and they poured their lives into the games for one person like me to enjoy it. I felt that the creation and art in itself can be very rewarding. Games made me appreciate art. “Turner would play games for eight hours a day in high school and still graduated near the top of his class.“And I’m OK now,” he said. “I’m not out there doing anything bad. I’m just living my life trying to make fun things for people.”Turner said he never neglected his school work. “The most important thing I learned through the Warren County school system was how to type well, which is really an important part of being a programmer that a lot of people underestimate,” said Turner.“For being a video game team developer, all of the math classes were hugely important. Geometry was very important, as was calculus. I took the highest-level math courses I could every year.”Turner offers words of wisdom for aspiring video game developers.“Pay very close attention in your English andliterature classes because if you’regoing to try to design games later, story art is very important,” he explainedThe Harvard of Video Game DesignTurner was accepted to what he once considered the Harvard of schools for designing video games: DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmon, Wash.Turner graduated from DigiPen with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Real-Time Interactive Simulation. He also graduated with a $55,000 student loan debt. That’s when he joined Upstart.com, taking on investors.Making ContactsStein took Turner out to lunch at a sushi restaurant in L.A. “He really did ask me if I smoked pot by asking me, ‘Hey do you smoke a lot of pot?’ and I thought that was really funny that he wrote that in the article,” said Turner. “And the fact that he said that my girlfriend was obviously completely made up, I thought that was funny too.”Turner admitted that Stein’s humorous remarks fit the stereotypes. However, the publishing of Stein’s article opened doors for Turner through networking. Because of the article, he is making new industry contacts.A Game for Everyone“I’m a software engineer, but at Good Mood Creators I’m a Technical Lead keeping programmers and more technical designers organized,” said Turner.Turner is clearly excited about the video game he’s creating with his co-workers, but he still won’t fold under questioning. He can only give the likely rating.“The game will probably be rated ‘Everyone.’ Not a game for kids, but a game that both kids and adults can enjoy.”

Brandon Turner, a Warrenton native and aspiring video game developer, was recently featured in a Time magazine story.