Jenny Jiao Hsia

Jenny Jiao Hsia is an independent game developer, designer, and co-director of Consume Me, an award-winning narrative game that blends systems-driven gameplay with emotionally honest storytelling. Consume Me won both the Nuovo Award and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at IGF 2025, earned additional nominations for Excellence in Design, Narrative, and Visual Art, and received two 2026 DICE Awards nominations for Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game and Outstanding Achievement in Story.

Five Lessons I Learned from Making Consume Me (The Hard Way)

In this microtalk, independent game developer Jenny Jiao Hsia (co-director of Consume Me) shares five hard-earned lessons from spending nearly a decade making an award-winning narrative game on a shoestring budget. She unpacks what it really takes to ship: the difference between prototypes and a coherent game, why discipline matters more than inspiration, and how “small teams” often mean concentrated workload and invisible roles--when the dream job starts to feel like work.